11/27/17 1:00pm

Where’s the University of Houston going to put its new College of Medicine? In the top 2 floors of this new structure behind the campus Rec Center, pictured here as construction completed this summer: the new Health and Biomedical Sciences Building 2. The College of Pharmacy is expected to complete its move into lower floors of the building by the end of this year. The adjacent tower (shown in the upper right of the photo below) is the 4-year-old Health and Biomedical Sciences Building (soon to be known as HBSB1), which, together with the older but also-attached Armistead Bldg. at the corner of Calhoun and Wheeler, houses the school’s College of Optometry.

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Campus Med Center
08/21/17 3:45pm

CALHOUN BANISHED FROM UH’S CALHOUN LOFTS A statement out this afternoon from UH: “The University of Houston does not have statues, memorials or monuments honoring the Confederate era. Calhoun Lofts were originally named to coincide with the name of the adjacent city street when the university began its aggressive residential expansion in the last decade. While the residence hall was not named in recognition of John C. Calhoun, in the wake of recent events, and out of sensitivity to our diverse student community the university has decided to change the name to University Lofts. The change will be made as soon as practical.” [Daily Cougar] Photo of Calhoun Lofts, 4700 Calhoun Rd.: Kirksey Architecture

05/05/17 11:30am

A little bit of tune-changing looks to have happened with respect to the University of Texas’s Houston data science campus idea in the month or 2 since UT formally canned the plans to pursue it.  At yesterday’s State of the City luncheon, where Mayor Turner asked a bunch of major regional universities to work together on making a data science research center happen after all, Lindsey Ellis reports that University of Houston board of regents chair and Landry’s CEO Tilman Fertitta also made some comments in support of the project. Fertitta (who back in March immediately issued a victorious press release when UT announced it would sell off the 300 acres of land it’d purchased) told the audience that UH would be “excited to sit down and collaborate” with other Houston and Texas universities on a campus, Lindsey Ellis reports for the Chronicle. 

The difference now (versus last spring when UH snubbed an invitation to join that task force working up potential uses for the land)? Fertitta says UT wouldn’t be able to single-handedly “come in and dictate” with respect to the final project; he also suggests that perhaps UT might like to donate the purchased property to whatever group of local universities might end up in charge.

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UT Houston Rematch
10/12/16 4:00pm

Hadley at Scott streets, Third Ward, Houston, 77004

The legal entity that has recently taken control of this block of Scott St. — located between Hadley and Bremond streets just off I-45 — appears to have been named in honor of the University of Houston’s early September football defeat of the Oklahoma Sooners. The previous owner of the land, a corporation called 3919 Scott Street (which, yes, is also the address of the up-for-eventual-demo original Frenchy’s restaurant down the road), transferred the property shown above over to an entity called UH33-OU23 near the end of last month, after putting in a request to the city to turn the 1.79 acres of mostly-vacant smaller lots into 1 big unrestricted parcel under the name University Gateway. The land is less than half a mile up Scott St. from the Elgin / Third Ward light-rail stop at the edge of UH’s central campus:

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Sooners or Later in Third Ward
08/25/16 12:45pm

Rendering of Fertitta Center at former Hofheinz Pavilion

Rendering of Fertitta Center at former Hofheinz PavilionThe $20-million basketball stadium donation previously rumored to be on its way from Landry’s owner and UH board of regents chairman Tilman Fertitta was confirmed this morning by the school, which also released renderings of what’s planned for Hofheinz Pavilion — eventually to sport the name Fertitta Center. The depictions of the $60-million upgrade  include some prominent views of a well-labeled Hofheinz Plaza, part of a deal with the Hofheinz family after a lawsuit over the basketball arena’s planned renaming.

Below are a few more shots of the plans, which UH says should be wrapped up by the end of the 2018-19 season:

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Center Moving Forward
08/22/16 4:30pm

THE UT AUSTIN SEGREGATION LAWSUIT THAT MADE TSU HOUSTON’S FIRST PUBLIC UNIVERSITY Thurgood Marshall School of Law 3100 Cleburne St., Texas Southern University, Houston, TX 77004A recounting of some Houston higher-ed history comes from Ben Werlund this past weekendnamely, how University of Houston and Texas Southern University ended up as separate but adjacent public universities in the Third Ward. In 1927 the schools were founded as Houston Junior College and Houston Colored Junior College, segregated schools that eventually wound up on neighboring land after being renamed University of Houston and the Houston College for Negroes.  In 1946, black Houstonian Heman Marion Sweatt was denied admission to all-white UT Austin’s law school; as the resulting lawsuit worked its way up to the Supreme Court in the pre-Brown v. Board of Education landscape of separate-but-equal requirements, the state quickly bought and renamed the Houston College for Negroes and added a law school, trying to prove that black students had comparable options to the Austin campus. “And thus, Houston’s first public university was born,” writes Werlund, to keep the Texas school system “from having to integrate its flagship in Austin.” The Supreme Court, however, didn’t buy that the new Houston law offerings measured up to the nearly 70-year-old UT law program, and UT Austin had to admit Sweatt after a 1950 ruling. TSU law professor James Douglas tells Werlund that the state legislature proceeded to cut TSU’s budget by 40 percent the next year; the private all-white University of Houston didn’t start to admit black students until 1962, shortly after which it turned public. “This was in the ’60s,” notes Douglas — “In 1964, I don’t think the people in Austin really thought integration was going to stick . . . I don’t think they ever thought this whole idea of having 2 universities close to each other was ever going to be a problem.” [Houston Chronicle] Image of Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University: TSU

09/24/14 10:00am

WHY METRO TRAINS ARE ALREADY ROLLING AROUND UH Map Showing Testing Area for the Southeast Line, HoustonNo, the new light-rail lines won’t be ready to carry passengers anytime this year — if you’re looking for a ride, check again in 2015. But over the next couple of weeks, you may see a Southeast Line train or 2 skirting the western and southern borders of the University of Houston. Starting today, Metro will be shuttling vehicles along the path shown in red on the Purple Line map at left, from the corner of Elgin and Scott Streets through MacGregor Park to the vehicle storage facility just past the Palm Center Transit Center — for safety testing. Map: Metro

07/28/14 12:30pm

View of Downtown from TDECU Stadium University of Houston

From the Twitter feed of Brandon Blue comes this across-the-endzone pic of the University of Houston’s newly minted TDECU Stadium, highlighting the view of downtown Houston the structure’s designers felt made it worth twisting the scrapped-and-rebuilt house of Cougar football. Robertson Stadium was aligned in a more even-handed northish-southish direction. TDECU Stadium (officially, ), constructed on the demolished remains of that structure, is rotated to match the eastish-westish orientation of neighboring Scott St. and Cullen Blvd., a decision that a few momentarily blinded quarterbacks or receivers may come to bemoan during afternoon games. But the benefit of those bleacher cutouts separating the upper decks of stadium’s endzones from the bleachers at the sides is clear: A gleaming glimpse of Houston’s homegrown mountain range opens up through the concrete canyon.

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Giving TDECU Credit
05/15/14 11:15am

Proposed Aspen Heights Dorms, Cullen Blvd. at Coyle St., East Downtown, Houston

A company that’s been building a growing chain of private college dorms is seeking a 10-year tax abatement from the city to help it build a $56 million 305,076-sq.-ft. complex just north of the Gulf Fwy. from the University of Houston. Houston’s version of Aspen Heights (as the company and all its dorms are named) would sit on 7.7 acres just north of the Catholic Charismatic Center on Cullen Blvd., across the street from the former Finger Furniture warehouse recently purchased by developer Frank Liu. The dorms would sit in the far southeast corner of East Downtown, backing up to the railroad tracks that form the neighborhoods northern and eastern boundary:

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A Quarter Mile from Campus
09/27/13 2:30pm

Architect Kenneth Bentsen designed quite a few institutional buildings in Houston, including Phillip Guthrie Hoffman Hall and Agnes Arnold Hall, shown here, at the University of Houston campus. Other buildings to Bentsen’s name include the Texas Children’s Hospital Complex and the Houston Summit (which is now, of course, Lakewood Church). As an architecture student at UH, Bentsen worked with Donald Barthelme and Howard Barnstone and began his career in the ’50s at MacKie and Kamrath. He ran his own practice here from 1958 until 1991. Bentsen passed away this week on Tuesday, September 24.

Photo: University of Houston

09/23/13 11:05am

Here’s a plan that looks to plug in to Metro’s still-under-construction Southeast Line and redo about 8 blocks along Scott St. in the Third Ward between UH and TSU. Though the plan, drawn up by LAI Design Group and dubbed “University Place Redevelopment,” is provisional, it appears to have in mind something like what the rendering above shows: A reshaped streetscape on Scott St. that would combine apartments, restaurants, shops, offices, and community buildings.

The first phase appears to call for a strip center facing Scott between Holman and Reeves, with 289 1- and 2-bedroom apartments and a parking garage in the rear:

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07/17/13 12:00pm

There’s more going on at U of H than that new McDonald’s, apparently: A reader sends these photos of many of the construction projects scattered across the campus. This photo shows the pylons of the still-unnamed bowl with a Downtown view that’s replacing Robertson Stadium, demolished back in December. And in the background of the photo you can see the new Cougar Place apartments. KUHF’s Jack Williams reports that the new stadium is already about a third done; more photos after the jump illustrate the below-grade playing field.

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07/11/13 11:10am

A reader sends photo of the construction progress of the replacement McDonald’s near the corner of Elgin and Cullen on the University of Houston campus. The McDonald’s that used to stand here was torn down in early June. A regional rep says that this new one should be ready by the time classes resume.

Photos: Thomas Heinold

06/20/13 12:00pm

Fonde Park, Brays Bayou (and its hike-and-bike trail), and the Orange Show Center for Visionary Arts are among the outdoor diversions near this window-grilled 1977 home on a small lot in Hampshire Oaks. The neighborhood is tucked behind the former Schlumberger facility off the Gulf Fwy. and is just a TX-5 Spur away from University of Houston’s main campus. Aluminum-sided, the once-contemporary home is one of four in a row with the same tipped-top street elevation and similar proportions, though each sports its own signature tree or bush in its front yard. As the newly listed of the lookalikes, this home has an asking price of $109,900.

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