Katy

Brookshire
01/11/10 3:11pm

New Rooms To Go on I-10, Just Minutes from Downtown Houston

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Furniture, Katy, Openings and Closings, Retail
12 Comments

The city’s official new “Welcome to Houston” sign for travelers approaching from the east west was moved further west to Brookshire over the weekend, as the ginormous new Rooms To Go Super Center facing the Katy Freeway opened for business. The distribution center and store stretch a mere 1,600 ft. along the I-10 frontage road, directly across from the Igloo plant and almost 6 miles west of the Katy Mills Mall. The entire facility takes up more than 1,000,000 sq. ft. A quick partial drive-by view:

Photos: Pankaj (top) and JimmyxBoi (bottom)

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Air Quality
12/23/09 10:59am

The Gift of Benzene

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Houston Ship Channel, Industrial Properties, Katy, Quicklink
11 Comments

THE GIFT OF BENZENE What’s that faint, slightly sweet smell in the air? More from Chris Vogel’s report on Houston’s industrial emissions: “According to the City of Houston, a six-month survey in 2008 showed that six out of seven air monitors near the ship channel detected benzene levels above what the EPA says can cause cancer in ten out of every million people. That’s ten times higher than what is considered an acceptable risk. ‘Until recently I didn’t even know they were releasing any benzene into the atmosphere,’ says Dr. Charles Koller, a leukemia specialist at MD Anderson. ‘It’s shocking to me. It seems, frankly, criminal.’ It can take more than ten years for anemia to develop in someone who has been exposed to benzene, says Koller, and even longer for leukemia. A person also needs to be genetically susceptible. ‘We don’t know how susceptibility works,’ he says, ‘we just know that it works.’ . . . ‘Once benzene gets in the air,’ [Koller] says, ‘it’s everywhere. So even in Katy, there’s someone who, if they’re susceptible, will get [sick] from what’s going on in the Houston Ship Channel.’” [Houston Press]

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Comments
07/30/09 8:30pm

Comment of the Day: Houston’s Room To Spread Out

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Development Strategies, Katy, Landscape, Quicklink, Wildlife
16 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOUSTON’S ROOM TO SPREAD OUT “. . . We by far are not paving our wilderness in concrete. The Katy Prairie represents and extremely small portion of area getting developed. The land you see in the Katy Prairie exists throughout south central Louisiana were it’ll likely never be developed. The Texas Coastal plains is quite undeveloped also. All this crying over really nothing. Wildlife is quite more adaptable than we give them credit for and they’ll move easily where they have to. I’m more and more convinced that people that live in Houston that go after developers for building the outer suburbs don’t realized how much is not developed when they leave the city. I guess they fly everywhere versus drive. The drive from Houston to Dallas alone should demonstrate how uninhabited this state is. Better yet, drive US 59 in either direction from Houston.” [kjb434, commenting on Investing in the Grand Parkway]

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Air Quality
07/17/09 4:27pm

Chlorine Clouds over Katy

by
Hazards, Katy, Toxic Sites, Windstone Colony
3 Comments

Katy residents living near a pool supply company got breathtaking views of the spectacular black plumes emanating from the RAM Chemical and Supply warehouse at 4949 Greenhouse Rd. during last weekend’s fire.

But the fun wasn’t entirely over: A separate episode yesterday resulted in a shelter-in-place order for a few hours last night — for downwind neighborhoods east of the Windstone Colony subdivision, stretching from Greenhouse Rd. to Barker Cypress. Fire officials warned of toxic clouds billowing out from a supply of hazardous chemicals still housed in the singed remains of the warehouse.

Video: Kevin Neugebauer

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Critters
06/01/09 3:14pm

Rough Weather and Marauding Visitors: Tough Times in the Forbidden Gardens of Katy

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Flooding, Hazards, Katy, Williamsburg Parish
8 Comments

The ravages of the Katy Prairie have taken their toll on the models and unburied treasure at Forbidden Gardens, reports Brittanie Shey:

In 1996, when the museum first opened, it must have been an amazingly detailed sight. But [Forbidden Gardens founder Ira] Poon and his builders didn’t account for the Houston heat and humidity, which ruined a lot of the hand-painted details. Each terra cotta soldier used to hold a wooden weapon in his hand, but reckless children would climb into the display and take the swords to play with. When the soldiers started to break or peel, it was impossible to order more because the molds had been destroyed. [Weekend manager Alicia] Mendez said she and coworkers spend a few hours each summer having at the displays with Gorilla Glue to fix what they can.

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Freeways and Toll Roads
05/12/09 7:50pm

Sub-Suburban SUV Adventure: Braving That Big Trip “Downtown”

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Katy, Traffic, Transportation
44 Comments

Spurred on by family members waiting patiently at the Carrabba’s on Kirby — and the promotional whizzes at GM and CBS Radio, who’ve furnished her with a brand-new vehicle to drive for 8 weeks — mommy blogger and new Chevy Traverse spokesmom Stephanie Click ventures out from her “own little world” in Katy to . . . the scary and purportedly trafficky Inner Loop!

Will she make it? How will her blogger-swag loaner car stand up to the rigors of multi-lane Houston driving?

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Development Strategies
05/01/09 11:59am

The Grand Exit

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Katy, Land for Sale, Malls, Proposed Developments
1 Comment

Those long-lingering plans by the Simon Property Group to build a mall called “The Grand” on 134 acres wedged between I-10 and the threatened Grand Parkway — catty-corner to the Katy Mills Mall — appear to be uh . . . “in question.” The Houston Business Journal‘s Jennifer Dawson reports:

The circular acreage surrounded by a mall ring road has at various times been earmarked for an outlet mall, regional mall, lifestyle center and mixed-use center.

Simon recently began marketing the vacant land for sale through local retail brokerage firm Page Partners.

Hmmm . . . how best to spin this?

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Industrial Properties
04/03/09 12:16pm

Out in Discount Land

by
Katy, New Construction, Quicklink
No Comments

OUT IN DISCOUNT LAND Former Halliburton unit PathFinder Energy Services, now a part of Smith International, is building a new $20-million, 225,000-sq.-ft. tilt-up campus on 25 acres in Katy. “The center will be located near the northwest corner of Colonial Parkway and the Grand Parkway, next to the highly visible, 800,000-square-foot 99 Cents Only warehouse along Interstate 10. PathFinder’s site is across I-10 from where Houston-based KBR Inc. planned to build 900,000 square feet of office space to house most of its 4,500 local employees. The KBR project, which would have extended the Energy Corridor farther west, has been put on hold for economic reasons. PathFinder intends to consolidate hundreds of employees from four buildings it leases in Northwest Houston into the Katy-area site, which was acquired in December 2007 from an Interfin Cos. partnership.” [Houston Business Journal]

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Cypress
03/12/09 8:55pm

Grand Parkway Segment E: Mall Shopper Express Lanes

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Fairfield, Freeways and Toll Roads, Katy, Malls, Proposed Developments, Quicklink
15 Comments

GRAND PARKWAY SEGMENT E: MALL SHOPPER EXPRESS LANES Approvals by the Harris County Commissioners Court this week — along with the timely arrival of $181 million of the state’s stimulus money — means nothing but a new Sierra Club lawsuit now stands in the way of building Segment E of the Grand Parkway toll road. The segment, which will cut through the Katy Prairie between I-10 and 290, will allow shoppers a convenient and direct link from the Katy Mills Mall to the new Houston Premium Outlets mall in Cypress, just west of Fairfield. “Peter Haughton with General Growth Properties said, ‘We need this road to continue the build out of Bridgeland, which we hope will be one of America’s best master planned communities.’” [abc13]

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Critters
03/02/09 8:18am

The Buzz in Settlers Village

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Hazards, Katy, Settlers Village
2 Comments

The Katy real-estate rush spreads to the insect world:

Neighbors say bees are nothing new to the Settlers Village subdivision.

One homeowner just down the block had a similar infestation about a year ago and had to remove the siding from his home to get the hive out, said Rowhan Cummings . . .

“They’re traveling,” Cummings says. “Once they got rid of those, they came back here.”

The 12-year-old subdivision is surrounded by open fields, and Cummings says the bees simply appear when the flowers bloom, then look for a place to settle down.

“Those bees were probably here before we were,” he says.

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Buying and Selling
02/25/09 11:35am

All Quiet on the Upper Katy Corridor

by
Katy, Price Trends, West Houston
6 Comments

“What I see on my bike rides,” writes 2-wheeled real-estate observer Lou Minatti, “is that construction has ground to a halt in Katy.” A few more louminating observations on the cycles of West Houston real estate:

The main upscale neighborhoods in the Houston metro area lie between downtown Houston and Katy, in the corridor south of I-10 and north of Westheimer/FM1093. Houston residents know what I am talking about. That narrow 30 mile x 8 mile corridor contains the trendy new “lofts” near downtown, expensive new condo towers in the Galleria area, River Oaks, Memorial, the Villages and Cinco Ranch. . . .

Me? I live north of I-10, the crappy side. It was a nice quiet place when we moved out here in 1995. It’s still an OK place, no real problems. But property values have been flat since 2000. The houses on this side of the freeway are between $100k-$150k. Here’s the thing: Long-time readers here have seen my videos and have seen the inventory and foreclosures from my bike tours. The new houses in these videos [both featured in this Swamplot post from last fall] have all been sold, and this is AFTER the shady lending was stopped. I did a video update three weeks ago [above] and didn’t post it on YouTube because there’s almost nothing on the market! In my subdivision of 900 houses there are two houses for sale and one foreclosure. That’s it.

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Houston Data
02/23/09 3:01pm

Katy and Those New Home Growths

by
Katy, New Construction: Residential, Quicklink
5 Comments

KATY AND THOSE NEW HOME GROWTHS “Houston is the largest home-building market in the nation, according to the Greater Houston Partnership and Builder and Hanley Wood Market Intelligence, with 42,697 building permits. Population trends, job growth, home prices and the rate of building permits all factored in to rank the top 75 markets in 2008. Assisting the numbers, no doubt, was Katy. Business Week magazine ranked Katy as the second-fastest residential community in the U.S. in a study published this month titled ‘America’s Biggest Boomtowns.’ The study was based on new home growth from 2000 to 2008.” And what will next year’s numbers say? [Houston Business Journal]

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Hazards
02/17/09 5:23pm

Seen on the Street: Armature Armchair

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Houston Heights, Industrial Properties, Katy, Montrose, Openings and Closings, Parking, Restaurants, Strip Centers
6 Comments

Ready to see some fun pix from around town? Here’s the guardhouse for the loading dock at the Igloo plant in Katy, as captured a while back by blogger Donna B.

A few more:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Cinco Ranch
01/06/09 11:51am

Azzarelli’s Hits the Highway

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Katy, Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Retail, Shopping Centers
12 Comments

Azzarelli’s Restaurant has fled the Tuscan-styled Villagio Town Center in Cinco Ranch, reports InsideKaty blogger Helen Eriksen — leaving behind a delinquent-rent notice on the front door . . . and some sort of lawsuit:

Inside the spacious eatery, napkins, bread plates and wine glasses are neatly arranged on the tables. Christmas decorations are also still in place but it’s unclear if the closing is permanent.

Efforts to reach [owner Frank] Triola were unsuccessful as of this blog posting. The person who answered the phone for the leasing agent, Villagio Partners, said she would have to check to see if someone could call me back because there is ongoing litigation in the matter.

Meanwhile, commenters have sighted a new Azzarelli’s just off the Katy Freeway:

However, driving down 1-10 heading west from Houston, the Barker Cypress exit has a new strip center and what do you know… Azzerelli’s is opening up a new restaurant! I think that the rent was very high at the Villagio Town Center and they are moving to a lower cost building. ??

Tuscan theming doesn’t come cheap. Another giveaway: the flashing “I-10 Location Coming soon!” notice on the Azzarelli’s website.

Photo: Azzarelli’s

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Katy
12/15/08 10:45am

How To Bring the Mall Closer to Main Street: Katy Shows the Way

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Mixed Use, Proposed Developments, Shopping Centers, Streets
4 Comments

Just line that short central driveway through your new power-center parking lot with a small number of stores and head-in parking. Fortify the freeway frontage with an FM-1960-worthy strip of more than the usual number of pad sites, and build the whole thing next to a mall! Next problem?

Introducing the new Katy Main Street, a just-announced 86-acre shopping center named for the short strip of 4 retail buildings meant to line its gullet.

The mixed-use development is designed to include 485,000 square feet of retail space, 500,000 square feet of office space and a full-service hotel and convention center at the southwest corner of Interstate 10 and Pin Oak Road in Katy.

All this . . . just across the street from the Katy Mills Mall!

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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