New Construction

Aerial Rendering of Villagio Shopping Center in Cinco Ranch

A Woodlands developer has decided its latest creation—a not-yet-opened shopping center in Katy—should be replicated statewide and beyond. Marcel Inc. CEO Vernon Veldekens told GlobeSt.com that

the concept behind Villagio involves smaller, mixed-use centers in neighborhoods rather than fronting freeways or interstate highways. “This gives a more intimate relationship with the community, similar to a European town square,” he says. “We feel like we can put these all over town in mid- to high-end areas and have the same success as we have in Cinco Ranch.”

The Villagio at Cinco Ranch, a boutique lifestyle center slated to open this fall on a 12-acre site at the corner of Westheimer Pkwy. and Peek Rd., is almost three-quarters leased. The center combines 112,285 square feet of retail and office space in a parking-lot-like setting. The developer’s marketing director told the Houston Chronicle that the Villagio will have a “Tuscan look and Tuscan feel to it.” Many of the cars in the 307 spaces surrounding the buildings and the 225-space garage will likely be European as well.

The project is a departure for Marcel Inc., a property development and management firm whose base portfolio includes more mundane shopping centers and a gas station and convenience store, and which previously developed a motorcycle superstore and a handful of Family Dollar stores. Already, the firm has plans for Villagios in north Austin and The Woodlands, and is contemplating additional locations in Round Rock, San Marcos, New Braunfels, and Dallas, according to Globe St.

After the jump, more views of the expanding Tuscan landscape, including the Tuscan villas on the lot!

77450, Cinco Ranch, Katy, Mixed Use, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Parking, Proposed Developments, Retail, Shopping Centers, Town-Squares, Townhomes

Condos

06/21/07 10:36am

How the Magnolia Lofts Got Their Name

Development Strategy, Historic Districts, Houston Architects, Houston Heights, Lofts, Mixed Use, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Townhomes

Sketch of Magnolia Lofts in Houston Heights by Tim Cisneros

Commenting on an article describing plans for a 40-unit condo building on the site of the former Ashland Tea House in the Heights, with another 40 townhouses and “garden villas” to be sprinkled around it later, Chronicle blogger Martin Hajovsky writes:

I remember when the Ashland Tea House, the McDonald Home, was demolished in 2005, the plan at the time was for a Victorian-themed restaurant to go there. The mere idea that someone would tear down a Victorian-themed restaurant to build a Victorian-themed restaurant struck me as the height of irony.

That memory came back reading the article because there’s a beautiful old magnolia on that site right now. It’s a perfect example of the species. Wonderful, fragrant, old and stately. If that tree survives the building of the “Magnolia Lofts,” it would be a miracle. Once again, irony triumphs.

Construction is expected to begin in August or September. The Magnolia Lofts will feature a tiny ground-floor commercial space—at 750 sf, even smaller than the average condo size of 900 sf—and two stories of parking, one of which the article describes as

“partially submerged” so the building would only appear to be five stories tall.

Maybe the developers should claim that the bottom level of parking is really at a normal level—although it’s underground, it is in the Heights.

Architect Tim Cisneros’s vague storybook sketch of the facade, though, has aroused the ire of Heights resident Mark White:

“While the description provided by the architect sounds like the building’s proposed style is in keeping with the Victorian-era architecture of the Heights, the initial drawings suggest a more ‘updated’ factory-turned-condo facade,” he said. “We would ask that the developer consider making a few changes to the style to make it more consistent with the architecture of the time period represented by the Heights neighborhood.”

By our estimate, that time period would be approximately 1891 to 2007, with the average construction date moving toward the present at a pretty steady clip.

Heights growing more dense? Thoughts thereof… [Home in the Heights]
Plans expand for Ashland Tea House site [Houston Chronicle]
Magnolia Lofts [Cisneros Design Studio]

77008, Condos, Historic Districts, Houston Heights, Mixed Use, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Parking

Downtown

06/20/07 12:01pm

Downtown Skatepark: Build It and Maybe They Will Go Away

New Construction, Old Sixth Ward, Parks

Downtown Houston Skatepark

“If your city doesn’t have a skatepark, then your city is a skatepark,” reads a headline on a Skaters for Public Skateparks website. And really: Houston has so many better uses for its concrete surfaces—like channeling floodwaters.

In the words of one proponent, speaking in a Public Use Skateparks for Houston (PUSH) video:

If you want to get the kids off the streets, get them to quit tearing up your ledges and your rails, and put them some place where they can actually have some fun and stay out of trouble, a place where families can come hang out — there’s a real need for it in a city this big.

It’s the flypaper theory of city planning: Build it, and maybe those annoying skaters will go there and leave your property alone.

You might have expected building owners bothered by scrapes and skate wax to have been bigger proponents of the newly announced downtown Skatepark. Instead, it took a $1.5 million donation from Joe Jamail for the Houston Parks Board to meet its fundraising goals.

The park will be 35,000 square feet of sculpted concrete on the west side of Sabine St. at Memorial Dr., just under the Sabine Bridge over Buffalo Bayou. There better be some drains in those bowls.

PUSH spokesman Barry Blumenthal told city council to expect 200 skaters and hundreds of onlookers at the park on a typical Saturday.

After the jump, more views of the new skatepark.

77007, Downtown, Old-Sixth-Ward, Parks

Briarbend

06/12/07 9:14am

You’ll Love This Home! And You’ll Love Demolishing It, Too!

Buying and Selling, Demolitions, Development Strategy, Homebuying, Homes for Sale, New Construction, New Construction: Residential

7807 Del Monte Dr.

Five little words slipped into the end of an MLS profile remind us, gently, that updated but low-slung houses on large lots in tony Houston neighborhoods aren’t meant for homebuyers who want to enjoy a simple home in a natural setting. No, an older ranch like this is meant for a family willing to tolerate a “gorgeous” and “spacious” (but also apparently cramped and doomed) home until they can tear it down and build something that’s five times as big and that blankets the 10,665-square-foot lot more definitively. It’s a sacrifice, we know.

See if you can find the magic words in this listing:

GEORGEOUS, UPDATED, WELL MAINTAINED 3/2.5/2 W/LRG ENTERTAINMENT RM & WET BAR OVERLOOK POOL, BRIARBEND SUBD, ZONED NEW BRIARGROVE ELEM. $55K+ IN UPDATES: 2007 Paint/Hardware, 2005 Silestone Kit Counters/ Dbl Ovens, Baths, Entertain Rm Roof, Replaced Ducts/Added 4 Return Vents. UPDATES LAST 6 YRS: Dbl Pane Windows, Refinished Hardwood Floors, Refinished Pool Surface/Robotic Pool Sweep, Garage Doors, Recessed Lights in Kit, LR & Hall. Park @end of blk. Live in now/Build later/2 story allowed.

More photos of the amazing $466K Briarbend house you’ll love so much you won’t be able to wait to tear it down—after the jump.

77063, Briarbend, Buying and Selling, Demolitions, Development Strategies, Homebuying, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Ranch-Houses

Commercial Real Estate

06/07/07 9:36am

A Clever Way To Develop Property Temporarily While You Wait for a Bigger Deal

Construction Materials, Demolitions, Development Strategy, Green Design and Development, Houston Heights, New Construction, Proposed Developments, Retail

Shipping Container

Here’s a building method that seems well-suited for Houston: It’s fast, it’s temporary, and it involves both shipping containers and fine art. Remember the demolition permit for the site on 11th Street in the Heights we mentioned a few days back? By Friday, it’ll have a completed building on it, according to ‘stina, who wrote in her LiveJournal Wednesday:

Today, the shipping containers will be delivered and installed to the new site of the 1400 square foot gallery, and you can see for yourself what this form of construction looks like. They started this morning with merely a few spread footings and grade beams and they’ll finish this evening with all the containers set and a good portion (if not all) of the roof in place.

It’s the new Apama Mackey Gallery, pieced together out of three shipping containers by Numen Development. The gallery will occupy the site for a few years, until the landowner is ready for a more permanent development in that location. Then Mackey will be able to move the gallery to a new lot she hopes to find in the meantime.

Some of the project’s green features, according to ‘stina’s report:

From conception of the idea in March, it has been three short months to a nearly final product!

The Mackey Gallery is built to be moved and reassembled with less than 5% waste.

Custom panelized roof and floor system utilizing Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs are extremely energy efficient and virtually eliminate the need for traditional framing while dramatically reducing waste and build time.)

Clerestory panels and office windows made from Polygal. (An insulated polycarbonate that is more energy efficient than glass, yet less expensive and more secure.)

The job site for the Gallery will need NO dumpsters because the building process has so little waste.

Even the parking lot will be made of Permeable Paving squares which are green, and reusable.

Assembly [Texaslawchick, via Offthekuff]
Apama Mackey Gallery
Numen Development
Daily Demolition Report: Coming Down from the Heights [Swamplot]

Photo: Flickr user Ross Dunn

77008, Demolitions, Development Strategies, Galleries, Green Design, Green Development, Houston Heights, Shipping-Containers

New Construction

06/04/07 1:04pm

The Best Thing About Those Southampton Oaks

Proposed Developments, Southampton

Sure, the canopy of coastal live oak trees along Sunset Boulevard north of Rice is purty and all, but what’s really great about it is that it’s going to block views of a new six-story medical tower going up in Southampton. Well, okay, the fact that car windshields don’t curve all the way up over our heads—that helps too. Just don’t look up while you drive by, okay?

Now if Southampton residents would just shut up about the new Medical Clinic of Houston building long enough to watch this drive-by video produced by the new building’s nice architects—showing the still-leafy drive along tree-lined Sunset Boulevard, they’ll see how silly their complaints are.

After the jump, un-foliated views of the new tower, plus the seven-level parking garage that’s going to face Rice Boulevard.

77005, Medical Clinics, Proposed Developments, Rice-University, Southampton, Trees

Apartments

05/21/07 9:57am

West Ave: Shiny, Happy People Holding Shopping Bags

Mixed Use, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Proposed Developments, River Oaks, Upper Kirby

View Down West Ave

The teaser website for the apartments-and-retail complex slated for that large, recently scraped site at the southwest corner of Kirby and Westheimer is up! What will you find there? For starters, a trance soundtrack you’ll have a tough time figuring out how to turn off, plus slick rendered views and a whizzy video of a dark and urban-looking streetscape where pedestrians wield shopping bags and hover precariously on balconies.

This is the former site of the River Oaks Tennis Center. The development is named West Ave, and to prove it they’re putting in a new street by the same name just west of Kirby, extending from Kipling to Westheimer. Of course the big news is the two floors of retail space facing Kirby, West Avenue, and Westheimer. On top of that: five stories of apartments, managed by Gables Residential. The parking garage is tucked in back.

After the jump: The plan and more images.

77098, Apartments, Mixed Use, New Construction, New-Streets, Proposed Developments, Retail, River Oaks, Shopping, Upper Kirby, West Ave

Malls

05/14/07 11:35am

Pearland’s New Drive-Thru Mall

New Construction, Pearland, Retail, Shopping Centers

Pearland Town Center Street View

Pearlanders excited about the Dillards, Macy’s, Barnes & Noble, and other typical mall fare that will become available to them when the new Pearland Town Center opens next summer will likely find even more excitement when they learn they’ll be able to drive right up to their favorite stores!

And no, it won’t be a Big Box center. (At least . . . not at first.) It’ll be just like a mall, except it’ll be open-air. It’ll be just like an outlet mall, except the streets will be tighter and more “urban.” It’ll be just like a downtown shopping district, except . . . it’ll be surrounded by a sea of parking!

And just what premium will shoppers be willing to pay for the chance they might be able to grab one of the few head-in spaces right in front of the Great American Cookie Co.? Once they’re in the outer parking areas, will they take a chance and wait patiently in traffic for the possibility there might just be a head-in space available there, or maybe in front of Victoria’s Secret?

Or . . . will all those premium close-in spaces go valet?

How much of a traffic backup will this new mall design cause? More on that, plus more artist renderings of the new mall, after the jump.

77583, Malls, New Construction, Parking, Pearland, Pearland-Town-Center, REITs, Retail, Shopping Centers

Apartments

05/14/07 9:49am

The Instant Med Center Highrise

Highrises, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Proposed Developments

The great southern Med Center land grab continues: Moody National Companies has bought a one-and-a-quarter acre site at the corner of Woodbury and Cambridge—about a quarter-mile southwest of the Spires. What for? How about . . . a new 200-unit apartment tower? Globe St. reports:

The fact the parcel is situated within 100 feet of the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Baylor College of Medicine’s proposed 2.7 million sf [new campus] is underwriting the project’s potential as are the proposed rents. “We’ve projected rents at around $1.65 per sf, with an average unit measuring somewhere around 950 sf,” Moody tells GlobeSt.com. “We want to offer a lot of variety from smaller studio units to larger luxury units.” He adds that Moody will manage and lease the tower.

No architect yet. No general contractor. Early-2009 opening.

Moody National Will Build $35M, 200-Unit Tower [Globe St.]
Corner of Woodbury and Cambridge [Google Maps]

77030, Apartments, Buying and Selling, Devonshire, Highrises, Proposed Developments, Texas Medical Center

Homes for Sale

05/08/07 11:06am

The Google Townhouses Are Coming!

Lofts, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Software, Townhomes

Missouri Street Lofts by Catera Development

Just last year, the Wall Street Journal warned homeowners about the dangerous consequences of taking new easy-to-use consumer software design tools into their own hands. Now Houston gets to see what happens when developers commandeer these same computer programs.

Coming soon: The Missouri Street Lofts, a six-pack of townhouses now under construction in the heart of Montrose. You can see them online now, though, modeled in cartoon-worthy earth tones using Google Sketchup—free 3D drawing software anyone can download and learn in just a few minutes.

After the jump, townhouse developers demonstrate their mastery of Sketchup’s ultra-wide camera angles, giving us bird’s-eye views of tight interiors and more!