That see-through office tower above the new Houston Pavilions development Downtown won’t be empty much longer. Globe St.‘s Amy Wolff Sorter reports that law firm Sheehy, Serpe & Ware has leased the top floor and a half.
Only 7 1/2 floors left!
Photo of Pavilions Tower: Houston Pavilions
Feeding the meter won’t help you avoid a parking ticket Downtown anymore, thanks to a change in Houston parking regulations that passed City Council yesterday:
Drivers who stay beyond the posted limit will get a ticket, even if they have paid for additional time or have bought the all-day “Downtown Hopper” pass. The stricter ordinance also includes a provision making it clear that no one else can feed the meter for you.
How they gonna catch you? By tracking your license plate. The fine for overstaying coin-bought welcomes? $25.
The new rules are set to go into effect after a 1-month “grace period.”
Photo: Flickr user wandayuen2001
Remember that naming contest for East Downtown? A reader writes in:
I got an email from the East Downtown Management District saying that a name has been chosen for the district and the new website will debut on January 19th the website is www.eadohouston.com so I’m thinking the new name is EaDo?
The East Downtown District registered that domain name in July. Plus, EaDo would jibe with this little comment left on Swamplot last month.
So what were the runners-up? Perhaps: Edo, E.D.O., E-Do, or Eat-O? Next up: More naming competitions, for West Houston, Lower Kirby, and North Norhill!
Photo: Jackson Myers
Happy New year! Swamplot is off for the remainder of the week, to rest up for an exciting year full of new features, plus plenty more Houston real estate, design, and neighborhood goodies.
Comments and the Swamplot tip line, of course, remain open. If you’re hunting for the results of the Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate, browse on over to this page. We’ll see you back here on Monday!
In the meantime, enjoy these excerpts from a recent watery tour of Downtown, shot by Daryl D’Angelo from an inflatable canoe on Buffalo Bayou:
Hmmm . . . What’s going on in Houston real estate today? How about . . . the continuing construction of MainPlace! It’s the day before Christmas, and it’s still going on!
Scope out the scene yourself with the D.E. Harvey MainPlace webcam! Five-minute camera takeovers accepted.
It’s been obvious for some time that economic conditions and credit problems have placed a giant question mark next to almost every major proposed new development in town. But it sure is fun to revisit them one by one!
A week after Swamplot posted renderings of the new building the Houston Ballet has been planning for a Downtown block near the Wortham Center it bought last year, the Houston Press‘s Richard Connelly made some inquiries with Houston Ballet PR manager Melissa Carroll about the building. In reply came this very brief message:
What’s the Houston Ballet’s new $53 million, 120,000-sq.-ft. Downtown headquarters building going to look like? Two renderings of the 6-story building planned for the block between Smith, Louisiana, Congress, and Preston Sts. have appeared on an architecture website based in the U.K.
A connecting skybridge would prevent tutus from wilting on the long journey between the new ballet practice facilities and the Wortham Center, which is catty-corner to the site. The new building will also house the ballet’s offices and wardrobe shop, as well as the the Ben Stevenson Academy.
The two views of the building don’t exactly gibe — a likely sign that the design is not final:
DOWNTOWN WAITING ROOM Architect Lawrence Speck of Page Southerland Page, architect of the Christ Church Cathedral’s John S. Dunn Outreach Center at Prairie and San Jacinto: “We went to other places that were serving the homeless in Houston and spoke with people. Gosh, they have all the time in the world. They’re very happy to talk to you. One thing that we learned that had not been handled well in Austin was that a whole lot of their lives are about waiting. They’re waiting for the meal; they’re waiting for an appointment; they’re waiting for friends to show up; and there’s no place to hang out. They are constantly being moved or jostled. So on the north side of Dunn center, we built a lot of space for just hanging out. There’s a very deep arcade—about 12 feet deep. It’s got ceiling fans. It’s shady. It’s cool. Then there’s a little buffer of green space, which is very, very important because that makes them not feel like they’re on the sidewalk. . . . Another thing that’s good about the arcade is that it’s on the church’s turf, and so the hotels and the condos and the other office buildings down there feel much more comfortable with the homeless people being in their neighborhood than they did before.” [Architectural Record]
The Christus Foundation for HealthCare appears to be hawking two distinct visions for the family health center it hopes to build at the corner of Fannin and McGowen in Midtown. That’s the same location where the complex that contained the Fu Kim Grand Palace Restaurant was torn down last year. On fundraising materials for the San José Clinic — a charity clinic that currently operates across the street from Minute Maid Park Downtown, and which will move into the new center in Midtown when it’s completed in 2010 — there’s a rendering of what looks like a 3-story stucco Alamo-meets-UT mini-resort building set behind a parking lot.
But the Christus Foundation’s website features something entirely different on its Living the Legacy fundraising page:
A red sheet now covers the more lurid portions of the shocking window display including naked mannequins that had apparently distressed some passersby of Jim Pirtle’s Notsuoh on Main St., John Nova Lomax reports:
The work, by local artists Shawna Mouser and Jennifer Pod, is called VaginArt. One half of the piece consists of the lower torsos of two shop mannequins with flowers between their legs, along with a pizza-sized paper wall-hanging with a suggestive slit in it.
The other half, and the one far more likely to have caused a ruckus, consists of a blow-up doll backlit by a sleazy strobe light, parading before a background of medium-raunchy centerfolds with black electrical tape concealing their naughty bits.
Pretending to be a tourist in his hometown, Misha from Tasty Bits puts together a day’s itinerary that includes the Breakfast Klub, the Rothko Chapel, the Menil, Westmoreland and Audubon Place, Nippon, . . . and Discovery Green:
11am: Head to Discovery Green to see exactly how much park $145 million dollars buys you. The corporate sponsorship at this place is a bit “enthusiasticâ€, but overall Disco Green (that’s what the cool kids call it these days, I hear) is a surprisingly good time. I didn’t bring my bocce balls or a putter, but I did have fun reflecting the best of Kraftwerk off the completely awesome Listening Vessels, designed by Doug Hollis. Being a bit stubborn, I also spent no less than half an hour trying to figure out if the Synchronicity of Color sculpture was interactive. It’s not, but feel free to give it a shot anyway.
The most interesting thing about Discovery Green is not how much it cost, but how much more livable Houston Downtown appears to be than it was as recently as 5 years ago. . . . Though a bit crammed with “featuresâ€, the park goes a nice job of combining a nature, architecture and art in a single organic space that anchors a new, far more residential Downtown than ever before.
Photo: Misha
At the new House of Blues last night: Jay-Z. And three blocks away, Books-A-Million and a roman-numeral flagship version of Forever 21 are now open! But between them in Downtown’s brand-new mixed-use street-hovering mall? Not much going on . . . yet:
The developers of the three block long Houston Pavilions said the pavilions will be the place to go, but for now it’s mainly a lot of space.
“It’s different because you don’t have a lot of nightlife down here. But with the restaurant, the Foundations Room, and the music hall at the House of Blues, we are going to bring people to the Pavilions,” [said] Deb Eybers, President of the House of Blues.
They won’t just bring people. Tenants will also be coming to the area. But for now there are just a handful of businesses.
More are slated to come on line in December and even more in the spring. Then the complex will be at 60 percent capacity.
The complex extends from Main St. to Caroline between Dallas and Polk — only a few surface-parking-lot blocks from the Toyota Center and Discovery Green.
If they had been trading weather futures here, it would have been too perfect: A view of a trading office in the JPMorgan Chase Center at 601 Travis St., from the morning after Hurricane Ike.
Another view below:
Sandwich franchise Pita Pit has a store tucked inside a Greenway Plaza office building. Two more locations debuted recently: one at Highway 6 and Williams Trace in Sugar Land (opened in May) and another in the tunnel beneath McKinney St. Downtown (opened in July). A new store in a strip center at Westheimer and Fountainview is listed as “coming soon” on the company website.
Now a source reports that a total of 10 Pita Pit franchises are planned for the Houston area — including one in the shopping center at 3939 Montrose Blvd., just north of the Hurricane-Ike-swept Diedrich’s Coffee, near Marble Slab.
Photo of Sugar Land Pita Pit: Pita Pit
