A number of readers have sent in pics of the sign just posted by Lovett Commercial in front of the former Houston Post building (the earlier one, not this one seeing a Chronicle redo) at the corner of Polk and Dowling in East Downtown. A company connected to Lovett owner Frank Liu purchased the former newspaper facility from the Houston Chronicle a year and a half ago. It encompasses the entire double block bounded by Polk, Dowling, Bell, and St. Charles streets. The signs advertise a restaurant-and-shopping rehab for the facility at the 2410 Polk St. address, which sits on 3.32 acres — looking something like this:
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Photos: Elizabeth Marshall Black. Rendering: Lovett Commercial
Retail and Restaurant Redo
I live diagonal to the Post building and can’t wait to see it redeveloped. This will truly be a game changer for East Downtown. Word is that the architect for the project is Bill Neuhaus with StudioRED, and the grocer could be a Kroger Signature or HEB Central Market.
Another grocery store getting closer to downtown…they’ll soon have their own!
Here’s hoping it does end up with an actual supermarket on the ground floor–East Downtown could use one.
I’ve thought for awhile, since all the residential projects were announced in Downtown, that the combined Downtown / EaDo / Eastwood / East End yuppie population would soon get to the level needed to justify a new grocery store to serve that market, likely somewhere near the Downtown / EaDo border. That is, if you can believe the claims that all such yuppies are driving to Montrose to grocery shop, bypassing Kombat Kroger and Midtown Randalls in the process because somehow they don’t measure up.
Of course, you have to keep in mind that childless yuppie households don’t generate the grocery sales that typical suburban parents-and-kids households do, even when household income levels are similar. Thus you need a greater number of gentrification-type households to justify a new grocery store than you would typical outer suburban subdivision households.
The building has a lot of potential and I have no doubts that it will be a beauty once converted. Any grocery store will likely be modest though I think. The little pioneering market/wine store on St. Emmanuel that opened up 4-5 years ago really took it in the tits it appears, but probably more due to their scant selection of food and timing rather than the idea and location.
Worse case it fails and becomes a mattress store but the converted building will still remain and that’s a good thing for the area.
EaDo needs a Bork.
This is really driven by the downtown living initiative more than anything that is happening on the Eastside. If all of the incentives are used, downtown will get 5,000 multifamily units. That is roughly equivalent to filling up about 200 blocks with 24 unit townhome farms. But if the energy markets stay soft and developers balk at building multifamily downtown, I doubt you would see this project happen.
Wowzas a Whole Foods in midtown and a Central Market in EaDo–can we buy enough groceries to handle both? Personally i think it should be a Fiesta ;)
What will happen to Polk/Cullen Kroger? Doesn’t Frank Liu own the land behind it (leeland and cullen) and building 30+ townhomes there? (also the kroger got new produce displays last week ;-p )
I don’t see a Kroger Signature or HEB Central Market coming to EaDo anytime soon. They’re more for the upscale areas like the Galleria. I can see something like a Trader Joe’s or Sprouts showing up there. I’ll definately take my yuppie self to buy few groceries and pre-packaged meals.
Does anyone remember the poignant quotation on the Polk side of the old Houston Post building? It was something clever, that I have forgotten….
So glad to see this kind of thing happening.
Central Market? Really? More like a JoeV’s or a Pantry at best.
There’s no indication that this will be a central market. In fact, I doubt it will be a CM, as I thought I remember reading that HEB is done making these? It might not even have a grocery store, despite the drawing hinting that.
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Anyway, as far as east downtown not being as much reason for building a grocery store in east downtown as downtown. Well, take into consideration that there’s well over 100 blocks worth of potential town homes that can be built just in east downtown (more than half of which are already town homes), not to mention the apartments that have been built, and also not to mention the apartments being built, or planned. East downtown is reaching critical mass all on it’s own, downtown residential occupancy is irrelevant of that.
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East Downtown, or as the marketing directors tell us to say, EaDo, is fast becoming the next Midtown, only it’s a lot more awesome cause you don’t have people using it as a commuter race track during rush hour.
If HEB wasn’t interested in the Fingers site, they sure as heck aren’t interested in this. Hopefully a trader joe’s type place.
Woodleigh Living, the quotation over the Polk entrance was ‘let facts be submitted to a candid world’. Unfortunately, what was once a nice-looking entrance is now butchered up.
Search for “2408 Polk St” on Google Street View and you’ll see what I mean.
I’d like to know what happened to that quotation. It was either cast into concrete or carved into stone. Let’s get a Swamplot investigation going and find out where it ended up.