COMMENT OF THE DAY: FREEWAY TRAFFIC BACKUPS BRING THE CUSTOMERS “I visited the store the first weekend it was open, and overheard the general manager talking about how much more foot traffic the store is getting. He stated the obvious, which I’m surprised no one has commented on yet–think of the hundreds of thousands of people who are stuck in traffic every day on the elevated portion of 59 across from the store. The store’s sign is eye-level to those commuters (whereas it’s actually harder to see the stores on ground level), and you gotta think at least some of them are going to be interested in the store’s wares. Compare that to a low-profile location on Portwest that probably gets 1/10000th the traffic of 59. This is a rare case where being on the second floor of a strip center actually helps a company in Houston.” [Triprotic, commenting on The Finest Strip-Center Recital Hall in Houston]
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Upper Kirby
Sales have been “a little slow” at that 2727 Kirby condo tower, the developer tells the Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff. The 30-story tower across from West Ave near Westheimer should be complete by mid-September. Only 8 out of 78 units have closed so far.
Jerry Brown of MDA Holdings tells Sarnoff that “all but 18 units in the building have been sold” — but that “just a few units have fallen out of contract.” The wording makes it a little difficult to determine how many more than those 18 units have no deposits on them.
- Tower nears completion [Houston Chronicle]
Photo of 2727 Kirby: Ziegler Cooper
Hidden upstairs in that new double-decker strip center on the south side of 59 between the Kirby CVS and the feeder-road Chick-Fil-A, nestled between a hair salon and a spa, is a brand-new recital hall, outfitted with a 7-foot-5 Hamburg Steinway Model C grand piano and room for up to 100 fans of fine classical music. Leave the curtains on the back wall open, and performers can appreciate a sweeping view of the freeway traffic as they play.
The hall is inside the brand-new Dowling Music, a gifts-and-sheet-music store run by concert pianist Richard Dowling, who recently returned to his hometown and bought the Houston branch of Pender’s Music (which Pender’s had bought from the local Wadler-Kaplan Music Shop in 2000).
The strip center and its neighbors were built on the former Kirby Dr. site of Westheimer Transfer & Storage, which former Rockets star Hakeem Olajuwon bought in 2002. Olajuwon demolished the building and flipped the land, parceling it out in pieces to suburban-style developers.
Dowling, who performs about 60 concerts a year around the world, can’t have expected much walk-in business from visitors patronizing other establishments in the strip center. Downstairs from his store is the Methodist Breast Imaging Center; an Israeli martial arts studio, a weight-loss clinic, a GolfTEC indoor golf clinic, and the Pasha Snoring & Sinus Center round out the second floor. But Dowling tells the West University Examiner‘s Steve Mark that traffic has doubled since he moved the store from its Portwest Dr. location:
A reader sends in a pic of the action at the renovated but long-suffering strip center at the southwest corner of Kirby and Richmond, which looked to be getting awfully lonely again after the departure of its lone tenant, Hue Vietnamese restaurant, in March.
But Hue is back as Kata Robata Sushi and Grill, and that white banner on the opposite leg indicates that the Dessert Gallery has moved in. Off camera, to the right, signs announce that the endcap is slated for a Texas Community Bank, but our reader reports seeing no sign of any money inside.
- Hue Gone Away [Swamplot]
Photo: Swamplot inbox
RESTAURANT ROW Six-month-old, heavy-tweeting, “new world creole” Richmond Ave. restaurant Sauté announces it has closed . . . on Twitter: “I guess this weekend saw three inside-the-loop restaurants close: us, Rickshaw, and Cafe La Jadeite. Sigh.” [Twitter; more on the other restaurants at Eating Our Words]
Too hot for the squirrels, apparently.
This latest edition of Seen on the Street sticks close to the pavement. First up: Artist David Cook snaps this hot photo of . . . no, that’s not an egg frying on Kirby. Just a street button with . . . culinary aspirations?
What’s more to see around town when you keep your head down?
THE NEW LEVY OFFICE PARK An office building next to the doomed Wakeforest Apartments will soon find itself in a new, almost park-like setting: “Bulldozers razed two old office buildings on Richmond at Wakeforest this week and will tackle apartments nearby later this year. Nothing is planned at this point for what amounts to about 4 acres that were purchased within the past six months by the Upper Kirby Redevelopment Authority’s TIRZ 19, said its chairman, Buddy Bailey. ‘We didn’t want empty structures,’ he said of the razing. The property, meanwhile, is ‘more than we could have hoped for.’ Immediate plans are to level and sod the estimated 1.2- and 2.8-acre lots, which are adjacent to the five-acre Levy Park. . . . Purchased for a total of $9.7 million, the office and apartment properties are not contiguous. A small office building separates them and remains.” [West University Examiner; previously on Swamplot]
Jerry and Wynonne Hart are scheduled to be sentenced today for “misapplication of fiduciary property” in the operation of their auction business at the Hart Galleries. In return for the couple’s guilty plea, prosecutors dropped charges of theft and money laundering.
11 News reporter Dave Fehling spoke to several former Hart Galleries customers:
The auction house thrived for years. The Harts enjoyed a sterling reputation among the rich and not so rich who all trusted the Harts to sell their valuables. But around 2003, something strange began happening . . .
. . . the Harts auctioned furniture and antiques for John Zielinski and his wife.
They were expecting to get $20,000.
“And I said, ‘where’s our money?’ And they said, ‘we’re having difficulty collecting some of the checks,’†said Zielinski.
The next thing Harts’ customers learned was that the couple was bankrupt.
The River Oaks Examiner‘s Cynthia Lescalleet says her recent tour of West Ave at the corner of Kirby and Westheimer “felt a bit like a campus visit for a really, really, ritzy college.” But wait, there’s more:
Rising seven-stories, West Ave. is hard to miss. The project by Gables Urban is massive and ambitious, and that’s only the first phase. The two-acre lot behind it, now used as a construction staging area, will be Phase II. Some day. It may spend the interim as overflow parking.
Further details about that Upper Kirby campus:
A couple of readers have written in to let us know that Hue Vietnamese Restaurant — otherwise known as the first but hopeful occupant of the revamped but still extremely lonely strip center at the southwest corner of Richmond and Kirby — has closed. One writes:
I have a feeling it was a casualty of a low occupancy building with additional damage inflicted by continual Kirby Ave roadwork. It’s a shame, the food and drink were mighty tasty and the building itself has some nifty lighting. Better looking than most new builds.
Is Gables Residential’s West Ave development doing so well already that plans are already in place to build the mixed-use development’s second phase? Or are the cause and credit markets so hopeless that architects of a once-hoped-for follow-on project decided they might as well post images of their design, since that’s the most exposure their work will likely ever get?
Ziegler Cooper Architects, designers of the 2727 Kirby highrise going up across the street, now have posted this image of a building on the company’s website. It’s identified it as West Ave Phase II.
And there’s this description:
Bruce Wolfe, who owns Houston’s Ligne Roset furniture showroom — and is about to open one in Austin — tells Houston Business Journal reporter Allison Wollam that business at the sleek and modern 3,500-sq.-ft. store in the strip center just north of the Rice Village at 5600 Kirby Dr. was better this holiday season than last, despite problems in the economy that have hurt other home-furnishings retailers:
“It’s not unusual for one of our clients to come in and show us their floor plan and hand us a $40,000 check to furnish their entire home,†he says. “When it comes to furniture, if you pay with peanuts, you’re going to get a monkey. And you can’t pay for a Pontiac and expect to drive away with a Mercedes.â€
The Houston Ligne Roset store was one of the few in the chain to carry the entire catalog in Spanish, which Wolfe says that also helped attract new clients.
Wollam goes on to report that Ligne Roset will be expanding and moving up Kirby in April, to the new West Ave development — where the store will be 1 of 5 showrooms Wolfe will operate under the name Design Source:
Tenants have already begun moving out of the Wakeforest Apartments just north of 59, reports the Michael Reed in the River Oaks Examiner. The Upper Kirby District TIRZ board voted last week to buy the 101-unit complex, tear it down, and build a new “civic complex” on the property, which sits at the eastern edge of Eastside St.’s Levy Park.
A few farewell views sent in by a reader:
The used-restaurant parts yard at the northeast corner of Kirby and 59 will sprout a new upscale neighborhood restaurant by late spring, reports Cleverley Stone. Rhea Wheeler and Debbie Jaramillo hope to open Haven in a brand new building at 2502 Algerian Way. No transfats will be used in its construction:
“Houston does not have a restaurant like this yet. We want to make the building as green possible. Since we are building a new structure we have the opportunity to incorporate many green concepts in the construction and design, from the building materials to the interior textiles, surfaces and lighting.”
For instance, Randy will have a garden on site that will be irrigated with rainwater collected by cisterns.
Randy is executive chef Randy Evans, formerly of Brennan’s.
Haven’s neighbors will be the shuttered Bennigan’s, Mai Thai, Lupe Tortilla, the Mucky Duck, and Taco Cabana — plus a small 6-plex apartment operated by would-be methadone-clinic proprietor Jared Meadors.
- Exclusive: New Houston Restaurant Will Be Haven for Green Concepts [Cleverley’s Blog]
- Mid-Century Modern Lofts & Flats! (Upper Kirby – Houston – TX) [Medusa Properties]
- EAST SUNSET HEIGHTS COMMUNITY METHADONE CLINIC – Coming Fall 2008! [Medusa Properties]
- Bennigan’s Rides into the Sunset [Swamplot]
- Sunset Heights: Will Not Subdivide [Swamplot]
- A Sunset Heights Lot Size Turf War [Swamplot]
Photo of 2502 Algerian Way: Swamplot inbox
What will happen to the Kirby Court Apartments just west of Whole Foods? The 1949 garden apartments on oak-lined Steel St. make up the major portion of a 5.744-acre parcel at the northwest corner of Kirby and Alabama being offered for sale or ground lease, the River Oaks Examiner reports. Also included in the parcel being sold by the Dickey Estate: retail properties facing Alabama, Kirby, and Kipling.
Cushman & Wakefield’s flyer for the property brags that there’s “potential to abandon Steel Street for an additional 33,750 sq. ft.” How much abandonment could those oaks survive?
