Highrises

Galleria, Highrises, Proposed Developments

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Proposed Turnberry Tower, Uptown, Houston

From the Swamplot rumor mill comes an unconfirmed and second-hand report: that the team behind proposed Houston Turnberry Tower — the 34-story luxury highrise planned to rest just behind the Williams Tower — “officially pulled the plug on their galleria deal yesterday.”

Could this be true? A lot of hard work — and a lot of plumbing design — has been poured into that project. It would be sad to see it all go down the toilet.

Late Update: The rumor has been confirmed.

Nine and a Half Bathrooms: The Turnberry Tower Penthouse Evacuation Plan [Swamplot]
The Turnberry: More Wiping, in More Places, than at Any Other Condo Tower [Swamplot]
Tune In to the Turnberry Tower [Swamplot]

Rendering of Turnberry Tower Galleria: Robert M. Swedroe Architects and Planners

77056, Condos, Galleria, Highrises, Luxury Highrises, Proposed Developments, Turnberry Tower, Uptown

10/08/08 12:11pm

Ashby Highrise: Strike Seven!

Boulevard Oaks, Condos, Development Regulations, Highrises, Neighborhood Disputes, Proposed Developments, Quicklink, Southampton

8 Comments

ASHBY HIGHRISE: STRIKE SEVEN! “The developers of the Ashby high-rise sent their plans back to the city of Houston just days before Hurricane Ike hit, and not long after the Public Works Department resumed operations, Buckhead Investment Partners were rejected for a seventh time. Records show the plans were filed again Sept. 11, seven days after being returned. They were denied a remaining permit again Sept. 29. In his comments, city engineer Mark Loethen said plans for a driveway permit contained no revisions and there was ‘no current justification’ for restriping plans on Bissonnet Boulevard at Ashby Drive.” [West University Examiner; previously]

77005, Apartments, Ashby Highrise, Boulevard-Oaks, Condos, Development Regulations, Highrises, Neighborhood Disputes, Proposed Developments, Southampton

09/12/08 10:00am

Ashby Highrise: Stuck on the Dock

Boulevard Oaks, Condos, Highrises, Neighborhood Disputes, Proposed Developments, Quicklink, Southampton

1 Comment

ASHBY HIGHRISE: STUCK ON THE DOCK That last city permit is proving difficult for developers of the Ashby Highrise, as the city denied the variance request for a loading dock last week: “In comments for the Public Works and Engineering Department, city engineer Mark Loethen said the at-grade loading dock from Bissonnet Street will not be allowed because its use would obstruct lanes of traffic. In his Sept. 4 comments, Loethen said the variance was rejected for the same reason, citing Sec. 40-86 of the code of ordinances. ‘Such a driveway, as proposed, would excessively interfere with the normal use of the Bissonnet Street right of way,’ he said.” [West University Examiner; previously]

77005, Apartments, Ashby Highrise, Boulevard-Oaks, Condos, Highrises, Neighborhood Disputes, Proposed Developments, Southampton

09/03/08 12:49pm

Ashby Highrise: Down to a Loading Dock?

Boulevard Oaks, Condos, Development Restrictions, Highrises, Neighborhood Disputes, Proposed Developments, Quicklink, Southampton

5 Comments

ASHBY HIGHRISE: DOWN TO A LOADING DOCK? Buckhead Investments has resubmitted plans for the proposed Ashby Highrise for the single permit standing in the way of construction. “[Developer Matthew] Morgan said the developers have asked for a variance concerning the design’s loading dock, adding that ‘plenty of examples’ of similar configurations ‘can be found on thoroughfares and collector streets’ in the area. One example he cited is the new high-end, 236-unit apartment complex called Fairmont Museum District at 4310 Dunlavy St. ‘It seems to have loading docks that you can’t pull through,’ Morgan said. ‘Dunlavy is a collector street. We don’t feel like the same criteria was used.’ [West University Examiner; previously]

77005, Apartments, Ashby Highrise, Boulevard-Oaks, Condos, Development Restrictions, Highrises, Neighborhood Disputes, Proposed Developments, Southampton

Financing

08/29/08 8:39am

West Loop Nineties Revival Not Getting Enough Love

Galleria, Highrises, Houston Architects, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments

1 Comment

Proposed Novati Group Office Tower at 1600 West Loop South, Uptown, Houston The Houston Business Journal‘s Jennifer Dawson is reporting that the Novati Group’s plan to dust off a 15-year-old Ziegler Cooper design for a 20-story office tower and build it on the West Loop

appears to be in limbo. The deal isnâ€™t dead, but itâ€™s not moving forward.

The problems: finding debt financing . . . and that pre-leasing thing.

Meanwhile, Dawson expects Transwestern to announce details soon on a large new addition to Uptown’s Four Oaks Place — to replace the 24-Hour Fitness on Post Oak Blvd. owned by TIAA-CREF:

The proposed building being called Tower Five at Four Oaks Place is now set to be 30 stories tall, with 525,000 square feet of office space on 22 floors atop a parking garage with roughly 1,500 spaces, says Carleton Riser, head of Transwesternâ€™s development group.

He says the building designed by architectural firm Pickard Chilton could break ground in the first quarter of 2009.

The fact that no tenants have committed to the new building wonâ€™t delay construction, Riser says.

Office buildings on and off [Houston Business Journal]
That Nineties Retro Tower Coming to the West Loop [Swamplot]
New West Loop Tower: Keeping the Uptown Office Market Up to Date [Swamplot]

Rendering: Ziegler Cooper

77027, Financing, Galleria, Highrises, Houston Architects, Office Buildings, Office Space, Proposed Developments, Uptown

Condos

08/27/08 1:50pm

2727 Kirby: Enough with the Crane

Highrises, New Construction: Residential, Upper Kirby

7 Comments

Condo Tower at 2727 Kirby Dr., Under Construction The crane at 2727 Kirby is coming down today and tomorrow, reports a reader who’s been watching the construction.

A larger version of this up-to-date photo showing the incredible shrinking construction crane — and a rendering of the completed condo tower — are waiting for you after the jump.

2727 Kirby, 77098, Condos, Highrises, New Construction: Residential, Upper Kirby

07/29/08 10:28am

Enter the Pipe Wrench: The MainPlace Movie

Downtown, Highrises, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments

6 Comments

All hail MainPlace! All hail mighty MainPlace! Your towerishness is so . . . smooth and strong!

Videos of Hines’s new office tower at Main and Walker Downtown and its 10 lower molar-and-bicuspid trees are out. If you can’t hear the John-Williams-for-Real-Estate soundtrack, you’re missing half the fun.

When you’re done munching on popcorn and watching the movie above, be sure to catch the slightly more sober second feature, which includes actual information about the building.

Videos [Hines Mainplace, via HAIF, via the Swamplot tipline]
Previously in Swamplot: Mainplace: The Pipe Wrench That Ate Downtown Houston, MainPlace: Hinesâ€™s 46-Story Green Pipe-Wrench Dream

77002, Commercial Real Estate, Highrises, MainPlace, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments

07/10/08 1:12pm

Mainplace: The Pipe Wrench That Ate Downtown Houston

Downtown, Highrises, New Construction, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments

4 Comments

MainPlace, Main and Rusk, Downtown Houston

The new MainPlace website features a bunch of snazzy new and revised rendered views of Hines’s 46-story Downtown office tower. Also included: plans of the building showing 2 street-level retail spaces — big enough maybe for a sushi restaurant plus a small postcard shop for tourists.

Promised to come soon on that website: videos. We hope they’ll play up some of the 1950s-era Japanese horror movie theming going on in a few of the new images.

After the jump: Plans! Sky Gardens! Shiny Glass! Run for your lives!

77002, Commercial Real Estate, Highrises, MainPlace, New Construction, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments

Chinatown

07/09/08 10:43am

Park 8 Chinatown Condo Project: Parked?

Commercial Real Estate, Condos, Highrises, Medical Buildings, Mixed Use, Parks, Proposed Developments, Strip Centers

2 Comments

Crane for Park 8, Beltway 8 Near Arthur Storey Park, Houston

Lou Minatti notes that the construction crane parked on the site of the Park 8 condo tower project on the west side of Beltway 8 between Bellaire and Beechnut has at long last been dismantled and removed. Is it time to say goodbye to the Land of Oz?

More bad news for fans of the 3-tower (plus hospital and strip center) project: The video originally embedded in our story about the project from last year is down too. But don’t worry . . . YouTube has a copy! See it again — and relive some of that Oz highrise magic — after the jump.

77072, Canceled Projects, Chinatown, Commercial Real Estate, Condos, Highrises, Hospitals, Medical Buildings, Mixed Use, Parks, Proposed Developments, Retail, Strip Centers

Champion Forest

07/03/08 8:52pm

Neighborhood Guessing Game Over: Lonely at the Top

Champions, Condos, Highrises, Homes for Sale, Interiors, Neighborhood Guessing Game

1 Comment

Neighborhood Guessing Game 14: Living Room

Well, where were we? This week’s mystery sky-pad fetched individual guesses of: Greenway Plaza, Museum District/Med Center, “near Woodway,” Gessner and Memorial, Memorial between Shepherd and Westcott, The Woodlands, Champions, Champion Forest, Riverside Terrace, Sugarland, Missouri City, River Oaks, Glendower Court (actually, “North of Westheimer and probably west of Shepherd, in that town-house filled area south of River Oaks”), and the Galleria.

Some of you guessed particular buildings. Two of you took a stab at Regency House, 2 1/2 fell for Four Leaf Towers, and 2 said it was the Timber Top. We also had guesses of the Huntingdon, the Willowick, Bayou Bend Towers, “the highrise near the Medical Center and Hermann Park” (the Parklane or the Warwick Towers or the Mosaic?), the Endeavour, “a small mid-rise apartment complex” on Augusta between San Felipe and Westheimer, the St. Clair Condos near the Post Oak YMCA, 14 or 15 Greenway Plaza, Hermann Towers (?), and the Spires.

The winner is LawrenceDean, who was first to name the Timber Top highrise in Champion Forest — and threw in this bit of color commentary:

Iâ€™m going to go with this being a glimpse of the lifestyle of a (very old) northside ballerâ€¦..

However, this came after some excellent advance work by Bernard, who is apparently expert in staring out of windows:

I donâ€™t see how it can be â€œin townâ€. Take a look out the window. Thereâ€™s nothing but green space. Itâ€™s hard to imagine a high rise in town that wouldnâ€™t have a view of at least a couple tall buildings popping up from the tree tops.

Itâ€™s clearly a two story unit. Must be a penthouse. But it doesnâ€™t look too high up. The building canâ€™t be more than 15-20 stories.

Maybe itâ€™s on the west side of town with a west facing view. It would suck to have a penthouse facing the wrong direction. . . .

There are two patches of green out the window. Is that a golf course? Maybe some forward thinking developer stole (I mean borrowed and never repaid) some S&L money and built a mini-high-rise out in The Woodlands or Champions. I donâ€™t know those ares very well.

If only you had! That’s enough for an honorable mention, though!

Special recognition goes to our two fully authorized troublemakers this week — Jeff and GoogleMaster — who identified the listing to us privately and then vied to keep easily swayed guessers focused on inside-the-Loop neighborhoods. This loopy comment by Jeff, in particular, is priceless:

Seriously, only an Inner Looper would have elephant tusks next to their couch.

After some initial overreaching, this Timber Top penthouse has been sitting on the market for quite some time. How long? See our summary:

77069, Champion Forest, Condos, Highrises, Homes for Sale, Interiors, Neighborhood Guessing Game, Timber Top

07/02/08 11:38am

Ashby Highrise: One Permit Away from Approval

Boulevard Oaks, Condos, Development Restrictions, Highrises, Neighborhood Disputes, Proposed Developments, Quicklink, Southampton

72 Comments

ASHBY HIGHRISE: ONE PERMIT AWAY FROM APPROVAL “Having cleared six of seven departmental reviews, dating back July 30, the project only lacks clearance from Public Works and Engineering’s traffic section.” Developer Matthew Morgan says Buckhead Investment Partners will address four outstanding traffic concerns and resubmit the project for approval soon. [West University Examiner; previously]

77005, Apartments, Ashby Highrise, Boulevard-Oaks, Condos, Highrises, Neighborhood Disputes, Proposed Developments, Southampton

06/26/08 10:51am

White Oak Tower: It Was All Just a Bad Drawing

Highrises, Houston Heights, Proposed Developments, Real Estate Marketing

10 Comments

Sign on White Oak, Next to Onion Creek Coffee House

A post offering “a few notes of clarification” appears on the HAIF thread discussing the new sign on the property next to the Onion Creek Coffee House on White Oak:

a. The structure, as currently envisioned, will include first floor retail and parking, probably two floors of parking and six to seven floors of office/studio lease space. The top floor of the garage will be designed for an art gallery, or similar space, with the roof of the garage as outdoor terrace areas.

b. The project is in a very, very early design stage and will be a Class-A “green” structure with early 20th-century details. Equivalent-scaled structures might be the Lancaster downtown or The Plaza in Montrose.

c. Target tenants will be neighborhood small businesses and individuals currently doing business in homes, garages, guest rooms, etc…within walking or biking distance and not wanting a heavy commute routine.

d. Project is in commercial district and would only “border” the residential district of the Heights.

e. Since it is primarily an office building there are considerations for the parking to be utilized after-hours by the nighttime oriented buinesses nearby for off-street parking which would limit the intrusion of parking into residential areas.

f. This is the only information available at this time. Further postings will come in the near future.

Thank you for your interest.

High Rise Apartments on White Oak? [HAIF]
More on the Heights highrise [Off the Kuff]
At Risk: New 14-Story Tower Drawn in the Heights [Swamplot]

Photo: HAIF user tmariar

77007, Commercial Real Estate, Highrises, Houston Heights, Proposed Developments, Real Estate Marketing

06/25/08 12:57pm

Five Allen Center: Lifting the Shroud on a 50-Story Tower

Downtown, Highrises, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments

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Proposed 5 Allen Center, Houston This hazy image of a new office tower planned for the northwest corner of Downtown, unveiled from the depths of the interwebs by HAIF user nate, is apparently meant to be the new Five Allen Center. It’s listed as a 1.2-million-sq.-ft. “near-term future development” in a Brookfield Properties document from this month.

A Brookfield executive described the project at a panel discussion on Downtown development earlier this year, according to a Houston Business Journal article by Jennifer Dawson a tipster alerted us to:

Brookfield is planning a 50-story office building on a 2.5-acre site west of 3 Allen Center, but will not begin construction until it is at least 50 percent leased, said Paul Layne, Brookfield’s executive vice president over the Houston region.

Layne predicted that by the time Brookfield’s all-glass, planned LEED Gold-certified building is finished, Class A rental rates downtown will be roughly $50 per square foot on a 10-year lease.

The project is referred to as the “Gateway Site” on Brookfield’s website:

A 2.5 acre parcel, the Gateway site would have a sky bridge connection to the Allen Center and unobstructed views to the west. The Gateway site is surrounded by historical parkland to the north, low-rise residential to the west and the Metropolitan Racquet Club garage to the south.

That looks like the northeast corner of Houston Ave. (the I-45 northbound feeder, at that point) and West Dallas.

Corporate Profile (PDF) [Brookfield Properties]
Development [Brookfield Properties]
Houston CBD Poised for Building Boom [HAIF]
Downtown office towers jump off starting block in tandem [Houston Business Journal]

Image: Brookfield Properties

77002, Commercial Real Estate, Downtown, Highrises, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments

Highrises

06/23/08 4:12pm

At Risk: New 14-Story Tower Drawn in the Heights