02/18/10 1:28pm

Vespa-riding Montrosian Brittanie Holland is curious about two retail buildings in her ’hood recently dressed up for lease:

We live in the northeast part of the Montrose. I was sad when the Hyde Park Supermarket shut down (across from Ziggy’s on Taft and Fairview) because they sold St. Arnold’s and Mexican Coke and were within walking distance. Plus the Pakistani (?) guys who worked there were so nice and knew me by name. Back when Ziggy’s was BYOB having the store there was, well, convenient.

The building has been vacant since summer but over the past few months workers have painstakingly removed all the original brick, refurbished the structure and the rebricked it with most of the original brick. It’s kind of an interesting mid-century building — it looks like it might once have been a garage, and there is a sign for business lease outside but I can’t believe the owners would do all that refurbishing without a [tenant] in mind. This is right down the street from Boheme and the new Deans, and has ample parking, so maybe they’re hoping to draw some similar high-brow ventures? Is Midtown continuing it’s fast encroachment on my filthy Montrose? (We’ll always have Lola’s. Hopefully.)

The other building probably needed a much more extensive cleaning:

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02/18/10 8:50am

SHOOTING IN CIRCUIT CITY This summer gun store the Arms Room will be moving into the former Circuit City store it just bought, off the northbound I-45 feeder just south of FM 646 in League City. The store specializes in military collectibles, concealed handguns, and tactical weapons. At 20,000 square feet, the new store will sell firearms and have a 15-lane indoor shooting range rated for rifles and pistols. Sounds a little like a bowling alley. ‘It is very similar,’ said general manager Travis James. ‘You’re in a lane for an hour and you shoot to your heart’s content. You just dont have to change your shoes.’” [Prime Property]

02/17/10 10:04am

THE GREAT BIG MALL-AND-SPRAWL GET-TOGETHER What do The Galleria, the Houston Premium Outlets mall in Cypress, the Katy Mills mall, the Deerbrook Mall, The Woodlands Mall, the Baybrook Mall, First Colony Mall, the Willowbrook Mall, the 11,400-acre Bridgeland development way out 290, and 42.5 percent of The Woodlands Operating Company have in common? They’ll all be owned by the same company — if the Simon Property Group completes the proposed $10 billion buyout of bankrupt General Growth Properties it made public yesterday. That would make 550 Simon malls in all — more than a third of the U.S. total. [Developments]

01/22/10 9:38am

An executive with Skanska USA tells the Houston Business Journal‘s Jennifer Dawson that the American subsidiary of the Swedish project development and construction company will build and finance this new freeway-side Galleria spec office building all by itself. Design work for the 14-story tower and 8-story parking garage, though, was farmed out to Kirksey.

Where will it go? The 2.3-acre former site of Tony’s Ballroom at 3009 Post Oak Blvd., across the street from the Water Wall Park. Metro will likely want a piece of that property too: A thin, mostly triangular sliver along the property’s western edge is needed to accommodate the new Uptown Line set to run down Post Oak.

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01/21/10 3:11pm

A little more than 2 years after announcing they’d be closing down, demolishing the restaurant and selling the land underneath it, and 9 months after reopening the almost-60-year-old institution with great fanfare, the owners of Otto’s Bar B Que are now saying the restaurant at 5502 Memorial Dr. will be closing for good. Sort of:

Otto’s has a long list of customers, including former President George H. W. Bush. He came by yesterday to get a final plate of food before the business closed. The building will be demolished and replaced with a bank. The owner told us it was hard to say goodbye.

“We have some wonderful people here in the City of Houston that have supported us for hundreds of years. It’s a little, a little emotional,” said owner June [Sofka].

You will still be able to order a hamburger from Otto’s at that location for a few more months.

Photo: Flickr user tamtam.afropunx

01/21/10 12:44pm

A reader writes in to complain about the not-quite-complete renovation of the former Sterling Bank building overlooking I-45 South at 4600 Gulf Fwy. The building was stripped down to its structure and is being reborn as the largest Planned Parenthood administrative headquarters and healthcare facility in the nation.

Is anyone else really bothered by the fact that on the stair-stepped portions of the curtain wall the spandrel glass doesn’t line up with the spandrels on the rest of the building? I mean if you’re going to design a facade that’s all about geometry, shouldn’t the geometry work? There had to be better ways to do this, really.

A close-up view:

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01/08/10 4:27pm

HOUSTON REAL ESTATE DOWNTURN: GREAT FOR STRIP CENTERS AND FAST FOOD JOINTS Who’s benefiting from Houston’s not-so-go-go commercial real estate market? “‘Cell phone stores are still doing well, and still want to open up new stores,’ [Riverway Retail retail broker Jake] Baker points out. ‘We’re also seeing companies like Edward Jones looking for, and getting good retail space.’ Edward Jones? Well, yes. ‘When you start to see your bank account shrinking, you want to start being conservative with your money,’ Baker says. ‘This is an ideal place for the Edward Joneses to expand and take a lot of retail space.’ Baker and [Weitzman Group senior VP James] Namken say that another category of tenant expansion is the franchisee. ‘With the economy so poor, people have been laid off, and are interested in starting their own businesses,’ Namken explains. ‘Many of them want to become franchisees. That’s where most of the growth has been recently, and will likely continue to be.’” [Globe St.]

01/05/10 5:06pm

DOWNTOWN SHERATON-LINCOLN REDO: TOO MANY RESERVATIONS Hey, how about those plans to renovate the vacant 1962 Sheraton-Lincoln Hotel on Polk St. Downtown between Louisiana and Milam, and turn the once-swank 28-story hulk into an all-suites hotel with meeting spaces and restaurants? “More than two years later, it doesn’t look like much work has been done at all. ‘Omni is not involved in the project,’ Caryn Kboudi, a representative for Omni Hotels, told Hair Balls. ‘I believe Songy still is.’ . . . The Harris County Appraisal District lists the owner of the building as Downtown Houston Hospitality LP, which is based out of Atlanta, the same place as the Songy corporate headquarters. That could be a sign that Songy still owns the property, but it’s impossible to say, because no one from Songy has returned our phone calls or e-mails.” [Hair Balls]

12/23/09 3:27pm

Who was it again that bought the West Oaks Mall out of bankruptcy earlier this month, for the bargain price of $15 million? Just an L.A. investment group called Pacific Retail Capital Partners. That firm’s principals, then with a company called Somera Capital, are the same people who sold the 1.1-million-sq.-ft. mall at Westheimer and Hwy. 6 in 2005 to Investment Partners of America, the “investment” vehicle of high-rolling 1031 Exchange king Edward H. Okun, after a quick 2-year spiff-up.

Okun paid Somera $102 million. Yes, that Edward H. Okun.

This time, the mall’s a whole lot cheaper, but it’s not in such good shape, either. Mervyn’s and J.C. Penney are gone. The rest of the mall is at 60 percent occupancy. “Over the past couple of years, several tenants tried to renew,” Somera Capital’s (and now Pacific Retail’s) Stephen Plenge tells Globe St., “and no one would return their phone calls.” The new owners say the Mervyn’s wing is likely to be redeveloped.

Photo of West Oaks Mall visitors: Joel Barhamand

12/15/09 4:22pm

GALLERIA POCKET PARK FIGHT ENDS WITH TIRZ REACHING INTO POCKET Twin septuagenerian veterinarians Jock and James Collins, whose property on the corner of San Felipe and Post Oak Ln. adjacent to BLVD Place was taken by eminent domain 2 years ago, settled their dispute with the city this past August after receiving a $990,000 payment from the Uptown TIRZ, reports Mike Snyder: “The amount of the settlement is less than the $1.4 million Wulfe offered the brothers for the property in 2006, an offer they refused because they wanted a lump sum rather than payments over several years. However, it’s more than twice the $433,800 that the city asserted the land was worth in December 2006, the agreed-upon date for settlement discussions, [the Collins brothers’ attorney, J. Cary] Gray said. The brothers contended the land was worth $1,012,000, Gray said. The Collins brothers, along with leaders of some government watchdog groups, contended the park was a pretext for providing a landscaped entrance to [Ed] Wulfe’s [Blvd Place] development at public expense. Documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle last year showed that the condemnation helped Wulfe close a $12.5 million land deal for a planned residential tower within the development, although plans for that project have been delayed because of the recession. [Mayor] White repeatedly denied that political considerations were a factor. The need for land to widen San Felipe wasn’t disputed, and White said it was a better deal for taxpayers for the city to take the entire parcel.” [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]

12/14/09 11:46am

“The former six-screen AMC movie theater at 1100 Greens Parkway” just north of Beltway 8 at Ella, reports Nancy Sarnoff, “is becoming convention space that will house the International Faith Based Business Expo and the Vision Changers Performing Arts Christian Center.”

Photo: LoopNet

11/30/09 10:17pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: COMMODITY, FIRMNESS, AND NOTORIETY “The design can’t possibly be that bad. People are talking about it. When was the last time anybody remarked on the designs of Energy Tower III or Energy Crossing II?” [TheNiche, commenting on There Will Be No Tours of the Death Star, and Other Details About the Hospital in the Belly of the Memorial Hermann Tower]

11/30/09 9:55am

Hospital executive Adam Lane tells the Houston Business Journal‘s Jennifer Dawson that the easiest patients to move into the new Memorial Hermann Tower on I-10 will be . . . the babies, “because they don’t know where they’re going.”

Also, it sounds like some of the interiors might prove a little disorienting for suburban kids:

A hospital floor dedicated to children has been elaborately designed as a town center. The hallway is made to look like a street with curbs, grass and storefronts.

Fortunately, more familiar surroundings will be nearby: the building is connected by skybridge to the Memorial City Mall.

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11/25/09 9:25am

H. Dan Miller, senior managing director of the Houston office of Holliday Fenoglio Fowler, commenting on the sale he recently brokered of the fully leased 30,000-sq.-ft. office building and bank drive-thru on an L-shaped property at 10411 Westheimer in Westchase, which received 18 offers within a week:

You had an irreplaceable location at the corner of Westheimer and Beltway 8 and three streets of frontage. I wish I had 10 of these types of buildings.

Photo: Holliday Fenoglio Fowler

11/20/09 2:52pm

What do all these Houston office towers have in common?

That’s right — they’re all part of the vast Crescent Real Estate Equities empire, which at the peak of the market 2 years ago comprised 54 properties in all, stretching from Texas to the California coast. That’s when Morgan Stanley snatched up the whole thing for a mere $6.5 billion, thanks in part to a little $2 billion loan from Barclays Capital.

Today, Morgan Stanley announced it is giving up on the whole thing. Back to the bank all those properties go. All of them. (Okay, minus a few that were jettisoned along the way.)

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