Proposed Developments

Featured Posts
06/19/18 5:15pm

New Otto’s Barbecue To Plant Restaurant and Catering Complex Where Luke’s Icehouse Bit the Dust on Durham

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Proposed Developments, Restaurants, Washington Corridor
6 Comments

Coming soon to the block across Durham from W Grill, just south of Washington: Otto’s Barbecue & Catering. The 67-year-old chain has plans for its first standalone location since the original on Memorial Dr. was sold in 2009 (for less than its owners felt it should’ve been) and demolished to make way for a collection of strip buildings.

Until last November, Luke’s Icehouse (pictured above) was the only structure standing in the way of the planned new restaurant on the corner of Lillian St. and Durham — but after shuttering last June, its building was torn down 5 months later. The rendering above shows Otto’s taking over the site from the north above Durham, where a courtyard fronts a covered patio adjacent to a parking lot.

Inside, the site plan indicates that 3,293-sq.-ft. would be devoted to the restaurant, while 1,722 would make up an attached catering kitchen:

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Smoke Signals
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East Downtown
06/18/18 5:30pm

A Look Around the 2-Building Emancipation Ave. Detention Complex Now in the Works for East Downtown

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Proposed Developments
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Inside the facility at 419 Emancipation that federal contractor Southwest Key Programs plans to use as a detention center for immigrant children, vestiges of the structure’s homeless-shelter past remain untouched. Christian nonprofit Star of Hope decked out the hallway of the smaller, 13,222-sq.-ft. building shown in the foreground of the aerial at top with both Old and New Testament scenes during its time on-site. It sold the property between Preston and Prairie streets in 2016 and moved into a bigger shelter on Reed Rd. near Hwy. 288.

In March, the complex wrapped up a 5-month stint as a temporary housing facility for 300 single adults displaced by Harvey. Its current owner (an entity tied to Dave Denenburg, the most recent renovator of Schlumberger’s former headquarters a quarter mile south) then leased it to Southwest Key, a nonprofit that operates facilities for unaccompanied minors in Texas. The organization plans to house as many as 240 children from infants to 17-year-olds inside — although most of the kids will be under 12, reports the Chronicle’s Lomi Kriel. That would make it “the first residential center in the nation detaining such small children without their relatives or other foster parents,” she writes.

A site plan shows how the 2 buildings sit on their 2-acre parcel, 3 blocks from BBVA Compass:

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Immigrant Kids Campus
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Featured Posts
06/14/18 10:00am

How a Fleet of Food Trucks Might Park Along White Oak Bayou Between Heights Blvd. and Yale

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Parks, Proposed Developments, Washingto Corridor
29 Comments

Only about 250 ft. separate I-10’s eastbound feeder from White Oak Bayou between Heights Blvd. and Yale — and within that never-developed span, Texas C.R.E.S. and an adjacent landowner are hoping to plant a food truck park, as advertised on the sign up near the southeast corner of the site. The conceptual plan above from architect Marshall Porterfield — not yet okayed by the city — indicates parking spaces for 10 vendors (and 6 patrons) accessible via entrances on the feeder and on Heights Blvd., across from the Heights Business and Mediation Center. A deck seating island in the middle of the parking lot provides some dining room within the third-acre site, owned by the current pair of developers since last year.

The rest of the land is devoted to park space for people and dogs. It backs up to an imagined spur of the White Oak Bayou Trail (currently only accessible on the other side of the bayou) that curves to the south.

Photos: Jason Cockerell. Site plan: Marshall Porterfield via Texas CRES and Delux Realty/Michel Coret

South of I-10
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Adaptive Reuse
06/12/18 2:00pm

Astral Brewing Ready To Launch Renovations on N. Shepherd Warehouse Brewery

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Bars and Clubs, Independence Heights, Proposed Developments, Renovations
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A construction permit filed yesterday reveals that Astral Brewing — the new beer venue headed to 4816 N. Shepherd — is beginning renovations to turn 9,208 sq. ft. of the 27,575-sq.-ft. warehouse building once home to Southern Truck Pros into a hub for brewing and drinking. The structure’s parking lot off Shepherd is shown full of trucks in the photo above, taken back before the auto shop shuttered.

A site plan posted on the brewery’s Facebook page indicates a combination of public amenities and mission-critical brewing facilities included in the redo:

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Independence Heights
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Featured Posts
06/12/18 11:00am

First Seaside Texadelphia Slated for Former Ocean Grille & Beach Bar on Seawall Blvd.

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Galveston, Proposed Developments, Quicklink, Restaurants
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FIRST SEASIDE TEXADELPHIA SLATED FOR FORMER OCEAN GRILLE & BEACH BAR ON SEAWALL BLVD. “Unobstructed Gulf of Mexico views,” will complement the food at the newest nearby location of Texas cheese-steak chain Texadelphia, situated right on the corner of Seawall Blvd. and 13th St. in Galveston, reports the HBJ’s Jen Para. The restaurant is picking up where Ocean Grille & Beach Bar left off in that spot when it shuttered 2 years ago, leaving behind a main building as well as the outdoor bar pictured above — and an even beachier Tiki hut structure with patio seating beneath it. How will Texadelphia make use of the existing amenities in this, its first ocean-adjacent spot? Its one corporate-owned, landlocked Houston location sprung up in Briar Meadow at 8383 Westheimer last October, bookending a 2-year hiatus the brand had taken from the city and its surroundings. It’s now mounting a three-pronged return: Earlier this year, it signed another lease for the spot in the Hawthorne Square Shopping Center that Yucatan Taco Stand vacated last year. [HBJ; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Ocean Grille & Beach Bar’s bar: Katya C.

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Alief
06/07/18 2:30pm

Fly Around the Public Portion of Gensler’s Glassy New Alief HOPE Clinic for Bellaire Blvd.

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Proposed Developments
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Enter stage east in the video rendering above Gensler published of the new HOPE Clinic planned for 13800 Bellaire Blvd., a block west of Eldridge Pkwy. After a look around the fountains bubbling up in the L-shaped building’s plaza right along Bellaire, you’ll be ushered through the doors to its cafe-like intake center on first floor (no need to open them).

No buildings stand in the way of the soon-to-be built structure; it’s slated east of an auto shop on a never-before-developed tract abutting Alief’s Metro Blvd. that the Asian American Health Coalition of the Houston Area has owned since 2016. This health center — serving uninsured and unable-to-pay patients — would be its fourth in Houston. An existing Alief location sits less than a mile down the road, in the Presidio Square shopping center off Hwy. 6.

Video: Gensler Houston. Image: HOPE Clinic

Renderings, Stat!
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Featured Posts
06/06/18 5:15pm

Where Another New Subdivision Will Slot into the White Oak Floodplain West of T.C. Jester

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Proposed Developments, Timbergrove
23 Comments

Here’s where the neighbors of the soon-to-be filled and graded Stanley Park subdivision will go, in a larger, adjacent 207-home community dubbed Palisades Park that’s also planned by the floodable rail yard west of T.C. Jester and south of Timbergrove Manor. Unlike the tract next door, it’s almost entirely outside White Oak Bayou’s 100-year floodplain (but still almost entirely inside the 500-year).

Its current occupant: the complex of industrial buildings eyed from the sky at top — which sits behind Grace Bible Church and adjacent to Better Bags, Inc.’s facilities off 11th St. In order to connect to that street, a new roadway would be built through what’s now the church’s parking lot, as indicated in the subdivision map below:

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By the Tracks
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Featured Posts
06/05/18 10:30am

Turkish Restaurant Transformation Now Taking Place Across Westheimer from Agora

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Montrose, Proposed Developments, Renovations, Restaurants, Retail
2 Comments

A new eatery is on its way to the Montrose shop called Montrose at 1723 Westheimer, a block west of Dunlavy. The toponymic women’s clothing boutique had about a 3-year run in the space before it went out of business, leaving the building vacant. Just last week, the developers behind the coming Eastern European restaurant filed plans with the city to remodel the 1,830-sq.-ft. structure into something more Turkish and culinary: Cafe Bosphorus. A banner hung up on the left storefront window store heralds its arrival.

Photos: Hipster Hotspots (Montrose Shop); Cafe Bosphorus (sign)

Cafe Bosphorus
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Featured Posts
06/04/18 4:30pm

Your Guide to East River Candyland

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Fifth Ward, Maps, Mixed Use, Proposed Developments
12 Comments

The map above — taken from this week’s city planning agenda — provides a candy-colored indication of how Midway plans to divvy up the 136-acre former KBR site along Buffalo Bayou, east of downtown, that it’s redeveloping into an office, retail, and residential neighborhood dubbed East River. Among the more colorful land uses revealed for the site: a park-fronting hotel slated for the semi-circular red parcel to the east, as well as a nameless museum — shown in grape — that’s planned along Buffalo Bayou near the neighborhood’s western edge.

Sprinkled along the water is an extension of the existing trail that runs along Buffalo Bayou’s north bank. It would traverse the entire development, from its western edge to the boat dock planned at its eastern boundary. Along the way, “Pedestrian bridges are being discussed with Buffalo Bayou Partnership to connect the two sides of the bayou,” according to the plans Midway submitted to the city.

Those 7 consecutive yellow blocks at the north end of the site along Clinton St. represent the citadel of townhomes that’ll look out onto the surrounding Fifth Ward. It’s bookended by 3 blocks of retail to the east along Hirsch Rd. and one to the west on Jensen Dr.

As heralded by the sign — pictured below — now hanging the site’s construction fencing, Houston’s city planning commission will take up the special exemption request that Midway submitted for the development later this week:

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Sweet Deal
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Apartments
06/04/18 1:00pm

Here’s an 8-Story Office and Apartment Complex for Heights’ Studewood Low Point on White Oak Bayou

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Houston Heights, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments, Retail
13 Comments

Engineering firm The Interfield Group is hoping to score a trio of variances that will allow it to swap out its existing dingbat office building (above) at the Heights landing point of the Studemont St. bridge for a much larger mixed-use development (depicted at top) dubbed Heights Gateway. The new 8-story complex rests on the stealth-bomber-shaped parcel at 401 Studewood outlined in the aerial above. It’s split between a residential portion (shown beneath the lettering in the rendering) and a glass curtain-walled office section to the north — all of which rests atop a floodable 2-story parking garage plinth.

Its lowest parking level — indicated in the site plan below — includes a main entrance off Studewood that runs between the work and live sections of the complex:

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Heights Gateway
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East Downtown
05/30/18 1:00pm

A Peek at East Downtown’s Hotel RL and Its Texas-Sized Inner Circle

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Hotels, Proposed Developments
22 Comments

Here’s the latest rendering of the Hotel RL that’s planned for the block of St. Emanuel St. just north of recently-opened bars Rodeo Goat and Truck Yard. Complete with a roughly 6-story high Texas flag dangling from its hamster-wheel-like facade, the building itself — designed by STOA Architets — stands at 27 floors. It’s planned in place of the 2-story Kim Hung Market building at 1005 St. Emanuel, pictured above outside its entrance. That structure currently backs up to Hutchins St., at the edge of a block-long parking lot to its west.

Rendering: STOA Architects. Photo: Greg D.

Deep in the Heart
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Featured Posts
05/22/18 5:00pm

Why Willowcreek Ranch Might Keep Its Roads to Itself

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Proposed Developments, Tomball
6 Comments

On Houston’s city planning agenda this week: a variance request from Caldwell Communities which seeks permission to forgo building a public north-south street through its planned Willowcreek Ranch neighborhood just north of the Grand Pkwy. in Tomball. Caldwell’s plans currently call for the neighborhood to include just one longitudinal road — a short, private street dubbed Three Bars Trl. It intersects Holderrieth Rd. — an existing public street — at the spot shown in more detail above, the boundary between what’s being developed now and a northern parcel set aside for future building. Because Holderrieth’s 2 nearest junctions with other public streets are currently about a mile-and-a-quarter apart from each other (more than double the city maximum), Caldwell — in building along the road — would be required to create one within its own property.

The reasoning it gives for why it shouldn’t have to: “A public street connection north from Holderrieth is infeasible due to the location of a tributary of Willow Creek,” the development’s namesake. The tributary includes a swath of 100-year-floodplain, shaded lighter blue in the map below:

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Off the Grand Pkwy.
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Churches
05/22/18 11:30am

How Salem Lutheran Will Spread Its Church-and-School Complex Across 119 Woodsy Acres in Tomball

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Proposed Developments, Tomball
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Salem Lutheran Church has plans to expand its current religious and pre-K–8 school campus, which sits just over 2 miles west of Hwy. 249 in Tomball. The idea: to develop roughly 100 acres adjacent to its existing facilities, adding new school structures and landscaping behind the pond-front church building shown in the photo at top, taken from above Lutheran Church Rd. The parking lot pictured on the left would also be enlarged, and a new complex of athletic fields would abut it to the south.

The master plan also includes not only these additions, but also a 73-lot residential area to the far west:

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Live, Learn, and Pray
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Featured Posts
05/18/18 4:00pm

A Peek at the Love Shack, Smokehouse Now on the Menu for Levy Park

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Parks, Proposed Developments, Restaurants, Upper Kirby
6 Comments

A pair of new renderings shows off the 2 food options planned for Levy Park — now in its second year of operation since the overhaul that reshaped and then reopened it last February. The kiosk depicted above — dubbed Love Shack — gets its name from chef Tim Love. (A previously-announced moniker, Love Bird, appears to have been scrapped.)

Love is also the operator behind the larger restaurant dubbed Woodshed Smokehouse that’s shown with a tall glass-walled dining room in the rendering at top. Below, a map of the park shows a spot labeled “Future Restaurant” in its bottom right corner:

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Preparing to Sprout
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Apartments
05/11/18 4:00pm

Near Northside’s Dunlop St. Won’t Run Through Fulton Lofts Apartments on METRO’s Red Line

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Near Northside, Proposed Developments
1 Comment

Houston’s City Planning Commission approved a variance yesterday permitting a developer that plans to build a 4-story apartment building on the corner highlighted above not to extend Dunlop St. through the site, as otherwise required. Instead, plans call for the street to end at the south side of the complex, where it’ll be bounded by a new, 8-ft. tall fence.

The request first showed up on the commission’s agenda on April 26, at which time a couple of residents came forward to complain about the heavy traffic on nearby Karcher and Angelo streets — which northbound drivers use to avoid the light at the intersection of Link and Fulton. Extending Dunlop through the site, they argued, would clear up some of that congestion.

But a 60-ft.-wide swath of road like that would run over the garage, parking lot, pool, and dumpster area the developer plans to build at the center of the complex, as shown in the site plan below:

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Transit Corridor
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