02/13/13 9:30am

Will the recent purchase, a reader wants to know, of a 105,000-sq.-ft. building out near Spring Branch by Admiral Linen & Uniform Services mean anything for the company’s much-smaller headquarters at 2030 Kipling St.? Well, Admiral Linen isn’t available for comment.

The company closed just after Christmas on the building at 8020 Blankenship Dr., near Hempstead and Bingle. Since 1998, according to city records, it’s owned the three-building, 24,000-sq.-ft. headquarters a block west east of South Shepherd and directly behind the Randalls on Westheimer.

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02/05/13 3:00pm

This Commerce St. parcel of property will be up for auction on February 14, reports Real Estate Bisnow‘s Catie Dixon. Owned by Cushman & Wakefield, says Dixon, the Downtown lot bound by Elysian and Austin is almost 29,000 sq. ft. of surface parking — for now, anyway — that stares at Minute Maid Park. Maybe the most important detail is that the lot backs up to Buffalo Bayou . . .

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01/25/13 10:00am

This is how Maggie Rita’s co-owner Santiago Moreno explains his Modern Mex entrepreneurial approach to Eater Houston’s Eric Sandler: “We’ve found out consumer decisions are made by women. When we track what makes a woman decide where to eat Mexican food, it has to do with margaritas. It has nothing to do with food.” Earlier this week, Houston Business Journal reports, Moreno and co-owner stand-up comedian Carlos Mencia shut down their Shepherd restaurant (shown above), the last of 3 Houston-area Maggie Rita’s, following the closings near the end of 2012 of their Kirby and Post Oak locations.

There’s another Maggie Rita’s in Houston, though you’ll have to go underground to get there: Tony Shannard, who’s ponied up the dough to use the brand name, runs his in the tunnel below Chase Tower at 600 Travis. He tells Houston Business Journal he plans to open another location soon.

Photos: Panoramio user Wolfgang Houston

01/24/13 1:30pm

Squatters and street artists might have to find another bygone building to pick on — but that’s only assuming there’s something really behind the renderings of renovations to Midtown’s Central Square Plaza that Claremont Property has been floating around. Could that demure stone mosaic on the wall facing Webster finally get its comeuppance after years of playing hard to get?

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01/23/13 1:00pm

The general landscaping public hasn’t been able to shop at San Jacinto Stone since January 19, when the 68-year-old Heights rockyard began the process of closing for good. (Contractors, at least, have until the end of February.) Back in August, San Jacinto Stone agreed to sell its 8 acres on Yale to a retail developer; yesterday, the deal was closed by Ponderosa Land Development, who says it has plans to build a shopping center on the property just south of I-10 and just north of the Washington Heights Walmart.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

01/23/13 10:00am

Shell Oil moved out the last of its things from the 3-building Bellaire Technology Center in 2012, consolidating R&D operations about 15 miles west of Southside Place in a spruced-up campus near Texas 6 and Richmond. Now, it appears that these 3.2 acres (shown in the map) of the 9.7 that the Center vacated are being eyed for residential development.

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01/22/13 3:00pm

A few doors down from Wabash Antiques & Feed Store and El Tiempo Cantina on Washington Ave., this building at 111 T.C. Jester had been home for many years to Fisk, one of the largest electrical contractors in the U.S. But a Swamplot reader has noticed that the building seems to be vacated. Fisk, acquired in 2011 by California-based general contractor Tutor Perini, wouldn’t tell Swamplot when or why or where it moved, though its website indicates that headquarters have been relocated out near Beltway 8 at 10855 Westview.

Photos: Swamplot inbox

01/18/13 1:00pm

One more of each, thank you: Creekside Park Village Center, rendered above, will be the Woodlands’ 7th and will be anchored by its 4th H-E-B, the master-planned community says. The shopping center will serve Creekside Park, a 100-acre community planned to go in up there west of Lake Paloma. It appears that the center will herd its shoppers inward toward a 4,300-sq.-ft. glass-walled restaurant, which you can see in the rendering. And there’s gonna be a fire pit in that park-like median-thing. (And a water feature on the other end. You know. Just in case.) In all, 80,000 sq. ft. of retail and office space are proposed for the site on Kuykendahl.

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01/17/13 4:45pm

YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY Has Midtown become too hip even for the federal government? The Social Security Administration is leaving, having lost its lease at the low-slung building at 3100 Smith (shown at right), reports CultureMap’s Whitney Radley: “Once a sort of wasteland, the surrounding neighborhood teems now with development, restaurants, bars, mixed-use complexes and multifamily units . . . . speculation that the building might be prime space for a restaurant or even torn down to make room for a mid-rise, is rampant.” [CultureMap] Photo: Panoramio user Wolfgang Houston

01/16/13 2:34pm

Back in 2010, Skanska said it was going to build and finance an office building in the Galleria all on its own. Swamplot showed you the first and second Kirksey-designed renderings. This one’s the third. And there’s another detail to add to the story: Skanska announced today that Datacert will be the first tenant. Though the planned 20-story, 300,000-sq.-ft. building at 3009 Post Oak is still under construction, Skanska says that Datacert should be able to move in on the 10th and 11th floors later this summer. Right now, the 15-year-old “enterprise legal management solutions” company is headquartered in a building a few doors down at 3040 Post Oak.

Rendering: Swamplot inbox

01/15/13 2:03pm

A FAKE STREET FOR REAL ESTATE SHOPPERS IN SPRING Opening in February, reports CultureMap, is a 10,000-sq.-ft. real estate “park” where a dozen lavishly turned-out showcase homes, ranging in styles from “The Midtown” to “The Calais” to “The Ashby Manor,” are presented for your perusal on a private cul-de-sac near I-45. Think of the immersive, don’t-mind-if-I-do shopping at IKEA blown up to the scale of Disney World — except at MainStreet America there will be fireworks and Christmases and tailgating parties and almost everything will be for sale:Do you like the paint color, the metallic faux technique on the ceiling or the graphic wallpaper accent in the bedroom? The details are available and so are the prices. In fact, you can make the purchase on site. If that couch, occasional table or rug is what you are looking for, swap that credit card and have them delivered. Floral arrangements? Yes, those are for sale as well. Mirrors? Check. Artwork? In stock. Window treatments? You bet.” Admission for adults is only $10; children aged 5-17 can get in for half that. [CultureMap] Photo: MainStreet America

12/14/12 9:47am

Longtime speculation that the entire vacant 104-acre site formerly occupied by the AstroWorld amusement park might someday be turned into some sort of singular mixed-use development took a hit yesterday as the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo announced it is buying the entire western half of the property, which sits across the 610 Loop from Reliant Park. The charitable organization hopes to close on the 48-acre tract by the end of the year. The purchase price is listed on its website as approximately $42.8 million, or $20.50 per sq. ft., “after charitable considerations by the seller.” That’s a Dallas investment firm known as the Mallick Group, which has owned the vacant property since 2010.

What will it rodeo do on all that land?

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11/30/12 10:57am

Those of you waiting with bated breath for the renovation, redevelopment, or removal of the 1950s-era office building at 3400 Montrose Blvd. (across Hawthorne St. from the Montrose Kroger): keep on bating. The company that bought the vacant 10-story building last September has told its 500 Israeli investors that its operations in Israel and Houston are both “in dire financial straits,” according to a report in Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

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10/09/12 3:12pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW THE OTHER HALF WILL EARN A LIVING “I really don’t care for any of the businesses coming in or their business models, but I’m really happy about the hundreds of jobs that will be created once they’re here. If these are the only companies with the capital to expand these days, well, that’s unfortunate, but at least someone‘s growing. That’s where most of the people—the ones that can’t afford the Rice Military townhouses, anyway—on this side of I-10—you know, the non-Heights side—work to feed their families and pay bills, etc., or where all the kids being raised over here will get their first job. Not everyone can work at Wabash or the comic book store.” [Jason C., commenting on Where the Walmart Golden Arches Will Rise]

08/07/12 2:34pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT’S THE THOUGHT PROCESS? “. . . There is one other thing that troubles me that maybe some of the developers on this thread might clear up. How much does humanity and civic duty factor into these decisions? I could quickly assume that the dollar and cent logistics is enough for anything like this to get green-lit, but I would rest a little more easily knowing that someone along the line questioned the implications of suddenly forcing so many people to find new places to live. Especially considering that, for students like me and my room mate, springing this change so close to the beginning of the coming semester only makes finding a new place that much more impossible to find. It might sound petty, but I hope someone somewhere feels at least a little guilty for the amount of hardship that has been dumped onto my lap.” [thisboy, commenting on Report: Castle Court Midrise Planned for Andover Richmond Apartments Site]