And that’s all for the 610 Allston St. bungalow Mary Cerruti refused to sell before she was found dead inside it last March. This past week’s demolition comes a little later than Trammell Crow had hoped when it began developing the adjacent 5-story apartment complex off Yale St. in 2013. After the developer’s attempts to buy Cerruti’s 6,600-sq.-ft. lot were rebuffed, it decided to build around both it and the same-sized parcel directly to its south. (Cerruti continued to speak out against the development even after construction began in 2013, appearing publicly at a planning commission meeting that February.)
Now, her property and the one next door have been snatched up by the same owner: Sandcastle Homes, an inner-Loop builder. You can see part of the company’s new 2-story handiwork at 606 Allston St. on the right in the photo above.
It went up over the last few months on what was once vacant land next door to Cerruti’s house:
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Both lots are shown here on the day crime scene investigators arrived and removed her bones from a narrow space in one of her walls. By that time, the 61-year-old woman had been missing for a year and a half, and a landlord had purchased her bungalow at a foreclosure auction. Presuming it was empty, he renovated it into a rental property.
After his first lessee discovered Cerruti’s remains, he then held onto the structure over the full course of HPD’s investigation — which ended back in January after investigators made a positive ID of the bones.
- Previously on Swamplot: Daily Demolition Report: Gone West; Skeleton Found Hidden in Holdout Heights House Belongs to Missing Owner, Medical Examiner Declares; A Twist in the Mystery of Who Owns Those Heights Holdout House Bones; Bones Found in Holdout Heights House Attic Tell No Tales; Alexan Heights Holdout House Where the Skeleton Was Found Last Weekend Now Up for Sale; Human Skeleton Discovered in That Heights House That Wouldn’t Sell to Trammell Crow; Trammell Crow’s 5-Story Apartment Complex Surrounding Holdout Heights House; Allston or Nothing: Side Street Now at Center of Alexan Yale Apartment Dispute; A Photo Tour: The 2 Yale St. Lots Where Those 2 Alexan Apartment Complexes Want To Be; A Second Midrise Alexan Planned Right Beside the First One on Yale; Stealing a Glance at Proposed Alexan Heights on Yale; Heights Lot Prepared for Midrise Apartments
Photos: Viridiana Vasquez (vacant lot); Houston Police Department (all others)
Progress? Hell no. More crappy new construction Inner Loop townhouses- the kind where the buyers are dazzled by oceans of granite &/or marble counter top surfaces and stainless steel appliances. And the same ones where the buyers don’t realize that lots of FAULTY/ BAD construction practices are HIDDEN behind the sheet rock; &/or the Hardi Plank siding/ Lick N Stick fake “stone” / or my fav the equally low quality spray on synthetic FAUX stucco exterior siding materials. The same kind of shady construction techniques that were EXPOSED during Hurricane Harvey. How many NC town houses had leaking roof top decks? That leaked into the floor(s) below-you know- through the ceiling(s) and down the wall(s) onto the high chemical sealant covered floors below. I’m not saying Sandcastle builds like that ,but if I was buying a NC instant new home / town home I’d have a VERY thorough Home Inspection- with cameras behind the sheetrock!!! At these price points a $500-800 home Inspection fee and the very MINOR sheetrock repair fees are way less expensive than finding out the hard way your new home is built like CRAP !!!
So anti-climactic. I want to find out the parcel is haunted and there’s a knocking inside the walls forever more…
Sucks, that house had some good bones
Slow hand clap, Lucky… How these new ‘Owners’ don’t understand the fly by night construction practices used by these ‘builders’ I will NEVER understand.
Our office builds (and designs) with Honor, Integrity and Fortitude, as the building process has a LOT of moving parts.
Just pick up the paper and you can read about shoddy workmanship and falsification of documents and inspections… Yee! Haw!!! You have to love the Wild Wild West nature of building in the H. Just because you can, does not mean you should.
-d-