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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

The New Whole Foods at West Dallas and Waugh

May 14, 2008 – 9:18 am

Northwest Corner of West Dallas and Montrose, Houston

Whole Foods Market has just signed a 25-year lease with the Finger Companies for land at the northeast corner of West Dallas and Waugh in North Montrose. The company plans to build a new 50,000-sq.-ft. store there, reports the Chronicle’s Nancy Sarnoff. That’s the same size as the new Whole Foods that recently opened in Sugar Land, but the new Uptown store the company is planning as part of Boulevard Place will be 50 percent larger.

The North Montrose location is only a few blocks east of the site planned for Regent Square. And Finger has more ideas for the full 11 acres fronting West Dallas it bought from Knickerbocker Corp. earlier this year:

Plans for the site also call for 60,000 square feet of additional retail space and hundreds of apartments. The Finger Cos. will build a six-story, 445-unit multifamily complex on the property. Construction will start early next year.

A ring road will be created in the center of the development to tie into the AIG complex, located to the north of the site.

A future phase includes a high-rise apartment tower for the land closer to Montrose. Developer Marvy Finger said the building could be similar to his company’s 20-story Museum Tower on Montrose near the Museum District.

Photo of the corner of West Dallas and Montrose, proposed site of Finger highrise: Charles Kuffner

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9:18 am | 6 Comments | Read more about Apartments, Commercial Real Estate, Land Development, Neighborhoods: Montrose, Neighborhoods: North Montrose, Proposed Developments, Retail
Wednesday, April 16, 2008

New 500-Acre Lake: Bringing Nature to the Katy Prairie!

April 16, 2008 – 10:08 am

Snow Geese on the Katy Prairie

Here’s the kind of project that ought to excite every truly patriotic Houstonian: County Commissioner Steve Radack wants to build a 500-acre lake — for fishing — on the Katy Prairie! How will it get filled? With rain, of course . . . and those regular floods from Cypress Creek! Apparently, they’ll have to excavate five Astrodomes worth of dirt. Where will they put the other four?

Best yet: Radack’s gonna name it after the Pope!

Them Katy birds want their wetlands? We’ll give them wetlands!

Of course, there are some naysayers:

Because the lake will not have a constant source of flowing water, biologists remain worried that there will not be enough oxygen in the lake to support a viable fish population, said [Donna] Anderson of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Texas Parks & Wildlife has also questioned whether nitrates and fertilizer from farm runoff might pollute the lake, said Jamie Schubert, coastal biologist with the department.

Yeah, we’ve heard that line before. Isn’t that what they said about the Gulf of Mexico? Hey, maybe we’ll find oil here, too!

Photo of snow geese on Katy Prairie: Houston-Galveston Area Council

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10:08 am | Comment | Read more about Katy, Lakes, Land Development, Landscape
Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Cullen’s Upscale: The Big Green Restaurant in Clear Lake

March 18, 2008 – 12:35 pm

Rendering of Cullen’s Upscale American Grille on Space Center Blvd., Houston

A restaurant scheduled to open today just beyond Beltway 8’s southeastern elbow is the first “Certified Green Restaurant” in Houston approved by the Green Restaurant Association. Cullen’s Upscale American Grille completed 17 of the GRA’s environmental guidelines.

The grille’s proprietor is first-time restaurant owner Kevin Munz, who previously built a chain of 13 Houston-area pawn shops. He sold the Mr. Money Pawn shops to Cash America International in 2006. Two years before that, he bought 92.8 acres of undeveloped land at the eastern edge of Ellington Field and began planning Clearpoint Crossing, a series of strips along the west side of newly extended Space Center Blvd., featuring retail/lease space, a professional-office park, and a multifamily residential project.

Cullen’s is intended to be Clearpoint Crossing’s main attraction: a 37,000-sq.-ft. Las Vegas-style eatery with seven private dining rooms — including one built of glass and suspended over the main dining area — a ballroom, space for outdoor dining, and seating for 700 diners. Customers will have their choice of china: Wedgwood, Versace, or “the Titanic.” Munz spoke to the Houston Chronicle’s David Kaplan about his plans for Cullen’s last year:

“I’ve been all over the U.S. and looked at restaurants. It’s the best of a bunch of different concepts and putting them into one, Munz said. “It’s the same thing I did with pawnshops.”

Munz told the South Belt-Ellington Leader he hopes to attract customers driving from as far northeast as Baytown and as far south as Galveston to his green restaurant, saying he “wouldn’t have done this in town.”

Munz expects the Clearpoint Crossing’s land value to “go up the day I open the restaurant,” he told Kaplan. That would be today!

After the jump, a plan of the whole Clearpoint Crossing development. Plus, a few of the restaurant’s green features!

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12:35 pm | 11 Comments | Read more about Commercial Real Estate, Green Design and Development, Land Development, Mixed Use, Neighborhoods: Clear Lake, New Construction, Openings and Closings, Real Estate Marketing, Restaurants, Retail, Shopping Centers
Thursday, December 27, 2007

The Leaky Lakes of Crown Oaks

December 27, 2007 – 11:31 am

Lake at Crown Oaks, ConroeThe charms of gated acreage near Lake Conroe: large, wooded lakefront homesites, plus only a 25 minute commute . . . to The Woodlands! Oh, and if we’re talking about 1400-acre Crown Oaks in Montgomery County, lots of lawsuits, too!

Last year, the Crown Oaks Property Owners Association, along with individual homeowners, sued Affiliated Crown Development LTD, citing poor structure of the two manmade lakes in the development, located outside Montgomery.

But so much has happened since then: After new board members decided the developer would finally work with them to solve the lakes’ problems, the property owners association dropped its suit this fall. But now two groups of 10 individual homeowners have hired separate legal teams to continue their lawsuit against the developer. And in turn, the developer is now suing the engineering and construction firms it hired to build the dams on both lakes.

But there’s even more lawsuit fun:

“The POA tried to get out of the suit as a plaintiff, so my group has also sued them,” [homeowner attorney Kevin] Forsberg said. “The individuals were not satisfied. … Even though the POA started working with the developer in the hopes that the lakes would be fixed, nothing has actually been done.”

What’s it like to build your home on a lake that doesn’t bother to show up? Thanks to the amazing power of the internets, you can experience all the highs and lows of manmade-lakefront real-estate investing yourself — from the comfort of your own computer! Watch videos and read details of the whole dam story . . . after the jump!

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11:31 am | Read more about Environmental, Flooding, Hazards, Homeowners' Associations, Lakes, Land Development, Landscape, Master-Planned Communities, Montgomery County, Neighborhoods: Crown Oaks, Real Estate Marketing
Thursday, December 6, 2007

Fifth Ward: New Urbanists Meet Old Toxic Waste

December 6, 2007 – 2:35 pm

Residences at Seventh at 5th, by DPZ

A reader who lives in the neighborhood points us to drawings and information from New Urbanist planners Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. about the firm’s designs for the former MDI Superfund site in the Fifth Ward. DPZ, of course, is most famous for the enormous small-town-sized stage-set the company designed for the 1998 Jim Carrey movie The Truman Show, which became so popular that it was kept on and is now used as a Florida Panhandle resort named Seaside.

InTown Homes and Lovett Homes owner Frank Liu bought the MDI site — a former metal foundry and spent-catalyst “recycling” facility famously polluted with lead and several thousand chemistry sets’ worth of other toxic substances — from the EPA late last year, with promises that he’ll spend a couple of years and $6.7 million remediating the property before letting Houstonians live there. Still, 36+ acres of inner-loop land at $5 a square foot doesn’t sound like too bad a deal.

After the jump: a look at DPZ’s MDI plans, plus large grains of salt.

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2:35 pm | Read more about Development Strategy, Environmental, Hazards, Land Development, Master-Planned Communities, Neighborhoods: Fifth Ward, Proposed Developments, Toxic Sites
Monday, November 19, 2007

Metro Chief Very Excited About Sprawl

November 19, 2007 – 11:52 am

Aerial View of Wolff Companies Projects Along I-10

Sure, Metro talks a lot about transportation in this city’s central districts. But a Houston Business Journal profile shows us Harris County Metropolitan Transit Authority Chairman David Wolff is also enthusiastic about Houston’s westward spread:

Many developers are building various types of commercial properties west of Houston and beyond.

The city of Katy, with an estimated population of 205,000, sits square in the path of Houston’s westward growth pattern.

“The whole city is going that way,” Wolff says. “I think Katy is going to be the next Sugar Land.”

He recalls the creation of Park 10, and how much the area has grown over the last three decades.

Says Wolff: “It was just rice fields. That was really the edge of the world then.”

After the jump, the METRO Board Chairman’s exciting projects way out west, plus how to get folks in the “next Sugar Land” to build freeway on- and off-ramps for your developments!

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11:52 am | Read more about Buying and Selling, Commercial Real Estate, Development Strategy, Freeways and Toll Roads, Katy, Land Development, Proposed Developments, Real Estate Investing, Sprawl, Transportation
Tuesday, November 6, 2007

What Those Inspired Masters Are Planning near Alvin

November 6, 2007 – 10:48 am

Map of Proposed Aperion Communities Developments

Why do we need the Grand Parkway? To connect all those new green-living communities spreading way out into the Texas prairie!

An Arizona development company is master-planning a master-planned community for a tiny 4,000-plus-acre plot in Alvin, linking the Grand Parkway, FM 1462, and highway 288. Yes, that’s bigger than Shadow Creek Ranch.

It’s called Inspiration at Alvin, if you believe the mayor, or Inspiration @ Chocolate Bayou if you believe the Aperion Communities website.

Alvin mayor Gary Appelt announced that the expected population when the project is built out — in 30 years — is 25,000 people. That’s just over six people per acre. No wonder they’re calling it green!

Inspiration is the first lifestyle enhanced sustainable community model ever created. It’s where Aperion’s programs for energy, health, business and transportation are connected directly to your home.

The company website lists the development at a just-slightly larger 5,500 acres, which means residents will have even more room to spread their windmills. Aperion is also threatening a 6,000-acre development called Inspiration @ Lake Houston. All in all, there are five Inspiration communities proposed for Texas and two for New Mexico. That’s more than 36,434 acres of currently wasted farms and ranchland transformed into sustainable, productive living spaces. Go green!

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10:48 am | Read more about Brazoria County, Development Strategy, Land Development, Master-Planned Communities, Proposed Developments, Sprawl
Thursday, October 4, 2007

Meanwhile, Way Way Way Outside the Loop . . .

October 4, 2007 – 12:34 pm

Plan of Grandeur ParkHouston’s middle-age spread continues:

  • Just north of I-10 at the Grand Parkway, Kickerillo is starting a large residential development called Grandeur Park. It’ll be across the street from The Grand, Simon Property Group’s new mall. Homes there will cost 300 to 600 Grand.
  • Houston will soon stretch to Sealy:

    Silvestri Investments of Houston has purchased 1,375 acres just west of Firethorne, which is a mile south of Interstate 10 on FM 1463.

    The new owner will hold the land for future development.

    “With the historical trend of development in Houston, it was only a matter of time before someone purchased land in the next logical pattern of growth,” said Michael Carroll, president of Riverway Properties, who brokered the deal. The price was not disclosed.

  • Ross Perot Jr.’s Hillwood Development Company has bought Sienna Plantation South. What we’ll get there: about 7,000 single-family homes on the 3,827-acre site. Included in that total: 300 acres for offices and retail, 100 acres for schools and churches, and 1,000 acres of parks and open space. No breakdown available on the acreage of cul de sacs, lakes, or driveways.
  • The fourth Del Webb retirement compound in Texas will be near Richmond, at Highway 59 and Thompson Rd. Fifteen hundred homes on 500 acres. You’ll need to be at least 55 years old to live there, and drive at least 55 to get there.
  • It’s tough building slabs in Texas City:

    After what developers described as a “minor slowdown,” the 574-home Grand Cay Harbour project in Texas City is back on track.

    Persistent rain during the summer was part of the problem. But project manager Norman Reed didn’t elaborate about what other factors led to a long stretch of inactivity at the development. The project is on 250 acres beside Galveston Bay at the end of the Texas City levee system.

    And don’t you worry about flooding after the construction’s done. This gated community will keep out the tides, too.

Plan of Grandeur Park: Kickerillo Companies

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12:34 pm | Read more about Land Development, Neighborhoods: Richmond, Neighborhoods: Sienna Plantation, Neighborhoods: Texas City, New Construction, Proposed Developments, Senior Living, Sprawl