Articles by

Christine Gerbode

10/25/16 6:00pm

12020 Tall Oaks St Bunker Hill, TX 77024

12020 Tall Oaks St Bunker Hill, TX 77024

12020 Tall Oaks St Bunker Hill, TX 77024The house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for insurance company exec William Thaxton is back on the market again as of Friday, now listed at just $2.795 million. Wright designed the triangle-and-diamond-themed home with no air-conditioning system in 1954, though Thaxton and the builder eventually snuck some ducts into the red concrete floor; the mid-century space later got a classically-inspired makeover and circled the market drain toward lot-value sale and presumed teardown. But an early 1990’s buyer saved the property from demolition and removed the pineapple-shaped finials — while adding a high-ceilinged, right-angled extension which enclosed the almost-a-parallelogram pool in more of a central courtyard. (That extension contains a living room, lofted entertainment space, bedrooms, and a kitchen, meaning the occupant doesn’t have to spend time in the angular Wright portion of the building if they don’t want to. )

The new listing (the latest in an on-again-off-again series of market stints that started in 2010 at $3.5 million) includes a few new angles on the property, which (as seen from above) sits alongside a channelized ditch draining directly south from Memorial City Mall to Buffalo Bayou. The lights around the front door and entryway are equilateral triangles:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

Mid-90s Modern in Bunker Hill
10/25/16 3:15pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHY ITS EASIER TO KICK THEM OUT BEFORE THE LEASE IS EVER SIGNED Reading“Ironically, the stricter the rules are for evicting people (to ‘protect’ tenants), the stricter we have to be on rent qualification and deposit size, which makes it harder for many tenants to rent. It would be easier to take a risk on a marginal tenant (low credit score, less than a full month deposit), if the property code didn’t allow them to bunker down in the apartment for 2 months if they don’t pay rent. A good example of a well-meaning law backfiring.” [Cody, commenting on Palace Lanes Building on Bellaire Locked Up by Landlord] Illustration: Lulu

10/25/16 1:00pm

Market Square Tower, 777 Preston St., Downtown, Houston, 77002

Just added: water for the cantilevered glass-bottom pool jutting out of Market Square Tower’s rooftop deck, some 41-plus-or-minus-the-penthouses stories above street level. Woodway is now advertising leasing availability for November, with some of the smaller one-bedroom units listed for $2,100 and up per month (and the largest of the penthouses, a 3-bedroom 3.5-bathroom 3-balcony affair, listed at $18,175) . The current floorplans available on the site now also suggest that the ground floor retail options will include a cafe, in addition to that CVS announced last month.

Those not enthused by the prospect of dangling over the downtown streetscape can opt for the other pool on the 4th-floor terrace, which overlooks Preston and Milam St.:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

Filling Up Downtown
10/25/16 11:45am

WOULD YOU LIKE TO WRITE FOR SWAMPLOT? Help Wanted SignWe’re looking to add a few occasional-ish contributors to Swamplot’s editorial mix. Got a way with words and a fresh take on this city (or know someone who does)? Here’s a terrific chance to dig into the ups, downs, ins, outs, wets, and dries of the local real estate scene —- and to get paid (well, something) for doing it. To apply, send an email to the tip line with the subject Freelance Contributor. (Please note: If you’re in the real estate biz, this is not the gig for you.) Tell us about yourself in a paragraph, and spend another telling us what kinds of stories you might be interested in working on. Will you trawl HAR for gawk-worthy listings? Review the artistic merits of sparkly refinery incidents? Scoop up tidbits on restaurant shakeups? Let us know the Houston real-estate-related stuff that you get excited about. Do include writing clips if you have ’em. If we like what we see, we’ll get in touch. 

10/25/16 10:00am

ADORABLE VENOMOUS CATERPILLARS BACK ON THE CRAWL FROM SEABROOK TO WEST U Asp warning sign at Weir Park, 3012 Nottingham St, West University Place, TX 77005‘Tis the season for stinging asps, notes Kaitlin McCulley while recounting a Seabrook resident’s recent encounter with one of the critters (also known as the puss caterpillar or, on occasion, the “toxic toupee”). The woolly caterpillars, whose delicate venomous spines are known to cause reactions in children such as 5-hour screaming fits and to necessitate the occasional emergency room visit in adults, are up in numbers for the fall as per usual, though their population and season varies from year to year depending on weather and food conditions. Over in West University, a sign currently hanging on the gate of Weir Park notes that the city’s parks folks will be putting out diatomaceous earth to kill the asps they’d spotted; the caterpillars have also been sighted (or felt) lately near the Harbach-Ripley Neighborhood Center in Golfcrest and in Lost Creek Park in Sugar Land. [ABC13] Photo of puss caterpillar warning sign in Weir Park, 3012 Nottingham St.: Swamplot inbox

10/24/16 3:45pm

Former Palace Bowling Lanes, 4191 Bellaire Blvd., Cambridge Place, Houston, 77025

The Palace Bowling Lanes building on Bellaire Blvd. (which picked up the new moniker Bowl on Bellaire about a year ago) appears to have been closed since Friday, says a reader who “showed up [Saturday] morning for the youth bowling league to find that the locks have been changed and they are not open for business.” Katherine Feser confirms this afternoon that the property is still closed, though a note on the door says the tenant can have new keys if and when all the delinquent rent is paid.

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

Southside Displaced
10/24/16 12:30pm

Riel Restaurant under construction at 1927 Fairview, Montrose, Houston, 77006

French-Canadian-Ukrainian-Texan fusion restaurant Riel is still being installed at 1927 Fairview St., formerly home to Te House of Tea and Trudy’s Boutique Re Sale at the corner with Woodhead St. A reader snagged the shot above yesterday afternoon, showing the former mid-60’s retail strip dressed up in green construction fencing and still sporting that above-it-all street number signage. Ex-Reef chef Ryan Lachaine last said in September that the place should be opening some time next month.

Photo: Mosaic Clinic Dermatology

Fairview Preview
10/24/16 11:15am

3100 Smith St., Midtown, Houston, 77006

The former Social Security Administration office at 3100 Smith St. and its gorilla-hawking mural wall are no more, following some weekend excavator grazing. Demo permits were issued last week for structure, which sat north of Elgin on part of the planned site of developer Morgan’s next Pearl-branded apartment development (the one with the built-in ground floor Whole Foods).

City permission for the planned mixed-use building to cozy up to the street were approved in February; the project will also straddle that now-closed segment of Rosalie St. between Smith and Brazos onto a section of the previously cleared block to the north.  Here’s what the layout might look like from above, per the plans included with the variance request:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

Rosalie Redecoration
10/21/16 4:30pm

WOULD YOU LIKE TO WRITE FOR SWAMPLOT? Help Wanted SignWe’re looking to add a few occasional-ish contributors to Swamplot’s editorial mix. Got a way with words and a fresh take on this city (or know someone who does)? Here’s a terrific chance to dig into the ups, downs, ins, outs, wets, and dries of the local real estate scene —- and to get paid (well, something) for doing it. To apply, send an email to the tip line with the subject Freelance Contributor. (Please note: If you’re in the real estate biz, this is not the gig for you.) Tell us about yourself in a paragraph, and spend another telling us what kinds of stories you might be interested in working on. Will you trawl HAR for gawk-worthy listings? Review the artistic merits of sparkly refinery incidents? Scoop up tidbits on restaurant shakeups? Let us know the Houston real-estate-related stuff that you get excited about. Do include writing clips if you have ’em. If we like what we see, we’ll get in touch. 

10/21/16 1:30pm

Trail construction along White Oak Bayou near Leonel Castillo Community Center, 2101 South St, Near Northside, Houston, 77009

A reader caught some shots last week of the current trailblazing going on between the Leonel Castillo Community Center and the White Oak Bayou greenway trail in Near Northside. The new connector should hit the path roughly between the south end of the building and the nearby Thomas Street Health Center HIV-slash-AIDS service building, just north of where the Heights hike-and-bike trail crosses over the bayou and under the Hogan St. bridge to merge with the White Oak trail on the way into Downtown:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

Closing Distance to Downtown
10/21/16 11:15am

Yale St. Commons Variance Request, Yale St. at 34th, Independence Heights, Houston, 77018

The name Yale Street Commons is currently sprinkled about the edge of the Pine Forest Business Center northeast of Yale and 34th St. in the form of a few variance request notices (like the one shown above standing by the abandoned strip of rail track running along the 36th St. side of the warehouse park).  That notice is for a request to merge 2 chunks of land within the rectangle made by Yale, 34th, 36th St., and the north-south line where E. 35th St. currently dead ends into the industrial-slash-office park, a few residential doors west of Cortlandt St.  The applicant also appears to be asking for permission not to extend E. 35th St. all the way through the property, which sits near the border between Independence Heights and Garden Oaks.  The 6-acre center, which in recent years has housed a variety of construction contractors, was sold in May to Stonelake Capital — currently at work on the Westheimer Oaks center and that Westheimer-fronting 5-acre make-it-a-park-for-now on either side of Mid Ln.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

Yale Street Commons
10/20/16 4:30pm

BOXES OF EVIDENCE TAKE COLD SHOWER IN HPD PROPERTY ROOM FREEZER 1202 Washington Ave., Washington Ave, Houston, 77002The still-under-investigation malfunction of an evidence freezer fire sprinkler at the HPD Property Room on Washington Ave. yesterday may have compromised evidence in as many as 4,200 cases, a Harris County district attorney’s office rep tells KHOU. Acting police chief Martha Montalvo says that some the moistened cardboard boxes and envelopes contained DNA evidence (though seemingly none related to sexual assault cases); she also adds that most of the individual samples are bagged in a few layers of sealed plastic. Mayor Turner announced that HPD’s forensic folks will help repackage the dampened evidence and see whether any of it has been damaged or compromised; reps from the DA’s office say they will be in touch with the lawyers of anyone whose case might be impacted by the samples in question. [KHOU] Photo of HPD Property Room at 1202 Washington Ave.: City of Houston