Neighborhood

Downtown
07/21/16 5:00pm

A Quick Wandering Tour of Stuff Going Up Downtown

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downtown-tour-1

A set of skeletal construction updates are the product of Bob Russell’s downtown photo hunt earlier this week. The view above is a Hines 2-fer: Behind James Surl’s spiky Point of View sculpture is the 32-floor apartment building on its way up at the corner of Travis and Preston (now going by Aris Market Square), with a sliver of all-business 609 Main visible on the right. The office tower has been getting its last few bits of steel stuck into place this week — check out a more centered portrait of the rooftop action (plus more covert snaps of bare beams from around the area) below:

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All On The Way
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Featured Posts
07/21/16 1:15pm

HBDi Seeking Makeover Help for Palm Center at the End of the Purple Line

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Third Ward
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Palm Center Redevelopment Conceptual Plans

Like the looks of the conceptual drawing above, showing one of the possible ways to dress up HBDi’s Palm Center on Griggs Rd.? Or think you’ve got a better idea, and the real estate connections to pull it off? Adolfo Pesquera notes a current call for proposals from developers interested in redoing the site — you’ve got until early October to submit your own plan.

The changes wouldn’t happen all at once: HBDi’s documents show that it hopes to split up the work into a few different phases, dependent on how the economy looks. The first order of business would be to pretty up the old buildings on the site; the next phase would include adding a plaza and some office space, followed by the addition of whatever mix of office, retail, residential, and medical space is eventually selected.  Though most of the images included with the proposal guidelines are speculative, HBDi’s conceptual drawings do show some of the more concrete plans for the site, which is the last stop on Metro’s Purple Line:

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Rearranging The First Shopping Center
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07/21/16 10:45am

How To Polish Up the Dent in Silver St.

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First Ward, Sawyer Heights
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Thornsen Streetlab Silver St. Redo

In the small but growing city tradition of redoing street plans in your spare time, urban planner and general Houston improvement brainstormer Jesse Thornsen has recently launched a website to showcase weekly ideas for making bits the local streetscape easier to navigate (by bike, foot, car, or other means). This morning’s addition: how to smooth out the westward jog in Silver St. as it crosses Dart St. The spot (shown in the above left-to-right conceptual before and after) is southeast of Annex Houston automobile storage and the Silver Street Studios complex; not quite due west lies the Shops at Sawyer Yards warehouse retail redevelopment.

Thornsen’s plan adds sidewalks and a landscaped median (to discourage vehicles from taking the most direct route straight through the jagged intersection). Thornsen points out that the section is designated for both bikes and cars by the Houston Bike Plan; his redo includes bike lanes, including a queuing spot big enough for multiple cyclists to cozy up together as they wait to turn north. Here’s a close up and a cross section:

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Squaring Up in First Ward
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Boulevard Oaks
07/20/16 1:30pm

Buckhead: Ashby Highrise Is Still Happening, But That’s Still Not Its Name

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Quicklink
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BUCKHEAD: ASHBY HIGHRISE IS STILL HAPPENING, BUT THAT’S STILL NOT ITS NAME Ashby Highrise, 1717 Bissonnet St., Boulevard Oaks, HoustonChronicle reporters Nancy Sarnoff and Erin Mulvaney spend some time on this week’s Looped In podcast dissecting some circuitous answers from Matthew Morgan and Kevin Kirton, developers of the multifamily project commonly known as the Ashby Highrise (which, as Morgan is quick to point out, has never been dubbed anything other than 1717 Bissonnet except by neighborhood opposition campaigners). In the wake of Buckhead’s recent court appeal victory,  the duo of duos touches on the project’s permitting history with the city, the ambiguous but active state of current plans, and the unexpected financial and emotional tolls of pushing a project forward through an unprecedented decade of protests (ranging from giant personalized signage aimed at the pair to that grim reaper sighting on Bissonnet).  [Looped In Podcast from the Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Rendering of 1717 Bissonnet St.: Buckhead Investment Partners

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Adaptive Reuse
07/20/16 12:00pm

Stripped-Down Walter’s on Washington Now Getting a Tyvek Touchup

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Washingto Corridor, Washington Ave
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4215 Washington Ave., Houston

A reader sends a set of quick driveby shots of the former home of Walter’s on Washington, which has been getting some cosmetic attention of late. After a 2009 relocation announcement, Walter’s slowly made its move to a former car and cabinetry warehouse on Naylor St.; the Washington Ave property was passed around to a few different owners (including corporate entities called Ay Papi and Carnegie Homes and Construction) before landing in the hands of The Mosaic Group in June of last year. Mosaic appears to have sold or transferred the property to one Joe F. West last August, but is still listed as the owner-slash-occupant of the space on the building permits that have been issued since then (including a few from as recently as May).

Mosaic also snapped up the empty lot next door last summer, which was bundled with the property during the August sale (and had been wrapped up together with the building behind the same now-absent construction fencing):

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Up Next on Wash Ave
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07/19/16 5:30pm

The Glittering 5-Story Affordable Housing Thinktank Bubble That Could Rise by Emancipation Park

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Third Ward
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Rendering of Emancipation Park, Dowling St., Third Ward, Houston

Update, 7/20: The renderings and description have been removed from both LAI’s website and the online portfolio website where they were previously displayed. At the request of the architect, Swamplot has removed the images as well; this article has been updated.

A glassy sphere shown in a rendering currently previously displayed on the website of Colorado-based LAI Design Group looked to be part of a design for a nonprofit workspace and affordable housing thinktank called the Coleman Global Center. An attached description of the project doesn’t didn’t specifically identify the location of the rendering (beyond noting that project is “in Houston”). But another rendered view of the project (posted to porfolio site Behance) showed the bubble right across Dowling St. from the almost-finished new community center at Emancipation Park (and its easy-to-identify reflection pool) at the corner with Elgin. And Leah Binkovitz’s May interview with state representative Garnet Coleman and a set of collaborating Third Ward nonprofit directors ambiguously highlights that particular corner as playing an important role in plans to shift how gentrification unfolds in the neighborhood.

Compare the rendering below (which shows the bubble building in place) to architect Phil Frelon’s angled aerial rendering of Emancipation Park (included further below):

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Third Ward
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Downtown
07/19/16 11:30am

Mod Christian Science Church Now Being Converted To Steeple-Themed Nightclub Downtown

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First Church of Christ, Scientist, 1720 Main St., Downtown, Houston, TX 77002
First Church of Christ, Scientist, 1720 Main St., Downtown, Houston, TX 77002A dumpster was spotted last week loitering around the Travis St. entrance of the Mod-ish Brutal-ish teal-ish former Christian Science church downtown, which, per the language on a building permit issued this month, is now being converted into a nightclub. The name listed on the permit (Club Spire) marks something of a shift in the tone previously set by the new owners this spring, when the group connected to Clé bar sought a TABC permit for the building under the name 1720 Main Reception Hall.

A curious reader sends the Friday afternoon shot above, along with an inquiry as to the fate of any interior furnishings and materials to be stripped away (the outside being fairly naked already, save for the gold-and-blue soon-to-be-eponymous spire). Here’s a last look from inside, around, and on top of the church’s sanctuary and courtyard as it was just prior to the finalization of the sale this spring — the elongated diamond-slash-triangle motif that covers the area behind the altar is carried through much of the rest of the building, from the stained-glass windows to the furniture: 

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Born Again on Main St.
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Featured Posts
07/18/16 4:45pm

The Long View of the Tall Doors on a $169k 4-Bedroom in Spring

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Homes for Sale, Interiors, Spring
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1003 Lynwood Rd., Spring, TX 77373

The spiral staircase concealed behind the 2-story front entrance of 1003 Lynwood in Spring will get you to the right height, but you won’t be able to exit that way — the only accessible upper-story door to the exterior leads onto a balcony in the master bedroom. The house is half a block north of the Highland Glen subdivision (which is tucked into the V of land created by the intersecting Missouri Pacific rail line, beneath the Hardy Toll Road, and Cypress Creek). The 4-bedroom home sits on 4 fifths of an acre of tall-treed lot; it was built in 1968 and hit the market 4 days ago. 

And now, a portrait of a door in 2 parts: 

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Coming Out On Top
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Featured Posts
07/18/16 2:45pm

The Menil Drawing Institute’s Paper-to-Solid Transition

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Menil, Menil Collection
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Menil Drawing Institute construction, July 2016

Proposed Menil Drawing Institute by Johnston Marklee, West Main St., Montrose, HoustonReader and mixed-media picture-maker Bob Russell sends along an update to his previous shots of the site of the Menil Drawing Institute, now preliminarily sketched into place in broad steel strokes. The framework shown at the top appears to be outlining that western interior courtyard that showed up in Johnston Marklee’s previous renderings of the building, which is going up where the now-level back third of the Richmont Square apartment complex once stood.

The Menil says construction should wrap up some time next year. Here’s a few more angles on all the angles already in place:

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Refining the Line Work
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07/18/16 1:15pm

Snooze Now Distributing Hair of the Dog from Former Interfaith Ministries Building on Montrose Blvd.

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WAMM
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3217 Montrose Blvd., WAMM, Houston, 77006

3217 Montrose Blvd., WAMM, Houston, 77006Colorado breakfast restaurant and cocktail purveyor Snooze says its Houston grand opening is set for this Thursday at 6:30 AM in the redeveloped office building at 3217 Montrose Blvd. (which hosted Interfaith Ministries before the organization converted a Midtown bank in 2013). The location is already quietly serving some of Montrose’s early risers (or late ragers) from its spot next to resale-by-mail used-clothing chain Crossroads.

The ground-floor space in the 2-story building is the first Houston outpost of Snooze, which has a few Austin spots already up and running. Corinthian Real Estate bought the property in 2014 after a bit of redevelopment work by Braun (as shown above) and moved into an upstairs office. Here’s what the space looked like before the pin-striped canopies and painted murals came down:

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Dawning on Montrose
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07/15/16 3:30pm

The Garden That Once Sank Where the Mecom Fountain Rose

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Museum District
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Montrose at Main, ca. 1925 from Preservation Houston archives

Mecom Fountain in front of Hotel ZaZa, Main and Montrose, Houston

The elliptical roundabout where Main and Montrose come together has gotten a bit taller since the scene showed in the photo above (which the archivist activists at Preservation Houston dug out of their files this week). The photo shows the sunken garden that once occupied the space at the acute intersection; the Museum of Fine Arts building can be seen lurking behind a few trees in the background, flanked to the left by the long-gone Montrose Apartments. A trail of mid-1920s automobiles can be seen caravaning northeast alongside Main St.’s spacious esplanades toward a sparsely-towered Downtown.

The fountain (which was recently granted protected historic landmark status after its crowdfunded de-restoration) replaced the gardens in the 1960s when John Mecom built redid the Warwick Hotel nearby (shown in the second photo above in its more recent but still storied reincarnation as Hotel ZaZa). Below is a look straight up now-well-treed Montrose Blvd. from southeast of the fountains, along Hermann Park’s rail-sliced Grand Gateway corridor — that’s the 5000 Montrose condo tower on the left, and the Museum Tower on the right:

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Growing Up at Montrose at Main
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Featured Posts
07/14/16 4:45pm

Half-Masked Double-Wide Shipping Container House Up for Sale in Fifth Ward

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Fifth Ward, Homes for Sale
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1709 Dan St., Fifth Ward, Houston, 770201709 Dan St., Fifth Ward, Houston, 77020

Much of the front of container-composed 1709 Dan St. still sports that distinctive shipping container crimp, though the actual entrance to the 2-box structure has been partially camouflaged behind siding and a gabled-roof-sporting porch. The misalignment between the 2 boxes makes room for a matching patio space in the back of the home, which sits about a block and a half north of the intersection with Lyons St. in Fifth Ward. The house was put together by container enthusiast Build-a-Box (whose website says it’s also working up a 50-unit shipping container apartment complex for the neighborhood).

All the sections of the 2-bedroom, 2-bath structure add up to about 1,228 sq.ft.; the house went on sale last month for $189,995. The crimping has been completely masked on the inside of the house:

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Building With Boxes
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