YOU MIGHT WANT TO CHECK WHETHER THAT LA MARQUE HOUSE YOU ARE BUYING IS SLATED FOR DEMOLITION 
A rep from Greenspoint Investors, which last September reportedly sold Whendy Carreon’s mother a house on the city of La Marque’s teardown list for about $25,000 in cash, tells Kaitlin McCulley that the company didn’t receive notification that the house was condemned until a month after the sale. Reps from the city, however, maintain that the company was notified before the transaction; city manager Carol Buttler says she’s heard of at least 2 other cases in which demo-doomed homes have been sold by other companies to buyers unaware of impending knock-down plans. The city has given Carreon’s family a year to try to get the structure, between SH 146 and Spencer Hwy., up to habitable standards; Joe Compian of Interfaith Gulf Coast, who’s been helping the family with that process, says would-be buyers in the area should check for any city holds on properties before paying in cash. [ABC13] Image of La Marque City Hall: Galveston County Clerk’s Office
Sign up for the Newsletter
Neighborhood
A look at the latest plans for bulking up the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral on Yoakum Blvd. at Kipling St. come from the diagrams submitted with a recent variance request for the project (and a few more now up on the church’s website). For comparison, a reader sends some leafy shots of the cathedral at its current width, snapped a few days before the setup for the annual Houston Greek Festival (which wrapped up on the church’s campus for the 50th time yesterday evening).
The expansion would widen the 1952 cathedral building to the north and south (toward and away from Kipling), about doubling the current seating capacity; the design also adds that big dome to the top (while the smaller dome along the Yoakum-side bell tower would get a new nitrate finish stainless-steel top-off to match). The church submitted the request for a 1-ft. building line setback last month, including this drawing from Philip Johnson/Alan Ritchie architects (which shows a leaf-free perspective from the corner of Yoakum and Kipling):
Toward the Heavens, To the Curb
- 5406 Viking Dr. [HAR]
- 63 Sterling St. [HAR]
The marker above (showing a now-officially-proposed H-E-B on N. Shepherd Dr.) is a little out of place, if it’s aiming for the former Fiesta site on N. Shepherd between W. 23rd and W. 24th streets as H-E-B says — but you get the idea, and the Houston Heights Beverage Coalition held a press conference on the site this morning to drive the point home. The red line on the map also only roughly shows the boundary of the nominal dry zone that the H-E-B-backed PAC is hoping to get loosened up a bit via that upcoming local election on take-home beer and wine sales. But you can find out for sure whether or not you’re close enough to be eligible to vote in the Houston-Heights-only election by checking your ballot at at HarrisVotes.com — and also check whether or not you’re registered, which you’ve only got until Tuesday to do. (If printing out a form is too much of a hassle, maybe try your nearest taco truck.)
- Previously on Swamplot: Yes, The Heights Dry Zone Petitioners Really Did Collect Enough Signatures For a Vote; Heights Dry Zone Signature Gatherers Return from the Hunt Victorious; Former Fiesta Site Preps for Teardown as Heights Dry Zone Petitioners Circle; H-E-B Would Like To Plant a Store in a Wetter Heights Dry Zone; Somebody’s Trying to Legalize Beer and Wine Sales in the Heights Dry Zone
Map of proposed H-E-B in Heights Dry Zone: Houston Heights Beverage Coalition
Campaign Fiesta
The Hawthorne-facing apartment highrise at 3400 Montrose is now open for general business, as the orange sign recently added over the door declares in all-caps. Across the street at the edge of the Disco Kroger parking lot, another orange sign is also directing folks toward the entrance, a reader notes — as of yesterday evening, the decked-out flag man above was set up across from the tower’s main entrance as some heavy equipment work wrapped up in the street behind it. Here’s a close-up portrait:
Hawthorne St. Style
The long-vacant former home of Samaritan Assisted Living was brought to the ground yesterday after demo crews got permission to knock it down, a reader tells Swamplot. The owners of the property at 8800 S. Main St. have been trying to get the scrawny strip (a full 68-by-640-ft. acre) into a new long-term ground-leasing relationship for at least the past year, and appear to have found one in September, per documents filed with the county — including a lease for a smidge less than the next 25 years for an entity housed in Tuscon, AZ, which shares an address with the converted-church-school corporate headquarters of Mister Car Wash.Â
Car Wash Cleanout
- 5410 Ossineke Dr. [HAR]
The chain link that has surrounded the former site of Corporate Plazas I, II and III since the wind-down of their protracted demise now appears to be getting augmented by some wooden fencing, a reader notes. The non-paved sections of the 4-ish-acre property bundle have picked up a layer of green since the final demo odds and ends finished up in May, giving that stack of pipes in the foreground something soft to lie down on.
Survey of the surrounding office space scene: That’s the crane at work on the office tower member of the Kirby Collection visible on the far left, over the parking-garage shoulder of the River Oaks Tower at 3730 Kirby (which, like the former Corporate Plaza land across Norfolk St., is owned by California-based Triyar). The 3701 Kirby office midrise is visible on the right from across Kirby Dr.; the kinda-matching 3801 Kirby is just out of the frame above, but visible in the shot below of the new fencing from the other side:
No Trespassing on Norfolk
Check out the first 6 of what Titan Homes says will be 18 townhomes planned for the area alongside Little Thicket Park off W. 25th St. in Shady Acres. The land for the project, which was purchased by the builder in 2014, isn’t technically part of the park, though its leafy coverage runs up to the edge of the property and blends in. The first set of 6 homes — to be called Rio Vista North — appear to come in 3 styles of crinkle-cut top-offs to the facade, and will sit north of a to-be-extended stretch of W. 25th St.
The 6-by-1 arrangement will back up to the property immediately north, which BMRJ Development is seeking to subdivide for a separate 3-by-2 sixpack facing Ohsfeldt. That potential development isn’t shown in this north-facing rendering of the Titan project’s back yard:
Growing in Shady Acres
A crane and 2 egrets were spotted on Brays Bayou just east of Main St. by a curious reader, along with the rising superstructure of the new Houston Community College Coleman College for Health Sciences building. The midrise, which will eventually connect to the other HCC buildings across Pressler St. via skybridge, should have 10 stories by the time the building opens (which, per HCC’s current plans, will be next August). The building is going up between the UT’s Sarofim Research Building and the large parking lot where the Shamrock Movie Theater once stood, across Main St. from the currently-also-mostly-a-parking-lot Shamrock Hilton site where the new DeBakey High School campus is going up.
- HCC unveils plans to expand in the Texas Medical Center [HCC (2015)]
- Previously on Swamplot:Â DeBakey High School for Health Professions Will Move To Slice of Former Shamrock Hotel Site
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Med Center Operations
- 2931 Amherst St. [HAR]
A gang of smaller machinery is seen spreading out across the roof of 3300 Main St. in the shot above (capturing a reader’s view of the scene from the HCC midrise next door), as a larger excavator works over some of the rubble piling up at the site lately. Also visible behind the former city code enforcement building, to the south: the now-in-full-swing MATCH theater building, and the rising facades of some of the apartment midrises going up on the Mid Main block.
Midtown Falling Flat, Rising High
- 5005 Hidalgo St. #417 [HAR]
Hines’s increasingly pointy 609 Main and flat-topped Chase Tower are visible to either side of the company’s Aris Market Square apartment highrise in this recent shot from Congress at Travis streets (sent in by a reader, who noted the top-out tree temporarily hoisted onto to the rooftop). Following the latest growth spurt, the tower has now gotten about as tall as it’s going to (and the newly-craneless Market Square Apartment Tower, now leasing across the eponymous Square, will always have 8 stories to lord over it). Here’s a closeup of the Aris’s Preston-facing facade, as the glass and exterior finishes start to creep up the sides:
Highrise Done Rising
