Central Square Plaza has been sold, and new owner Keeley Megarity, whose LLC closed on the 1-acre Midtown property at 2100 Travis St. about a week ago, says that a decision about how to renovate these buildings — and what to renovate them into — will be made in the next 30-45 days.
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.
This flag-flying 12-story tower planned for the under-development Block 10 West Office Park might end up hiding the renovations underway on the former Great Indoors, which you can see peeking out in the distance in the rendering above. Real Estate Bisnow’s Catie Dixon reports that Hicks Ventures is building out the out-of-business big box into a 2-story, 245,000-sq.-ft. spec office building. Plans include the construction of a 5-level parking garage behind the new building and a 6-level garage between it and this proposed I-10-facing tower.
Here’s an aerial view of the park and its neighbors:
This relatively gritty Warehouse District warehouse appears to be the subject of some real estate speculation, reports Hair Balls’ Richard Connelly: A website for the Houston Studios building — home to a 10,000-sq.-ft. soundstage with a 30-ft. ceiling for video shoots, rehearsals, and other creative expressions — features renderings that show it as a cleaned-up commercial complex:
The only thing that’s really changed about 3400 Montrose, a tipster tells Swamplot, is the name of its owner: Global Paragon, which bought the former podium for Scott Gertner’s Skybar in 2011, went “belly up” this past November, the tipster says, and the vacant 10-story building’s now owned and managed by a 40-person LLC that’s looking for a buyer or a joint venture.
And that’s where these interior photos, from a short-on-info listing posted recently on Cushman & Wakefield’s website, come in:
Kirksey submitted the rendering above in a 4-firm competition to design a general office with some temporary housing for the Saudi Consulate, now occupying a suite in the 22-story Westheimer highrise shown here, which dates to 1982 and sits across the street from an IHOP. But Kirksey lost that competition — to Studio RED.
Spring’s a time of renewal: And the Yoakum St. apartments — and palm trees, too — pictured here came down this winter so something very like this office building could begin going up. Campanile South, it’s called, is being described by developers Hansen Partners as a 6-story, 82,000-sq.-ft. “boutique” space with retail and restaurants facing Richmond Ave. Setting up on a lot between Yoakum and Graustark, Campanile South will be be the 7th member of the Campanile family that’s clustered around St. Thomas University the University of St. Thomas and Montrose Blvd.; it’s expected to be ready for tenants in 2014.
And something like this 3-story, 2-building office complex should start going up this spring in Spring, reports the Houston Business Journal’s Shaina Zucker. Planned to sit on 7 and a half acres at 460 Wildwood Forest Dr., the 127,794-sq.-ft. Wildwood Corporate Center will be across the street from apartments and about 3 miles north of the ExxonMobil campus being built among comparatively tame woods where 385 acres have been clear-cut around the intersection of I-45, the Hardy Toll Rd., and the likely path of the Grand Pkwy.
Rendering: Houston Business Journal
Hines has confirmed that it will be putting up something new — maybe this glow stick of an office building, maybe not — at 609 Main, just north of the former MainPlace, now BG Group Pipe Wrench. Pickard Chilton, says Hines, will design a 41-story, 815,000-sq.-ft. office tower just as soon as an anchor tenant is signed. This view of the rendering released this week seems to look south toward the Hines-owned downtown block bound by Main, Texas, Fannin, and Capitol. Now, half that block is an $8 a day parking lot. If you look closely at the rendering, you’ll see an Apple logo just to the left of that entrance teepee. Whether that will actually be a new Apple store is not confirmed — and anyway, before anything new can come in, Hines will have to tear down what’s already there: The unoccupied Texas Tower, the former Sterling Building, at 608 Fannin:
Where’s all the new office space in Houston? Here, reports Metrostudy’s David Jarvis. The lemming-like red dots cramming together on the Beltway and Katy Fwy. out toward the Grand Parkway denote locations that are already under construction, totaling 12.5 million square feet of new office space. The green dots denote planned locations that would add 6 million more. The ExxonMobil campus up near the Woodlands, reports Jarvis, accounts for almost half of the new construction.
Map: Metro Study Report
And here’s what BHP Billiton Petroleum’s new 30-story tower might look like. The company announced yesterday that construction will begin at 1500 Post Oak in November on the fifth skyscraper at Four Oaks Place; the proposed 560,000-sq.-ft. building, going up where a vacant 24-Hour Fitness now sits, will be connected by a skybridge to the company’s existing 1360 Post Oak building. BHP says that the twinnish towers are meant to consolidate the company’s entire workforce in Uptown.
Rendering: Houston Business Journal
Ah, Friday: Why not take a stroll down Binz St. in the Museum District and have a look at what’s going on? Let’s head east from here: the corner of La Branch and Binz, near the Children’s Museum.
Our guide, Swamplot reader David Hollas, provides the photos and the observations:
Will the recent purchase, a reader wants to know, of a 105,000-sq.-ft. building out near Spring Branch by Admiral Linen & Uniform Services mean anything for the company’s much-smaller headquarters at 2030 Kipling St.? Well, Admiral Linen isn’t available for comment.
The company closed just after Christmas on the building at 8020 Blankenship Dr., near Hempstead and Bingle. Since 1998, according to city records, it’s owned the three-building, 24,000-sq.-ft. headquarters a block west east of South Shepherd and directly behind the Randalls on Westheimer.
A Swamplot reader sends in photos of this Travis St. office building’s — well, stuccover. Gone are the striped awnings and gas light (pictured at the top) likely added during the building’s New Orleans Revival phase. Also gone is a trick-of-the-eye mural continuing those awnings (and window-fronting balcony railings, too) painted on the brick load-bearing wall that faces south toward Francis St. Built in 1959, the 4,741-sq.-ft. Midtown office space was purchased last June.
Want to see more of the stuccover?
Office building or home? It depends on which listing you read. One on LoopNet appears to have marketed the property for a while at $599,000 — as an office building. But it popped up as a single family item this week on HAR, asking $535,000. Built in 2001 and updated in 2010, the corner-lot custom live-work structure is 2 blocks south of the Katy Fwy. in the Brunner subdivision in Cottage Grove.
