Memorial

Bankruptcies
05/26/10 12:19pm

Shaun Kelley Slims Down

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Memorial, Openings and Closings, Retail
14 Comments

On his Facebook page, Shaun Kelley claims to be just “moving my business.” But abc13 is reporting that the Shaun Kelley Weight Control storefront at San Felipe and Voss shut its doors for good yesterday — shortly after the local fitness guru declared bankruptcy.

An unspecified nearby gym will take on Kelley’s trainers and clients, according to the report. Shaun Kelley Weight Loss Center memberships cost $15,000 a year, though shorter memberships were available.

Kelley gained national attention 2 years ago after the FBI interviewed a former employee to determine if Roger Clemens might have obtained steroids or human growth hormone through Kelley or his clinic. The employee claimed Clemens had met with Kelley at that location, but Kelley claimed Clemens was an acquaintance who had never visited the clinic.

Okay, then. But what about Donald Trump?

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Home Design
05/13/10 12:16pm

Behind the Westminster Wall, Still Modern After All These Years

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Homes for Sale, Huntleigh, Memorial
31 Comments

Back on the market for what looks to be the first time in a couple of years: This 1959 garage-free number on Westminster Dr. in Memorial, just a couple doors down from Chimney Rock. The house was designed by Houston architects Wilson, Morris, Crain, and Anderson — just a few years before the company drew up plans for the Astrodome.

What? No giant west-facing windows in front? And what’s behind door number 1, anyway?

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Buying and Selling
03/26/10 1:22pm

Memorial Drive Scrape: The End of Otto’s and Bibas Greek Pizza

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Cancellations and Delays, Commercial Real Estate, Memorial, New Construction, Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Retail, Rice Military, Shopping Centers
3 Comments

How cheaply did the Ponderosa Land Development Co. pick up the 1.3 acres of land under Otto’s Bar B Que on Memorial Dr.?

“I won’t be able to ride off into the sunset with what I’m getting,” Otto’s co-owner June Sofka tells Jennifer Dawson of the Houston Business Journal. And that’s our only clue. Well, that and the fact that the shopping-center developers still had enough money left over to buy the property next door.

A new 2-story building on the 1.8-acre site between Asbury and Reinicke, on the southern border of Rice Military, is being designed by Kirksey.

The portion with Memorial frontage that will also be torn down to make way for the new project is owned by two sisters, one of whom is Wanda Greb. Their property contains Bibas Greek Pizza, M-T Nails, Memorial Barber Shop, Rich Cleaners and the hamburger restaurant segment of Otto’s, which is leased by the Sofkas.

Ponderosa intends to scrape the entire site and develop a 22,000-square-foot center with retail, restaurant and possibly some boutique office space. The project is expected to cost $6 million to $8 million, not including the land cost.

But wait, maybe not all of those businesses are disappearing from that location!

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Homes for Sale
03/04/10 11:49pm

Neighborhood Guessing Game Over: Remember the Forest

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Interiors, Memorial, Memorial Forest, Neighborhood Guessing Game
8 Comments

So many pretty close guesses in this week’s game, but we’re awarding the prize to the player who came the closest of all. Flake, congratulations! You’ve just won a one-year individual membership in the NGG’s longtime sponsor, the Rice Design Alliance!

Is this place really (as commenter Phil put it) the “MOST. INNOCUOUS. HOME. EVER.”?

Have a look and judge for yourself. There’s no harm in that.

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Critters
03/02/10 8:14am

The Feral Peafowl of Nottingham Forest

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Memorial, Nottingham Forest, Quicklink
8 Comments

THE FERAL PEAFOWL OF NOTTINGHAM FOREST Jay Lee shoots game in Houston’s wild west: “Off Memorial Drive between Kirkwood and Dairy Ashford reside the wild peafowl of West Houston. Peacocks and Peahens roam the yards and streets, putting on a show and making a racket. Their call sounds like a baby crying out or a cat in severe pain. Some residents describe their call as “sounds like somebody being murdered.” Overall they seem oblivious to the human residents and the occasional gawkers like myself who drive down to see them. Apparently the population of about 50 birds are offspring from a pair that a landowner gave his wife more than 30 years ago.” [Bald Heretic]

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Cancellations and Delays
01/21/10 3:11pm

Otto’s Bar B Que Really Closing for Good This Time, Except of Course for the Hamburgers

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Commercial Real Estate, Memorial, Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Retail
4 Comments

A little more than 2 years after announcing they’d be closing down, demolishing the restaurant and selling the land underneath it, and 9 months after reopening the almost-60-year-old institution with great fanfare, the owners of Otto’s Bar B Que are now saying the restaurant at 5502 Memorial Dr. will be closing for good. Sort of:

Otto’s has a long list of customers, including former President George H. W. Bush. He came by yesterday to get a final plate of food before the business closed. The building will be demolished and replaced with a bank. The owner told us it was hard to say goodbye.

“We have some wonderful people here in the City of Houston that have supported us for hundreds of years. It’s a little, a little emotional,” said owner June [Sofka].

You will still be able to order a hamburger from Otto’s at that location for a few more months.

Photo: Flickr user tamtam.afropunx

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Homes for Sale
11/19/09 11:03pm

Neighborhood Guessing Game Over: Hudson News

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Hudson on the Bayou, Interiors, Memorial, Neighborhood Guessing Game
2 Comments

We have a winner for this week’s Neighborhood Guessing Game! Who won that membership in the Rice Design Alliance?

First, here’s where you guessed this home might be: Southampton (2 guesses), Bellaire (3 of you), Tanglewood, Champions (2), “off Memorial near the Tollway,” Baytown (2), “Gessner and Wilcrest area,” Pearland, Sugar Land, The Woodlands (2), Katy, Southampton, the Heights, Briar Forest, Downtown, Memorial, West University, Deer Park, League City, Clear Lake, Greatwood, Willowbrook, Spring, Champions, Kingwood, Midtown, Montrose, Rice Military, Camp Logan, Garden Oaks, Oak Forest, Timbergrove Manor (2), Upper Kirby, the Galleria, Afton Oaks, Gulfton, Spring Branch, Sharpstown, Alief, Braeburn, Tanglewilde, Westchase, Barker Cypress, Greenspoint, Cinco Ranch, EaDo, River Oaks (2), “Wards 1-6,” Riverside Terrace, Avondale, “just inside the Beltway, just off Memorial Dr.,” West Lane Place, “somewhere south of Richmond and west of Hillcroft,” “the Stoney Brook or Westbriar/Tanglewilde area,” Tealwood, and “the Memorial/Gessner area.”

The winner of a one-year individual membership in the RDA is mojo jojo, for pinpointing the home with this entry:

The decorations in this home point to outside the loop, around the beltway or beyond! The photos give very little indication to era, except for the kitchen. From the knob placement on the cabinets (I betcha that these cabinets original had yellow or green ceramics knobs), to the custom built vent apron over the island, this kitchen screams 70’s!!! . . .

What leads me to the location is the fact that the home has almost no yard, as seen in the many photos which show the ivy covered wall outside of every window. This leads me to the many townhome communities built in the 70’s and 80’s, around the Beltway.

My scientific calculations, lead me to believe that this home is just inside the Beltway, and just off Memorial Dr.

Congratulations, mojo jojo!

We’re also handing out an honorable mention to movocelot, for being kinda close too. Now just where is this place?

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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CityCentre
09/04/09 11:24am

Openings and Closings: Restaurant Revamp Edition

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Galleria, Houston Heights, Memorial, Openings and Closings, Restaurants, The Woodlands, Upper Kirby
No Comments

What’s new to eat?

  • Opening Soon: Lola, a diner-ish spot serving “American comfort foods” — in the restored and refashioned former Eckerd Drug across from the Heights Post Office on Yale and 11th. This’ll be the third Heights restaurant venture from Ken Bridge, who also runs Dragon Bowl and Pink’s Pizza.
  • Opened This Week: From famed New York, Las Vegas, and Dallas chef John Tesar, Tesar’s Modern Steak and Seafood, directly across from the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in The Woodlands. You’ll certainly want to eat everything on your plate when you visit: “Tesar’s entire menu will be one hundred percent sustainable created with a zero-waste food ethics in mind,” declares the restaurant website. Whole fish will be a specialty. Outside: a burger bar.
  • Closed: The Texadelphia in the fast-food-friendly strip center on Memorial Dr. and Asbury, across from Otto’s — reportedly on account of the parking lot being too darn clogged. No worries: You can still get your cheesesteak fix at 3 other Houston locations, and it’s now a bit easier to find a spot in front of the Kolache Factory.

More food fun:

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Buying and Selling
07/24/09 7:48pm

Smashing Modern in Glen Cove

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Glen Cove, Houston Architects, Land Sales, Memorial, Real Estate Marketing
23 Comments

Judging from its debut in this morning’s demolition report, it’s looking like the end of the line for the classic 1960 steel-and-glass home at 6040 Glencove St., near Bayou Bend and Memorial Park.

What’s going away?

The house had the kind of wide-open spaces that modernists love, and its floors were marble Рcool, [original owner Andr̩] Crispin says, under bare feet in the summer.

At 4,600 square feet, the house was large for its era, plenty big enough for the Crispins’ four children and their grand-scale entertaining. When Crispin and his wife hosted musical events, 200 to 300 guests thronged their dramatic living room. There, those guests could admire the wall of glass 14 feet tall. It offered a view of the untamed back yard, a rolling ravine filled with sassafras trees, rabbits and armadillos.

The home was designed by Houston architect Talbott Wilson, 2 years before his firm created the Astrodome. Its current owner, David Mincberg, was appointed by Mayor White earlier this week to serve on the board of commissioners of the Houston Housing Authority. Mincberg bought the property last spring from an owner-broker who employed an innovative marketing plan: the Midcentury Modern came free with purchase of the dramatic 1.35-acre homesite.

What did Mincberg end up paying?

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Commercial Real Estate
07/08/09 5:55pm

Just Couldn’t Say Goodbye: Otto’s, Back from the Edge of the Market

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Land for Sale, Land Prices, Memorial, Openings and Closings, Restaurants
10 Comments

That plan by the owners of Otto’s Bar B Q and Hamburgers on Memorial Dr. to shut down the restaurant, sell the land, and retire on the proceeds didn’t end up going so well after all, the Houston Business Journal‘s Allison Wollam notices. The 58-year-old restaurant

was slated to be demolished to make way for the sale of the high-profile Memorial Drive land, but the restaurant has now fully reopened after the owners were unable to find a buyer for the property. The hamburger side of the two-sided restaurant has remained in business, but the portion selling barbecue closed for a time. A sign on the door says the barbecue side of the restaurant celebrated a grand reopening on April 15.

But word of the reopening seems to be spreading slowly. The once-bustling parking lot of the restaurant, for example, was only sparsely populated during lunchtime on a day earlier [last] week.

The owners, June and Marcus Sofka, were told they might be able to get as much as $150 a square foot for their property when they listed it with Cushman & Wakefield at the end of 2007. But a real estate broker tells Wollam the 1.3-acre Otto’s property at 5502 Memorial Dr. and the 17,000-sq.-ft. shopping center the couple owns next door might be worth a little less than half of that today.

Photo: Flickr users Bob & Lorraine Kelly

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Boulevard Oaks
05/14/09 10:31am

Greenwood King April Report: Getting a Little Crowded at the Top of the Market

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Buying and Selling, Houston Data, Memorial, Price Trends, River Oaks, Tanglewood
2 Comments

Swamplot readers have a few things to say about Greenwood King’s latest fancy-neighborhood market report, which came out yesterday! Our regular GK watcher notes that the separate breakdowns for new construction and existing home sales introduced in last month’s edition have been abandoned. Still:

The news is relatively bad. Sales volumes are down sharply all over town. 17% more high end listings than last year . . . River Oaks, Tanglewood, Boulevard Oaks, and Memorial Close In are all over 12 months of inventory. . . .

The 17% higher inventory is reflective of a market of motivated sellers. By definition, a high end homeowner should not “have to” sell unless there has been a life change (divorce, death, job interruption). Everyone knows the housing market is weak in 2009, so…. the only class of sellers on the market are those having cash flow problems or those who have to sell due to a life change. There are almost no trade up sellers right now.

Memorial has 19.1 months of inventory

. . . as big $3-5 million white elephants sit there waiting for the landscapers to come and cut the lawn for the week. It takes a good $20,000 a month to live in one of those monsters. I guess the supply of willing millionaires just isn’t going to match the number of mega mansions. It will take some time, but they will soon move onto bank balance sheets and then to the auction block.

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Commercial Real Estate
03/06/09 10:17am

Where the Freeway Met the Bayou: The Last Days of Las Alamedas

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Leasing, Memorial, Openings and Closings, Restaurants
16 Comments

Over at Eating Our Words, Katharine Shilcutt has posted photos of the now-vacant longtime home of Las Alamedas Restaurant. As noted in this featured comment from a Swamplot reader, the restaurant packed up and rolled away late last month, after long-extended lease negotiations failed. Restaurant owner Jorge Sneider told the Houston Business Journal the building’s new landlords were demanding a significant rent increase.

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Memorial
03/03/09 3:36pm

Brennan’s Restaurant: 80 Percent Back Soon

by
Midtown, Restaurants
3 Comments

The Brennan’s Restaurant building at 3300 Smith St. in Midtown — designed in 1930 by Houston architect John Staub — was originally the home of Houston’s Junior League. A fire during Hurricane Ike left it a brick shell. But now the owners say they’ll rebuild.

Alex Brennan-Martin — and the Brennan’s website — have said as much a number of times before. But today he announced it at a press conference with the mayor. An unspecified “80 percent” of the building will be restored. The new Brennan’s is expected to open in October, its old courtyard oak replaced with a free-range model imported from Hermann Park.

Also snuck into the press conference: the 2 new restaurants Brennan-Martin be opening with partners in the aptly named CityCentre, the Town & Country Mall replacement parked at the crotch of I-10 and the Beltway. Café Rosé and Bistro Alex should open inside the new Hotel Sorella there in July.

Photo of Brennan’s after Hurricane Ike: Flickr users hannu & hannele

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Comments
02/24/09 4:11pm

Comments of the Day: Las Alamedas Packs Up

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Commercial Real Estate, Leasing, Memorial, Openings and Closings, Quicklink, Restaurants
No Comments

COMMENTS OF THE DAY: LAS ALAMEDAS PACKS UP “I drove by yesterday and there were two large U-Haul trucks backed up to the back door. I think Las Alamedas is toast. What a shame; I’ve had many good times there.” And later: “Well, I drove by a couple of hours ago and the sign out front says something like ‘Thank you for 28 great years. We will relocate.’” [Clive, commenting on Las Alamedas: Landlord Wants More]

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Commercial Real Estate
02/13/09 10:30am

Las Alamedas: Landlord Wants More

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Leasing, Memorial, Openings and Closings, Restaurants
8 Comments

Last week the Houston Business Journal reported that the owner of Las Alamedas had reached agreement on a new lease with its landlord and would reopen on February 6th. But the upscale Mexican restaurant on the Katy Freeway at Voss is still closed.

What happened to that agreement?

“The landlord came back and wanted at least 50 percent more rent and other things that we didn’t originally agree on,” says [restaurant owner Jorge] Sneider.

Sneider had previously told reporter Allison Wollam that the original landlord died in a plane crash, and various surviving family members had been fighting over ownership of the property for the last year and a half. “He now hopes he can work out another lease in a couple of weeks,” Wollam reports today.

Photo: Rachel Dvoretzky

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