New Construction

Galleria
10/19/12 1:29pm

Above the Galleria Whole Foods Hole

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New Construction, Retail
2 Comments

From an upper floor to the east, looking toward Downtown: Piers are in and some column rebar bundles are up already for the BLVD Place building fronting Post Oak Blvd. (the street just beyond the construction site in the photo). According to plans posted online, an underground parking level with room for 260 cars will fit below the 48,500-sq.-ft. Whole Foods Market, with more parking behind and above the grocery-store space on 2 additional levels. Also going into the building at the corner of San Felipe St.: other retail, restaurant, and office spaces.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

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Bayous and Waterways
10/18/12 4:18pm

That New Bridge Going in Under the Bridge Over the Bayou

by
New Construction, Parks, River Oaks
33 Comments

Courtesy of Swamplot reader James Glassman, here’s a shot of what’s been connected so far under the Shepherd Dr. overpass as it crosses the end of Allen Pkwy. at Buffalo Bayou. Suspended ’neath the cars at this gateway to River Oaks: a new pedestrian bridge, which will link the aptly named Sandy Reed Memorial Trail along the bayou’s South bank with Memorial Dr. to the north. Here’s how it’s drawn out in the Buffalo Bayou master plan:

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Comments
10/17/12 4:26pm

Comment of the Day: What It Takes To Build at the Upper End

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Construction Materials, Home Design, New Construction, Quicklink
6 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT IT TAKES TO BUILD AT THE UPPER END “You are right that you can build a very nice house for $150/sq. ft., but when you are in this stratospheric range, $150 is your starting point and you jump off from there. . . . Your roof will be slate and not composition. Goodness knows how much that costs, and how it impacts your structural engineering. Your floors will be stone and/or wide plank salvaged wood and not 2 1/2″ plain sawn oak. Your facade will be brick, not hardi plank, and bricks will cost $2-$3 each and not 50 cents. And on an 8,000 sq. ft. structure you may get 50,000, 100,000 bricks. Then you pay the mason. Your trim and doors will be custom manufactured and not stock. Your window package will be custom manufactured and not stock. Saw one house where custom fabricated metal windows cost $250,000. For the windows. Your light cans will cost 10x the cost of the cans you get in a builder spec house. You will have paid a lighting designer a fortune to tell you how to position those lights. Your HVAC, security, A/V systems will be state of the art, each of which will run tens and tens of thousands, if not more. You will insulate your house to an extreme level. And so on and so on. It all adds up . . . But yes, you can build a nice house for $150/sq. ft., but if you are building on a 50,000 sq. ft. lot on the corner of Kirby and Inwood, you just won’t.” [KG, commenting on Houston Home Listing Photo of the Day: Out of the Closet]

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Construction Materials
10/15/12 1:26pm

90 Percent American in Ranch Estates

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Museum District, New Construction, Ranch Estates
16 Comments

For the home she’s building for her family on Banks St., on the former site of a carefully disassembled Ranch house in Ranch Estates, architect Karen Lantz tried to make sure every product was made in the United States. But the breaking point came with cabinet hardware, Mimi Swartz writes: “‘This one?’ Lantz said, picking up the pull on the left and turning it over for my inspection. ‘From Italy. Nine dollars.’ She picked up the one on her right. ‘This one?’ She paused. ‘China. Four dollars.’ The U.S.-made pull that was closest to what she wanted cost $72. She called company after company trying to do better. When she asked why the American pulls cost so much more than those made overseas, the answers ranged from ‘We make them here’ to ‘It’s a classic.’”

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Freeways and Toll Roads
09/28/12 11:05am

Three More Links in the Grand Parkway Are Now Ready To Roll

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New Construction, Quicklink
16 Comments

THREE MORE LINKS IN THE GRAND PARKWAY ARE NOW READY TO ROLL Yesterday the Texas Transportation Commission rubber-stamped TxDOT’s selection of a developer for 3 additional segments of the Grand Parkway — if you count FM1960 and Hwy. 6, Houston’s fourth ring road. Segments F1, F2, and G of State Hwy. 99 will run from Hwy. 290 east to the newly minted I-69 (also known as U.S. 59). Along the way, the new stretch will rub elbows — conveniently — with the new ExxonMobil campus in the former pine forest west of the I-45 intersection and the start of the Hardy Toll Rd. Zachry-Odebrecht Parkway Builders will be in charge of the $1.04 billion project. Construction is expected to start next year, with the toll road opening in 2015. [TxDOT] Map: Tollroads News

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Apartments
09/21/12 10:10am

About Those “Early Morning” Concrete Pours

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New Construction, Quicklink, Rice Military, Sound
34 Comments

ABOUT THOSE “EARLY MORNING” CONCRETE POURS A neighbor of the Park Memorial construction site in Rice Military writes: “Just a question on Houston city ordinances. Are there any restrictions on construction in the middle of the night? I was awakened at 3 am this morning by a massive concrete pour. The site has been lit up with floodlights and there are multiple trucks with back up signals, machinery noise and yelling workers. I found some general noise ordinances but wondered if there are any other rules? This is as bad as any nightclub or worse.” [Swamplot inbox; previously on Swamplot]

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Galleria
09/12/12 1:40pm

New Plans Show BLVD Place with Apache Office Tower Stamped in the Middle of It

by
Mixed Use, New Construction, Office Space, Proposed Developments
18 Comments

What will the long-awaited BLVD Place mixed-use development just north of the Galleria end up looking like now that Apache is building a 33-story office tower and parking garage — and reserving space for a second tower — on a huge chunk of the land facing Post Oak Blvd.? Like a considerably smaller retail complex than what Wulfe & Co. advertised from 2007 until the Apache purchase announcement this June. The development now appears to be split into 3 functionally distinct blocks: A Whole Foods-anchored shopping center with office space above it wrapped around a parking garage on the corner of San Felipe and Post Oak Blvd.; the Apache office complex to the south of that on land formerly occupied by the Pavilion at Post Oak; and a bank of 4 apartment or condo towers (including Hanover’s) and maybe a hotel hanging in back, behind Post Oak Ln. The only incongruity will be the portion of BLVD Place that’s already been built: the 4-story retail-and-office building in the Apache zone at the project’s southeast corner, which will now be separated from the rest of the retail by the Apache Tower.

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Attractions
09/07/12 10:16am

Mud Bridge Over Buffalo Bayou

by
Bayous and Waterways, New Construction
14 Comments

Reader Jeromy Murphy sends a couple pics of a temporary ford of Buffalo Bayou seen last week near the site of the Police Officers Memorial off Memorial Dr. just west of Downtown. Planned nearby: a new permanent pedestrian bridge that will make the memorial accessible to soulmates hanging about in Glenwood Cemetery to the north. The bridge will also open the memorial to visits from bikers on the recently updated trail on the bayou’s north side.

This map shows the plan:

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Institutional Buildings
08/31/12 12:00pm

At New UH Biz Building, Glowing Sign of Insperity Is Just Around the Corner

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New Construction, Signage, University of Houston
6 Comments

The sign isn’t up yet, but this new classroom building at the University of Houston’s business school is being named after a human-resources company. Insperity gave the school $8 million, apparently enough to warrant the company’s name appearing in 1-1/2-ft.-tall neon-backlit letters at the top of Insperity Center. According to a UH document, the sign should be clearly visible to visitors on the west side of campus.

The 140,000-sq.-ft. building, previously referred to as the “classroom and business building,” just opened west of the Bauer College of Business’s Melcher Hall. Construction began in 2009.

Photo: HAIF user fatesdisastr

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Churches
08/23/12 2:02pm

New Fourth Ward Park of the Open Church

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Fourth Ward, Houston Architects, New Construction, Parks
41 Comments

Friday is the official groundbreaking ceremony for the Fourth Ward’s new Bethel Church Park — though an eagle-eyed Swamplot reader noted workers from contractor JE Dunn getting a jump on things at the site of the former Bethel Missionary Baptist Church at Andrews St. and Crosby earlier this month. The Freedman’s Town church in the shadows of Downtown, portions of which date from 1923, was largely destroyed by fire in January 2005 after several years of sitting vacant. Its shored-up walls have stood mostly undisturbed since then.

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Houston Heights
08/16/12 4:10pm

Houston’s Newest and Littlest Library

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New Construction, Openings and Closings
17 Comments

Inspired by a Kyrie O’Connor column last month decrying the absence of any Little Free Libraries in Houston, Heights resident Mag Franzoni and her husband went ahead and created one themselves. At the grand opening of the tiny custom-built bright-red exchange box perched on a couple of 4x4s in front of the home at 736 Tulane St. earlier this month, Franzoni had it stocked with a carefully pruned collection that included a biography of Ho Chi Minh, John McCain’s Character Is Destiny, Portia de Rossi’s anorexia tell-all, and Max Brooks’s World War Z, on the coming Zombie War. “I loved the idea where people could go and grab a book (and hopefully — if they can – bring a different one in return) and basically making this library into a gift that keeps on giving,” the newly minted front-yard librarian wrote the Heights Kids Group. “I hope some of you will stop by and pick up/bring a book. And if not, maybe you can share it with everyone you know so eventually everyone in Houston knows where to go when they want/need a book to read.”

Photos: Mag Franzoni

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Energy Corridor
08/15/12 9:41am

A Flag Circle Flies on the Katy Freeway

by
New Construction
28 Comments

“I love burst mode on my Samsung S3,” writes the Swamplot reader who used it to capture these photos looking north from the Katy Freeway just west of Hwy. 6. “What’s the deal with the giant flagpoles?” More than 2 dozen of them are up now, arranged in a semicircle on I-10-facing property, immediately west of Sam’s Club adjacent to a building under construction. As of yesterday evening only 1 flag was up, flying at half-mast.

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Bayous and Waterways
08/14/12 1:48pm

What’s the Story with Rutland Pond?

by
Houston Heights, New Construction
10 Comments

A Swamplot reader offers a trade: A few photos of the retention ponds going in north of White Oak Bayou where 6th St. was blocked between Yale and Shepherd (above and below) — in exchange for more details on the park that’s apparently planned for that location, including a scheduled completion date for the construction. “I have no ‘official’ information, only old data and hearsay,” reports the reader. Which includes this map dating from 2010:

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Construction Materials
08/07/12 5:50pm

Woodlands Shipping Container Co-Op Building: Open Source, Fully Leased

by
New Construction, Office Buildings, The Woodlands
6 Comments

The epic Software Group is now passing around pix of the “creative co-op” building the company painstakingly constructed next to its Woodlands headquarters over the last 18 months — out of 11 recycled shipping containers and a slew of other recycled materials. The 8-ft. x 40-ft. x 9-1/2-ft. containers, explains company president Vic Cherubini, are each 8-9 years old and still rated “sea worthy.” Around that core, the animation, multimedia and web development company production company built an almost-5,000-sq.-ft. building with a large video production studio inside. The assembly sits 50 ft. away from Epic’s own facility at 701 Sawdust Rd., and is now occupied by several creative companies in the area — who pre-leased it before completion.

How’d they put the thing together?

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