Apartments depart, homes roam, and all is as it wasn’t.
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WORLD’S LARGEST AIR CONDITIONING MANUFACTURER TO BUILD GIANT COMFORTPLEX AT NORTHERN REACHES OF KATY PRAIRIE 
Ah, Houston industry! Oil may be down, but air conditioning is booming — and ready to do its part to further our fine city’s sprawl-ward spread. Ralph Bivins reports this morning that Japanese HVAC giant Daikin Industries, which paid $3.7 billion back in 2012 to buy Houston’s Goodman Global, will build a $417 million, 4,000,000-sq.-ft. manufacturing and logistics campus on virgin prairie southeast of Hockley, off U.S. 290 a good 3 miles west of the Grand Parkway. Dubbed the “Comfortplex,” the facility (portrayed in the rendering above) will consolidate current company operations in both Tennessee and Texas, and increase the company’s Houston-area workforce to approximately 4,000 employees. The Comfortplex will replace an existing 525,000-sq.-ft. Goodman air-conditioner factory near Loop 610 and 290 when it opens in 2016, Bivins notes. The company produces ducted and ductless AC systems under the Daikin, Goodman, and Amana brand names. [Realty News Report] Rendering: Daikin Industries
THE SWAMPLOT AWARDS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED 
Did it seem like the holiday season went by in a glittery flash? If so, maybe you didn’t have time to take in the wonders of the 2014 Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate. It’s the annual chance for this publication’s readers to honor local standouts with an assortment of accolades. 2014 may be over, but you can still revel over who or what your peers tagged as their Favorite Houston Design Cliche, Best Demolition, Best Sign of the New Houston, and other honorifics in 7 separate categories — simply by reading this accounting of the winners. Equally entertaining and informative is this roundup of the runners-up. Thanks again to all the worthy contestants and commentators — your rich contributions to this city (and this website) make the Swampies an annual endeavor worth repeating.
The Austin-based developer of 3 Houston apartment communities was arrested Saturday in Virginia for his role in a failed coup of the West African nation of Gambia. According to an affidavit prepared by an FBI special agent, Cherno M. Njie provided funds for the ill-fated venture, and was to have been installed as Gambia’s president if it had been successful. Prior to the surprise military venture in his native country, the University of Texas graduate served as the tax credit manager of the Texas department of housing and community affairs, which during his tenure awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in federal tax credits to developers of affordable housing. Njie resigned from the agency in 2001 following the bribery conviction of a board member and founded Songhai Development, whose later contributions to the Houston landscape include the Chelsea Senior Community (pictured at the bottom of this story) and the Little York Villas apartments near Acres Homes and the Langwick Senior Residences (pictured at top) near Greenspoint. He also served as president of Songhai’s sister company, CMB Construction.
In 2011, 3.2 acres of land Njie donated next to the Langwick project at Langwick Dr. and W. Hardy Rd. were turned into a park designed for senior citizens — named Ida Gaye Gardens, after Njie’s mother. (The photo at right above, posted on Songhai’s website, shows Njie at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the park with Greens Bayou Corridor Coalition’s Regina Lindsey.)
From a Greenspoint Park to a Gambia Coup
The end comes for the former Shamrock Hotel ballroom, now known as the Edwin Hornberger Conference Center. And a few more holdovers:
Signs have gone up around the former metal foundry site at 3617 Baer St. in the Fifth Ward indicating that a hearing is scheduled for this Thursday to get city approval for the latest rejiggering of homesites on the 35-acre tract. Developer Frank Liu of Lovett Homes, InTown Homes, and a few other local builder brands plans to put a total of 538 homes (down from 589) on the EPA-monitored property, known as the MDI Superfund Site after the last owner of the metal-casting operations, Many Diversified Interests, which shut down in the early 1990s (previously, the plants were owned by TESCO). The property, which lies just south of I-10 about 2 miles of east of downtown, was listed on the EPA’s list of priority Superfund sites in 1999, after tests showed the soil and groundwater was contaminated with lead and other hazardous metals.
Living Green
ANOTHER CHELSEA GETS AWAY 
Good morning! It’s 2015, oil is already checking out the territory south of $50 a barrel, and Swamplot is ready to begin its coverage of cancellation and delay announcements from real estate developers. We’ll start this one gently, with an Inside the Loop project you probably hadn’t even heard of — though its name certainly sounds familiar: The developers of Chelsea Museum District, a proposed apartment complex atop a podium garage with a bit of retail thrown in planned for the north side of Blodgett St. between Crawford and La Branch, tell the HBJ‘s Paul Takahashi they are “contemplating holding [the] project to see how the multifamily market fares amid low oil prices.” But don’t confuse Trans Unity Investment’s Chelsea Museum District with another project less than a mile to the west at 4 Chelsea Blvd. that used to be called Chelsea Montrose, but has since been renamed The Carter (no, not kidding), and which developer StreetLights Residential has already begun building (see construction photo above from just before Christmas). [Houston Business Journal] Photo: Marc Longoria
The last day of business for the original Ruggles Green location, in the Persona Day Spa shopping center at 2311 West Alabama St. east of Kirby Dr. (above), was New Year’s Eve. But the restaurant claims it won’t be gone from the neighborhood for too long. A new Ruggles Green is scheduled to open up in the street-facing retail space on the ground floor of the Gables Upper Kirby apartments going up next door (portrayed above left), once construction on that project is finished. That’ll be this spring, a note on the Ruggles Green website promises. The new address, 2305 W. Alabama St., will be one door down from the former Mission Burrito, recently renamed Ãœberrito Mexican Grill to avoid tortilla torts.
Meanwhile, up in The Woodlands, a brand new Ruggles Green in the shopping center at 2501 Research Forest Dr. is scheduled to open any day now — “whenever the chairs arrive,” the company’s Facebook page declares. Here’s a pic of that standing-room-only (for now) location:
But First, The Woodlands
THE CENTER OF EVERYTHING, ONCE YOU DRIVE ALL THE WAY OUT THERE 
The latest event in the growing trend of establishments far from the center of the city adopting names that convey an aura of centrality comes from the firm turning the former Camp Strake Boy Scout facility just south of Conroe into a large suburban residential development. Henceforth, Johnson Development announced today, the 2,046-acre property just west of I-45 and south of Loop 336 — north of The Woodlands — shall be known as Grand Central Park. [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Jones Lang LaSalle
USPS NOW SAYS IT WILL CLOSE AND SELL THE HEIGHTS POST OFFICE 
A new public notice taped to the door of the Heights Finance Station post office at the corner of Heights Blvd. and 11th St. last Friday indicates the U.S. Postal Service has moved on from “considering” moving out of the property and is now prepared for a full-on “disposal” action: “This property has been determined by the Postal Service to be excess and is no longer necessary for Postal operations,” reads the notice, which also indicates that “Postal Service policy requires the property to be sold at Market Value.” Though public comments are still being encouraged, it typically takes more than a few discouraging words to prevent a local post office from shutting down. The 6,161-sq.-ft. building at 1050 Yale St. sits on more than an acre of land. [Previously on Swamplot] Photos: Swamplot inbox (post office); Nick Panzarelli (notice)
We’re still awaiting photos of the scene — both to confirm and to allow everyone to revel in the destruction — but a regular tipster informs Swamplot that the building backing up to Buffalo Bayou on the south side of I-10 near Voss Rd. that until mid-2009 housed the Las Alamedas Restaurant is being demolished. The back side of the building has been ripped open, the reader reports;, but as of a visit yesterday the front of the building remained intact.
Now It’s Never Coming Back
Juxtaposed “before” and “after” pics (recreated above) of the 1963 used-to-be-Mod house at 2042 Forest Oaks Dr. in Meadowcreek Village have garnered a mere 1002 comments (so far) on a Facebook Mid Century Modern fan page. Many of the comments decry the roofing and landscaping changes made to the home, explaining that the renovator doesn’t appear to “get” the style of the original. Others wonder whether some sort of Photoshop trickery might be involved. But a few commenters note that the home, whose Houston Mod open house was featured on Swamplot in 2012, was a foreclosure, that many of its modern features had been altered before its most recent sale, or that the 4-bedroom, 3-bath, 2,650-sq.-ft. home appears to be much more livable in its current state.
Unfortunately, the earlier listing included only a few additional photos, making direct before-and-after comparisons of the extensive changes made to the home’s interior — including the addition of laminate floors and granite countertops — difficult. The home was listed for sale in mid-December for $210,861. Pre-renovation, it sold in March of 2013 for $78,000.
- 2042 Forest Oaks Dr. [HAR; previous listing]
- Lamenting a former Mod in Houston, TX [Mid Century Modern on Facebook]
- Previously on Swamplot: A Meadowcreek Village Help-You-Sell
Remuddling
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday permit offices were open.
The best way to start the new year is by getting rid of the old.
It’s just about over: a year of winners, losers, also-rans, and the many others who just keep working at it. Swamplot is signing off for 2014, but we’ll be back next Monday to offer additional helpings of Houston real estate craziness. A Happy New Year and best wishes to all; you deserve it.
Photo of San Jacinto Monument: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Year, Out
