- MetLife Real Estate Investors Picks Up 22-Story Office Building at 3040 Post Oak Blvd. in Sale Valued at $125M [Houston Chronicle]
- Houston Ranks No. 4 in Country for New Residential Construction Activity in First Half of 2014, Finds Trulia [Houston Business Journal]
- The 609 Main Concrete Pour By the Numbers [Prime Property]
- 5 Houston Areas That Could Become Real Estate ‘Hotspots’ in the Near Future [Culturemap]
- Median Home Values in Supposed 25 Wealthiest ZIP Codes in Houston Area Increased 22.22% on Average Over Past Year [Houston Business Journal]
- Frankel Building Group To Build 44-Home Gated ‘The Lakes of Shadow Creek’ 3 Miles from ExxonMobil Campus [Houston Business Journal]
- Downtown’s Barringer Bar Locked Up After Contract Dispute with Downstairs Bar Clutch City Squire [Eater Houston]
- Lake Conroe To Be Converted into Drinking Water Source by June 2015 To Help Meet Demands of Growing Population [Houston Chronicle]
- EPA To Remove Hazardous Chemicals from the CES Environmental Services Site on Griggs Rd. in South Houston [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- Father of Fallen ‘Naked Unicyclist’ Finds Ghost Bike Honoring Son at Site of Fatal Accident on Sens Rd. in La Porte [Houston Chronicle; more info]
- Identifying the Art in Bert Long’s Fifth Ward House [The Great God Pan Is Dead; previously on Swamplot]
Photo of Jefferson Heights Apartments construction at 1520 N. Memorial Way: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
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It’s a shame about Barringer Bar closing. It was a nice, hidden gem. Last two times I went there, the divey Clutch City Squire was dead while Barringer had a good crowd. I wonder if that has anything to do with Clutch locking them out?
It’s good to see that the Feds will help clean up the CES Environmental Services site. I’m of the opinion that bankruptcy law should be revised to require that environmental clean-up be paid for before creditors can be paid. It would help in cases like this’ but it would also make lenders push dirty industries to clean up their act. Companies with bad environmental records would feel it in their ability to get credit.
About hotspots, I agree that the South Main corridor will probably boom soon. The ease of access to the Med Center, NRG, and proximity to wealthy areas like Braeswood and West U is just too hard to ignore. There are huge lots all along it, and high rise views would provide some incredible views of Med Center to Downtown to the Galleria. It would make more sense to have a Highland Village type development along it esp given the number of visitors that would frequent it from NRG.
I think South Main inside the loop is already starting to turn around. They just moved to tear down a large plot of storage units and an old apartment complex. I wonder how long the few vacant parcels and the two run down motels have before being replaced…..
Noticed several big projects percolating at around 8800 So. Main, and 9300 Buffalo Speedway, and trying to find out what they will be. A former religious summer camp at around 9400 is becoming town homes, and the Millennium Falcon whatever apartments at Kirby and Main are going up quickly.
77019 doesn’t make the list for “wealthiest zip codes”? And how is 77005 #4 and not #1 on this list, when it had the highest home value listed, the largest $$ increase and largest % increase? This is why I can’t do math – because it all makes no sense to me at all.
@Vonnegan — The ESRI numbers claim to be ranking the wealthiest (highest net worth) ZIP codes, not the ones with the highest home values. They’re not perfectly correlated simply because there are other assets people own besides houses, and other debts people owe besides mortgages.
Agreed, South Main is an opportunity due to its proximity to employment and the availability of large redevelopable tracts. However, stadia are extremely poor economic development tools. The traffic generated from them probably supports some number of thousands of square feet of retail, but not even an entire strip center. In a lot of ways, the stadia create a dead zone rather than benefit the surrounding landowners.
Also, it’s not a sexy locale. I’ve been told previously to shop that area for opportunistic Medical Center land plays, and then told various rhetorical combinations of that it isn’t enough that the land values being halved for every additional quarter mile going south on South Main because South Main doesn’t pass the sniff test. Of course, that was before Houston got hot again. I’d wager that if South Main passes the sniff test these days, that either it could pass as having been inevitable or also that the canary in the coal mine has gone belly-up; but I wouldn’t be going out of my way to buy now at the high end of the cycle, I’ll say that for sure.
I also think developers moving on to Richmond in Montrose is a foregone conclusion as Westheimer gets developed out. There are still some tear-downs that make sense on Westheimer, though–a few of the old strip centers, and please god get rid of that Valero…