UNLOADING GALVESTON’S BISHOP’S PALACE 
The Galveston-Houston Archdiocese has put up for sale the 1892 Bishop’s Palace, a.k.a. Gresham’s Castle, at 14th and Broadway. The price? $3 million. But the archdiocese isn’t going to let just anyone buy the 17,420-sq.-ft. Victorian clergy digs-turned-museum — at least not for a while: “The Galveston Historical Foundation has an exclusive right until the end of this month to raise . . . the money or the archdiocese can open the sale to all comers,” reports the Houston Chronicle. Foundation director W. Dwayne Jones tells the Chronicle that they’ve already raised $2.3 million. And why the sale? “Jones said the archdiocese has been looking to get out of the museum business for a while. ‘They are in the business of saving souls.'” [Houston Chronicle] Photo: Galveston Historical Foundation
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Buildings for Sale
Here’s a prediction from a reader about the fate of these apartments just inside the Loop at 4724 Oakshire Dr.: “It looks like another older apt. complex in/near Afton Oaks will probably soon be no more. At least, the building is being sold and all the residents just got a 45 day notice to move out (I don’t know for sure they’re tearing it down, but the odds are it will be). It’s a pity, because it’s a very well-made building (and, from what I’ve seen of some of the construction going up in the area, that’s not the case for a lot of the newer buildings).”
The only thing that’s really changed about 3400 Montrose, a tipster tells Swamplot, is the name of its owner: Global Paragon, which bought the former podium for Scott Gertner’s Skybar in 2011, went “belly up” this past November, the tipster says, and the vacant 10-story building’s now owned and managed by a 40-person LLC that’s looking for a buyer or a joint venture.
And that’s where these interior photos, from a short-on-info listing posted recently on Cushman & Wakefield’s website, come in:
Not quite 3 years after reopening as what owner Rodney Finger claimed to be the biggest furniture store in Texas, the 600,000-sq.-ft. I-45 Finger Furniture flagship — and the 16.5 acres near UH that it sits on — has come up for sale. Until the Finger family bought the property in the early ’60s, it was home to a minor-league baseball stadium for the Houston Buffs, a farm team for the Cardinals up in St. Louis. That history was given some floor space among the couches and mattresses indoors in the Houston Sports Museum — with a replica home plate in the showroom tile to approximate the original. And the asking price? $11 million.
Office building or home? It depends on which listing you read. One on LoopNet appears to have marketed the property for a while at $599,000 — as an office building. But it popped up as a single family item this week on HAR, asking $535,000. Built in 2001 and updated in 2010, the corner-lot custom live-work structure is 2 blocks south of the Katy Fwy. in the Brunner subdivision in Cottage Grove.
What’s this? Near the intersection of W. Gray and Milam, a for-sale sign has popped up on the Central Square Plaza buildings on a 1-acre lot in Midtown. We’re hoping to get more details soon. The fate of the 12- and 14-story offices and parking garage at 2100 Travis has been tied up in court for years; Swamplot reported last summer that owner Alfred J. Antonini won a skirmish in a ongoing battle against the city, which had in 2011 ordered him to make “a bunch of repairs” to the buildings, vacant now for a real long time.
- Previously on Swamplot: City Loses Skirmish in Battle To Repair Central Square
Photo: Swamplot inbox (sign); LoopNet
The proto-strip center that houses Yale St. Grill in the Heights went up for sale earlier this month, but Barbara Guidry, who’s been the vintage-y diner’s manager for 30 years, doesn’t expect any changes: “[The building’s] been sold before,” she tells Swamplot, “but this is like an institution.” The 1952 building has been listed at just under $3.2 million. The restaurant shares the 18,000-sq.-ft. structure — located a couple blocks north of the 19th St. shopping district — with Heights Antiques and Dr. Ullman, an optometrist. All 3 are long-term tenants on triple-net leases. Guidry says, “No, this place is a gold mine.”
- Shopping Strip Yale St. Center (PDF) [Marcus & Millichap]
Photo: Flickr user jgeo
Some saddle-up bric-a-brac remains on the exterior of the former Harwin Western Wear store on Navigation, a few blocks south of the original Ninfa’s. The 1935 retail-residential property contains a few apartments plus more living quarters in the converted attic. Located on the corner of N. Palmer St., the partially painted brick-and-board (and barbed wire) structure with awnings is across from a parking lot, a light-industrial building, and a vacant lot. A Metro bus stop sign sits right out front. The new listing, $200,000, offers no interior photos — but plenty of peeks at the exterior and environs:
Back in April, former Bootsie’s Heritage Cafe chef Randy Rucker gave up on plans to open a new restaurant in the holdout parcel (above and at bottom right in the photo at right) behind the Asia Society Texas building. Now that property’s owner, Balcor Commercial, is giving up on it as well. The 3,624-sq.-ft. former doctors’ office on a 11,700-sq.-ft. lot at 5219 Caroline was listed for sale earlier this month for just a tad under $1.5 million. The property traded hands for $907K back in July of 2010, when Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi’s steamy building next door was just a muddy construction site. Renovations of the Caroline building for Rucker’s conÄt never began. “Unfortunately, converting the Caroline property into a fully functional restaurant while maintaining the integrity and design of the structure turned out to be a challenge,” an owner’s rep tells Swamplot.
Some might know this Milam at W. Main property as the former home of Milam House, a social services agency that operated within until 2007. Some might recognize it as a building they view peripherally and from above while zipping out of downtown on Spur 527. Behind the automated gate, however, the mansion-turned-commercial space holds a doctor’s practice downstairs and unrelated professional offices upstairs.
The building combines the presence and proportions of a 1950 home with the more modern upgrades of a 2007 renovation, which also subdivided — only temporarily, the listing agent says — several first floor rooms. Described as an historic property in the Bute section of the Montrose area, this new listing fronting an access road is asking $1,350,000 — regardless of whether its future use remains commercial, resumes residential status, or blends a bit of each. Its neighbors include 2-story apartments next door and 3-story offices-over-parking across the street.
In 2009, the now-10-year-old Betz Art Gallery housed in a 1947 cottage-scale venue on West Gray gained a 3-story appendage to expand its exhibition space. Now the gallery towers over itself. Listed in January at $599,000, the property’s asking price dropped to $549,000 at the end of March. That’s around the time artist Lori Betz opened the Betz Art Foundry at the Summer Street Studios, up in the artsy warehouse district off Houston Ave. Although the Montrose-area gallery remains open, it’s moving later this year, a gallery staff member says.
A mashup of modern and vintage structures, the bi-level gallery-home is listed as ADA compliant and reported to be “very energy efficient.” Maybe it’s the dearth of windows. Glass panes that remain post-redo have light-diffusing panels.
The three buildings listed as 6204 Main St. lie not on the tree-lined block near Rice University, but rather its mixed-use counterpart on North Main. Asking $260,000, the property includes a vacant warehouse flanked by two homes, squeezed onto a quarter-acre in the Rodgers Park area, just south of Sunset Heights and 2 blocks from Metro’s Heights Transit Center.
The warehouse anchors the southeast corner of N. Main and E. 23rd. It’s in “poor condition,” according to the listing. The adjacent houses, meanwhile, are generating rental income. They date back to the late 1920s. The dimensions of every room are described as 10 ft. x 10 ft.
THE DEEP RETAIL DISCOUNTS AT HOUSTON PAVILIONS 
Four years after its opening, the troubled Downtown mall-office complex known as Houston Pavilions may sell for $50 to $75 million below the cost of its construction. To avoid foreclosure on a loan valued at $130.7 million, the developers turned the property over to a receiver late last year; Transwestern is now marketing the project for sale. Offices are fully occupied, but the big problem is the 59-percent-vacant retail portion of the project, says Real Estate Alert: “More than half of the retail tenants haven’t been paying full rent because the overall retail occupancy rate remains below the prescribed threshold cited in their leases. A buyer could convert about 42,000 sf of vacant retail space into offices to exploit downtown Houston’s booming office market . . . However, a conversion of all the retail space isn’t an option, because doing so would make it impossible to meet the retail occupancy threshold necessary for the existing tenants to pay full rent.” [Real Estate Alert; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Flickr user cjt3
The real-estate fund that’s owned the half-vacant strip center at the southwest corner of Westheimer and Montrose for the last 4 years has put the entire 2.86-acre block up for sale. On the site now: Half Price Books, Spec’s Liquors, Papa John’s Pizza, and the 3-6-9 China Bistro in a stuccoed-over 41,838-sq.-ft. building once known as the Tower Community Center (to match the Tower Theater, now home to El Real Tex-Mex, across the street). Also included: the standalone Jack-in-the-Box on the corner of Montrose and Lovett. No list price, but broker HFF is indicating “price guidance” of $10 million or higher.
The Art Deco building still lurking beneath was designed by architect Joseph Finger in 1937, 2 years before he completed work for Houston’s city hall. Here’s how the shopping center looked then-ish, with a Walgreens on the corner of Yoakum St.:
Is all that living space on the second floor of this metal warehouse building right off the Tomball Pkwy. frontage road near the end of Jones Rd. really window-free? Built a decade ago, the 5,062-sq.ft. structure is an unrestricted property suitable for mixed use — and that includes homesteading.
