THE GREAT INNER-LOOP TEARDOWN BACKUP “Since builders cannot get credit to build spec homes right now, they are not buying older “tear-down” homes in West U and Bellaire. As a result, the $400K-$499K price range in West U and Bellaire is a strong buyer’s market with inventories stacking up.” [Strictly a Buyer’s Agent]
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Bellaire
From the website of Top View Builder — builders of this 6,017-sq.-ft. home at 5607 Whitehaven St. in Bellaire — under “Company History”:
Founded in 2007 by four well-rounded partners, the company is desitned to set the benchmark of excellence.
Maybe helps explain the bloated look, too.
- About us [Top View Builder, via Swamplot inbox]
- 5607 Whitehaven St., Bellaire [HAR]
More real-estate-firm troubles you haven’t read about in the newspaper: JPI, a multifamily developer based in Irving, Texas, earlier this week shut down or canceled all new development and construction projects — and laid off development, design, and construction teams. Existing projects already underway will be “completed and wrapped up by a small team that will remain behind until they are complete,” according to a company email provided to Swamplot. The email blamed “the ongoing credit crisis” and “the inability to obtain credit at any price” for the closings.
JPI did not appear to have any projects planned for Houston, but JPI Living does operate Jefferson Estates at Bellaire, an apartment complex at 4807 Pin Oak Park, just inside the Loop between Bissonnet and the Southwest Freeway.
- JPI [via Swamplot inbox]
- Jefferson Estates at Bellaire [JPI Living]
Photo of Jefferson Estates at Bellaire: JPI Living
SHELL STILL LEAVING BELLAIRE Shell Oil will renovate and expand its Westhollow campus off the Westpark Tollway near Highway 6 and send most Bellaire employees there. “. . . two-thirds of the 5-acre [Bellaire Technology Facility] is built on leased land. That lease will expire in 2010, which added to the decision to close the operation there.” [Houston Chronicle]
Joni Webb goes on a tear through Bellaire, describing some new builder homes:
Each year, Bellaire builders compete in a Showcase of Homes where they try to out build each other with more and better amenities, more square footage, more details, more windows – more of everything and anything to win the Best of Show. The builder is the star here, architects are rarely if ever mentioned. I don’t blame them, I wouldn’t want to claim one of these “show” houses myself. Is it truly harder to design an attractive house? Is it more difficult to design a home with inviting curb appeal? I don’t think so. I think it actually must be harder to design one of these detailed overloaded showcase style houses.
And then . . . she takes readers on a tour of Bellaire’s baddest spec homes! Here’s Swamplot’s edited version . . . actual addresses, details and asking prices, and links to the listings have been added (and some contrasting homes Webb likes much more have been left out):
Location: 4701 Braeburn Dr.
Details: 4-5 bedrooms, 4 1/2 baths; 5,076 sq. ft.
Price: $999,000
The Pitch: “Stunning Mediterranean stone and stucco new construction in Bellaire! . . . Virtual grass added to photo!”
Docent Comments: “Is it Mediterranean or French, contemporary or Tuscan? Take your pick, there are elements here of each style. The front loading garage is the focal point. Can someone please explain the two windows lowered on the stone at the front of the garage? Are they lowered for children or dogs to peer out of them? And why are there two faux windows on each side of them? I count FIVE lanterns on the garage alone. The house itself is barely noticeable, it’s so pushed to the back of the garage. The front door is encased in a square stone facade, again, why? Two turrets of different heights flank the front door. The stone work is placed with no regard to design. The left turret has a stone base, the right turret has a stone facade with bands of colored stucco at its base. The windows are contemporary, while the house is not. And why are there three faux windows with a small gable above the right turret on the second floor? There is nothing, absolutely nothing attractive about this house. If someone buys it, it will be a miracle.”
Oh, yes . . . there’s more!
The votes are in! Thanks to all of you who played this week’s game! We had some great comments this time.
Two of you thought the house we showed might be in Sugar Land. Another two guessed Clear Lake. Tanglewood also got 2 votes — one specifying “near Winrock.” Bellaire had two too — one of them pegging it off Newcastle, south of Bissonnet. There was a traffic jam around Memorial, with single guesses of Memorial, the Memorial Villages, “west of 610/east of Voss and north of San Felipe/south of Memorial,” “Blalock/Bunker Hill area near Memorial/San Felipe,” “one of the Kickerillo subdivisions,” “off Briar Forest between Kirkwood and Dairy Ashford,” and Huntwick. The Woodlands, Crestwood, Champions, Augusta, Rice Military, Westhaven Estates, the Heights, Pearland, Manvel, Riverside Terrace, Midtown, Buffalo Speedway, Knollwood, Woodlake Square, and Greatwood attracted one vote each.
The winner was CK, who took a stab at Bellaire . . . and nailed it. Good work!
Honorable mentions go to four contestants who were able to tease out a few interesting details about the house. First, Scott, for this sad but brilliant bit of real-estate logic:
If it’s a new build, where’s the wine fridge? Get those bottles off their butts and on their sides!
Joni Webb figured out that the exercise room was on a 3rd floor, and pegged the house as so 20th century:
this is newer build, probably 1990s because the flooring is wood and tile, not the newer limestone. plus – brass hardware screams 80s and 90s not 2000s.
margo captured the gist of the place with this classic comment:
this is some sort of eary 90s red brick type jobey.
markd distilled that even further, to “Bellaire McMansion.” Right on . . . but a little late. Plus “off Newcastle” is a few blocks off.
No secret agents played the nastier version of the game this time!
After the jump: It came from Bellaire!
From a story by Mauricio Guerrero in this week’s Village News:
The Bellaire home at 4616 Maple St. where Dennis and Randy Quaid grew up during the 1950s and 1960s will be torn down. The house was previously owned by Kathleen McQuill[an], who purchased the home in 1978 from the Quaids.
“I bought from Mrs. Quaid herself,” she said.
Nita Quaid was the realtor and owner of the house.
McQuillan lived in the house for three years, then let her mother-in-law, sister and various other friends rent and live in the former Quaid home. She said that after owning the house for the past 30 years, it was time to sell.
“It makes me sad, but progress is ongoing,” she said when she found out that the house would be torn down.
- Quaid Home Will Fall to Wrecker’s Ball [Village News]
Photo from Dennis Quaid’s Sophomore yearbook: Flickr user denquaidfan
In this episode: Bellaire east of Newcastle, aka Southdale. Close to parks, schools, pools, and trains! Our open-house tour features new homes, newer homes, and an actual Bellaire original.
Location: 4340 Valerie St.
Details: 4 bedrooms, 4 1/2 baths; 4,048 sq. ft.
Price: $809,000
The Scoop: 2005 “great party house” on corner lot designed “to maximize liveable space.” More is . . . uh, more! Mudroom, Game Room, Sewing Room, wine bar; Pantry has second refrigerator. Master Bath has double doors. Listed since February; price just chopped $6K.
Open House: Sunday, 2-5 pm
On with the tour!
From the course description for Anthropology 325L: Ethnographies of Ordinary Life, spring semester, UT Austin:
This course tries to approach the “ordinary” through ethnographic research. Each student will choose a project for participant observation. Questions include: how is the ordinary made to seem meaningful or made invisible or naturalized? How is ordinary life experienced by particular people in particular situations? How is it the site of forms of attachment and agency? What are the practices of everyday life? How do people become invested in the idea and hope of having an ordinary life? How does ordinariness dull us, or escape us, or become a tempting scene of desire?
And an excerpt from a recent posting of student fieldnotes on the Ethnographies of Ordinary Life class blog:
Bellaire has a different story. My mom often tells friends of the family about how over the course of our first ten years in this house, there was always at least one house being torn down and rebuilt. Our house along with three or four others are now the only original houses on the street. And they are now dwarfed by the pseudo-stucco three story behemoths that have come to characterize Houston exurbs. The street is littered with showy luxury vehicles, and most of the new neighbors don’t really socialize with us or one another. And you should hear my father lament the plight of the trees on our street (and I am totally with this one). My mom stopped organizing the block party a few years ago simply because no one else expressed interest or willingness to help out.
- Dreamworlds of Bellaire [Ethnographies of Ordinary Life]
- ANT 325L [University of Texas at Austin]
It’s high time for another street-walking adventure from the writing, singing, photographing, and drinking duo of quasi-professional pedestrians John Nova Lomax and David Beebe. Their latest challenge: a 14.5-mile walk along Bissonnet, from Synott Road (just past Dairy Ashford) to Montrose, which brings Lomax to this stirring conclusion on the sidewalk-transforming power of street trees:
By now, I’ve walked damn near the entire lengths of Bellaire, Westheimer, Clinton, Navigation, and Shepherd, and Bissonnet is nicer than all of them, for the simple reason that its sidewalks have far more shade. Westheimer has none between 6 and the Loop, save for a few landscaping fantasias at scattered corporate campuses; there’s none to be had on most of Shepherd unless you duck under a bridge (where you might sit on human turds); sun-baked Bellaire has none from Eldridge central Sharpstown, and the East Side streets are only a little better. Bissonnet, on the other hand, seems like a stroll through Yosemite.
Below the fold: local color.
Looking for a home in an in-town location, but don’t want to miss that exhilarating feeling you get from East Side neighborhoods near the Ship Channel?
Why not start your search near Bayland Park, at the corner of Bissonnet and Hillcroft, just west of Bellaire? It’s outside the Loop, far to the west of Houston’s industrial areas, close to some of some of the city’s most dynamic neighborhoods . . . and recently was rated one of the most consistently smoggy places in Houston.
That’s right: Smog is worse on the West Side.
The data may surprise many Houstonians who associate smog with the chemical refining and industrial byproducts that foul the air in East Harris County.
In fact, the highest ozone readings in the city are routinely captured by monitors located on Houston’s densely populated southwest side. Recent data shows Bayland Park, just west of Bellaire, to be one of Houston’s smoggiest neighborhoods. According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the Bayland Park monitor, located in the 6400 block of Bissonnet Street, recorded 45 days in the last three years when ozone levels violated public health standards.
During that period, the monitor registered ozone concentrations as high as or greater than those recorded by monitors in the Ship Channel region.
Howzat happen?
University of Texas chemical engineer David Allen analyzed data collected by the Bayland Park monitor in 2006. He and others determined that climate patterns explained the high ozone concentrations on Houston’s west side. Based on computerized modeling of weather patterns, Allen said nearly every incident of excessive ozone levels in Bayland Park that year happened on days characterized by the same weather pattern: hot and sunny, with still air in the morning and light winds from the east blowing in the afternoon.
“The east winds pick up Ship Channel air and carry it all the way into west Houston where it settles over neighborhoods,†Allen said.
That’s the smell of money.
- Dubious honor: Bayland leads in bad air [Bellaire Examiner]
Photo: Harris County Precinct 3
Over at Houstoned, professional barfly John Nova Lomax and crooner David Beebe take a long, strange trip down the entire length of Bellaire Blvd.—on foot. Lomax’s conclusion:
If Westheimer is mainly about the fetishes, broken dreams and vanities of Anglo whites, and Shepherd is all about the needs of cars, Bellaire is a world market of a street, a bazaar where Mexicans, Anglos, Salvadorans, African Americans, Hondurans, stoners, Vietnamese, Chinese, Koreans and Thais go to shop and eat.
The report from western Chinatown:
Tall bank buildings are sprouting, with glass fronts festooned in Mandarin. Strip malls fill with Vietnamese crawfish joints, Shaolin Temples, and acupuncture clinics. As we crossed Brays Bayou, a huge temple loomed in the distance, and it didn’t take much imagining to pretend you were gazing across a rice paddy toward a Vietnamese village. A Zen center abuts one of the last businesses in town to carry the all-but-forgotten A.J. Foyt’s once-omnipresent name. A couple of ratty old apartment complexes have changed into commercial buildings, each unit housing its own business.
The rice paddies, of course, have left the neighborhood.
More highlights of their journey, as they walk east: live turtles in the water gardens outside the Hong Kong City Mall; front-yard car lots in Sharpstown; Jane Long Middle Schoolers rushing convenience stores; the “Gulfton Ghetto.” Plus, this illuminating report from Alief:
Alief Ozelda Magee, the town’s namesake, is buried right there, under a slate-gray monument with a touching epitaph: “She did what she could.†And hell, maybe she still is. The adjoining apartment complex, which is rumored to cover some of the graves here, is said to suffer from a poltergeist infestation.
- I am a Pedestrian Report: Bellaire [Houstoned]
Photo: Cruising down Bellaire, by flickr user corazón girl
