11/14/07 10:15am

Paczki, A Polish Jelly Donut

By now everybody knows the full story about the latest proposal to turn the Reliant Astrodome into a wacky, gondola-and-balloon-filled convention-hotel donut, right? Sure, it took the Astrodome Redevelopment Corporation four years to work out the plan — and okay, the would-be redevelopers might be a little stingy about actually showing anybody what the thing is supposed to look like. But the proposal’s clear enough that when the Rodeo and the Texans say they don’t like the project we know enough about the plan to understand what they’re objecting to. Right?

Well, maybe not.

In the latest installment of the Chronicle‘s “Oh, by the way, we failed to mention” series on the latest Dome redo efforts, reporter Bill Murphy drops this little nugget about twenty-three paragraphs in:

The rodeo’s [Chief Operating Officer Leroy] Shafer said he understands that officials in his organization might be viewed as “obstructionists” because of their opposition to the plan. But the public, he said, would understand the rodeo’s stance if officials of the group could speak freely about what they see as the project’s problems. Rodeo officials had to sign confidentiality agreements before they were allowed to review details of the plan.

Hey, Harris County residents should feel lucky: we got to see a drawing of the project without all of us having to sign non-disclosure agreements! If we all promise to sign and keep our mouths shut, can we find out about the project secrets too?

But there’s more:

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11/09/07 10:28am

Gondolas

Hidden in today’s Chronicle update on the Dome’s status are a few more exciting details about the Astrodome Redevelopment Corporation’s still-mysterious plans to remake the former home of the Astros and Oilers into a convention hotel. It’s gonna be like a county fair!

Company CEO John Clanton casually mentions that the new hotel will have seven restaurants and an amusement park, possibly including a ride to “near the top of the Dome,” plus tethered hot-air balloons, a batting cage, and gondolas.

It’s unclear whether Clanton is referring to Venetian-style gondolas for navigating all the new waterways inside, or the kind you see on ski slopes, for crossing the ballfield central fairgrounds. More details on the Astrodome Redevelopment Corp. website!

Oh . . . that’s right. There isn’t one.

After the jump, the real reason County Judge Ed Emmett doesn’t want to demolish the Dome.

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11/07/07 8:02am

Astros Vs. Expos at the Astrodome, 1992

More high comedy surrounding the Astrodome: Just what is Texans owner Bob McNair’s problem with the proposal to redevelop the Astrodome into a hotel? It’s . . . the hotel!

“A hotel would be in direct conflict with our games and when the rodeo is going on. You can’t tell guests they can’t come to the hotel on Sundays. That wouldn’t be fair to them. It wouldn’t be fair to our fans.

“We’re trying to be open-minded about this. We’re willing to look at anything that doesn’t conflict with our events.”

Now, you’re probably asking yourself: Haven’t the Texans known that the Astrodome Redevelopment Corporation was wanting to turn the Dome into a hotel now for about . . . what, three years? Wouldn’t the two groups maybe have wanted to chat with each other at some point during that period?

Silly you! You’re presuming that the Texans and the Rodeo and the Harris County Sports and Convention Corporation — Reliant Park’s landlords — actually have some intention or incentive to come up with a workable plan to redevelop the Astrodome. And you’re forgetting that turning the Dome into a hotel was an idea pushed early on by . . . the HCSCC’s chairman, Mike Surface! Remember that space-theme amusement-park concept that was so brilliant that the group that proposed it won the “competition” the HCSCC set up four years ago — even over other developer groups that had more experience and deeper pockets? That group was the Astrodome Redevelopment Corporation.

A year later the ARC scrapped its own space-park concept in favor of the convention-hotel complex pushed by the HCSCC. With the Sports and Convention Corporation’s backing, the company worked in secret for three more years to refine the proposal.

Good thing the HCSCC didn’t solicit any alternate proposals during that time. Just think of the confusion that would have caused!

Photo of Astrodome from August 28, 1992: Flickr user j4e0f0f

11/01/07 10:22am

Overhead View of Proposed Astrodome Hotel

You know things must be getting desperate for the Astrodome Redevelopment Corporation, which earlier this week suffered the indignity of having two rather important stakeholders come out against the latest incarnation of the company’s tightly guarded, four-years-in-the-making, Frankenstein-inspired proposal for bringing the Dome back to life. When they finally got to see the proposal, “recently,” the Texans and the Livestock Show & Rodeo decided the Astrodome’s new incarnation would be incompatible with their own operations.

But the greatest indication of the redevelopment group’s desperation was revealed just yesterday in local ABC-TV reporter Miya Shay’s blog. That’s right, the Astrodome Redevelopment Corporation is going for broke: The company finally decided to release to the public actual images of its proposal for the county-owned facility!

Yes, it’s a daring strategy to use on a property paid for by local taxpayers, but it just might work.

After the jump: the newly released images of the Astrodome hotel-under-glass!

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10/31/07 11:46am

Reliant Astrodome

A funny thing happened on the Astrodome Redevelopment Corp.‘s way to, uh . . . redevelop the Astrodome: They forgot to get buy-in on their kitchen-sink proposal from a few important parties:

The $450 million plan to reinvent the Reliant Astrodome as an upscale convention hotel may have hit a wall Tuesday when the Texans and Houston rodeo officials came out against it.

The Texans and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo’s contracts may give them veto power over new development at Reliant Park. Also, a letter of intent signed by the county and Astrodome Redevelopment Corp. requires the company to get the Texans and the rodeo to sign off on the project.

Oops! Hey, it might have been a good idea to ask these folks what they would approve of—before spending four years scheming in their secret design bunker. Just a suggestion . . .

“Not until we saw their plans recently did we realize that this project has the ability to cannibalize our operations,” said Leroy Shafer, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo’s chief operating officer. “Every dollar spent that is spent there is one that might not be spent at the rodeo.”

Jamey Rootes, president of the Houston Texans, said the team was worried that the hotel would hamper the flow of fans in and out of Reliant Park on the team’s 10 game days.

The nerve! The response from Scott Hanson, president of the Astrodome Redevelopment Corp.:

Frankly, we are quite shocked by the Rodeo’s position. We have been working with the Rodeo organization for quite some time and were hopeful that our proposed redevelopment would only enhance their month-long event.

Apparently, “working with” does not include “sharing details of the proposal before it is complete.”

At last, the beauty of the Sports and Convention Corporation’s original plot from a few years ago is revealed: give exclusive rights to flail about in secret in search of a new use for the Dome to a company that, um . . . is really good at being secretive and flailing.

Coming next from those brilliant Dome masters: If these jokers can’t figure out what to do with that thing, maybe no jokers can!

Astrodome photo: Flickr user here_we_are

10/24/07 8:23am

Lots for Sale on Avondale, Stanford, and Westheimer in New Avondale West Historic District, Houston

Here’s one of those great coincidences that makes watching Houston real estate so much fun:

Asking price: $5 million. Being able to tell your new neighbors that you can tear down whatever history you want in their new district after 90 days: priceless.

10/18/07 10:00am

Sunken Play Area at the Frame-Harper House, Houston

Texas Architect magazine features a home that shows what the famous postwar Case Study program of modern steel houses might have looked like if it had landed on bayou banks in Houston instead of L.A. hillsides.

Of course, what was cool in the fifties wasn’t especially appreciated in the eighties. The home’s second owners

removed the terraced landscaping and painted the entire house white, including its darkstained walnut paneling and load-bearing walls of pink Mexican brick. They filled sunken terrazzo soaking bathtubs in children’s and parents’ bathrooms with concrete. They removed the lacy, cast-plaster screens separating the living and dining rooms designed by Gloria Frame’s father, Joseph Klein, and the unusual turquoise St. Charles steel kitchen cabinets with their little shiny stainless steel legs. In the main living areas they covered over a series of recessed light coves in the ceiling depicted in superb photographs by Ezra Stoller, which were published in House & Garden in September 1961. They also replaced the original copper roof flashing with galvanized steel flashing that had rusted to the point of failure by 2004 when the house’s third owner, Dana Harper, persuaded them to sell it.

After the jump, more swank pics from Harper’s expensive restoration of this cool modern home off Memorial Dr.

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10/03/07 7:43am

Postcard of Hotel Cotton, Now the Montagu Hotel, Downtown HoustonWhat a way to make up for yesterday! Finally, demolition permits are issued for more than a dozen addresses within the almost-full-block at Main and Rusk being offed to make way for Hines’s MainPlace downtown — including the historic 1912 Beatty-West Building, the 1940 former Bond Clothes store, and the 11-story Montagu Hotel, originally the 1913 Hotel Cotton. Plus: Way, way down Main St., the Droubi’s railroad car at Kirby Dr. finally leaves the station.

Our list of colorful names and addresses of stores-no-more, as usual, begin after the jump.

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09/07/07 10:19am

Carnival in the Astrodome

The crack team that the Astrodome’s unelected caretakers selected four years ago to redevelop the Houston landmark—for the brilliance of their proposed idea and their ability to make it happen—has changed its concept yet again! This time, though, the secretive group really has got it right. No more Space Theme Park. No more Ye Olde Fake Texas Courthouse Hotel Under Glass. This time, it’s a . . . modernish hotel . . . wrapped by a parking garage . . . with rides . . . and ponds and trees . . . and leftover parts of a ballfield . . . and conventioneers!

A faux Texas courthouse and other features that played on the state’s past are out. Plans now call for including a section of the Dome’s seats, part of the diamond and an overall contemporary design that plays up the building’s cutting-edge nature when it opened in 1965.

“We’re going to have rides. There could be air rides that take you off the ground and make you say, ‘Wow,’ ” said Scott Hanson, president of Astrodome Redevelopment Co., the firm hoping to transform the Dome. “We’re going to have a few of those. They would be easy-going rides that would show off the venue.”

Brilliant! Now, all they’ll have to do is convince five county commissioners in secret session, and the private takeover of a public stadium county taxpayers have paid billions of dollars for will be complete.

Astrodome carnival photo: Flickr user Jeff Balke

08/01/07 6:00pm

Elder Street Artist Lofts in the Former Old Jefferson Davis HospitalSome residents of the new Elder St. Artist Lofts (formerly the Old Jefferson Davis Hospital) in the First Ward are upset with the building’s management:

“To me it’s not an artist loft anymore,” says one resident who’s been there since the beginning. “We receive the newsletters from ArtSpace in Minneapolis and we see the artist live-work spaces that are opening up in Buffalo, New York and in San Francisco and other parts of the country, and they’re active and they’re artist-run and they’ve got the support of the city, they’ve got the support of the community and they’re vibrant. And we’re not on that level, and I don’t know if we ever will be.”

Current and former tenants gripe to the Houston Press that the resident managers play favorites and will only rent month-to-month, and that there aren’t enough artists in the building.

Photo of Elder St. Artists Lofts: Greater Houston Preservation Alliance

07/17/07 10:14am

442 Heights Blvd by Harry James Building & Design

The movement to rid the Heights of dilapidated old houses and replace them with far more appropriate historic structures continues. The latest contribution: a demolition permit obtained for the Doyle Mansion at 945 Heights Blvd., which was built by William Wilson (who later founded neighboring Woodland Heights) in 1898, and which somehow managed to sneak onto the National Register of Historic Places about 100 years later.

Harry James has been buying properties all along Heights Boulevard, tearing down homes and replacing them with what he calls “Victorian Classics.”

And now it will happen to the Doyle Mansion too.

A “Preservation Alert” notice sent out by Historic Houston’s Lynn Edmundson reveals a meeting with James last week didn’t go so well:

Despite its deteriorated condition, it is architecturally and historically a very significant residence on Heights Boulevard that could and should be saved.

Unfortunately, the builder now appears unwilling to entertain any offers.

James features several Victorian Classics (the new kind) on his website, along with a childhood story that reveals something preservationists won’t want to hear: the homebuilder doesn’t mind getting his ass kicked if it means he gets to build what he wants:

Needless to say, my dad wasn’t very happy! I remember he gave me a gentle kick across my backside as I scurried back to the house with my head hung down. It seemed like he was mad at me for months. Years later, when I reflect, I realize that what my dad failed to see was the level of skill and craftsmanship that was used in the construction of this secret door into his garage.

Photo of 442 Heights Blvd.: Harry James Building & Design

05/11/07 12:59pm

Not wasting a single day, Weingarten has already filed for a “certificate of appropriateness” that would allow it to demolish the northern curve of the River Oaks Shopping Center horseshoe.

The HAHC will consider the certificate at its May 23 meeting; if the commission denies Weingarten the certificate, the company will have to wait until Aug. 7, 90 days after it applied for the COA, to actually get demolition permits.

Looks like we’re right on schedule.

04/26/07 12:28pm

River Oaks Theater

Disposing of older buildings used to be so simple. It’s tougher now, but it’s not impossible. You’ll just need to use some new techniques. If the buildings you want to demolish have a high enough profile, you’ll also need a good PR consultant who can help you with strategy.

For a while, it looked like Weingarten Realty might have some trouble tearing down its historic River Oaks Shopping Center, River Oaks Theater, and Alabama Bookstop (which used to be the Alabama Theater—back in the day when people watched movies instead of reading so much). When rumors first began to circulate, there was the big hullabaloo about the River Oaks Theater, and all those online petitions.

But since then, not so much. Weingarten clearly has its winning gameplan mapped out. How did they do it? How do you tear down an immensely popular older building in Houston today, and do it right?

The technique you need involves outrage bait. What’s that? Read on, after the jump!

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