Today being Martin Luther King Jr. Day and all, Swamplot is taking a breather, along with some but not all of you. Check back with us tomorrow and most days thereafter for continuing coverage of Houston real estate goings-on.
Photo of Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk and Rothko Chapel: Ed Uthman [license]
NEW ALEXAN BLAIRE HOUSE WILL EAT BLAIR HOUSE APARTMENTS ON BELLAIRE BLVD. 
Even though the location isn’t specified, there’s enough detail in a press release put out by Bluerock Residential Growth REIT last week announcing its joint venture with Trammell Crow Residential to build a 269-unit apartment complex “2 miles from the Texas Medical Center” to identify where the new construction will take place. And to know that if it goes forward, it will spell doom for the Blair House Apartments, next door to the Palace Bowling Lanes, at 4139 Bellaire Blvd. in Southside Place. The biggest giveaway: The new project’s name, Alexan Blaire House, which combines Trammell Crow’s multifamily brand with a can’t-quit-it developer addiction to adding a trailing ‘E’ wherever it might stick. Plus, both Blair(e) houses sit on 4.16 acre sites. The existing 12-building complex of 2-story structures was built in 1963. [Bluerock Residential, via Houston Business Journal] Photo: Apartment Science
These are the sites we will remember — as soon as their contents are cleared.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE PROBLEMS SPRAWL SOLVES 
“. . . the concern about cities expanding out into the suburbs is about worker mobility and our ability to fund adequate infrastructure. That’s great if the woodlands, katy, and sugarland could become real functioning cities comparable to that of Houston. However, it’s unsustainable if you have poor transportation options affecting the supply of qualified labor and an undiversified industry base that leads to boom and bust cycles. We can barely afford Metro’s reach in central Houston and with more low-income workers being pushed further from the city’s core we will continue to lose workers from our supply of labor.
I love Houston the way it’s always been though. having multiple office centers spread across town helps keep housing demand distributed across a wider area rather than turning the central part of town into an enclave for well paid dual income families only. Allowing land to continue being gobbled up further and further out allows for affordable housing for new residents increasing our supply of labor. Anything that helps cities expand, even if endless suburban sprawl, and make better use of their existing resources and infrastructure is a positive to me.” [joel, commenting on Comment of the Day: West Houston’s Plan for Suburban Domination] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES THE PRICE OF OIL MAKE TO HOUSTON REAL ESTATE? 
“Let’s assume 100,000 people live and work in Houston and are employed, somehow, someway, by the energy industry. That’s a very high guesstimate, but let’s go with that. Now let’s assume one of four, or 25,000, are in danger of having their hours reduced or jobs eliminated. Again, a very high estimate. 25K folks in financial distress is less than one percent of the giant Houston SMA (5M or so). Even if you tripled the number to 75K folks living in Houston that are instantaneously released from their employment ’cause oil dropped to $25/barrel, that’s still less than 2% of the city’s population, and a blip on the ‘financial health of Houston’ radar. Home prices may dip a bit in Houston, but that may be more due to a massive number of shit houses being constructed and sold cheap than $1.95/gallon gas.” [c.l., commenting on Houston Housing Market Reaches All-Time Highs — Before It Crashes, Dips a Little, Remains Steady, or Climbs Further] Illustration: Lulu
If the giant 25-story-tall question mark built into the profile of the Hotel Alessandra — the Modern tower pictured above, planned for a spot directly behind the XXI Forever store along Fannin — spurred any of you to wonder when or whether construction of the promised residential expansion of GreenStreet (formerly Houston Pavilions) might begin, here’s an answer: Next Monday, MLK Day, workers will begin blocking access to the urban mall’s center court at 1201 Fannin St. and other areas to begin demolition work. Their target: The much shorter structure that once housed the Houston Pavilions’ Yao’s restaurant, owned by family members of Houston Rockets star Yao Ming, which stands in the way.
TESLA OR SPACEX OR SOMEBODY ELON MUSK KNOWS IS PLANNING TO BUILD A 5-MILE HYPERLOOP TEST TRACK, PROBABLY IN TEXAS 
Speaking at a Texas transportation forum in Austin today, Elon Musk said plans are afoot to build a 5-mile test track for the Hyperloop pneumatic-tube-like transportation system the entrepreneur and engineer and billionaire outlined 18 months ago — and that the “leading candidate” for the site was somewhere in Texas. The track — a low-pressure environment inside a set of steel tubes, meant to allow pods to move inside at speeds of up to 760 mph — would be privately funded, but open to universities and research institutions interested in developing and iterating on the prototype transportation technology. In a couple of follow-up tweets, Musk described the test track as a site where students and others could test out their own pod designs, and even suggested a Formula SAE-style annual student Hyperloop pod racer competition. Musk’s SpaceX launch facility is located near Brownsville. Not coincidentally, the Tesla CEO said he also plans to reintroduce legislation this year that would end Texas laws that block the electric-car manufacturer from selling directly to consumers. [Ars Technica; The Verge; previously on Swamplot] Drawing of Hyperloop prototype design: Tesla Motors
The Komatsu has arrived at the doorstep of this 1941 bungalow at 1707 Holman St., in the southeast corner of Midtown. Once it disposes of the property, the excavator will work its way through another home abutting this one’s back yard — at 1706 Francis St. And once the land is clear, Jared Meadors and Tony Tripoli will start building this development of 6 close-but-not-touching townhouses fronting a long driveway extending all the way from Holman to Francis:
If you’re scoring which large residential projects are going ahead — despite concerns about a price-of-oil-induced downturn — and which ones are being quietly shelved, score this apartment tower from the Dinerstein Companies in the first column. “The medical center will shield us from the oil situation,” Dinerstein marketing director Emily Prevost declares to HBJ reporter Paul Takahashi. Construction on the Millennium Tower on a vacant lot at 1911 Holcombe St., just southeast of the Brays Bayou border of the official Texas Medical Center campus, is scheduled to begin on January 26th.
The owner of this 1930-ish former gas station and duplex bungalow at 3500 White Oak Dr. in the Houston Heights Historic District South plans to tear down the 2 structures and build a single-family home on the 8,800-sq.-ft. site — likely facing the side street, Cortlandt. Last week by a vote of 12 to 6 Houston’s planning commission reversed the decision of the archaeological and historic commission, allowing the demo to go through. The HAHC had denied the owner’s demolition request in November, insisting that the structures could be rehabbed. But experts hired by the owner indicated that the underground gas tank beneath the station couldn’t be removed without demolishing that structure, and that redevelopment of the duplex would be “cost prohibitive.”
SORRY, NO MATTRESS STORE CAN SNEAK INTO HIGHLAND VILLAGE WITHOUT SOMEBODY NOTICING 
Here’s a piece of hot retail news the likes of which has not been encountered since . . . well, since Swamplot broke the story that the Walgreens near the corner of Westheimer and Weslayan will be moving across both streets to the former Fresh Market spot: A reader has ID’d a new neighbor moving into the former Rice Epicurean shopping center, next to said future Walgreens. It’ll be . . . wait for it . . . a Mattress Firm going into the 3743 Westheimer Rd. address, as evidenced by the familiar red sign now glowing brightly above the future front door shown above. Intriguing bonus tip, for all you Highland Village area store-opening watchers to chew over: “There were two vacant spots in the center when Fresh Market was there and it looks like the other one is leased as there’s a sign in the window for construction but does not identify who is moving in.” Photo: Swamplot inbox
Is this Houston real estate’s Wile E. Coyote off-the-cliff-but-hasn’t-realized-he’s-gonna-fall-yet moment? Or is a new era dawning, in which out-of-state investors new to this whole “Houston is booming” thing swoop in to buy up everything and save the day? A fresh serving of home-sales data from real estate agents is available this morning . . . to support either notion. This past December was a record-breaking month for home sales, the Houston Association of Realtors claims in its latest report. Total property sales were up 11 percent over last December, and the current 2.5-months supply of inventory (a comforting term to those who regularly consider a home to be an off-the-shelf item) is scored as “the lowest level of all time.” Total dollar volume of housing sales for this past month was up a whopping 18.1 percent over December of last year. Both average and median sales prices for single-family homes reached “historic highs for a December in Houston.”
Separately, using her own calculations from MLS data, buyers’ agent Judy Thompson has updated her hand-carved regular roundup of appreciation rates and market conditions for the 21 well-known (and mostly Inner Loop) neighborhoods she’s been tracking on her West U Real Estate website for the past decade. (“In some areas I have had to make value judgments about which sales might have been lot value sales that were not listed that way,” she explains.) Of note: Of the tracked neighborhoods, little old Westbury led the increase in average sales price per sq. ft., rising 22 percent in the last year; the combined average for 2014 was an 11 percent uptick.
Chart: HAR
