Downtown

Downtown
11/10/09 2:38pm

Raising Funds for the New Houston Ballet Building: Just Wait Until Nutcracker Season

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Financing, Institutional Buildings, New Construction, Theater District
4 Comments

An article on Bloomberg.com forwarded by a reader provides an update on the progress of fundraising efforts for the Houston Ballet’s new building Downtown planned for the block surrounded by Congress, Smith, Preston, and Louisiana streets. You’ll remember that back in August, Ballet managing director Cecil C. Conner told the Chronicle‘s Molly Glentzer that the board had raised “about 70 percent of the funds” needed for the $53 million building — which the organization hopes to have ready for move-in by 2011.

What’s the latest news, 3 months later?

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Buying and Selling
10/23/09 10:47am

Where Floodwaters Will Park Downtown

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Downtown, Flooding, Parks, Quicklink
5 Comments

WHERE FLOODWATERS WILL PARK DOWNTOWN The Buffalo Bayou Partnership helped the City of Houston and the Harris County Flood Control District acquire a just-under-2-acre site Downtown for $7.3 million last week: “The property, which is currently being used as a surface parking lot, is sandwiched between Buffalo Bayou on the north and Commerce on the south, stretching from La Branch to Caroline. Roughly half of the land was acquired from a 15-person investment group led by David Loftus. The other half was bought from members of the Loftus family. Loftus says he acquired the site in 2002 with plans to erect a parking garage. After hearing about civic leaders’ intentions for the land, Loftus says he decided to wait and sell it instead. The land will be used to widen the bayou in an effort to mitigate flooding. The site will also double as a park with hike and bike trails during dryer times. Both projects are a part of long-term visions for the bayou system.” [Houston Business Journal]

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Downtown
10/12/09 10:40pm

The View from AIG: This Time We’re Sure Houston’s Never Gonna Flood Again

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Economic Conditions, Flooding, Highrises, North Montrose, Office Buildings, Weather
4 Comments

From his perch high in the (formerly AIG) America Tower on Allen Parkway, Swamplot reader Stephen Cullar-Ledford forwards this latest dramatic scene, which aches for suitably metaphorical captioning.

A few months ago it was fog, this afternoon it’s a rainbow over downtown . . .

Photo: Stephen Cullar-Ledford

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Comments
10/07/09 5:15pm

Comment of the Day: The Savoy Hotel Implosion You Missed

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Demolitions, Downtown, Quicklink
12 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE SAVOY HOTEL IMPLOSION YOU MISSED “I was across the street watching the tear down on and off for the 3rd day. They had a little trouble with the elevator shaft and the chimneys. Apparently the building was built pretty solid…2 foot thick brick walls. Yesterday they etched part of the bricks in the back and about half the building came down all at once by itself, rattling the ground and putting up a huge dust cloud. Part of the fire escape fell on the parking garage next door though.” [K. Brink, commenting on Emergency Demo: The Savoy Hotel’s Final Weekend Stay Downtown]

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Apartments
10/02/09 3:50pm

Downtown’s Pigeon Poop Powder Keg Will Not Go Boom

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Demolitions, Downtown, Environmental, Hazards, Quicklink
No Comments

DOWNTOWN’S PIGEON POOP POWDER KEG WILL NOT GO BOOM Swamplot reader ms. rosa reports on tonight’s scheduled demolition of the 1906 Savoy Apartments building (later the Savoy-Field Hotel) at Main St. and Pease Downtown: “Just spoke with Cherry [Demolition]. They will start tearing down the building tonight (Friday, October 2, 2009) at 7:00pm. It will not be imploded (as hoped!)” [Swamplot; previously]

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Apartments
09/24/09 11:17am

Guano with the Wind: Demolishing the Savoy Asbestos Possible

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Demolitions, Downtown, Environmental, Hazards
25 Comments

City officials have decided to give the owner of the original 1906 Savoy Apartments building on Main St. Downtown an extra week to knock down the structure before going ahead with their own emergency demolition plan. The building’s owner — listed in Harris County records as Michael Nassif — will now have until midnight next Friday, October 2nd, to have a contractor of his own choice begin dismantling the structure. If that doesn’t happen, the city-selected contractor will complete the demo that weekend — and leave the property with a lien for the $448,600 cost.

While negotiations have focused on how quickly work can begin, residents of the Beaconsfield across Pease St. may be more interested in how long the demo will take — and how it will be done. Architect David Hall, who has studied the building for several developers, spoke to abc13 reporter Gene Apodaca about the asbestos embedded in the building’s crumbling interior plaster:

“It’s full of environmental issues. There are pathogens that are a result of the pigeon droppings, there are areas of the building I measured where pigeon droppings were six inches thick,” said Hall.

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Apartments
09/18/09 5:50pm

Emergency Demo: The Savoy Hotel’s Final Weekend Stay Downtown

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Demolitions, Downtown, Houston History
23 Comments

Houston’s first-ever highrise apartment building will be demolished next Friday, September 25th, a spokesman for the Houston Police Department announced today. Neighborhood Protection inspectors have determined that structural problems with the vacant-and-crumbling 1906 Savoy Apartments building (later the Savoy Hotel) require it to be taken down as quickly as possible. The Houston Press‘s Craig Malisow reports:

[HPD’s Mark Curran] said the police have had difficulty contacting the owner, who is currently in Lebanon. (Curran didn’t remember his name off-hand, but a 2007 Press story identified him as Michael Nassif). The owner has 10 days to file an appeal, Curran said.

The nearby Metro line will need to be closed during the demolition — hopefully not longer than Friday-Sunday, Curran said.

Curran also said that the building would be guarded continuously until it is torn down.

The original Savoy Houston’s first public building to have electricity. Not included in the demolition order: the building next door with the big Savoy Houston sign on top. After that portion was built in 1961, the entire complex was operated as the Savoy-Field Hotel.

Photo of 1906 Savoy Apartments, in front of 1961 Savoy-Field Hotel: Flickr user oooch2

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Condos
09/18/09 3:13pm

Red-Hot Bachelor Pad of the Month

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Condos for Sale, Downtown, Home Decor, Interiors, Midtown
17 Comments

Ah, the single life! This one-bedroom, 625-sq.-ft. take at 2016 Main appears to have every necessity in place, down to that single toothbrush artfully placed next to stainless-steel counter bowl. Ax the giveaway Downtown and Midtown views, and wouldn’t this have made an excellent candidate for Swamplot’s weekly Neighborhood Guessing Game?

Asking $129,750 — since mid-ish July. Maintenance fee is $510 a month.

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Comments
09/11/09 1:05pm

Comment of the Day: Wrap Knapp with Velvet Rope Lines

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Downtown, Nightlife, Old Sixth Ward, Quicklink, Washington Ave, Washington Corridor
1 Comment

COMMENT OF THE DAY: WRAP KNAPP WITH VELVET ROPE LINES “Good riddance! This landmark has for too long stood in the way of shiny-shirt progress. Think of how many bars with names like ‘Elite,’ ‘Wealth,’ or ‘Entitled’ you could fit on that property! For my money, I might just have to call [it] the Bourgeoises, in honor of the now defunct Proletariat. And by ‘in honor of’ I mean ‘urinating upon the memory of.’” [Nord, commenting on GM Wants To Take Away Knapp]

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Downtown
09/10/09 11:58am

GM Wants To Take Away Knapp

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Historic Preservation, Old Sixth Ward, Openings and Closings, Retail, Washington Corridor
9 Comments

On the list of dealerships General Motors intends to shut down: Knapp Chevrolet, at 815 Houston Ave. just south of Washington. Back in May, GM notified the longtime Downtown dealership of its intent to terminate its franchise agreement as of Halloween 2010.

Since then, the dealership’s owners have been trying to get the decision reversed: President Robert G. Knapp presented his case to a congressional subcommittee in July, after several appeals to the company were rejected. Knapp claims his dealership has been profitable, and that closing the dealership would significantly hobble GM’s local market share. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee has gotten involved, introducing a bill in Congress that would make it easier for dealerships to appeal franchise terminations in court. Knapp is also collecting a list of supporters through an online petition to GM. More than 6,200 supporters have added their names to the list so far.

One of those supporters: The Greater Houston Preservation Alliance, fans of Knapp’s moderne corner building, completed in 1941, 2 years after the dealership was first established.

Photo of Knapp Chevrolet: Chris Adams

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Demolitions
09/02/09 6:14pm

The Secret Train Station Hidden Downtown

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Downtown, Quicklink, Transportation
14 Comments

THE SECRET TRAIN STATION HIDDEN DOWNTOWN “See, everyone in Houston thinks that our old train station was over by Enron Field (this blog does not recognize Minute Maid’s sponsorship deal) and that it’s been preserved as part of the ballpark. But actually, we had TWO stations – the Southern Pacific had their own, seperate from the Astros station, a mission/art deco fusion with beautiful murals on the walls and great big arched windows. Pictures of the place . . . are few and far between, but the ones I’ve seen show something that rivals LA Union Terminal or [Philadelphia’s 30th St. Station.] That station was torn down to make way for the Barbara Jordan [Post Office], except that ONLY THE WAITING ROOM WAS TORN DOWN. The whole mess of platforms and switchtracks that goes along with an art deco station building is still there, behind the post office, rusted and overgrown but still in existence as a huge chunk of UP-owned real estate.” [Keep Houston Houston]

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Downtown
08/04/09 9:09am

Peeking into the New Houston Ballet Center for Dance Downtown

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Houston Architects, Institutional Buildings, New Construction, Theater District
4 Comments

When the building is finished in 2011, what will wayward pedestrians poking past the new Houston Ballet Center for Dance from the intersection of Congress and Smith streets Downtown be able to glimpse of the action inside?

. . . the architects . . . envisioned the granite like a proscenium stage, framing views from the street through windows on several floors of the north and west facades.

Those windows, [Gensler managing principal James] Furr added, are like a “billboard for dance,” enabling passersby to see classes and rehearsals.

Furr spoke to the Chronicle‘s Molly Glentzer, and Gensler provided more-up-to-date images of the 115,000-sq.-ft. facility, which will be clad in black granite on one portion and “a light plaster” on the other:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Downtown
07/28/09 9:33am

Downtown Lunch Breaks

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Openings and Closings, Quicklink, Restaurants
2 Comments

DOWNTOWN LUNCH BREAKS Timpano’s Chop House, at the corner of Main and Texas, shut down last week — meeting the same fate as its predecessor, Bossa. Where will expense-account lunchers go now? “In the shadow of Timpano’s sudden closure skulks a disheartening Houston restaurant trend: the precipitous decline of the downtown business lunch. This spring, such expense-account stalwarts as Voice (in the Hotel Icon) and 17 (in the Alden-Houston Hotel) have eliminated lunch service entirely. On April 1, Spencer’s for Steaks and Chops in the Hilton of the Americas–the premium restaurant in Houston’s largest convention hotel–gave up on lunch service and moved its official opening time to 2 p.m.” [Cook’s Tour]

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Downtown
07/24/09 11:43am

Places, Everyone! Houston Ballet Center for Dance Starts Digging in Downtown

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Houston Architects, Institutional Buildings, New Construction, Proposed Developments, Theater District
3 Comments

Shhhh!!! The curtain hasn’t gone up yet on the new Center for Dance the Houston Ballet is constructing at 601 Preston St., between Louisiana and Smith, at the northern end of Downtown. There have been no big public announcements about the project, no local news stories, nada. But it looks like preliminary construction work on the building has already begun.

Yes, the new Ballet building is the mystery construction project Abc13 reporter Miya Shay posted in her Twitter feed yesterday, prompting an impromptu guessing game here. After some smart guesses from Swamplot readers and Tweeters, Shay revealed the answer this morning. In a later tweet, she gave a few more details: that fundraising for the building had reached more than 50 percent of the organization’s goal and that the building’s skybridge — which would connect it directly to the Wortham Center, so performers’ ballet shoes wouldn’t have to touch the street — was “def[initely] in.”

Shay also posted a second photo showing work going on at the construction site:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Downtown
07/21/09 2:21pm

Buffalo Bayou Sodders: Brave and Unfazed

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Flooding, Gardening, Landscape, Lawn Care
9 Comments

Reader Jeromy Murphy sends in this photo he took this morning along the banks of Buffalo Bayou, from the jogging path in Buffalo Bayou Park under I-45. What’s going on over there across the water?

While walking back to my office from a downtown meeting, I noticed workers installing new sod along the Bayou.  I wonder how long this will last considering the weather report?  Anyone along the ship channel need some new sod?  It’s probably headed their way.

What’s wrong with a little sod freshening?

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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