Here’s a second rendering of that new office tower Hines tells the Houston Chronicle it hasn’t announced it will build. Of course, a different story is coming out of this neighborhood near River Oaks, where the 35,000-sq.-ft. property on the corner of Spann and San Felipe, purchased in November by an entity connected to Hines, has been cleared of its garden home and staked with flags, as the photos after the jump show:
This rendering shows one of 4 charitable duplexes planned to go up in Meyerland that will be set aside for single-mother families. Construction began late last week on property that’s owned St. John’s Presbyterian Church at 5020 W. Bellfort Ave., between Willowbend and S. Post Oak Blvd., just outside the Loop. One of the 8 units will also be home to an on-site caseworker.
Flanked by a pair of churches, these stick frames just popped up in the Third Ward. Plans for the development called Bastrop Plaza show a row of 9 townhouses on a vacant lot at the intersection of Webster and Bastrop. That’s a block west of Dowling St., 2 blocks south of the Gulf Fwy., and 2 5 north of Emancipation Park, primed for a very expensive redevelopment project of its own this summer. A sign at the construction site here announces that the townhouses will start at $260,000.
A reader sends this photo of the site prep going on at the fenced-in empty lot that made a recent cameo in that Montrose Dancing Rollerblader featurette. Owned since 2006 by the Aga Khan Foundation, which has said it planned to build an Ismaili Center here on the flood-prone makeshift dog park on Montrose between W. Dallas and Allen Pkwy., the property hasn’t seen much activity — other than the dancing, of course — for awhile.
Until this week, that is. And now the reader wants to know what the deal might be: “Looks like a lot of development is happening in this block. I read . . . about the development on the AIG side [of Montrose], but now the other side, next to those Amli apartments, seems to be breaking ground on something large. Any idea what’s gonna be placed there?”
Photo: Swamplot inbox
The finishing touches are being put on this somewhat totemic new building at the ReUse Warehouse site in Independence Heights. This one’s built on the concrete slab and with the steel beams of the old Public Works machine shop here at 9003 Main St., downcycling that building’s roof for use as its ceiling. It’ll serve as office space for Solid Waste Management staff; it’ll also house a workshop to process donated materials (usually the leftovers from new builds and the salvaged stuff from demos)Â and feature a recycled-art gallery. Zen T. C. Zheng reports that the building should be ready to go by June.
Photo: Allyn West
This photo, courtesy of a reader, shows what will eventually hold up the new pedestrian bridge spanning Buffalo Bayou. This view looks south across the muddy water from the Sandy Reed Memorial Trail near Jackson Hill St. and Memorial Dr. toward the Royalton condo tower on Allen Pkwy. Crews have also begun clearing away more trees and brush between this spot and the Adath Yeshurun Cemetery, where the bayou’s master plan shows the Lost Lake will be.
Here’s a rendering of the classroom studio (and vegetable garden and recycled shipping container) that’s now under construction at the Monarch School in Spring Branch. North of the Katy Fwy. near Kempwood and Gessner, the school serves students with neurological disorders, and it says that the design elements and architecture of this very green 1,120-sq.-ft. studio from Architend will become part of the curriculum:
Even more apartments are going up inside the Loop: This development from Mill Creek Residential is underway behind the St. Regis Hotel on San Felipe and E. Briar Hollow Ln. The complex, south of Memorial Park, appears to provide residents a view of that Welcome W. Wilson, Sr. beautification strip there along the Union Pacific railroad tracks. Developer Jeb Cox says that there will be 317 units and a parking garage, the construction of which began in August.
Construction has started in Pasadena on one of the largest loading and unloading zones of beer in Texas. Silver Eagle Distributors, whose lookalike company headquarters you can see from I-10 north of Memorial Park, says that the $25 million, 400,000-sq.-ft. distribution center will sit on 50 acres near the Sam Houston Tollway and those Independence Trail scenes painted on the Pasadena Freeway refineries.
Image: Silver Eagle Distributors via Swamplot inbox
The other tenant in this new retail center at Westheimer and Dunlavy will be Space Montrose. Owner Leila Peraza says that by August the artsy and crafty retailer at 2608 Dunlavy will be relocating from this spot behind Cafe Brasil into the 4,800-sq.-ft. building under construction at the corner about 200 ft. away. Space Montrose will take up 1,200 sq. ft. of that and share a wall with what a pending liquor license names Leaven & Earth, a pastry cafe from well-schooled, globe-trotting chef Roy Shvartzapel. Recently, 2608 Dunlavy has been an art gallery and yoga studio; Peraza says she heard a book store is next.
Photos: Allyn West
Another win for Komatsu: This vacant 30,000-sq.-ft. office building in the shadow of the Houston House apartments was reduced to rubble this week on the Downtown lot bound by Fannin, Main, Leeland, and Pease, where construction on the 24-story, 336-unit residential tower SkyHouse is just beginning. (The parking lot in the foreground of the photo at the top is now a hole in the ground.) The project at 1625 Main was announced in March by Atlanta developer Novare Group, which has put up a similar tower in Austin.
Photos: Swamplot inbox (demolition), Allyn West (building)
A rep from Edge Realty Partners says that that new retail center that’s now under construction at Westheimer and Dunlavy will have 2 tenants. The primary one, occupying 3,600 sq. ft. of the new building’s proposed 4,800, will be a well-bread pastry cafe from Roy Shvartzapel, the globe-trotting chef profiled recently in Eater Houston. A TABC permit application, filed April 17, suggests that the cafe will be called Leaven & Earth.
And the other tenant? The Edge rep says that names can’t yet be named, but that a lease is all but complete for a “boutique” retail shop that’s already in Montrose to relocate inside the remaining 1,200-sq.-ft. suite that’s depicted in the rendering here as right next to Agora.
Images: Edge Realty Partners (rendering); Allyn West (building)
Note: More here.
It looks like that retail center that’s replacing the art gallery that burned down is beginning to shape up. And it looks like at least one of the future tenants intends to serve adult beverages. The sign behind the chain-link at the site names the applicant as Leaven & Earth, and a rep from the TABC confirms that the application, filed on April 17, is pending. The original plans for the site here at 1706 Westheimer describe a 4,829-sq.-ft. building — with 36 parking spaces behind it, accessible from Dunlavy — designed to replace the Galerie Mado Chalvet, which was lost in a fire and immortalized on a backpack in 2012.
Photos: Allyn West
Before construction can begin next month on this 4-story apartment complex planned for the southwest corner of Cypresswood Dr. and the Tomball Pkwy., some things have to go. Developers Embry and Stonelake Capital appear to have in mind an unscraped 15.4-acre site that’s thick with trees, and Real Estate Bisnow’s Catie Dixon reports that the demise of an “existing structure” is imminent. But she doesn’t say which one. And neither has Embry. But: The manager at the Arby’s there on Cypresswood says it’s not the Arby’s.
In the middle of last summer, Interfaith Ministries closed on almost 76,000 sq. ft. of Midtown property spanning 2 catty-corner blocks just north of HCC, including the PrimeWay Federal Credit Union building shown here at 3303 Main St.; the organization says it’s closing in on the $12.5 million needed to fund the renovation of the 39,000-sq.-ft. bank into its headquarters and the construction of a new 14,000-sq.-ft. Meals on Wheels distribution center at Elgin and Fannin.
