Articles by

John Nova Lomax

12/10/14 2:00pm

47 Grand Regency Cir., The Woodlands, Texas

47 Grand Regency Cir., The Woodlands, Texas

Listing her home caps a whirlwind 5 months for Theresa Roemer. Back in June, The Woodlands socialite threw open the doors to her 3-story, 3,000-sq.-ft., $500k “she-cave” to a blogger from Neiman-Marcus, a move that would eventually attract both scorn and “You go, girl!” sentiments from around the world.

A burglar struck soon thereafter, and then attempted to blackmail her by threatening to tell the world that at least some of the haul of allegedly designer goods from her opulent trove were mere fakes, a threat the as-yet-unapprehended thief eventually carried out.

Around the same time, Roemer sued her estranged stepson for defamation of character. That matter has since settled, but the upheaval isn’t over: Roemer is now selling her home in the Carlton Woods subdivision of The Woodlands.

And when we say Roemer is selling her house, we mean just that: she is the listing agent for the 17,315 sq.-ft., 9-10 bedroom, 10 full and three half-bath, one 3-story closet manse at 47 Grand Regency Dr. The asking price: $12.9 million.

You’ve seen the pics on teevee, Culturemap and on newspapers from around the world. Here are real-live listing pics, and not just of the closet, but the whole house!

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Scene of the Crime
12/10/14 10:15am

OIL PRICE PLUNGE LEADS TO STOCK DOWNGRADE FOR NEW GREENWAY PLAZA OWNERS greenway-plaza-lightning300Last year Atlanta-based Cousins Properties splashed out big in the Houston office market, purchasing all 4.4 million sq.-ft. of Greenway Plaza for $950m in October, 8 months after they snapped up the $233m Post Oak Central complex, making Houston the dominant market in the CUZ portfolio. Which might have seemed a great idea in October 2013, when crude was going for about $100 a barrel, but now? A security analyst from Bank of America and Stifel have both downgraded Cousins Properties shares from “buy” to “hold,” citing falling oil prices and the company’s exposure to Houston. [Realty News Report] Photo of lightning over Greenway Plaza: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool

12/09/14 3:30pm

distinctive-life-cremations

“I know what they were going for but I think it’s the ‘We will come to you’ that I find upsetting,” writes Houston Chronicle culture critic Andrew Dansby on his Facebook page.

Dansby tells Swamplot that he spotted the sign in front of the business at 3414 S. Shepherd Dr. while out walking recently and believes it open to two interpretations, other than the no-doubt intended expression of eagerness to provide good service.

One, that they could be so eager, they are ready to pounce on you and cremate you against your will:

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Funeral Blues
12/09/14 11:59am

willia-st-pinto-2

In case you missed them late last month, here are a few renderings of Park Place at Buffalo Bayou, the 18-story office tower Pinto Realty Partners is putting up on Willia St., atop the rim of the Spotts Park bowl at Memorial Dr. and Waugh Dr., just north of Buffalo Bayou and atop the dust of the demolished Masterson YWCA.

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Willia Look At This
12/08/14 4:28pm

peacock-apartments-mosaic-1414-austinpeacock-plaza-courtyard

According to Harris County Clerk documents, the Peacock & Plaza apartments at 1414-1416 Austin St. downtown across the street from Root Memorial Square were sold late last month to a Colorado-based development company.

The two Spanish-tinged, red-brick pre-war buildings — one of which is adorned with an eye-catching tile mosaic of a proud peacock, both of which are studded with dark green and white awnings — hold a total of 32 studio apartments.

There’s no off-street parking, but that’s offset in part by “crazy low rents in a prime location,” according to a reader. Prime it is indeed, just across Root Memorial Square from the Toyota Center and blocks from Discovery Green and the convention center. And cheap it is indeed too, at least as of last year, when units were being advertised for $520 a month.

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History For Sale
12/08/14 3:15pm

white-oak-bike-trail-bridge-aigwhite-oak-bike-trail-bridge-11th

Over Thanksgiving weekend city workers opened a portion of the proposed hike-and-hike trail that will one day link downtown and Acres Homes.

Work began last October on this new section, one that heads west from the MKT hike-and-bike trail’s former official western terminus at Lawrence Park, under the N. Shepherd Dr. and N. Durham Dr. overpasses, and over White Oak Bayou, west to Cottage Grove and north towards an eventual link with the existing White Oak Bayou trail.

This link legitimizes a an unsanctioned though fairly popular “ninja route” long used by off-trail cyclists, who had been pedaling the gravel path from the park to a rickety, burned-out White Oak Bayou railway trestle known to as the “Bridge of Death,” seen below in a 2012 photo.

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That’s been demolished and replaced with a sturdy span of of concrete and steel, complete with fancy, built-in insignia, and skyline and AIG building vistas.

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Bike Path Breakthrough
12/05/14 2:10pm

1-stop-baylandThe Last American City, by Douglas Milburn

In the tragically out-of-print The Last American City: An Intrepid Walker’s Guide to Houston, magazine writer and editor and Rice German professor Douglas Milburn took a break from his bipedal tours of Montrose, the Galleria, downtown and the Med Center to share his hard-won, footsore knowledge of Houston’s finest convenience stores, circa 1979.

It was a propitious moment for the convenience store concept; gas stations had yet to erode their share of the quick and easy food and drinks market, so Milburn had plenty to choose from, not least, from among dozens of U-Tote’Ms.

Guided by Leroy Melcher, U-Tote’M was arguably Houston’s most beloved homegrown convenience store chain, albeit one bearing a name and totem pole imagery that would be considered wildly offensive by today’s standards.

A Tulsa U-Tote-M made a cameo in The Outsiders:

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Wallowing In Nostalgia
12/05/14 10:30am

tema-hermann-park-residences-site-plan-cropped

And here is how Tema hopes all of its developments will fit together one day on the northern edge of Hermann Park.

That just-begun 7-story apartment building — “Phase I” above — is going in at 1699 Hermann Dr., immediately west of Tema’s thirtysomething-year-old, 35-story Parklane Houston Condos tower.

Phase II — also 7 stories, groundbreaking TBA — slots in behind the 7-story building and looks over Ewing St. towards downtown.

And then there’s the proposed tall and twisty Tower at Hermann Place, the 42-story behemoth that was once slated to be up by the middle of next year

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Museum Park Plans
12/04/14 4:30pm

Hermann-Park-Residences-wide

Construction commenced earlier this week on Tema Development’s Hermann Park Residences you see rendered above. The 7-story building is going up at 1699 Hermann Dr. overlooking the park and a heartbeat or two east of the Health Museum, a little to the west of Tema’s 35-story Parklane tower, and possibly within earshot of the lions roaring at the zoo.

The Residences are intended to be the first of Tema’s three-phase plan for their 6.8 acre plot. That twisty 42-story tower Tema has proposed is still 4-6 years away, according to a company spokesperson.

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Parklife
12/04/14 1:56pm

amazon-roller-blue-heron

A few days ago Jay Roussel went on Amazon and ordered a copy of Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?: The Epic Saga of the Bird that Powers Civilization for his friends Christian and Lisa Seger at Blue Heron Farm in Field Store, TX, about 45 miles northwest of Houston. When Lisa Seger opened the slapped-together-looking and poorly-taped package, she found no poultry tome, but rather a mysterious and heavy green cylinder. A mini-monolith of sorts.

As reported on the Blue Heron Facebook page, Christian Seger said, “This appears to be part of Amazon. Like, literally, part of Amazon. Part of the belt from the warehouse.”

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12/04/14 11:15am

harmony-wedding-chapel-gulf-freeway-bestert-molina

The Harmony Wedding Chapel at 8120 Gulf Freeway has been one of Houston’s most familiar freeway-side landmarks for 50 years, a little slice of backstreet Las Vegas that has now provided 5 generations with cheap, often hastily-arranged weddings. (Even today a bare-bones ceremony with no guests is a mere $50.)

But as the site of the first gay marriage in Texas, it is a landmark in American LGBT history too. There on the banks of Sims Bayou, on October 6, 1972, Brownsville-bred former high school football player Antonio Molina married William “Billie” Ert, a female impersonator who performed in local nightclubs as “Mr. Vicki Carr,” in tribute to the El Paso-bred singer. (One such spot was Ursula’s, a lesbian-friendly bar at 1512 W. Alabama, the future home of a succession of failed restaurants and now the home of the Skin Renewal Center.)

Handing over a wedding certificate Ert obtained by appearing in front of court clerks in very convincing drag, the couple exchanged vows before an activist chaplain they had brought in, and sealed them with a kiss. A firestorm awaited them outside the chapel’s Gulf Freeway feeder road-facing doors. 

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Highwayside History
12/03/14 1:00pm

johnson-st-lawsuit-repairs

Urban Living was added as a defendant last month to a lawsuit filed in February by 8 plaintiffs against 2 companies run by Saeed Qazi and Saleem Qazi, both of whom are also being sued individually.

The suit revolves around 6 adjacent homes in the First Ward — 1919 through 1929 Johnson St. — built around 2008 by the Qazis and their companies, Zenith Urban Homes and Zenith Signature Homes. Once built, the homes were exclusively marketed and sold by Urban Living.

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Sawyer Heights Lawsuit
12/03/14 10:03am

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Here’s a look at Houston’s upcoming second location of the New Orleans-based PJ’s Coffee chain. The banner is up and workers are inside the new mini-strip mall at the Cottage Grove corner of Larkin St. and Durham Dr., just south of Yuppie Dog pet care, and just north of a taco truck-friendly parking lot and a Wendy’s, and just across the Katy Fwy. from looming competition in the form of a strip-mall Starbucks.

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Caffeine Fix
12/02/14 2:00pm

Johnnys-gold-brick-owners-2518-yale

Brad Moore and Ryan Rouse have joined forces with the newly-enhanced Treadsack restaurant group to take over the former Boom Boom Room space at 2518 Yale from building owner Jackie Harris. Johnny’s Gold Brick will be the name of the new bar.

Treadsack principal Chris Cusack, (pictured second from left) whose group includes Down House in the Heights and Brooke Smith ice house D&T Drive Inn, says that he hopes Johnny’s Gold Brick will be the sort of place where you can get “decently-made cocktails, but also a shot and a beer, and be totally accessible and easy to be in.”

Leslie Ross (pictured second from right), who earlier this year competed for title of America’s Most Imaginative Bartender in Las Vegas, left Triniti Restaurant’s Sanctuari Bar to join forces with Treadsack earlier this month and will be heading up bar operations.

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Gold Bricking It