Land Sales

Apartments
11/22/11 11:41am

West Ave-Style Apartments and Retail Planned for Dunlavy Fiesta Site?

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Buying and Selling, Lancaster Place, Land Sales, Montrose, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment, Retail
62 Comments

Survey stakes have gone up around the Montrose Fiesta Market on the southeast corner of Dunlavy and West Alabama, directly across the street from the brand-new H-E-B Montrose Market.

What could that mean? A source who is not a party to the transaction claims that the survey is connected to a sale of the property, which is already under contract for “‘crazy money’ — something on the scale of $85-$90 SF”:

The reputed use will be for a 6 to 7 story multi-use development — something on the order of West Ave or the Read-King chimera promised for the SWC of Alabama and Shepherd. . . . Personally, I find the land purchase price to be pretty hard to believe . . . because market value of land in that area is $40 – $50 max or maybe $60 at a stretch. Fiesta’s lease expires in 2014 with no renewal and either they or the owner has an early out option. The other tenants in the center all have short lease terms with no renewal.

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Discovery Green
11/03/11 5:00pm

City Playing Musical Blocks with Downtown Houses

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Downtown, Historic Preservation, Land Sales, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment, Tourism
11 Comments

Yesterday was moving day for 2 unusual Downtown buildings: The 1905 Cohn and 1904 Foley (above) houses cattycorner from the George R. Brown Convention Center. Leftover single-family homes from an area once known as Quality Hill and now strangers in the land of skyscrapers and stadiums, they’d be notable Downtown residents even if they weren’t designated historic structures. The city is moving them across the street and a block closer to Minute Maid Park, where they’re intended to become add-ons to a mysterious Regional Tourism Center proposed for the 600 block of Avenida de las Americas. According to plans flashed at the last public meeting for the Downtown/EaDo Livable Centers Study, this new building dedicated to Upper Texas Gulf Coast vacationers would face the westbound light-rail line along Capitol St. and sit at the bottom of an unidentified residential tower:

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Buying and Selling
10/03/11 9:03am

Richmond from Lucky Burger to the Harp, Ready for Something

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Castle Court, Land Sales, Montrose, Quicklink, Retail
14 Comments

RICHMOND FROM LUCKY BURGER TO THE HARP, READY FOR SOMETHING New owners of a 50,000-sq.-ft. site at the southwest corner of Richmond and Mandell in Montrose, which includes Lucky Burger, The Harp Irish Pub, Maria Selma’s Mexican Restaurant, and Orange Bar: a partnership controlled by Braun Enterprises — the same group that bought the former Harold’s in the Heights clothing store last month. Space in the retail buildings totals more than 11,000 sq. ft. Braun tells reporter Katherine Feser his group plans to hold onto the property for now but imagines some new retail development could take place next. Leases for all 4 properties expire in 2014. [Houston Chronicle] Photo: Braun Enterprises

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Apartments
09/29/11 1:06pm

A West Alabama and Weslayan Kickoff to the Next Highrise Apartment Growing Season

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Buying and Selling, Highland Village, Highrises, Land Sales, Mixed Use, Proposed Developments
22 Comments

Here’s a shot of the now-vacant corner of Weslayan and West Alabama, where PM Realty Group has announced it’ll be constructing a 35-story apartment building and parking garage — with a restaurant and “service retail” — beginning next year. The 2.6-acre site is the former location of the Confederate House at 2925 Weslayan, later known as the State Grille, which was torn down in 2008. PM Realty bought the site from Giorgio Borlenghi’s Interfin Cos. last month. No renderings from PM Realty’s architects, RTKL, have been passed around yet.


Photo: Candace Garcia

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Bankruptcies
05/09/11 2:33pm

Gulf Freeway Outlet Mall Site: Up for Grabs?

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Buying and Selling, Commercial Real Estate, Land Sales, Landscape, League City, Malls, Proposed Developments, Quicklink, Retail
1 Comment

GULF FREEWAY OUTLET MALL SITE: UP FOR GRABS? A possible complication in those plans to put a new 95-store outlet mall between the Big League Dreams sports complex and the Bay Colony shopping center west of the Gulf Freeway in League City: The Galveston County Daily News‘s Laura Elder reports that the 35 acres of land Tanger Factory Outlet Centers was hoping to purchase out of bankruptcy for $8.7 million will be going up for auction instead in just 10 days. A bankruptcy court ordered the sale last week. Tanger announced the project in January, just days after the Simon Property Group announced its plans to build another outlet center, the 100-store Galveston Premium Outlets, just 4 miles to the south, in Texas City. [Laura Elder’s Buzz Blog; previously on Swamplot] Rendering: Tanger Outlets

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Buying and Selling
03/31/11 4:38pm

How Hakeem Olajuwon Sold Metro $5.6 Million of Swampland for Just $15 Million

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Downtown, Land Sales
27 Comments

In 2005, Houston’s transportation agency agreed to pay $15 million for 17.3 acres of flood-prone land along the northern bank of White Oak Bayou just north of Downtown, reports the West University Examiner‘s Michael Reed. Former Houston Rockets and UH basketball star Hakeem Olajuwon had purchased the property from the Union Pacific Railroad for an estimated $2 million six years earlier. But even more eye-popping than Olajuwon’s roughly estimated $13 million profit on the sale is this little nugget: A separate appraisal — conducted the same year as the sale — valued the property at only $2.6 million.

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Demolitions
03/25/11 4:27pm

How They’re Making More Land in Piney Point Village

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Land Sales, Piney Point Village, Trees
6 Comments

The reader who sent in these photos of what appears to him to be the impending demolition of the house at 252 Piney Point Rd. tells Swamplot he can’t tell from the markings which trees are scheduled to come down with it — the ones with the red ribbons or the ones with the green: “There are too many to count and are almost all over 50′ tall.” The 5,022-sq.-ft. house on the almost-an-acre lot dates from 1955. The new owner bought the property last December for north of $1 million, but less than the $1,240,000 asking price. The listing included several photos of the “park like setting” just a couple of blocks north of Memorial Dr. but none of the home.

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Buying and Selling
03/11/11 10:53am

Ruggles Grill on Westheimer: Gloria’s Got Your Number

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Land Sales, Lower Westheimer, Montrose, Proposed Developments, Restaurants
10 Comments

Two immigrants from El Salvador who survived what they describe as a “precarious existence” as undocumented workers in Houston for several years plan to buy the 3 Ruggles Grill buildings at 903 Westheimer, tear them down, and build a new 7,500-sq.-ft. restaurant on the site just east of Montrose Blvd. Jose and Gloria Fuentes met each other in Houston after fleeing their war-torn native country in 1978. Their Salvadorian restaurant chain, Gloria’s, now has 12 locations in the Dallas area and one in Austin. The Ruggles purchase hasn’t been completed, the HBJ‘s Allison Wollam reports. But the company also plans to open 3 additional locations nearby: in Sugar Land, The Woodlands, and West U. Ruggles chef and co-owner Bruce Molzan hinted last month that he’d reopen the Ruggles flagship in a new location if the building sold. The 26,812-sq.-ft. property was listed for sale at the end of last year.

Photo: Moody Rambin

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Buying and Selling
02/08/11 10:47am

Get Ready for a Studemont Kroger

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Commercial Real Estate, Industrial Properties, Land Sales
63 Comments

Kroger has bought 8.5 acres of former industrial land on Studemont, just south of I-10, the Chronicle‘s Purva Patel reports. The land, which was once part of Houston’s Sixth Ward, sits just north of Arne’s Warehouse and Party Store and across the street from Grocers Supply. Kroger closed on the larger portion — a 7.2-acre cleared parcel at 1400 Studewood, listed for sale at $15.7 million — just last week. A spokesperson for the grocery chain wasn’t ready to announce a new store on the site, but did say the company had already taken possession of 1.3 acres just to the south, at 1200 Givens St. If Kroger does build a new supermarket there, the parking lot would have 450 ft. of frontage on Studemont; other industrial properties, many of them accessed from Summer St., would still be sandwiched between it and the Sawyer Heights Target.

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Commercial Real Estate
02/02/11 10:31am

The Discounting Has Begun: Idylwood Walmart Already Marked Down 25 Percent!

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Development Strategies, Franchises and Chain Stores, Idylwood, Land Sales, Proposed Developments, Retail
14 Comments

Just as Swamplot was reporting on the leaked site plan showing that a new full-size Walmart SuperCenter is being planned off the Gulf Fwy. at South Wayside Dr., Councilmember James Rodriguez comes back from a meeting with the company waving a slightly different site plan. And look, this one shows the proposed East End store between Idylwood and the freeway has already slimmed down by 58,000 sq. ft.! Does that qualify as a rollback? Plus: This plan (shown above, again rotated to fit Swamplot’s format) features 13 more parking spaces! Meanwhile, Walmart spokesperson Kellie Duhr tells the Chronicle the new store would be “about 150,000 sq. ft.” and feature a full grocery. That number jibes with the plan above. Also included this time, at no additional charge: an extra Tire and Lube Express next to the Garden Center on the south side. One curious detail, though: Both this plan and the one featured in Swamplot’s story on Monday are labeled with the same date.

What’s going into the lot at the corner of Maxwell Rd. and the I-45 feeder next to the driveway at the southwest corner of the site, labeled “Outlot 1” on both plans? A source tells Swamplot it’s being eyed for a gas station from Walmart sidekick Murphy Oil.

Plan: Doucet and Associates

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Commercial Real Estate
01/31/11 8:09am

Surprise! Walmart Buying Land Next to Idylwood for Houston’s First Inner-Loop SuperCenter

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Franchises and Chain Stores, Land Sales, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment, Retail
110 Comments

The first-ever inside-The-Loop Walmart SuperCenter will be built near the corner of South Wayside Dr. and the Gulf Freeway, a source tells Swamplot. The 28-acre site sits between Idylwood and I-45; according to a preliminary site plan currently making the rounds in that neighborhood, the store’s main entrance will be from Wayside, which also serves as the freeway entrance to a few other eastside neighborhoods, including Country Club Place and Forest Park.

According to Swamplot’s source, a real-estate entity connected to Walmart has an 8-month option to buy the property, home to 6 vacant warehouse buildings that once served as a distribution center for Oshman’s — as well as the former corporate offices of the defunct sporting goods company. Walmart has been completing its analysis of the property and is less than 30 days away from completing the land purchase, for a price of $35 a sq. ft., the source says.

Isn’t Walmart already planning its first Inner-Loop store on the other side of Downtown — just south of the Heights? Yes, but that store won’t be a SuperCenter. The Idylwood store is expected to measure approximately 210,000 sq. ft. — almost 60,000 sq. ft. larger than the planned Washington Heights District location. The site plan of the Idylwood store, which is not final (and which we’ve rotated to fit below), shows an asphalt parking lot with 722 spaces, plus a garden center on the store’s south side:

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Buying and Selling
11/16/10 2:51pm

Children’s Kirby Assessment: Bike Barn Site Bank and Drive-Thru

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Demolitions, Land Sales, Proposed Developments, Retail, Rice Village
9 Comments

A 2-story Frost Bank with a drive thru will take over the Kirby side of the former Village Plaza shopping center between Dunstan and Bolsover — once the demo company finishes smashing the Bike Barn, Mattress Giant, and the shells of a few other stores its been chewing on, reports the Village News. Frost bought the 35,000-sq.-ft. leftover portion of the center at 5925 Kirby earlier this month from the Children’s Assessment Center. The CAC plans to expand its Rice Village “campus” (named after attorney John M. O’Quinn) and build a parking garage on the back half of the property.

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Development Strategies
10/08/10 7:02pm

Who’s Behind Springwoods Village, Anyway?

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Land Sales, Master-Planned Communities, Office Space, Proposed Developments, Springwoods Village
3 Comments

The development director of the New York-and-Denver-based firm that just announced it would be creating a new eco-themed 1,800-acre community immediately south of The Woodlands — and directly adjacent to a 400-acre parcel Exxon Mobil has been eyeing for a giant new consolidated corporate campus — is sure being kinda vague about the identity of the property’s owner, Springwoods Realty. Keith Simon tells the HBJ‘s Jennifer Dawson that Coventry Development and Springwoods Realty share some officers (including him), but that the two companies are “not affiliated.”:

Coventry handles all of the real estate holdings for a privately held umbrella organization that Simon would not name. Springwoods Realty is under that umbrella.

Other entities under the umbrella own approximately 1,000 acres of undeveloped land by Baybrook Mall. Coventry has developed approximately 1 million square feet of retail property around the mall over the past 25 years.

“It’s really a confusing puzzle,” Simon admits.

Adding to the mystery surrounding this corporate . . . uh, “shell” game: Simon’s statement earlier in the week that Springwoods Realty had sold off approximately 400 acres of its holdings — not to Exxon Mobil, but to an entity named Palmetto Transoceanic.

Site map: Coventry Development

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Buying and Selling
10/05/10 2:56pm

Is Springwoods Village the New Exxon Mobil Eco-City?

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Development Strategies, Land Sales, Office Space, Proposed Developments, Springwoods Village
34 Comments

Coventry Development’s senior VP Keith Simon wouldn’t answer media questions today concerning the possibility that the new 1,800-acre mixed-use community his company wants to develop just south of The Woodlands might have the newly consolidated headquarters of the largest oil company in the world as its very first neighbor. In January, the Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff reported on plans shown to her — apparently prepared for Exxon Mobil — showing an “elaborate corporate campus, including 20 office buildings with 3 million square feet, a wellness center, laboratory and multiple parking garages” on a 400-acre site near the intersection of I-45 and the Hardy Toll Rd.

Meanwhile, an informant tells Swamplot about a real-estate “study” Exxon Mobil has reportedly been conducting of all the properties it owns and leases in Houston: “the old Humble building at 800 Bell downtown, the Chemicals complex at Katy Fwy. and Eldridge, the lovely Greenspoint campus across from Greenspoint Mall, the research facility on Buffalo Speedway, and others.” The company is considering vacating all these sites — as well as its large and valuable Fairfax, Virginia campus outside Washington, D.C. — and consolidating all employees in the new megacampus just south of The Woodlands. (Baytown refinery employees, don’t worry — you’d get to stay put.)

Writes our informant:

Although the company is telling its understandably concerned employees who happen not to live in Spring or The Woodlands not to worry, that this is still just a study, there is already work being done to prepare the site for building.

Where might have Exxon Mobil have come up with those 400 acres?

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Cinco Ranch
09/24/10 12:37pm

School-District Manifest Destiny

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Development Strategies, Katy, Land Sales, Master-Planned Communities, Quicklink
14 Comments

SCHOOL-DISTRICT MANIFEST DESTINY Cinco Ranch — recently named the fastest-growing residential community in the country by a real-estate consulting firm — will keep expanding west. Newland Communities just purchased 492 acres west of neighboring Pine Mill Ranch, way out near Firethorne between FM 1463 and Katy-Flewellen Road; the company plans to have new Cinco Ranch-branded homesites available there within a couple of years. Further west, there’s even more land available for cheap: the 742-acre Tamarron Lakes subdivision was foreclosed on in April. Kirk Laguarta of Land Advisors Organization, who’s marketing that property for $19K an acre, tells the Houston Business Journal that the property that Newland just bought is considered more valuable that that, in part because it’s zoned to Katy ISD. But Newland may not be interested in expanding Cinco Ranch into Tamarron Lakes — that development belongs to the Lamar Consolidated ISD. [Houston Business Journal]

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