Proposed Developments

Commercial Real Estate
01/31/11 8:09am

Surprise! Walmart Buying Land Next to Idylwood for Houston’s First Inner-Loop SuperCenter

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Franchises and Chain Stores, Land Sales, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment, Retail
110 Comments

The first-ever inside-The-Loop Walmart SuperCenter will be built near the corner of South Wayside Dr. and the Gulf Freeway, a source tells Swamplot. The 28-acre site sits between Idylwood and I-45; according to a preliminary site plan currently making the rounds in that neighborhood, the store’s main entrance will be from Wayside, which also serves as the freeway entrance to a few other eastside neighborhoods, including Country Club Place and Forest Park.

According to Swamplot’s source, a real-estate entity connected to Walmart has an 8-month option to buy the property, home to 6 vacant warehouse buildings that once served as a distribution center for Oshman’s — as well as the former corporate offices of the defunct sporting goods company. Walmart has been completing its analysis of the property and is less than 30 days away from completing the land purchase, for a price of $35 a sq. ft., the source says.

Isn’t Walmart already planning its first Inner-Loop store on the other side of Downtown — just south of the Heights? Yes, but that store won’t be a SuperCenter. The Idylwood store is expected to measure approximately 210,000 sq. ft. — almost 60,000 sq. ft. larger than the planned Washington Heights District location. The site plan of the Idylwood store, which is not final (and which we’ve rotated to fit below), shows an asphalt parking lot with 722 spaces, plus a garden center on the store’s south side:

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Commercial Real Estate
01/28/11 10:16am

How Springwoods Village Will Earn Its Lunch Money, and other Secrets of the Great ExxonMobil Frontiers

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Development Stategies, Land Development, Master-Planned Communities, Office Space, Proposed Developments, Real Estate Investing, Springwoods Village
7 Comments

The HBJ’s Jennifer Dawson picks up an interesting detail about Springwoods Village, the mysterious eco-themed community being planned by a mysterious company for 1,800 mostly forested acres just south of the Woodlands, at the intersection of I-45, the Hardy Toll Road, and (someday) the Grand Parkway. Coventry Development, still won’t talk about the project’s connection to the rumored but not-yet-announced corporate campus ExxonMobil appears to be building next door, which is expected to consolidate most employees currently based in Houston and Fairfax, Virginia. But it sure looks like Coventry is banking on something big close by: Development director Keith Simon tells Dawson that

Coventry will develop commercial parcels in Springwoods before the residential acreage. The company’s strategy is to build commercial first to create tax value that will funnel money through the tax district to fund infrastructure.

Building standalone office parks and strip centers in the middle of a forest is, of course, a time-honored Houston development tradition. More often these days though, the sprawling houses go in first. But if the major centralized campus of the second-largest publicly traded company in the world is going to bring in thousands of workers nearby pretty soon anyway, yeah — what’s the point?

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Houston Heights
01/25/11 11:44pm

Studewood Place: Some New Building Behind the 11th St. Someburger

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Mixed Use, Proposed Developments
121 Comments

Details on the 6-story mixed-use building being planned for the corner of Studewood and 11th 1/2 St. in the Heights will be announced “very soon,” a representative of the new property owner promises Swamplot. A couple readers wrote in earlier today with questions about the new construction fence that just went up on the 25,000-sq.-ft. lot, directly behind the Someburger stand on 11th St. Here’s all the owner, a new firm called Vita Nuova, is willing to say about the project — dubbed Studewood Place on city permits:

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Attractions
01/21/11 2:35pm

Behold the Orange Glow: The Dynamo Stadium Blob Is Ready To Go

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East Downtown, Proposed Developments, Stadiums
18 Comments

The big East Downtown orangish blob that will be Dynamo Stadium takes on a more definite shape in these new drawings. That’s a giant steel mesh wrapping the 22,000-seat soccer and football venue. Inside: 34 luxury suites, 1,000 “club” seats, and a stadium club. Separate canopies connected to the exterior mesh hang over both sidelines and a stage on the south end. The Houston Business Journal‘s Allison Wollam reports that orange lights will shine on the stadium at night — but the tower lighting shown in earlier renderings is gone from the latest images. Maybe, as a Dynamo fan on HAIF suggests, the place is just gonna glow from within.

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Comments
01/20/11 4:46pm

Comment of the Day: Cultural Exchange

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Freeways and Toll Roads, Openings and Closings, Proposed Developments, Quicklink
2 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: CULTURAL EXCHANGE “If it’s any consolation, if there’s a scale model of the Astrodome outside of Beijing, it’ll probably get paved over eventually, too.” [tinyvoices, commenting on Out of the Way, Tiny Soldiers, Here Comes the Grand Parkway: Katy’s Forbidden Gardens Is Closing Down]

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Demolitions
01/20/11 10:58am

Where M.D. Anderson Will Put the UAE President’s New Building

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Medical Buildings, Proposed Developments, Texas Medical Center
7 Comments

One of the things UT’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center will be doing with that $150 million gift the president of the United Arab Emirates is handing over: Constructing a new 600,000 sq.-ft. therapy building, named after the donor’s dad: the Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan Building for Personalized Cancer Care at MD Anderson. But where in the Med Center will they fit it? It won’t be replacing M.D. Anderson’s Houston Main Building, the former Prudential Life Insurance Tower already being hacked away at, and which the medical institution reportedly plans to demolish within weeks — a new treatment facility of some sort has been planned for that site for almost 9 years. The new building funded by the Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan Charity Foundation will land instead on a different demo site: the southeast corner of Moursund St. and M.D. Anderson Blvd., a 5-acre lot which until last year was the home of the UT Health Science Center’s Mental Science Institute. M.D. Anderson bought the 2-story concrete-and-brick building at 1300 Moursund from its sister institution, then had it torn down over the summer, identifying the land at the time only as a location for “future expansion.”

A couple more photos of that site, from last year’s demo:

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Commercial Real Estate
01/18/11 2:37pm

Where the Other New Gulf Freeway Outlet Mall Is Supposed To Go

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League City, Malls, Proposed Developments
3 Comments

Just days after Simon Property Group announced it would build a new 100-store Galveston Premium Outlets shopping center in Texas City, Tanger Factory Outlet Centers is ready to talk about the outlet mall it’s been planning for a 35-acre site just 4 miles to the north, in League City. Tanger’s 300,743-sq.-ft. mall, which the company says is in the “predevelopment phase,” would sit just north of the Bay Colony shopping center and just south of the Big League Dreams sports complex. And like the Simon Mall, it’ll be right near a Walmart too — the Supercenter across I-45 at FM 646.

If both malls sign up enough tenants to get built along the I-45 feeder road, it’ll help adjust the impression that huge swathes of undeveloped land remain between Houston and Galveston — at least for drivers headed south. The Chronicle‘s Purva Patel also reports on a third new mall being discussed for the area — from Taubman, but that company hasn’t announced its plans.

Rendering: Tanger Outlets

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Dickinson
01/13/11 12:29pm

The Galveston Outlet Mall Coming to Texas City

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La Marque, Malls, Proposed Developments, Texas City
6 Comments

The company behind the Houston Premium Outlets way up off 290 near Fairfield in Cypress has announced plans to build a similar outlet mall on the opposite side of Houston. Simon Property Group, also the owner of the Houston Galleria and the Katy Mills Mall, plans on calling the new 100-store, 350,000-sq.-ft. complex the Galveston Premium Outlets, but it’ll be located well north of the island in Texas City, just south of the Holland Rd. exit off I-45 and north of the Walmart Supercenter, on the west side of the freeway. From the drawing the company is passing around, the place should look a whole lot like its Cypress cousin, logo-tattooed tower and all.

The site is a 55-acre chunk of the stalled and probably flopped Lago Mar, a 7,000-home development announced 6 years ago.
The Galveston County Daily News‘s Laura Elder reports there are rumors another outlet mall is coming to the area as well, a couple of exits north on a 20-acre lot north of Cross Colony Dr. and west of FM 646 in Dickinson — this one from another national mall developer: Tanger Outlet Centers.

What’s the deal with the malls already in the area?

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Apartments
12/29/10 12:24pm

A Plaza View for the Rice Village: Hanover Plans Smaller Development in Place of Sonoma Screwup

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Mixed Use, Proposed Developments, Restaurants, Retail, Rice Village
33 Comments

The Village News is reporting that the Hanover Company has purchased the 4.5-acre site in the Rice Village once slated for Randall Davis’s Sonoma development, and is ready with plans to build a large — though far less grandiose — retail-and-apartment project on the site. Davis and partner Lamesa Properties made a mess of the site 2 years ago, purchasing a stretch of Bolsover St. from the city and demolishing several buildings’ worth of retail and office space before facing the credit markets and figuring out they wouldn’t be able to get financing for the project.

Hanover’s project, called Plaza View Hanover at Rice Village, is scheduled to include 385 “high-end” apartments, 14,000 sq. ft. of retail or restaurant space, and a multi-level parking garage, all in what its designers label a pedestrian-friendly design. What’s that plaza we’ll be viewing? An almost-17,000-sq.-ft. public space along Morningside, with a “water feature, grass lawn, large trees, and restaurant dining spaces.” According to Hanover executive veep John Garibaldi, 55,000 sq. ft. of retail space, 34,000 sq. ft. of office space, and an 8,000-sq.-ft. grocery store were cut from the earlier Sonoma plans. Much of the towering nouveau pomposity of the Sonoma design has been cut too. Along Kelvin St., Hanover’s buildings will reach 6 stories tall; 5 stories along Morningside and Dunstan.

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Leasing
12/28/10 12:30pm

A First Glimpse of Uchi in Houston: Leasing Lower Westheimer Retail by the Piece

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Lower Westheimer, Montrose, Proposed Developments, Restaurants, Retail
13 Comments

Here’s a first look at the not-so-distant future of Lower Westheimer, just a block east of Montrose, where sushi chef Tyson Cole and the owners of Austin’s Uchi and Uchiko restaurants plan to open a first Houston venture. The new Houston Uchi won’t be taking over the whole corner. The neighboring spaces will instead be available à la carte: The new owners are picturing as many as 3 separate businesses (one with a second floor and rooftop deck) leasing the 4,700-sq.-ft. building that used to house Caffe Den and Privé at 908 Westheimer. Also available, around the corner on Grant St.: a little 714-sq.-ft. structure with the address of 904B Westheimer. It’ll share restrooms with Uchi, which will be taking over the former Felix Mexican Restaurant space on the corner, at 904A. The left side of the Grant St. rendering above is the only view we’ve seen so far that shows any part of Uchi itself, but it contains a few clues about how Austin architect Michael Hsu (creator of the original Uchi on South Lamar as well as Houston’s Sushi Raku in Midtown) plans to transform a vintage Tex-Mex classic into something sushi-worthy. It looks like at least a few of those arched windows will stay:

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Demolitions
12/16/10 2:06pm

Sugar Land Sugar Box Implosions Back on for This Sunday

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Fort Bend County, Industrial Properties, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment, Sugar Land
1 Comment

The controlled demolitions of 2 metal buildings once part of the Imperial Sugar Refinery off Highway 90A in Sugar Land, originally scheduled for December 12th, have been rescheduled for this weekend. If all goes according to plan, after the dynamite blasts on Sunday morning the furnace house and bin building will fall away from the brick char house, which Johnson Development Corp. plans to save and use as a centerpiece for the new 700-acre historic-themed development it plans to build on the site, celebrating the rich but recently decimated history of the local sugar-refining business. The company plans to call the development “Imperial.” With or without the implosion, the demolition of Sugar Land’s iconic buildings has already been nominated this year for a Swamplot Award for Houston Real Estate, in the Best Teardown category.

The viewing area will be east of Main St. and north of Hwy. 90A — which will be closed down. There will be parking available at Lakeview Elementary, 314 Lakeview Dr., and Sugar Land Middle School, 321 Seventh St. Demo time is scheduled for 7 am.

Photo: Flickr user mscottk

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Art
12/10/10 12:05pm

Peter C. Marzio’s Unfinished Business at the MFAH

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Institutional Buildings, Museum District, Museums, Proposed Developments, Quicklink
5 Comments

PETER C. MARZIO’S UNFINISHED BUSINESS AT THE MFAH Count the creation of Isamu Noguchi’s Cullen Sculpture Garden, the addition of the Rienzi estate, and construction of the Rafael Moneo-designed Beck Building as just a few of the accomplishments of the Museum of Fine Arts’ longtime director, who died last night at the age of 67. But more was being planned: “At the time of his death, Marzio was working toward the goal of a third building for modern and contemporary art, which he envisioned as presenting a global view of art movements in the Americas, Europe and Asia. He called his plans for the third building the most intellectually challenging work of his career.” [29-95]

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Commercial Real Estate
12/07/10 5:43pm

First Sign of Skanska: Where the New Spec Office Tower Near the Galleria Will Go

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Development Strategies, Financing, Galleria, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments
14 Comments

From the window of his office behind the Galleria, Swamplot reader Warren Pattison snaps this view showing a crane installing a large sign on the site of a new office tower scheduled to go up at 3009 Post Oak Blvd. That’s the former site of Tony’s Ballroom, wedged between the Water Wall and the West Loop. An executive with the U.S. unit of Swedish project development and construction company Skanska announced back in January that the project should begin construction by the end of this year, but the company didn’t close on the deal to buy the land — from a subsidiary of Hines — until September. The company will be financing the building by itself. A fanciful view of the design for the now-19-story tower, by local architecture firm Kirksey, as it might appear if no buildings or billboards were nearby, and everybody abandoned the West Loop:

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Buying and Selling
12/07/10 2:25pm

Riverside Terrace Assisted Living: Whatever It Is, You Should Be Against It

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Neighborhood Disputes, Proposed Developments, Riverside Terrace
12 Comments

Passed on to Swamplot: an “anonymous call-to-arms of sorts” distributed to the front doors of a few residents on the Hwy. 288 edge of Riverside Terrace. A reader who received the crooked yellow flyer complaining about the encroachment of businesses into the area tells Swamplot “I would find it hilarious if it didn’t make me so angry.” Our tipster notes in the author of the double-sided note an apparent “disjunction between the things that irritate them (‘Speed Racers’ and ‘sexual deviants’) and the alleged causes (businesses, like Denny’s).”:

I don’t even know how to respond – I thought about creating another flyer, actually using my name, and systematically debunking each of their complaints, but that would probably just get my house egged.

At issue: a future “assisted living facility” apparently being planned for 2323 Prospect St. The author of the flyer doesn’t exactly know what’s going in there, but writes adamantly that it can’t be good:

What kind of services are being provided and to whom these services are being provided is unknown at this time. Will this pending facility provide services for the released mentally fragile, released prisoners, sexual deviants, homeless or for drug rehab? Whatever! This business is not safe for you, your family, our block, our neighborhood and our community.

The complete flyer:

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Art
12/07/10 11:54am

Houston Building Permits Will Turn This House into Art — Tonight

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Fifth Ward, Parks, Proposed Developments, Public Art
2 Comments

Note: Nope, not tonight. See update below.

Sometime after 9 pm tonight — if rain doesn’t postpone its scheduled journey from 3012 Erastus St. in Houston’s Fifth Ward to a new home on Lyons Ave. — this abandoned house will become art. That’s not just the contention of Dan Havel and Dean Ruck, the two demolition artists responsible for the move; it’s actually detailed in the city permits they obtained for “Fifth Ward Jam,” a temporary public-art project they’re creating with funding from the Houston Arts Alliance. After Wooten House Movers set up the structure in its new location, Havel and Ruck will start tearing it up and reconstructing it. But the move is what will make it art — because the city says so. “The permit office had a hard time categorizing just exactly what to call our project,” Havel tells Swamplot:

Is it a house, is it a sculpture? Is it both? The black and white rules of permitting needed to be utilized. The best way to do that is to first call the house a structure in order to obtain the permits to move it. However, once the house is placed on the property, it ceases to be an inhabitable structure and will be transformed into a sculptural environment. So, somewhere along the moving route, whether it is half way between two sites or when it physically enters the new site, it will be officially categorized as a sculpture.

So when we reconstruct the house into a sculpture, we do not need a building permit because it is now a sculpture. Pretty funny logic, if you ask me, but it makes sense. The permit guys were certainly scratching their heads, but we got our permits.

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