Medical Buildings

Featured Posts
11/02/18 2:45pm

New Houston Methodist Admin Midrise Will Give Multicolored Child Care Center a Neighbor To Look Up To

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Medical Buildings, New Construction, Texas Medical Center
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A tower crane and accompanying high-altitude construction equipment are now hovering over the northwest corner of S. Braeswood and Greenbriar where work on a new 14-story 7-story Houston Methodist office midrise is underway. Next door, a separate, 8-level structure will be devoted to parking. It’s all taking off on what used to be the Astrodome Marriott hotel, torn down after the Methodist system bought the land in 2000.

For more than a decade the 10-acre parcel remained unbuilt until a new single-story daycare for Houston Methodist employees’ kids (ages 0 through 5) sprung up on its western portion last year. The center — a brightly-painted and multi-gabled structure to the left of what’s shown in the photos above — enrolled 130 kids when it opened. Once some of them age out, it’ll consider taking on children of Methodist’s business partners, too, as well as those without any parental ties to the hospital system.

Photos: Swamplot inbox

South of Brays Bayou
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Featured Posts
07/10/18 12:15pm

Model Patient Sits, Stays Atop ReadyPet’s Veterinary Clinic Trailer on Stella Link

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Medical Buildings
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The bandana-clad figure atop the trailer pictured above demonstrates the type of behavior that’s expected from patients at the ReadyPet clinic, parked and open for business in the parking lot on the corner of Stella Link and S. Braeswood Blvd. While the vehicle itself has been there since late 2016, its rooftop topping didn’t arrive until the following year. Among the services offered inside: ear cleanings, blood work, nail trimmings, vaccinations, and other routine veterinary procedures for dogs as well as cats, despite their lack of representation on the exterior.

The clinic’s location puts it just north of the former Preferred Bank branch indicated by the standalone yellow rectangle on the left in the map above. A bit further away is the largest storefront in the Stella Link Shopping Center, home now to the clinic’s affiliate, the Houston Pets Alive animal shelter.

It took over the former Sellers Bros. grocery store — pictured below — that closed down in the strip in 2015:

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Top Dog
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Featured Posts
03/29/18 4:00pm

Hump-Backed Goodyear Auto Shop a Block Away from Highland Village Has a Mixed-Use Prognosis

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Highland Village, Medical Buildings, Mixed Use, Proposed Developments, Retail
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Ancorian subsidiary CityLands has plans to plant a medical office building with street-level retail in place of the barrel-vaulted 1970 Goodyear auto shop at 3720 Westheimer. Leasing materials dub the new 40,250-sq.-ft. building the Surgery Center of River Oaks. However, the anchor tenant that CityLands says has leased more than half the structure’s square footage has a different take on its whereabouts — the partnership of doctors calls itself the Upper Kirby Surgical Center.

The rendering above shows a drive-up entrance fronting the planned building — which the developer says will include “integrated parking.” The lot that CityLands bought from the car center’s owner earlier this year backs up about 160-ft. north from Westheimer to abut the cul-de-sac of Locke Ln.

Photo: Arch-ive. Rendering: CityLands

Westheimer Retirement
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Featured Posts
11/21/17 2:15pm

Medistar’s New Med Center Highrise Hoping To Lure Clinics, Doctors’ Offices to the Best Western Side of South Main

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Medical Buildings, Mixed Use, Proposed Developments
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Medistar is planning to build its 550,000-sq.-ft. medical tower right next to the InterContinental Houston Medical Center hotel and the Greystar apartment highrise it is already constructing on the west side of South Main St. The aerial photograph above, looking south toward the Texas Medical Center campus on the east side of South Main, shows the apartment structure under construction on the west side of the block and the shorter hotel tower also in-progress behind it, fronting the street. North of that construction, the photo shows a yellow highlight around the former Best Western Plaza Hotel at 6700 South Main. That hotel is now scheduled to be replaced by the new 20-or-30-something-floor medical tower pictured at the top of this story.

A single ground-floor lobby facing Old Main St. will serve both the 357-unit hotel and the 375-unit apartment building. Retail and restaurants are planned for the new medical tower’s street level. A skybridge, visible in the rendering below, plugs into the south side of the tower just above its garage level and is intended to connect the hotel and apartments to the medical tower:

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TMC Medical Tourism Hub
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Featured Posts
09/15/16 2:45pm

Uncensored Views of the Med Center’s Giant Syringes, Now Flashier Than Ever

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Medical Buildings, Texas Medical Center
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O'Quinn Medical Building, 6624 Fannin St., Medical Center, Houston, 77030

The double hypodermic needles atop the Cesar Pelli-designed O’Quinn Medical Building have just gotten brightened up: a lighting designer from FUSE sends Swamplot these bare-all shots of the Madonna tower’s roof following the company’s just-wrapped installation of a new LED setup around the tips. Down below, Texas Children’s Hospital announced earlier this week that it has bought the tower from Baylor-slash-St.-Luke’s, along with a Baylor outpatient clinic down the street. Texas Children’s told the Chronicle that it isn’t planning to boot tenants until they can move into that under construction campus on Cambridge St., somewhere around 2020.

Nor does the new owner have plans to change the tower’s name right away — though many of the physicians who petitioned against the building’s O’Quinn christening in 2005 aren’t likely to mind if they do. At the time, dozens of doctors signed a document insisting that the current namesake, Houston’s own John O’Quinn (of fen-phen and breast implant lawsuit fame), “bears partial responsibility for the litigious environment in which we work,” and that it was offensive “to have money we earned — and which he took by suing us — going to name after him a medical building in which we work every day.”

The sunset shot above looks west across the Rice campus (that’s the stadium that played backdrop to JFK’s go-to-the-moon speech, given 54 years ago this past Monday, on the right above the octagonal base); the itty-bitty silhouette of the distant Williams Tower can be seen poking up from the horizon on the left. Here’s the tip itself, so close you can almost see the filament in the flashing bulb:

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Feeling Shiny and New on Fannin
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Featured Posts
07/01/15 10:00am

Emergency Renovations for an Empty Drug Store at the Edge of White Oak Bayou

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Medical Buildings, Renovations, Retail, Shady Acres
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1925 E. T.C. Jester Blvd., Shady Acres, Houston

1925 E. T.C. Jester Blvd., Shady Acres, HoustonA reader notes there’s been some construction activity in and around the entrance and rear drive-thru window of the former Eckerd-turned-CVS Pharmacy along the White Oak Bayou Trail at the corner of T.C. Jester and 18th St., on the west coast of Shady Acres. That’s a notable turn of events: The building has been vacant for about 5 years. The standalone structure’s prospective new tenant appears to be another SignatureCare Emergency Center — last week, a note on the website for the local chain of health clinics had listed 1925 E. T.C. Jester Blvd. as the location of its upcoming “Heights” facility, but the address has since been removed.

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SignatureCare
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Commercial Real Estate
06/23/15 4:30pm

The End of a Shady Acres Medical Clinic

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Demolitions, Medical Buildings, Shady Acres
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Demolition of 2499 Ella Blvd., Shady Acres, Houston

Demolition of 2499 Ella Blvd., Shady Acres, Houston

This was the scene over the weekend at 2499 Ella Blvd., at the corner of 25th St. in Shady Acres — as photographed by a Swamplot reader. The vacant former Ella Family Medicine clinic building, known also more recently as the home of the Fulton Pharmacy, is no more.

Photos: Veronica Jones

Weekend Clearance
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Featured Posts
03/11/15 1:45pm

Touring the Lonely Mod Office Buildings of Glenbrook Valley

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Glenbrook Valley, Medical Buildings, Modern Design, Office Buildings
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Medical Office Building, 7620 Bellfort St., Glenbrook Valley, Houston

Real estate agent Robert Searcy sends in make-’em-look-pretty pics of a few of the small Modern office buildings to be found along Bellfort St. between Telephone Rd. and Broadway in Glenbrook Valley. The buildings were built in the 1960s, many of them to serve doctors connected to the former Southeast Memorial Hospital on the northwest corner of Bellfort St. and Glenloch. (Later operated by Riverside General Hospital as its Edith Irby Jones Campus, the structure was torn down a few years ago after suffering extensive damage from Hurricane Ike.)

Pictured above: The Bellfort Women’s Care Clinic at 7620 Bellfort, formerly the office of Dr. Hans Altinger, who also lived in Glenbrook Valley. Next on the tour:

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Some of the Doctors Are In
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Featured Posts
04/17/14 11:00am

A Look at Memorial Hermann’s New Parkside Trauma Building, Coming Soon to the TMC

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Medical Buildings, Proposed Developments, Texas Medical Center
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Proposed New Trauma Building, Memorial Hermann Hospital System Texas Medical Center Campus, Cambridge St. and Taub Rd., Texas Medical Center, Houston

Included in the $650 million expansion and renovation of its Texas Medical Center campus approved by the Memorial Hermann Health System last month: the new, presumably 16-story patient care building across the street from Hermann Park and the Houston Zoo shown at the lower left of the rendering above. It’ll be on the corner of Cambridge St. (renamed from North MacGregor Dr. a while back, while you weren’t paying attention) and Taub Rd. Partially hidden behind it in the image above is a new parking-and-mechanical structure to go with it.

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More Beds for the Med Center
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Featured Posts
01/07/14 3:00pm

Baylor College of Medicine Filling Its Unfinished Hospital Building by Pulling St. Luke’s South from the TMC

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Medical Buildings, Texas Medical Center
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Baylor Hospital Bldg., 7200 Cambridge St., Houston

The shiny new building on the northwest corner of Old Spanish Trail and Cambridge St. south of the Texas Medical Center that the Baylor College of Medicine built but then let sit as an empty shell for nearly 4 years will soon be filled with hospital beds, the institution announced today. And the complex will eventually become the new home of the successor to the Texas Medical Center’s St. Luke’s Hospital. Catholic Health Initiatives, which has its headquarters in Denver, bought the entire St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System last May for $2 billion; a new nonprofit joint venture between CHI St. Luke’s Health and Baylor will operate the new 250-bed hospital, which will be inserted into the structure’s vacant floors by next spring and bear the unwieldy name of Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center McNair Campus.

The same joint venture will also run the existing 850-bed St. Luke’s hospital on Bertner Ave., now conveniently known as the Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center TMC. But that Texas Medical Center institution appears to be going south: A yet-to-be-created master plan and timeline will guide the eventual replacement of that facility — it’ll move south of Brays Bayou to the McNair Campus, which is outside the official boundaries of the Texas Medical Center:

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Back to Health
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Apartments
10/07/13 12:00pm

A New Mixture of Uses for the Old Spring Branch Med Center

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Buying and Selling, Medical Buildings, Proposed Developments, Quicklink, Redevelopment, Retail, Spring Branch
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A NEW MIXTURE OF USES FOR THE OLD SPRING BRANCH MED CENTER The proud new owners of the 300,000-sq.-ft. Spring Branch Medical Center say they plan to flip the 18-acre property on Long Point Rd. into a residential and retail development. Investor Bruce Phillips tells the Houston Chronicle that the old medical buildings, most of which were built in the ’80s, might not have to come down to make the change happen and could be repurposed. The purchase was led by BlackSwan, which is also developing with Stream Realty that 25-story office tower near Washington on Waugh and Barnes. [Houston Chronicle ($); previously on Swamplot] Photo: MAM Jobs Network

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Medical Buildings
09/04/13 10:00am

Former Houston Rocket Royce White Putting His Name on Mental Health Clinic on W. Bellfort

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Openings and Closings, Public Health, Westbury
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Royce White might never have suited up for the Houston Rockets, spending most of his rookie season toiling in the D-League with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers and — umm, tweeting, but it appears he has found a way to contribute to the city. Last week, White — who suffers from generalized anxiety disorder — announced that his foundation, Anxious Mind’s, which he started when he was playing college ball at Iowa State, will partner with Bee Busy Wellness Clinic to open a free mental health facility on W. Bellfort. The clinic will also provide dental services and primary care and will open this January inside the Rubik’s Cube-like former Frank Neighborhood Library at 6440 W. Bellfort, shown here, just west of Westbury and Meyerland. White played in only 16 games last season; he was caught up in disputes with Rockets management about travel arrangements — he hates to fly — and team doctors. In July, he was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers.

Photo: Allyn West

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Medical Buildings
07/31/13 10:00am

The Parc Binz: Slimmed Down and Cheered Up

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Museum Park, Office Buildings
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Here’s the latest rendering of the once-protested Parc Binz development that’s going up on the corner of Binz and Chenevert in Museum Park. Prime Property reports that this mixed-use building, designed by Energy Architecture, should be all ready by the end of the year. During construction, though, the scale of it seems to have shrunk: Originally proposed to stand 6 stories and have 75,000-sq.-ft. of office, retail, and medical space, Sarnoff sizes what is actually being built at 50,000 sq. ft., and this brighter new rendering shows only 5 floors.

You can compare it with the previous one — featuring a solitary fellow brooding in the gloaming out on the terrace — after the jump:

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Houston Heights
07/17/13 4:30pm

Getting Going on That Senior Living Complex in the Heights

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Medical Buildings, New Construction, Senior Living
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Construction is well underway at the site of the torn-down Studewood Fiesta on the Village of the Heights. This updated (and softer) rendering shows the 4-story, 103-unit senior living facility as seen from near the intersection of 14th and Studewood; it will be bordered on the north by Algregg. A rep from developer Bridgewood Properties — which operates 3 similar facilities in Houston — says that the 1st floor will be devoted to a clinic for “memory care,” and the 2nd floor will include a fitness center, library, beauty salon, and assisted-living suites; the top 2 floors will be reserved for apartments, ranging from 1-bedroom, 524-sq.-ft. spaces to 2-bedroom, 753-sq.-ft. ones.

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Medical Buildings
05/23/13 11:10am

The New Mixed-Use Building in the Museum District

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Mixed Use, Museum District, Office Space, Retail
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That excavator first rolled out here on La Branch and Binz last summer — and 11 months later this is how the site looks: Catty-corner from the Children’s Museum, the Museum Point Professional Building appears to be all but complete. The 4-story building at 1401 Binz was originally planned to be 30,000-sq.-ft., with retail on the first floor, a clinic and offices on the middle floors, and some kind of residence (“with a garden terrace”) up top. A 160-car parking garage was also planned.

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