Eastwood

Buildings for Sale
02/19/13 12:30pm

Finger Furniture Selling Showroom, Old Baseball Stadium Property Near UH

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Commercial Real Estate, Eastwood, Furniture, Land for Sale, Retail
22 Comments

Not quite 3 years after reopening as what owner Rodney Finger claimed to be the biggest furniture store in Texas, the 600,000-sq.-ft. I-45 Finger Furniture flagship — and the 16.5 acres near UH that it sits on — has come up for sale. Until the Finger family bought the property in the early ’60s, it was home to a minor-league baseball stadium for the Houston Buffs, a farm team for the Cardinals up in St. Louis. That history was given some floor space among the couches and mattresses indoors in the Houston Sports Museum — with a replica home plate in the showroom tile to approximate the original. And the asking price? $11 million.

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Comments
06/14/12 11:55pm

Comment of the Day: The Teardown Chase

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Demolitions, Eastwood, Quicklink, West University
No Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE TEARDOWN CHASE “Nice house. I remember back in the mid 80′s when places like that were available in West U for about the same price. My wife and I would see an ad for one in the paper, go rushing down to West U to look at it and find a bare patch of brown earth where the house stood a few days prior. We never could get to a house before the builders.” [Bubba, commenting on Bus or Bike Now, Ride Rail Later from Eastwood-Area Bungalow]

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Eastwood
06/14/12 10:45am

Bus or Bike Now, Ride Rail Later from Eastwood-Area Bungalow

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Homes for Sale, Interiors, Transportation
15 Comments

Poke along Polk St. in the Woodleigh area of “Greater Eastwood” to find this vintage brick bungalow. Since it’s next to an auto repair service, the home acts as a bookend shoring up one end of a mostly residential block. A convenience store caps the other end; a shopping center is in the next block.

The listing’s location close to Cullen Blvd. means both current and future public transportation options. Metro buses, for example, stop nearby and Polk St. itself has a bike lane. Meanwhile, Metro Rail has 3 stations pending in the area, though each might turn out to be a bit of a hike from the home. It’s about three quarters of a mile to the future Green Line’s York and Lockwood/Eastwood stations. The Purple Line’s Leeland/Third Ward stop is going up just over a half-mile away.

The house boasts classic features of 1929 domicile design: porches, wooden trim, interior archways. Listed earlier this month at $124,900, the property is offered “as is.” Here’s what — at least as the photos show it — that means:

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Development Regulations
12/20/11 11:39am

Kitchen Ethics: Permit or No Permit?

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Eastwood, Interiors, Quicklink, Renovations
25 Comments

KITCHEN ETHICS: PERMIT OR NO PERMIT? “I’m not sure who to go to on this, but I live in Eastwood and am doing a total upgrade of my kitchen. I’m going back and forth on whether to go through the city permit process or not . . . am trying to figure out the pros and cons. We have guys doing the construction that will work with us either way on it. Any thoughts?” [Swamplot inbox]

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Eastwood
10/24/11 1:50pm

Mayor Parker Wants To Buy Unused Eastwood Elementary School on Credit

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Historic Preservation, Public Buildings, Schools
13 Comments

Eastwood’s original Rufus Cage Elementary School would become a landmarked “community facility” under a plan announced today by Mayor Parker. The 1910 2-story brick schoolhouse at the intersection of Telephone Rd. and Baird St. last served as a schoolhouse in 1983; under Parker’s plan, the city would buy the building for $100,000 in credit from HISD, which the school district could use to acquire a city property or right-of-way to be named later. HISD’s trustees approved the sale earlier this month, but city council will have to vote on the plan too. After taking ownership, Parker says, the city would pursue a landmark designation for the property and “work with the neighborhood to seek proposals for conversion of the building to another use.” The schoolhouse, a small auditorium, and a warehouse sit on a triangular 28,700-sq.-ft. lot.

Photo: Candace Garcia

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Eastwood
09/12/11 10:39am

Eastwood Two-Story Moves a Little on Down the Line

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Home Decor, Homes for Sale, Interiors
21 Comments

Just reduced a smidge: This 2-story four-squarish renovated 1914 home in Eastwood, just southwest of Eastwood Park. A few blocks north at Harrisburg and Lockwood, a light-rail station for Metro’s new East End line is supposed to open sometime around the home’s 100th-birthday mark. A porch wraps around the house, behind a front fence and driveway gate. And inside — a careful photographer has made sure you’ll notice — you’ll find lots of well-saturated colors.

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Buildings for Sale
06/16/11 9:40pm

HISD Looking for Cage Match in Eastwood

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Eastwood, Historic Preservation, Public Buildings, Schools
8 Comments

What’s happening with the old Rufus Cage Elementary School on Telephone Rd., just north of Lawndale? Some roof repairs, and . . . a possible sale? “Now we actually have some people that have interest in the property, but our concern is that the interest is in the land, not necessarily in the building,” HISD trustee Juliet Stipeche tells abc13’s Cynthia Cisneros. The Eastwood school, built in 1910, closed in the mid-1980s and is currently used as a storage facility by the school district. An organization called the Rufus Cage Educational Alliance is trying to find a public use for the building and its 1.021-acre site. A deal the school district had negotiated to sell Cage to Historic Houston fell through long before the nonprofit’s recent financial difficulties. Nine other school properties are listed for sale on the HISD real estate website.

Photo: Candace Garcia

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Demolitions
02/04/11 5:43pm

Eastwood Church of the Redeemer Likely To Be Redeemed for Vacant Lot

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Eastwood, Religious Institutions
16 Comments

The Episcopal church on the triangular block near the head of Telephone Rd. at Dallas and Eastwood is headed for demolition, according to information posted on its Facebook page. The congregation plans to vacate the Church of the Redeemer after a service on February 27th. A letter posted from senior warden Daniel Coleman declares the building “no longer safe to occupy”:

According to Tellepsen Construction and Studio Red Architects, the existing condition of the electrical, mechanical, and plumbing systems, the chunks of concrete separating and falling from our buildings (“spalling”), the lack of a fire alarm system, and the inadequacy of emergency exit signs and lights is more than enough to revoke our Certificate of Occupancy, if the Fire Marshall inspected the buildings. The cost of addressing just these issues would be $5 – 7 million. Neither our congregation nor our Diocese can afford that; and even if all those things were repaired, our congregation can no longer afford to maintain the building.

“The buildings will eventually be demolished, but we believe that the mural will be removed and preserved in the hope of future use,” adds a parishioner organizing a congregation “memory book.” Also likely to be saved, at least until the current contract expires: the bell tower, where T-mobile has a microwave relay. The original church on that site was built in 1920 as the Eastwood Community Church; Tellepsen was the contractor for its 1932 replacement. Additional structures were added in the forties and fifties, along with the sanctuary mural, called “Christ of the Workingman.”

Photo: Church of the Redeemer

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Crime
05/25/10 5:16pm

D&W Lounge: What’s Stirring in Eastwood’s After-Coffee Morning Bar

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Eastwood, Nightlife
6 Comments

D&W Lounge owner Keith Weyel told the Houston Press‘s John Nova Lomax last year he was “somewhat disappointed that the kids in the nearby new condos” hadn’t quite found their way yet to his bar just past the train tracks on Milby St., at the western edge of Eastwood. But Lomax doesn’t mind:

. . . to cater to the third shift at the coffee plant, the D&W Lounge opens at 7 AM. The interior is done up with pictures of Marilyn Monroe, statues of the Buddha, and a super-cool tin man hand-fashioned out of school cafeteria cans.

More evidence of the bar’s rough-and-tumble street cred: last month’s on-site fatal shooting.

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Comments
03/01/10 2:01pm

Comment of the Day: The Soccer Stadium at Finger Furniture

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Eastwood, Quicklink, Retail
3 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE SOCCER STADIUM AT FINGER FURNITURE “Am I crazy to ask the question why this site would not be an easier solution for the Dynamo’s stadium? It’s right on 45 South, has much better ingress/egress than the east end site, with dedicated exits going north and south, very close to downtown. . . . Looking closer, too, it makes for easy alternative use(s) for the stadium (which means TSU can have even more convenient use of the facilities with their campus not 2 miles away), near Hobby Airport for sports fan travelers/reporters/etc., and doesn’t take a ton of money to make the site possible since it already has a vast parking lot, utilities, (albeit obnoxious) pylon freeway sign. Knowing the Fingers family, they would take the call, and be happy to trade the site for another from the city for future development. Yahtzee!” [JG, commenting on A Whole New Ball Game: Fingers Back and Open for Business]

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Eastwood
02/26/10 11:49pm

A Whole New Ball Game: Fingers Back and Open for Business

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Houston History, Museums, Openings and Closings, Retail
3 Comments

Almost a year after shutting down all its operations, Finger Furniture — or at least another company using the same name and run by the same family — is open again. Owner Rodney Finger is claiming the newly renovated 600,000-sq.-ft. facility at 4001 Gulf Fwy. at Cullen near Eastwood is now the biggest furniture store in Texas. And that’ll likely be true for a bit longer — until the warehouse portion of that million-sq.-ft. Rooms To Go on I-10 past Katy opens in another month or so.

But at 200,000 sq. ft., Finger’s showroom is 5 times the size of the one at Rooms To Go. And then there’s that museum inside:

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