TOP CITY DEVELOPMENT OFFICER: WHAT MAKES THE HEIGHTS SO SPECIAL? Where does Andy Icken get this kind of attitude, anyway? From . . . uh, reading some of the reader comments on Swamplot? The Chronicle‘s Mike Morris rummages through that stash of city emails about the West End Walmart and discovers “dismissive, and sometimes derisive, references to citizens opposed to the development” from Mayor Parker’s top development honcho: “For example, in response to a subordinate’s e-mail regarding potential fallout from a July 2 Chronicle report about Wal-Mart’s interest in the site, the city’s chief development officer, Andy Icken, wrote, ‘In that neighborhood I assume there are some who feel they have access to unique info that makes those folks uniquely qualified to decide what is good for everyone else. … Walmart deals with folks like this everywhere.’ Three weeks later, as neighborhood opposition intensified, Icken responded to a colleague’s comment about Wal-Mart’s growth in the Houston market by writing, ‘We have had 4 new ones built in the last 2 years without a community comment until they touched the effete in the heights!’” [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
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Proposed Developments
That’s 3-and-a-half levels of parking artfully hidden behind the extended forehead of the new Galleria Whole Foods Market in this latest rendering being waved by the developers of Blvd Place. Also obfuscated: your view of that little mustache of strip-mall-valet-style parking in front, behind those hedges facing Post Oak. But most Whole Foods shoppers will be parking in a separate 300-car underground garage, and will feed into the store on a moving sidewalk. The parking levels above are meant to serve an additional 140,000 sq. ft. of retail, restaurants, and office space Wulfe and Co. is hoping to fill in this portion of its scaled-down redevelopment project. But so far no leases have been signed, reports the Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff.
This Whole Foods has now been marked back up to 48,500 sq. ft. — about 25 percent larger than the chain’s Kirby location, but down from the 78,000 sq. ft. originally announced 4 years ago. The latest construction start date: next summer.
- Plan for new Whole Foods takes shape [Houston Chronicle]
- Blvd Place coverage [Swamplot]
- Previously on Swamplot: Taking a Bite out of Whole Foods, Whole Foods Galleria and North Montrose: Still on Track, Galleria Whole Foods Parking Puzzle Solved, The Sleek Strip, the Ritz Tower, and the Path to Whole Foods: A Closer Look at Boulevard Place, Uptown Whole Foods: Still on Track, Apparently, Is Whole Foods Coming to Boulevard Place . . . or Not?
Rendering: Wulfe & Co.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: MAKING HISTORY IN GALVESTON 
“what’s equally funny is that the sign on the [pier] now reads ‘[coming] soon: galveston’s historic pleasure pier’. i guess on this island, things are now considered historic even before they’re built.” [JC, commenting on Landry’s Kicking Galveston’s Flagship Hotel Off the Pier, for Amusement] Photo: Ellen Yeates
The development director of the New York-and-Denver-based firm that just announced it would be creating a new eco-themed 1,800-acre community immediately south of The Woodlands — and directly adjacent to a 400-acre parcel Exxon Mobil has been eyeing for a giant new consolidated corporate campus — is sure being kinda vague about the identity of the property’s owner, Springwoods Realty. Keith Simon tells the HBJ‘s Jennifer Dawson that Coventry Development and Springwoods Realty share some officers (including him), but that the two companies are “not affiliated.”:
Coventry handles all of the real estate holdings for a privately held umbrella organization that Simon would not name. Springwoods Realty is under that umbrella.
Other entities under the umbrella own approximately 1,000 acres of undeveloped land by Baybrook Mall. Coventry has developed approximately 1 million square feet of retail property around the mall over the past 25 years.
“It’s really a confusing puzzle,†Simon admits.
Adding to the mystery surrounding this corporate . . . uh, “shell” game: Simon’s statement earlier in the week that Springwoods Realty had sold off approximately 400 acres of its holdings — not to Exxon Mobil, but to an entity named Palmetto Transoceanic.
- Coventry developing new community near likely Exxon campus [Houston Business Journal]
- Springwoods Village coverage [Swamplot]
Site map: Coventry Development
Among the revelations in the packet of emails reporter Miya Shay recently received in response to a 3-month-old public-records request: City officials learned from Ainbinder Company as early as June 11th that the big-box store indicated on plans for the company’s Washington Heights shopping center in the West End would be a Walmart. Swamplot readers first heard reports of the company’s plans on July 1st. But as late as July 13th, the city development director’s deputy apparently felt it necessary to ward his boss off plans to keep the details or intentions behind the city’s infrastructure-improvement agreement with Ainbinder a secret: Tim Douglass writes development director Andy Icken, “Frankly, it’s a little too late to try and ‘sneak’ this through council. The cat is out of the bag.”
HAIKU OF THE DAY: AMUSEMENT PARK WEATHER Landry’s not on land, sell gale storm rides with dinner. OK, Fertitta? [houku, commenting on Landry’s Kicking Galveston’s Flagship Hotel Off the Pier, for Amusement]
Early renderings are out for the next round of construction — promised for 2011 — at CityCentre, Midway Companies’ mixed-use assortment on the former site of the Town and Country Mall. The 3rd and 4th office buildings in the complex will together be called CityCentre 3, and they’ll go on the leftover patch of grass just west of the Hotel Sorella, sidling up to Beltway 8. Like the others, the two new 6-story buildings will feature retail space on their ground floors: more than 33,000 sq. ft. out of a total 250,000. The feeder-road view:
First order of business for Tilman Fertitta, now that he’s finally succeeded in turning Landry’s Restaurants back into a private company under his control (the deal closes today): announcing the demolition of Galveston’s hobbled-on-a-pier Flagship Hotel. Actually, Landry’s officials jumped the gun slightly, showing plans for a large hotel-free amusement park on the 25th St. Pier site of the shuttered hotel to Galveston’s city council yesterday. In place of the Flagship — which was built a few years after Hurricane Carla hit the island in the early sixties — yep, you guessed it: There’s gonna be a Ferris wheel. Plus: a double-decker carousel and other attractions meant to vaguely resemble the amusement park originally on the pier when it was built in 1943.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: RING ROAD REASONING “And people said there is no need to build the Grand Parkway. If Exxon forces all the people out at the West Houston Location they’ll need [the] parkway to get [to] this site.” [kjb434, commenting on Is Springwoods Village the New Exxon Mobil Eco-City?]
Coventry Development’s senior VP Keith Simon wouldn’t answer media questions today concerning the possibility that the new 1,800-acre mixed-use community his company wants to develop just south of The Woodlands might have the newly consolidated headquarters of the largest oil company in the world as its very first neighbor. In January, the Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff reported on plans shown to her — apparently prepared for Exxon Mobil — showing an “elaborate corporate campus, including 20 office buildings with 3 million square feet, a wellness center, laboratory and multiple parking garages” on a 400-acre site near the intersection of I-45 and the Hardy Toll Rd.
Meanwhile, an informant tells Swamplot about a real-estate “study” Exxon Mobil has reportedly been conducting of all the properties it owns and leases in Houston: “the old Humble building at 800 Bell downtown, the Chemicals complex at Katy Fwy. and Eldridge, the lovely Greenspoint campus across from Greenspoint Mall, the research facility on Buffalo Speedway, and others.” The company is considering vacating all these sites — as well as its large and valuable Fairfax, Virginia campus outside Washington, D.C. — and consolidating all employees in the new megacampus just south of The Woodlands. (Baytown refinery employees, don’t worry — you’d get to stay put.)
Writes our informant:
Although the company is telling its understandably concerned employees who happen not to live in Spring or The Woodlands not to worry, that this is still just a study, there is already work being done to prepare the site for building.
Where might have Exxon Mobil have come up with those 400 acres?
A New York land development firm called Coventry Development has just announced grand plans to establish a giant eco-friendly, mixed-use development modeled heavily on the ecological principles first demonstrated decades ago by The Woodlands — on an 1,800-acre site just south of that community. It’s now a pine forest near the intersections of I-45 North, the Hardy Toll Road, and the projected path of the Grand Parkway, about 30 miles north of Downtown Houston. Some portions of that forest will remain: Plans call for a 150-acre nature preserve along one section of the community’s northern reaches, which stretch to Spring Creek. South of that, and along the northern border of the Grand Parkway, the developers are planning a town center with the hallmarks of major mixed-use employment centers: office space and retail, a medical district, townhouses and apartments, and single-family homes. But they’ve gone ahead and given the place a formula-tested suburban-housing name: Springwoods Village.
Springwoods Realty Company has owned most of this land since the 1960s. Why develop it now? Because it’s now pretty clear that the Grand Parkway will actually be built right at the property’s southern border, the developers say. Plus, there’s development on all sides now.
Speaking of Katy schools: The power lines in the photo on the left, a couple miles southwest of Katy Mills mall, flag the dividing line between Jefferson Development’s Firethorne subdivision, zoned to Katy ISD, and the just-announced Firethorne West addition in Fulshear the company just announced — which will be served by the Lamar Consolidated ISD. The new Katy ISD elementary school site waiting for November’s bond vote and proudly featured in the center of Firethorne’s master plan will not be serving the 1,400 planned homes in Firethorne West, even though they’ll be only 2 blocks away. The kids in Firethorne West will likely be attending Huggins Elementary, which is more than five miles to the southwest. And until new roads are built they’d actually get to drive past that “Future Katy ISD†elementary school every school day to get there:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHY THEY’RE BRINGING WALMART TO THE WEST END “I once wrote a frustrated letter to Wal-Mart’s corporate office in Arkansas begging for a better store to serve the Inner Loop than what was available on S. Post Oak and 610. It may very well have come off as begging. Had they ever followed up with me about the particular issue, I almost certainly would have begged for the store. And had they come to my door, I’d have groveled at their feet in admiration of their corporate largess and magnaminity, even.” [TheNiche, commenting on West End Walmart Development 380 Agreement Gets City Council OK]
WEST END WALMART DEVELOPMENT 380 AGREEMENT GETS CITY COUNCIL OK As expected, city council this morning approved a program of reimbursements to Ainbinder Company for improvements to public areas related to its Washington Heights Walmart-plus-strip-centers development in the West End. The vote, 11-4, came after amendments were approved limiting taxpayer costs to $6,050,000. The improvements will include wider sidewalks and bigger trees along Yale and Heights than required minimums, drainage and reconstruction of several nearby streets, and a jogging path along the Heights Blvd. esplanade south of I-10. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
Got a question about something going on in your neighborhood you’d like Swamplot to answer? Sorry, we can’t help you. But if you ask real nice and include a photo or 2 with your request, maybe the Swamplot Street Sleuths can! Who are they? Other readers, just like you, ready to demonstrate their mad skillz in hunting down stuff like this:
Answers — of a sort — to your questions-about-town:
- Southwest Freeway: More than a week after our source noted the problem, that dangling loop of fiber-optic lighting gone dim is still taped to a cable (see photos above) on the Dunlavy St. bridge. TxDOT, the agency in charge of the lights, has swooped in to fix problems with the lights sporadically since at least 2004. But the situation has apparently accelerated to the late-drooping stage. What’s next? Are they just gonna leave us hanging?
- North Montrose: Pat Wente finds the source of the Regent-Square area jackhammering: demolition of a slab leftover from the Allen House demo on West Dallas (see photo below). And hears Bernard’s somewhat blunt though unofficial assessment of the prognosis for construction on the giant mixed-use project:
