Neighborhood Disputes

Apartments
09/28/11 5:06pm

Ashby Highrise Appears Ready To Rise Again, This Time as an Apartment Tower

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Boulevard Oaks, Development Strategies, Highrises, Lawsuits, Neighborhood Disputes, Proposed Developments, Southampton
41 Comments

The development company behind a proposed 23-story residential tower at 1717 Bissonnet near Southampton known as the Ashby Highrise submitted its plans to the city again today, after taking a 2-year break. Buckhead Investment partner Matthew Morgan tells the West U Examiner‘s Michael Reed that the plans sent in today are mostly identical to those submitted in August 2009. Those plans, which the city ultimately approved, were for a version of the tower that axed some of the buildings’ commercial features, including retail and office space and a pedestrian plaza in front of the building. The lawsuit Buckhead filed against the city early last year, challenging the repeated rejection of its earlier plans for the building, is still pending in U.S. District Court.

There is one notable difference in the new plans: The units will be rented, not sold, Morgan says.

Rendering: Buckhead Investment Partners

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Homeowners' Associations
09/14/11 12:51pm

Watching Where You Park in Raintree Place

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Neighborhood Disputes, Parking, Quicklink, Raintree Place
16 Comments

WATCHING WHERE YOU PARK IN RAINTREE PLACE A resident of Raintree Place received an email complaint from the community’s property owners association approximately 10 minutes after her parked car was spotted in her own driveway. Dianne Josephs, who rents her home, tells the Houston Press she had been loading up her vehicle with clothing and household goods to donate to wildfire victims. Regulations in the private gated neighborhood of 86 lots inside the Loop at 10 South Briar Hollow Ln. between San Felipe and Post Oak Blvd. prohibit residents from leaving cars anywhere other than in their garages or in a few designated visitor spaces. This isn’t Josephs’s first run-in with neighborhood authorities: “Josephs says her neighbor circles the complex several times a day to report open garages and cars parked in driveways. Once, she reported him for having his garage open, and she says he flipped her daughter off with both hands. ‘I wanna buy it [the house], but the people here are so mean!!’ squealed Josephs. ‘They yell at me and say, “You’re nothing but trouble.”…but I question authority. When I think it’s crazy, I question it.'” [Hair Balls] Photo: Raintree Place

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Critters
08/31/11 12:20pm

Spring Potbellied Pig Dispute Hits the Courts

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Lawsuits, Neighborhood Disputes, The Thicket
24 Comments

“Veterinary experts” are now “standing by to testify” in the lawsuit filed yesterday against a Spring HOA on behalf of Houston’s best-known potbellied pig, declares the lawyer hired by the pig’s owners, Missy and Alex Sardo. What’ll those experts say? That Wilbur Sardo, the 60-lb. pet with close to 5,000 Facebook friends — and now a live webcam show — doesn’t count as livestock, and therefore isn’t prohibited from living with his owners by the deed restrictions of the Thicket at Cypresswood neighborhood.

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Lawsuits
08/10/11 3:15pm

St. Agnes Drops Suit

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Neighborhood Disputes, Nightlife, Quicklink, Schools, Sharpstown
14 Comments

ST. AGNES DROPS SUIT St. Agnes Academy has officially ended its lawsuit meant to prevent a nightclub called El Corral — planned for the former Finger Furniture store in PlazAmericas — from receiving a liquor license. The suit was filed last Friday against the nightclub’s owners, the city of Houston, and the TABC. A spokesperson for the all-girls private school, which is building an athletic facility across Bellaire Blvd. from the former Sharpstown Mall, tells Swamplot “any future plans regarding the suit are to be determined,” but offered no further comments. [Previously on Swamplot]

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Lawsuits
08/09/11 12:40pm

El Corral and the Fields of St. Agnes

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Neighborhood Disputes, New Construction, Nightlife, Sharpstown
16 Comments

St. Agnes Academy has already begun constructing an athletic complex on the site of the former Gillman Auto dealership at the corner of Bellaire and Fondren in Sharpstown. The 18.7-acre property, which it bought last fall, will have 3 athletic fields, 2 softball diamonds, 8 tennis courts, plus weight rooms, conference rooms, and meeting rooms. But administrators of the all-girls private school aren’t too happy with a development planned across the street in PlazAmericas, the former Sharpstown Mall. Last Friday, the school filed suit to prevent a nightclub from opening in the mall’s former Finger Furniture store.

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Critters
07/19/11 1:12pm

Thicket HOA To Pot-Bellied Pig: Your Petitions Are No Good Here

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Development Regulations, Neighborhood Disputes, The Thicket
9 Comments

Pot-bellied pig Wilbur Sardo now has more than 3300 friends on Facebook, a Twitter feed, a growing YouTube channel, and an online petition with more than 500 supporting signatures, but still only 17 days left before he’ll have to find a new home outside The Thicket at Cypresswood subdivision in Spring. Owner Missy Sardo says she was told at an HOA meeting and over the phone last week that she could keep her household pet if she got 51 percent of residents to sign a petition in the pig’s favor. But a certified letter Sardo received over the weekend indicates that the neighborhood’s board of directors has decided that its “initial decision [to banish the pig] will stand.” The neighborhood’s deed restrictions prohibit “animals, livestock, poultry, reptiles, or insects of any kind.” Household pets, defined as “domestic animals commonly and traditionally kept in homes as pets” are allowed, as long as they do not include “any wild, semi-wild, or semi-domesticated animal.”

Video: Wilbur Sardo

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Glenbrook Valley
06/23/11 5:43pm

Inside the Historic Battle for Glenbrook Valley

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Historic Districts, Historic Preservation, Neighborhood Disputes, Quicklink
18 Comments

INSIDE THE HISTORIC BATTLE FOR GLENBROOK VALLEY The color-coded maps, the front-yard tombstones, the shivering naked women, the Ranches and MCMs, the prayer nooks, the free tacos, the threatening drive-by waves . . . it all comes out (well, some of it anyway) in Steve Jansen’s Glenbrook Valley exposé. [Houston Press; previously on Swamplot]

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Alief
06/20/11 12:02pm

The Nanny Didn’t Do It

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Neighborhood Disputes, Quicklink, Streets, Turtlewood Square
15 Comments

THE NANNY DIDN’T DO IT In a statement released last Friday, council member Al Hoang clarifies statements he made earlier to the Chronicle and KHOU 11 News’s Jeremy Rogalski that appeared to place blame for the forging of 16 neighbors’ signatures on a nanny no longer employed by Hoang’s family. The signatures were gathered for a petition requesting the name of Hoang’s street be changed from Turtlewood Dr. to Little Saigon Dr. “I have never placed blame on my former personal assistant, as some stories have portrayed,” the statement reads. “I have clearly said that the homeowners association tendered the petition to my assistant at home, not that she maliciously forged that petition.” Hoang says he welcomes the Office of Inspector General investigation into the incident, which Mayor Parker announced last week. [Houston Politics; previously on Swamplot]

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Buying and Selling
05/02/11 8:23am

Blind Item: “Popular Pub Inside Loop” for Sale — Guess Which

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Neighborhood Disputes, Nightlife, Quicklink, Rice Village, Uncategorized
49 Comments

BLIND ITEM: “POPULAR PUB INSIDE LOOP” FOR SALE — GUESS WHICH Your clues: “This very popular pub boasts great reviews, has been in business for 16 years and is a big hit with the neighborhood crowd as a place for local residents to gather and enjoy adult beverages in a relaxing atmosphere. It is one of the very few places in Houston that has a bocce court (lawn bowling). . . . The median age of their clientele is probably 30-35 and they enjoy playing bocce in their spacious beer garden, watching the world go by from their sidewalk [cafe], relaxing indoors in air conditioned comfort, watching their favorite sports on any of their indoor / outdoor televisions, playing a game of darts, enjoying their favorite music from the internet jukebox or taking advantage of the free Wi/Fi. They are well known for their great beer/wine selection and friendly service.” [BizBuySell, via Twitter user ucalledthewolf]

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Apartments
04/28/11 2:49pm

Fine, Go Ahead: Apartments Next to Idylwood Walmart Site Get Demo Orders

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Demolitions, Idylwood, Neighborhood Disputes, Public Safety
7 Comments

The owner of 4 vacant apartment buildings and 4 carports just north of the future site of the Idylwood Walmart now has 9 days left to get a permit and tear them down — or the city will do it for him and send a bill. Zion Ohana bought the already somewhat-decrepit properties bordering Idylwood at 6634 Sylvan Rd. in January 2009, a few years after the previous owner — who had lived in one of the units — passed away. About 20 neighborhood residents and representatives of nearby businesses showed up to yesterday’s city hearing, but Ohana didn’t, and didn’t send anyone to speak for him. One Idylwood resident thinks that might be part of the reason the owner ended up with a $72,000 fine for leaving the structures in their current condition — $1,000 per day per structure for the 9 days since a notice was posted on the properties.

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Brookwoods Estates
03/09/11 1:58pm

The Sound of the 290 Expansion

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Freeways and Toll Roads, Holly Park, Neighborhood Disputes, Sound, Timbergrove
13 Comments

A small group of homeowners that includes residents of Timbergrove, Brookwoods Estates, and Holly Park have filed a lawsuit against the Federal Highway Administration claiming that the agency approved the expansion of Hwy. 290 along the 38-mile stretch from 610 to FM 2920 last August without properly analyzing how noise from the project would affect their properties. In the filing, the plaintiffs say they are not opposed to the project, but are concerned that TxDOT’s environmental studies of its planned elevated roadways at the 610 and I-10 interchanges — some of which will reach as high as 100 ft. in the air — didn’t account for noise impacts on Memorial Park and the Houston Arboretum as well.

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Comments
02/09/11 6:40pm

Comment of the Day: None of Your Business

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Development Strategies, Houston Heights, Neighborhood Disputes, New Construction, Quicklink
15 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS “. . . What makes you think that a developer is going to want to give you warning or a chance to protest?!? They bought the land, they’re developing it. What stake in this do you or anyone who feels blind sided have? They didn’t give you a chance to speak, complain, picket, whatever because they have a product that REGARDLESS of what they tell you,… you will not like it.” [lunch pail, commenting on Studewood Place: Some New Building Behind the 11th St. Someburger]

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Comments
02/02/11 4:48pm

Comment of the Day: Nominated for the Walmart Peace Prize

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Franchises and Chain Stores, Neighborhood Disputes, Quicklink
25 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: NOMINATED FOR THE WALMART PEACE PRIZE “. . . If everyone arguing against the West End Walmart would stand up and say, ‘I don’t personally like Walmart but I certainly don’t think less of you for thinking they are not so bad’ then we would probably all get along much better.” [Jimbo, commenting on Surprise! Walmart Buying Land Next to Idylwood for Houston’s First Inner-Loop SuperCenter]

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Comments
12/27/10 4:50pm

Comment of the Day: Cold Case, Rice Village

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Neighborhood Disputes, Quicklink, Rice Village
7 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: COLD CASE, RICE VILLAGE “Seems to me a little backwards math could figure this one out. The trajectory (calculated from point of entry through roof vs point of breakage of the glassware) and size of object thrown (amount of melting can be estimated based on size of ice recovered vs time and temperature) should be able to figure out very close which balcony the blocks came from.” [tanith27, commenting on Iced Again: A White Christmas Comes Early to Hans’ Bier Haus]

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Neighborhood Disputes
12/27/10 11:08am

Iced Again: A White Christmas Comes Early to Hans’ Bier Haus

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Rice Village
18 Comments

Santy Claus delivered 6 or 7 large and heavy before-Christmas gifts to Hans’ Bier Haus, the little bar that’s provided so much entertainment to the Rice Village over the last year. The little one-story structure at 2523 Quenby, doesn’t have a chimney; the gifts were just dropped onto the roof sometime early Friday morning. From there most of them crashed through. In addition to several holes in the ceiling, the ice blocks left a few damaged light fixtures, a few broken glasses, and a sprinkling of drywall crumbles inside, plus a breakaway tree limb on the back patio. Bier Haus co-owner Bill Cave tells abc13’s Sonia Azad the partially melted blocks were discovered Friday morning.

But gosh, who besides a mean old Santa could have done such a thing to Hans’ Bier Haus? And . . . who did it over Thanksgiving, too?

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