02/25/10 11:09am

Two months ago, a group out of San Antonio bought up the $32 million and somewhat-tattered note owed by the owners of the Metropole Apartments at 3616 Richmond (between Edloe and Buffalo Speedway). But Lynd Residential Properties and McCombs Enterprises weren’t interested in collecting payments — they foreclosed on the property right away. And now they’re hoping to sell the 289-unit property — for more than $40 million. Globe St.‘s Amy Wolff Sorter explains politely how it came to this:

Metropole’s story begins in 2005, when Cambridge Development acquired a vacant office building with plans to convert it into living space. Cambridge Development finished its work in 2007, creating a luxury high-rise multifamily complex right around the time fundamentals began to weaken. Cambridge Development brought the asset to market in late winter 2008. Metropole was under contract several times but never made it out of escrow.

. . . and the new owners swooped in at the end of last year. They tell Sorter they’ve already brought the occupancy rate up from 75 percent to “the low 80s,” with rental rates of approximately $1.50 per sq. ft.

Photo: Metropole

02/09/10 11:48am

No, that’s not valet parking being offered along the ramp at the Timmons side of Lakewood Church in Greenway Plaza. It’s a new drive-thru healing service offered by Pastor Joel Osteen’s mother, Dodie Osteen:

She conducts a traditional healing service each month, recently adding one for children with medical issues. The drive[-through] service is for anyone too ill to attend those. . . .

The first drive through service was advertised by word of mouth. Though small by Lakewood standards, it seems small though it will grow. Yet it did what was intended by creating hope where there might have been none. Dodie Osteen will tell you she’s a living example

“You know what, I can come to them. And I’m perfectly willing to do that. If I have to crawl out there to them, I’ll do that,” said Dodie.

Mrs. Osteen plans to schedule more of the drive-through healing services when the weather improves. The cold temperatures and rain aren’t good for people with health issues.

Photo: Paul Duron

12/04/09 1:19pm

City officials are discussing a possible sale of the former basketball stadium now occupied by the nation’s largest megachurch, reports the Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff. When Lakewood Church took over the Compaq Center (formerly the Houston Summit) from the city in 2001, the institution prepayed the entire $12 million rent amount of the 30-year lease, and spent considerably more than that on renovations. The city won’t see any more income from the property for 22 years. According to the agreement, Lakewood has the option of extending its lease for a second 30-year period, for $22.6 million.

How much could the city get for the little church by the Southwest Freeway?

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

11/20/09 2:52pm

What do all these Houston office towers have in common?

That’s right — they’re all part of the vast Crescent Real Estate Equities empire, which at the peak of the market 2 years ago comprised 54 properties in all, stretching from Texas to the California coast. That’s when Morgan Stanley snatched up the whole thing for a mere $6.5 billion, thanks in part to a little $2 billion loan from Barclays Capital.

Today, Morgan Stanley announced it is giving up on the whole thing. Back to the bank all those properties go. All of them. (Okay, minus a few that were jettisoned along the way.)

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

10/07/09 12:37pm

POST OFFICE SALES: NEVER MIND Those gargoyles-on-sticks facing Downtown from Randall Davis’s Metropolis condo building get to keep their view. Nancy Sarnoff reports that two post offices offered for sale earlier this year (including the River Oaks P.O. adjacent to the Metropolis) have been taken off the market: “‘Bids were just so low we stopped that project for the time being,’ said Charlie Phillips, postal operations analyst for the [U.S. Postal Service]. Those properties are at 1900 West Gray at Dunlavy and 2802 Timmons, near West Alabama.” No report yet on the outcome of bidding for the Downtown Post Office at 401 Franklin St. [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot]

04/20/09 7:55am

Here’s a whizzy reel showing what the new Metro trains and stations on 4 upcoming light-rail lines are supposed to look like. Dowling St. in the Third Ward, the Edloe Station in Greenway Plaza, the Moody Park Station on the North Line, MacGregor Park Station on the Southeast Line, and Lockwood Station on the East End Line each get about 30 seconds of CGI treatment, from a low-flying camera buzzing some extremely lifelike — though torpid — pedestrians.

Christof Spieler finds a few flaws:

The Third Ward footage seems to be out-of-date; it shows the old alignment crossing Dowling on Wheeler, not the new route that switches to Alabama. But other details are correct: the stations shown are the new prototype station design (by Rey de la Reza Architects), minus artwork.

It’s nice to be able to visualize what these lines might look like. But it’s also a reminder that it’s important to get the details right. At Edloe, for example, the trees integrated into the canopy are nice, but there’s no crosswalk at the west end of the station platform, which means a 500-foot detour for some riders. The Moody Park and MacGregor stations do show that crosswalk, and the sidewalks look pretty good, too. But in all the images, the overhead wires are suspended from their own poles in the middle of the street, not from the streetlight poles on either side, as on Main Street. That makes for more poles and a more cluttered streetscape.

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

12/01/08 10:18am

A 3-story section of The Collection, the Morgan Group’s 528-unit apartment complex under construction behind the new Costco on Weslayan and Richmond apparently collapsed early Sunday. A Swamplot reader sends in these photos of the scene following the accident, along with a few sharp comments:

The 4 story “stick built” apartment facility known as “The Collection” (www.collectionliving.com) became a “collection of sticks” early Sunday morning. It seems as if the contractors and the Morgan Group were in a Thanksgiving hurry to get home for turkey and giblets and forgot to “tie in” to the adjoining 3 and 4 story section of the main building.

Good thing it was a Sunday as Monday morning will bring back a tribe of contractors to push to get this facility on the Harris County Tax Roll by Summer 2009….Someone could have been seriously hurt if not killed. The Morgan Group should be “thankful” this Thanksgiving that it was not the case – and that they can “rush” to completion.

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

11/14/08 11:41am

COSTCO SIDEWALK MAZE: BETTER FOR THE TREES Lee McGuire gets to the bottom of the wacky sidewalk screwup at Trammell Crow’s Greenway Commons, on the corner of Weslayan and Richmond: “It turns out the city actually required the new sidewalk to run right through the utility poles to save a row of trees. The developer said the project meets federal guidelines — except perhaps the blocked handicap ramp. The final inspection won’t take place until the shopping center is finished. If it’s in violation, the developer promises to fix it.” [11 News, via BlogHouston; previously]

10/27/08 11:15am

Sidewalk Along Weslayan St., Greenway Commons, Houston

The wise folks behind Greenway Commons — the new shopping center replacing the old HISD headquarters building at the corner of Richmond and Weslayan — have apparently taken some extra-special steps to make sure the new development (which includes a brand-new Costco) is super-friendly to pedestrian visitors!

Making everything welcoming to people arriving on foot makes sense — the project had been criticized for exhibiting suburban-style development patterns in a location that some dreamers had imagined would be a street-fronting mixed-use center. It’s already a busy corner, and Metro’s new University Line will have a stop only a short walk away.

But “easy to access” can also mean “boring.” So it’s comforting to see these pictures of the project’s street edge sent in by a reader, which show a gentle, fun infrastructure-themed obstacle course taking shape along the new Weslayan and Richmond sidewalks in front of Trammell Crow’s grand development:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

09/11/08 7:31am

Greenway Plaza, Houston

Morgan Stanley, having swallowed Crescent Real Estate Equities near the peak of the market last year, is having a little trouble digesting the REIT.

The Wall St. Journal reports that one of the Crescent properties Morgan Stanley is ready to spit out is . . . Greenway Plaza. An article by reporters Lingling Wei and Aaron Lucchetti finds a July estimate of $826 million for the 10-building complex.

Photo: Flickr user ShinyCrazyDiamond

08/11/08 11:41am

COSTCO $17K LEFT TURN GREEN LIGHT The new Costco on Richmond gets on okay for tree-free left turns: “According to Craig Cheney, spokesman for partner-developer Trammell Crow, nine bald cyprus and three other trees will be removed from the Weslayan median and replanted elsewhere. The developer will ‘buy out’ three live oaks that will be cut down on Richmond to make way for two left-turn lanes for a total of $17,000, a spokesman for the city said. [River Oaks Examiner, previously in Swamplot]

07/02/08 11:15am

Costco at Richmond and Weslayan Under Construction

Street trees in medians on Weslayan and Richmond will likely be disappearing soon, reports Sarah Kortemeier in the offline-only Village News. Three left-turn lanes on Weslayan and two on Richmond are planned for the new Greenway Commons Costco-powered Power Center under construction on the northeast corner of that intersection:

Trammell Crow Managing Director of Retail Development Craig Cheney says that the company was required by the City of Houston to put the turning bays in for traffic mitigation purposes, and his company was not made aware of any extra permitting required to remove trees. . . .

The median does not appear to be wide enough to accommodate extra lanes without removing trees. Cheney says that Trammell Crow is “open to any suggestions [the City] might have” about relocating or mitigating the effect on trees, but that the turning bays cannot be constructed without removing or relocating at least some of the trees.

Photo of Costco construction: Flickr user Graustark

06/27/08 9:51am

River Oaks Physician Plaza

Medistar’s brand-new River Oaks Physician Plaza adjacent to the just-shuttered River Oaks Hospital has just one tenant, reports Monica Perin in today’s Houston Business Journal:

The 105,000-square-foot, five-story River Oaks Physician Plaza was intended to house offices for River Oaks Hospital physicians as well as a sports medicine center, sleep lab and an endoscopy and pain management center, all operated by River Oaks Hospital, which was originally set to lease space in the building. . . .

But, according to Dr. Leroy Sterling, a physician investor in River Oaks Hospital, there is currently only one tenant — a physician — in the building.

Colliers is now trying to lease the building to commercial tenants. Space is listed at $21 a square foot, triple net. The building has been renamed River Oaks Plaza.

Photo of River Oaks Physician Plaza: River Oaks Hospital

06/26/08 4:13pm

Apple’s Where To Buy Page for the iPhone, Showing the AT&T Store between Edloe and Weslayan

A Swamplot reader who’s been itching for one of them new 3G iPhones points us to this page on the Apple website, designed to show where you’ll be able to buy an iPhone. On July 11th, the new phones will be available at Apple Retail Stores and at AT&T outlets.

Naturally, Apple illustrates the two store options with photos of the most glamorous examples of each type. The Apple Store shown is the famous glass cube on 5th Avenue in New York City. And the AT&T store is . . . the AT&T Experience Store on the side of the Southwest Freeway between Edloe and Weslayan!?

Our reader comments:

And no, it doesn’t look that good in person. It’s on at least its third incarnation as a cellphone store: first it was a pretty boring two-story concrete box for Houston Cellular, then it got some outlandish rooftop decoration with a rebranding to Cingular, and then it changed brands (and colors) to ATT.

06/24/08 10:53am

River Oaks Physician Plaza, Houston

Looking to lease medical offices near the Southwest Freeway? Medical Properties Trust — which last year bought the former Twelve Oaks Hospital building just west of Greenway Plaza and the 6700 Bellaire building in Sharpstown from Hospital Partners of America and leased them both back to the River Oaks Hospital — may soon have a lot of space available! HPA announced yesterday that both of its River Oaks Hospital locations are closing.

Be sure to check out Medistar’s brand-new River Oaks Physician Plaza (above), designed by Kirksey — also part of HPA’s complex!

Photo of River Oaks Physician Plaza: River Oaks Hospital