Swamplot Archives by Category: Neighborhoods: Upper Kirby

Friday, October 23, 2009

Friday Group Photo Feature: The Corner of Kirby and West Alabama

Here it is: Swamplot’s first-ever group photo feature, created by our readers! This feature was pieced together from reader pix taken in and around the intersection of West Alabama and Kirby Dr.

How does it look?

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Monday, October 19, 2009

2727 Kirby: Refunds Are on Their Way

The Chronicle’s Nancy Sarnoff, after a tour of 2727 Kirby:

Developer Jerry Brown said 20 units are occupied in the 78-unit building.

The least expensive floor is priced at $575 per square foot, he said, and the average unit is about $2 million.

Maintenance fees are 65 cents per square foot.

While Brown said he’s seeing more traffic these days, there have been some snags.

I recently came across some lawsuits against the developer filed by buyers who canceled their contracts, but didn’t receive their earnest money back like they were promised.

“If they’re entitled to their money, they’ll get their money,” Brown said.

Photo of 2727 Kirby: Ziegler Cooper

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Swamplot Price Adjuster: Carraba Rating Commercial Property

The Swamplot Price Adjuster needs your nominations! Found a property you think is poorly priced? Send an email to Swamplot, and be sure to include a link to the listing or photos. Tell us about the property, and explain why you think it deserves a price adjustment. Then tell us what you think a better price would be. Unless requested otherwise, all submissions to the Swamplot Price Adjuster will be kept anonymous.

Location: 2506 West Main St.
Details: 2-3 bedrooms, 2 baths; 1,779 sq. ft. on a 9,473-sq.-ft. lot
Price: $950,000
History: On the market since the beginning of September.

Just a couple blocks south of the intersection of Kirby and West Alabama is this behind-the-Carraba’s-parking-lot home, apparently being marketed for lot value. The reader who’s nominating this property calls it:

Cute little house, but almost a million for it. Represented by Carraba Property. Next to restaurant of the same name. For that price, a lifetime supply of free Italian meals should come with purchase.

Okay, what about without the meals? What should it cost then?

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Wednesday, October 14, 2009

What You Can Get with Bad Credit: West Main Foreclosure Second Chance

A reader accustomed to shaking his head when he drives along Greenbriar just north of Richmond informs us that the recently built “big, expensive monstrosity” for sale on that corner is now advertising its bank pedigree:

This long-on-the-market house/thingy now has large for-sale-by-bank sign slapped all over the very nice fence. This has all sort of ridiculous written over it: four car garages, pool, etc.

If a 7,976-sq.-ft. villa with 4-car garage for less than a million in that location sounds cheap, it’s because the building is actually 2 separate “townhomes” — each roughly half that size — with a “common element.” The $959K price tag is for the foreclosed unit at 2201 W. Main.

After a year-long run on MLS, that front unit is now listed as “pending continue to show.” Which in light of the ready-to-loan listing copy maybe isn’t so surprising:

FORECLOSURE!!BANK WILL FINANCE FOR 4.5% WITH 10% DOWN(BAD CREDIT OK)

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Monday, September 21, 2009

Taking More Than Half Off at Those Apartments with the French Quarter Look

   

How hot are those apartment specials? One complex is pushing a concept that’s even more unusual: a clothing optional sun deck. ‘I don’t know if anybody uses it or not,’ said George Renfro, who leased a two-bedroom apartment at the French Quarter-style complex called La Maison at River Oaks. ‘It’s up on the top floor and in a very secluded area.’” [Houston Chronicle]

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Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Condo Spies in the Night: Investigating Sales at 2727 Kirby

Sure, we all want to know how well the condos at the newly completed 30-story 2727 Kirby tower have been selling. But a couple of dedicated readers decided to investigate on their own:

[We] have been musing that 2727 Kirby looks awfully dark for a building for which the Chronicle proffers “all but 18 units have been sold

Well, we put on our trench coats and went parking garage climbing to find out exactly how many souls live in that wraithlike monument to a bygone era.

These scary night pictures were taken on a Tuesday evening at around 8 pm. This was a prime time for at least a sampling of residents to be at home among their new Imported Stone Flooring and European Cabinetry. The night photos were taken from atop the parking garage on West Alabama that is the home of Fleming’s and from the Parking lot on Westheimer that serves Taco Milagro/Downing Street.

And they show . . . ?

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Friday, September 4, 2009

Openings and Closings: Restaurant Revamp Edition

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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Monday, August 17, 2009

Alabama Bookstop Theater: The Balcony Is Closed for This Performance

You were maybe planning to stop by the Bookstop in the old Alabama Theater on Shepherd for one last browse before the store closes on September 15th? Do a little clearance-sale shopping, grab a coffee up on the balcony and look out over that live-on-stage magazine stand?

It may be a little too late for that now. On the Houston Press Twitter feed this weekend, Katharine Shilcutt reported that the upper levels of the store are already cleared and closed . . . for good.

Photo: Houston Press

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Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Small, Stylish, and Already Sold: Design-y Inner Loop Home Bargains You Missed

“I do always seem to be showing you houses that few of us can really afford,” Houston interior-design blogger Joni Webb admits to her readers:

But the secret truth is, nothing gets me more excited than seeing a house which is NOT expensive yet looks like it was designed by a professional! Nothing is better because it affirms what I fully believe, style is not about money.

So Webb sets out to find a few inside-the-Loop homes dressed to meet her style standards — and priced between $300K and $500K. How long does it take her? Two days, poring through “hundreds, if not thousands” of HAR listings.

What does she find?

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Friday, July 17, 2009

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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Monday, July 13, 2009

Studying Those Sales Reports for 2727 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.

Photo of 2727 Kirby: Ziegler Cooper

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The Finest Strip-Center Recital Hall in Houston

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:

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Monday, June 15, 2009

Signs of Retail Life at the Corner of Kirby and Richmond

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.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

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Friday, June 5, 2009

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]

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Thursday, June 4, 2009

Seen on the Street: How Hot Is It Out There, Really?

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?

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