COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE REPORT FROM GREENSPOINT MALL “. . . A huge swath of it is basically closed (the part near Dillards)– storefronts with lots of signs letting you know they are available. There are still quite a few mall staples, as well as an unusual number of mom-and-pop operations. I was there today just after 1 pm. There were people around, including folks apparently from nearby offices doing some lunch shopping or eating in the food court. But the number of people seemed sparse. That said, it is a long haul to any other movie theater from there, and there are a lot of people who live and work in the area. And I’m fairly sure the mall is one of the safest places around–it has a large Harris County Sheriff/HPD station in the mall! The parking lot is full of police cars.” [RWB, commenting on Before the Movies Start: What’s Eating JCPenney at the Greenspoint Mall]
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The daintily decorated Bayou Woods mansion owned by a Vincent Cabella — put up for sale last year for $4 million but reduced to $3.45 million by the time Swamplot featured it in March — has been discounted again. Now come up with just $2.45 million and the cozy little 5-6 bedroom, 5 1/2-bath retreat is yours!
How could you refuse an offer like this?
Of course, this isn’t just your run-of-the-mill elephant-statues-by-the-front-yard-fountain Memorial Dr. show-off-piece. According to the New York Daily News, it’s actually the hideaway mobster Vincent Palermo — aka Vinny Ocean — retired to after he testified against some of his former underlings in New Jersey’s DeCavalcante crime family and joined the federal witness protection program. (Cabella, crime reporter Greg B. Smith explained, was the former Mafia boss’s new Houston name.)
But he’s led an active retirement:
THE GREAT OTC HOOKER STEAK-OUT Out on the town and on the tail of some of them high-priced hookers shipped in from Vegas specially for this week’s Offshore Technology Conference, Caroline Gallay strikes gold diggers on Post Oak: “We had by far the best luck at Mo’s A Place for Steaks, where suddenly (around 10:30 p.m.) the almost all-male crowd was inundated with scantily clad young things taking cards and holding court. I saw some of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen, and I think I might start hanging with the hussies more often. The once-overs thrice-overs my friends and I got should have probably offended us, but I for one was flattered — even if they were internally reviewing price points. On Monday evening, the first time we trolled for tramps, I’m pretty sure we were even solicited. An older gentleman hovered and leered at our table until we finally spoke to him. Our tab? Close to $70. His face once he learned we were locals, and later that our parents and he shared friends? Priceless.” [CultureMap]
Missed out on putting in a bid on that pinkish coke palace up in Ponderosa Trails that went up for auction in March? Of course you did, because it didn’t sell. So now the 5-bedroom, 8,024-sq.-ft. mansion at 17907 Elk Valley Circle will be back on the virtual auction block again this May 18th to 20th— starting at the same $471,250 minimum bid.
Alas, the 2.54-acre property will be available “for inspection” just once, for a couple of hours on May 12th — by special appointment only. There’s a “Waiver, Release & Indemnity Agreement” you’ll have to sign to participate. And no, the former owner won’t be available to answer your questions about maintenance — Daron Odell Jones is still serving a 13-year prison sentence for cocaine possession with an intent to distribute.
According to law enforcement officials, Jones led a drug empire supplying the Mobile, Alabama, area and had ties to a violent Mexican drug cartel. (If he hadn’t cooperated with authorities, pled guilty, and forfeited this home, a small car collection, and some snazzy jewelry, he might have received a longer sentence and faced more serious charges.)
What distinguishes this druglord’s lair from all the lookalikes and wannabes builders have been putting up all over Houston?
THE CASE OF THE UNUSUALLY HELPFUL CONTRACTOR Melvin Lendall Brown, owner of a local unincorporated business he called Brownstone Construction, provided an unusually complete range of services to his clients. The Justice Dept. announced his guilty plea — to a single count of wire fraud — earlier this week: “Brown and others recruited and solicited individuals with good credit to act as borrowers in applications for residential mortgage loans to purchase one or more of those properties, even though the borrowers had no intention of making payments on the mortgage loans. Brown, aided and abetted by at least one other person, made representations to each borrower, including that he would buy the home in the borrower’s name, make any monthly mortgage payments, find others to live in the home and pay monthly rent, take the home out of the borrower’s name after a period of time as well as compensate the borrower. Brown and others caused Uniform Residential Loan Applications to be made in the names of the borrowers that overstated their employment income and other assets, understated or omitted their debts and other liabilities, falsely represented that the borrowers leased the homes in which they resided and received income from the rent, and falsely claimed that the borrowers intended to occupy the newly purchased homes. Because of the fraudulent information, the lenders made decisions to approve the applications and fund the loans. In support of those fraudulent loan applications, false and fraudulent documents were submitted, including sham lease agreements and bogus employment information. Brown also provided funds to the borrowers to use for deposits toward the purchases of those homes and for closing fees, and he often appeared with the borrowers at the closings.” [FBI Houston, via InSite]
What inside info does Swamplot have to spill about this 6,648-sq.-ft. mansion on more than an acre off Memorial Dr. in Bayou Woods?
Absolutely none. Really: We don’t know a thing about it.
Okay, okay — nothing other than . . . uh, publicly available information. And this little reader comment last week that tipped us all off. Yeah, you read it too!
“Vinny Ocean†is selling his Memorial mansion. It is now listed at [$]3.5M. How much would YOU offer knowing that some mouthbreathing NJ thug might not know Palermo sold it and no longer lives there? I’d knock 3M right off the top. You really oughta amble over to HAR and take a look at this place – over the TOP!
Who’s Vinny Ocean?
Yeah, there are lots of very large homes in Houston that kinda look like some drug lord’s mansion. But how can you find one that’s truly authentic? Here’s one way: Look for a property that’s been put on the market by actual U.S. marshals!
Like this 5-bedroom, 4-bath pinkish-brownish stucco crib at 17907 Elk Valley Circle in Ponderosa Trails. It sits on a 2.54-acre lot on a quiet cul-de-sac just south of Cypress Creek near Kuykendahl, and comes complete with the requisite pool and patio, hot tub, double-height porte-cochere, and 4-car garage.
Sure, it sorta looks like it might be the home of a drug kingpin, but so do a lot of other big homes in town built since, say, 2000. What’s this one’s pedigree?
DARKNESS DESCENDS OVER THE EAST FREEWAY Hey, who turned out all the street lights along I-10 between the East Loop and Uvalde? Copper thieves! “[Public Works spokesperson Alvin] Wright said a similar theft took place inside the loop, but this was the first time it had happened on such a large scale further east. In response, public works is considering replacing the copper wires with aluminum, and installing lock boxes to keep the copper conductors safe. Officials said they don’t know how long it will take to complete the repairs, which could eventually cost taxpayers thousands of dollars.” [KHOU.com]
Will Julia Roberts play her a second time in this new movie? Houston socialite Joanne King Herring claims that an 18th century painting New York mortgage broker Geoffrey Rice tried to sell through Sotheby’s auction house last year was stolen from her home 24 years ago — and she’s got an original 1980 purchase receipt from Christie’s and a 1986 Houston police report to prove it. Rice claims he bought the painting for about $1,000 in Houston back in 1983 from — who’da guessed it? — Jerry and Wynonne Hart’s now-defunct Hart Galleries.
Alas, the Harts are in legal trouble of their own: last year they pled guilty to felony “misapplication of fiduciary property” while charges of theft and money laundering were dropped. But another judge later awarded them a new trial. Nevertheless, in an affidavit, they claim they never sold the painting — or anything else — to Rice.
Rice tells the New York Post he took the painting — by Scottish artist Sir Henry Raeburn — with him to New York after he got divorced, “where it sat in his laundry room until early last year.”
Wow. Just wow. A laundry room — in Manhattan!
More than 700 of the abandoned or problem properties documented and written up by the Houston Police Dept.’s Neighborhood Protection Corps over the last 3 years belong either to the City of Houston or Harris County agencies, reports 11 News reporter Jeremy Rogalski. Approximately half of those properties are located in 4 not-so-fancy Zip Codes — 77016, 77026, 77028, and 77051 — three of which are in the northeast area of the city.
One piece of the problem: those tax-delinquent properties the county puts up for public auction:
. . . if they don’t sell, it becomes the county’s obligation to maintain them. But [Harris County Facilities & Property Management Chief Administrative Manager Jim] Lemond admits, the county can’t even check them all.
“We have two inspectors whose primary function is to do many other things and not this,†Lemond said.
As for the violations the city writes, there’s another problem: The county claims for years, the city never told it about the violations.
“No that’s not acceptable. Obviously that’s not acceptable,†Lemond said.
He added that his office was puzzled when the city did send over a packet of violation notices in June 2009.
“What are these, and where did they come from and what’s this all about,†Lemond recalled of his reaction.
But Montecella Flaniken, Assistant Director of Field Operations with Neighborhood Protection Corps, maintains the city had been routinely e-mailing the county of violations all along.
- Hundreds of crime-ridden, eyesore properties owned by city of Houston, Harris County [KHOU.com, via BlogHouston]
Graphic: KHOU.com
DESOLATE FEEDER ROAD CAR LOT LANDSCAPES What’s become of the 20-some Houston-area car lots dealers have shut down over the last year or two? Here’s a sampling: “‘My mother lived here 27 years, and we never had any trouble with Landmark Chevrolet,’ said Rhys Everett, who was cleaning out his mother’s former residence in the Hidden Valley neighborhood behind the defunct dealership. ‘But now it is filled with vagrants who have taken everything that wasn’t nailed down, and it’s a jumping-off point for crime in our neighborhood.’ The dealership, one of 13 outlets nationwide that Bill Heard Enterprises closed in September 2008, sprawls for blocks near the intersection of Gulf Bank and the North Freeway. It looks as if it had been hit by a cyclone. The main showroom’s exterior and interior windows are shattered. Ceiling tiles are torn away, exposing duct work that dangles like limp straws. Awnings hang in tatters. . . . The ravaged Chevrolet dealership’s antithesis can be found on Interstate 10 in Baytown, where the defunct Baytown Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge dealership is preserved in near-pristine condition.” [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
That condo in The Huntingdon belonging to Ken and Linda Lay may soon have company on the market. Randi Stanford, daughter of alleged swindler Robert Allen Stanford — who’s lived in a 2,803-sq.-ft. condo in the same highrise at 2121 Kirby for the last 3 years — has agreed to vacate her unit by the end of March.
The agreement ends a longstanding dispute. The court-appointed receiver for the assets of the Stanford Financial Group will put the unit up for sale.
According to HCAD records, Unit 16NE is owned by an LLC whose address is listed as 5050 Westheimer Rd. — the former headquarters of Stanford Financial Group. Writes the Chronicle‘s Mary Flood:
A report by an accountant working for the receiver showed that Allen Stanford paid for the condo with
 $1.3 million in early 2006. It shows that at least $44,000 paid for condo maintenance came directly from company funds, and that $34,000 of that came from the certificates of deposits issued by Stanford’s bank in Antigua that are at the heart of the alleged fraud.
- Stanford’s daughter will leave condo linked to his firm [Houston Chronicle]
- Stanford’s daughter agrees to vacate condo [Stanford Watch]
- A Look Inside Ken and Linda Lay’s Lonely Highrise Castle Retreat [Swamplot]
- Westheimer Office Building and All: Allen Stanford Says Sell! [Swamplot]
Photo of The Huntingdon: HAR
NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH MEDIA WATCH A reporter for a Houston media outlet is exploring a “potential story” on neighborhood watch groups around the Houston area, and has a few questions for Swamplot readers: “In your experience with the Houston real estate market, have you seen the existence of watch groups affect the market in the watch neighborhood? In other words, would a potential buyer be deterred or reassured/pleased by neighborhood watch signs in the area in which she/he is looking at buying? Would they think it was unsafe/safe? Do watch groups bring the prices up, down or neither? I’m interested in any light you could shed on the topic of neighborhood watch groups–even if it is slight.” Well, whaddya think? Add your comments below, or send them privately to this email address. [Swamplot inbox]
SOUNDING THE ALARM AT THE AURORA PICTURE SHOW The microcinema’s founder, Andrea Grover, reports on the little Sunset Heights church on Aurora St. turned little movie theater — turned little crime scene: on recent events at the Menil-bungalow office of Aurora Picture Show on Sul Ross: “Now that the dust has settled . . . it’s OK to tell you: Aurora was burglarized, not once, but twice in 9 days, and the insurance claim was denied. . . . There was a small clause about a B3 monitoring system (a monitored alarm) that was not highlighted at signing and allowed the insurer to deny Aurora, after eleven uninterrupted years of payments to them (without a single claim) – probably amounting to $30-40,000 in insurance payments. . . . Now, out over $5000 worth of equipment, plus staff time, and contract labor for clean up . . .” [Facebook, via Arts in Houston]
Now that a suspect for at least one of the recent Heights-area arsons is in custody, blogger Fred Eats Houston feels a bit more comfortable sharing his photos of some local burn victims.
There have been 18 “suspicious” fires in the Heights area since mid-August. Here are 2 views of a playhouse on Ashland St., part of one of the first structures to burn:
