09/29/08 1:03pm

Last week Hair Balls blogger Dusti Rhodes reported that most Houston-area haunted-house attractions were faring pretty well after Hurricane Ike — and managed to elicit this gem from the owner of haunted-house chain Phobia:

Our customer base is still screwed over. We bet they’ll be happy to hear that the fake houses in the area have their power back.

Now from Crosby comes a different kind of Hurricane Ike haunted house horror story: A warehouse attached to auto accessories shop B&M Accessories received so much damage from the storm that the owners decided to scrap their plans to expand their store into it. Instead, they’re turning the entire building into . . . yes, a haunted house:

“When we first came and walked through, my son said it looked like a haunted house in here,” [co-owner Billy] Maness said.

Though the power was out around much of the community, two light bulbs flicked on at the mention of Halloween.

After some discussion it was decided: the eerie warehouse was to become Crosby’s House of Terror, a 9,000-square foot maze of Halloween fun and fear.

While others are mourning the loss of their homes and businesses, the duo turned their misfortune around, giving the entire community something to scream about. Since Sunday, they’ve been hard at work, not cleaning up, but ramping up the Halloween spirit unleashed by Hurricane Ike.

The Halloween attraction will open to the public on October 3. Less than a year ago, the building at 117 Ulrich Ln., off FM 2100 in Crosby, was Shooters Bar. Before that, it was called the Chicken Coop.

After the jump: design touches from Hurricane Ike!

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08/06/08 2:46pm

Bridge over Railroad Tracks, First Ward North of Edwards St., Houston

It seems son-of-a-son-of-a-guv Paul Hobby wasn’t quite clear at first what to do with a huge industrial site he bought in the First Ward:

Over the years, Hobby says, there was interest in turning it into an indoor soccer facility. There was also talk of growing lettuce inside the large warehouse. But a year ago, Hobby came up with the idea to create a data center in the space.

But that’s just the start of it. The site is the former Budweiser distribution plant Silver Eagle Distributors left behind when it built its new bunker further west on Washington Ave. Hobby bought the First Ward facility quietly from Silver Eagle in 2004 and leased it back to the company for a while before it left. The site stretches along Edwards St. from Sawyer to Silver, a few blocks north of Washington.

Indoor farm . . . server farm . . . why not? The possibilities are endless! But then, there’s always . . . townhomes!

A row of eight to 10 townhomes are slated to be built along Edwards Street. And an undetermined number of units are being considered for the eastern-most part of the property.

Of course! But it gets better . . .

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04/28/08 7:18pm

Site of Fallbrook Distribution Center, 8103 Fallbrook Dr., Houston

Just add punchline: If all goes as planned, Home Depot will soon be operating a LEED-certified distribution center just south of the Sam Houston Race Park in Northwest Houston.

Pennsylvania REIT Liberty Property Trust began constructing the enormous 535,000-square-foot Fallbrook Distribution Center at the southwest corner of Fallbrook Dr. and Fairbanks-North Houston on spec, and plans to submit it to the U.S. Green Building Council for core & shell certification. Home Depot will be leasing the entire facility.

But Home Depot wanted a few changes made . . .

Liberty Property . . . switched gears in the middle of construction to make the facility — originally planned as 615,000 square feet — smaller to suit the long-term tenant. “We disassembled the east side of the building and relocated tiltwall concrete panels to create a larger employee parking area,” [Liberty Property’s Joe] Trinkle says. “We had to take apart the building to accommodate their need.”

The west side of the building was also disassembled and reconstructed in order to add a third loading dock, he says.

Gary Mabray, an industrial broker with Colliers International, says it is unusual for a construction project to undergo as many changes as this one did.

“That building was basically finished,” Mabray says. “They had to go back in and demolish slab and everything.”

Liberty Trust, a real estate investment trust, offered the tenant a build-to-suit option at another site so the building would not have to be converted, but Trinkle says the timing was off.

Photo of Fallbrook Distribution Center under construction: Liberty Property Trust

02/14/08 3:15pm

Georgia Gulf Nighttime View

Available now: A whopping 286.4 acres of lovely and historic waterfront property . . . inside Beltway 8! Easy freeway access. Close to . . . everything! Sealed bids are being accepted until April 7th.

Cushman & Wakefield, the real estate firm listing the site, said the property contains some of the last remaining large tracts of . . . land with water frontage in the Gulf Coast region.

This sounds almost too good to be true.

Photo: Georgia Gulf

01/22/08 2:50pm

Johnny Franks Auto Parts AdIt’s not just the rice silos that’ll be leaving the First Ward. Next thing you know, they’ll be demolishing . . . the used-auto-parts yard across the street. A source very close to Charles Kuffner reveals that the owner of Johnny Franks Auto Parts at 1225 Sawyer St., across the street from the Mahatma Rice silos, has already sold the land to residential developers.

But wait. Johnny Franks Auto Parts bills itself as “The Nation’s Oldest Salvage Yard.” Is this true? If so, how could Houston let such an important historical site be destroyed? Founded in 1910, the salvage yard for years advertised itself as “the house of a million parts.” Sadly — like so many other historic structures in Houston — that may be its ultimate fate.

After the jump, Kuffner counts the reasons why there’s probably no stopping residential development from taking place on this historic site:

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01/18/08 11:32am

Mahatma Rice Silos at Riviana Foods Plant, 1702 Taylor St., Houston

Gone to subdivisions, everyone!

Riviana Foods chief Bastiaan de Zeeuw gives more details about the company’s decision to close the Mahatma and Success Rice processing plant at 1702 Taylor St.:

De Zeeuw points out that the acreage devoted to rice-growing in Texas decreased by 75 percent from 1980 to 2006. In the 1980s, he says, Texas represented about 20 percent of total rice acreage in the United States. Now, it represents only 5 percent.

So what will happen to the 9.4-acre site in the increasingly less industrial area just south of I-10 once a new facility is built in Memphis? Read on, after the jump.

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01/04/08 10:45am

Riviana Foods Mahatma Rice Silos near Summer St. and Winter St., Houston

Say a long goodbye to those silos that hover over the Winter St. Studios in the industrial area just east of Sawyer St. Mahatma Rice owner Riviana Foods says it is closing its Houston plant and building a new facility in Tennessee:

Over the two-year time period, production and packaging at the Houston plant will be phased out and transferred to the new Memphis facility. At the end of this transition period, the Houston plant, which includes the Instant and Packaging Plants, Warehouse and Technical Center located at 1702 Taylor Street, will then be closed and operations will cease. Currently, approximately 250 employees work at the Houston facility. Riviana’s headquarters will remain in Houston at its Allen Parkway location.

Photo of Rice Silos at 2200 Summer St.: Flickr user emilyj82