- 9011 Ponderosa Dr. [HAR]
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Montgomery County
In the Grogan’s Mill neighborhood of The Woodlands, a 1985 Mediterranean spreads across a half-an-acre lot served by a loop-tipped roadway that appears in aerial views to resemble an inverted golf club. That’s rather fitting — the property overlooks a fairway of the tournament course of the Woodlands Country Club. The floor plan, meanwhile, includes its own pool room (top photo). Laps on the housing market date back to June of 2010, when the asking price bobbed for a bit at $949,000 before sinking to $693K. A 2011 re-listing splashed water at $900K before a late 2013 surge upped the ask to $1.15 million. That’s also the price sought in a brief spring-to-summer 2014 listing as well as the re-re-re listing by a different agent dating from Black Friday. Let’s take a swing through the place:
Pool Hall
- 5 Sunbird Ct. [HAR]
Now that Lake Conroe has filled up a bit, a Cape Malibu woods-and-waterfront property with dock is in the splash zone. The somewhat secluded 1975 property has a $489,000 asking price. Its back deck has this tidy, multi-level house attached:
On a cul-de-sac’s wedge lot in The Woodlands neighborhood of Cochran’s Crossing, an updated 1987 home with an outdoor oasis (top) has back fence access to forested pathways and a putting green of The Woodlands Country Club’s Palmer course. The park-like property teed off in early April, but sank its asking price by $30,100 earlier this week to rest at $269,900.
Par Tee Time
- 13235 Sonali Springs Dr. [HAR]
MONTGOMERY COUNTY MASTER-PLANNED COMMUNITY PICKED FOR MIDDLE-AGED DISTRICT 
Arizona homebuilder Taylor Morrison has just purchased 700 lots in the master-planned community Woodforest a few miles north of The Woodlands, and the Houston Business Journal reports that these lots — for which prices and plans are not yet available — in Johnson Development’s 3,000-acre community will be reserved for residents 55 and up. But this doesn’t appear to mean that Taylor Morrison, which is also building in Springwoods Village south of here, will be putting anyone out to pasture, writes Bayan Raji: “It’s committed to the homes fitting in.” [Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Riverbend in Woodforest: Woodforest
Camp Strake, owned by the Houston arm of the Boy Scouts of America since the 1940s, is now under contract to Johnson Development, responsible for communities like Sienna Plantation in Missouri City and Imperial Sugar Land, to name just a couple. Nevertheless, Johnson Development declined to reveal any plans for the 2,083-acre lake-dotted property along the San Jacinto River and not quite 10 miles north of the new ExxonMobil headquarters. For what it’s worth, Jones Lang LaSalle did market the property to buyers as a master-planned community called Grand Lake Park, a plan for which you can see after the jump.
GRAND TEXAS THEME PARK GETS ITS TEXAS LAND 
Developer Monty Galland has teamed with investors that include a former AstroWorld manager to close, at last, on 600 acres in Montgomery County for the proposed Texas-themed Grand Texas Theme Park. In April, Galland told Click2Houston that he would close on the property in May. But the 3-month delay seems to have allowed time for the development to develop thematically beyond tractor rides and simulated shootouts: Prime Property’s Erin Mulvaney reports that there will be the previously unmentioned Big Rivers Water Park here too. The parks will be carved out of the heavily wooded acreage between U.S. 59 and Hwy. 242, near the proposed EarthQuest dino-resort. But the proximity doesn’t seem to present a conflict in the mind of East Montgomery County improvement prez Frank McCrady, reports Mulvaney: “He compared the two parks to Knott’s Berry Farm and Disney Land in California. In this scenario, Earth Quest would be Disney Land, and Grand Texas is Knott’s Berry.” [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Grand Texas
Norman and Contempo leanings are but the start of the stylin’ mashup incorporated into a large waterfront property in the Village of Panther Creek in The Woodlands. On and off the market since the summer of 2010, when its initial asking price was $3.2 million, the 1990 custom estate popped back up last month as a re-relisting seeking $2.5 million. Earlier this month, the ask dropped to $1.95 million. That’s a price point a previous relisting sought for nearly a year, ending in May 2012 at $1.85 million.
Next month, reports Real Estate Bisnow’s Catie Dixon, construction’s supposed to start on 3 more segments of the Grand Parkway: That’s why F1, F2, and G on the map here are colored in that cautionary yellow. And where G ends? Not coincidentally, adds Dixon, at that future intersection with U.S. 59, planned to be completed by 2015, the 1400-acre master-planned Valley Ranch is getting ready to sprawl out.
GRAND TEXAS THEME PARK: FILLING THE ASTROWORLD VOID 
And this overgrown crossroads in the middle of somewhere near U.S. 59 and FM 242 is expected to be part of the Grand Texas Theme Park. Investors are in place, and the land between New Caney and Splendora in Montgomery County should be closed on this May, developer Monty Galland tells Click2Houston, when construction on the $200 million project — advertised to feature high-noon cowboy shootouts and tractor rides — will begin. And why all the fuss? “If there was an Astroworld,” says Galland, “we probably wouldn’t have even pursued this development. . . . The great thing about it is that we have enough land that we can create a lot of the elements Astroworld had, and it doesn’t detract from the other areas of the park. We’re not going to compete with Disneyland. We want to create an entertainment value that’s similar to going to the movies or going bowling.” [Click2Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Grand Texas Theme Park, via Facebook
The cartoon horse speaks! Alas, Grand Texas Theme Park’s well-heeled mascot isn’t saying where you’ll join him. But at least the theme park’s website is now open, claiming that developer Monty Galland “has determined three different desired sites: Two are in Montgomery County, while the other is in Fort Bend County.” And there are now several new renderings of the park’s proposed “territories” with detailed descriptions of the Texas-themed activities and amenities to come.
Meet Lasso, your mascot for the new Grand Texas Theme Park! The armed-and-friendly blond stud has been revealed as the long face of the Texas-themed theme park’s second-go-around in Texas. Back in July 2009, developer Monty Galland announced that he had a spot in Tomball for the park’s first phase to open by April 2010. Well, that was then. Now, Galland’s back — with Lasso in tow — and presenting a revised proposal to Montgomery Country leaders, reports the Tomball Potpourri: The developer’s eyeing property near New Caney, where Grand Texas might better hitch its wagon to dinosaur-friendly EarthQuest.
Property-tax assessments dropped overall in Harris County this year, but a reader in Montgomery County writes in to brag about the remarkable rise in value her small neighborhood in The Woodlands experienced over the same period: Assessments for a group of 42 homes in the Village of Panther Creek went up by a minimum of 80 percent over last year’s values. To get a taste of the boom, our reader suggests, try a search for “Wedgewood Glen” on the MCAD website. The datasheets for any of the properties listed will show the appraisal history. “With increases like that, The Woodlands may be the hottest real estate market in the country,” she writes. And she says she’s ready to sell her 30-something-year-old home now — if she can get anyone to buy her home at the price the county assessor says it’s worth.
