Proposed Developments

Cartoon of Highrise Planned for 1717 Bissonnet One advantage of keeping your Houston-style Big Tower in a Wealthy Residential Neighborhood project secret: You can plat the property, prepare traffic-impact studies, and upgrade utilities before anyone notices. One downside: Media-savvy neighbors might catch on and announce your project before you do. Or at least release renderings.

Here’s what Buckhead Investment Partners is saying about the 23-story mixed-use tower the company is planning for the current site of the Maryland Manor apartments, on the south side of Bissonnet near Dunlavy: A six-story base will include a 467-car parking garage, space for retail and a restaurant on the ground floor, and five live-work townhomes. An “amenity plaza” level on the sixth floor will have an exercise room, spa, and office space. Above it all: 17 floors of either apartments or condos.

Rainwater collection. LEED-Silver rating. Red-brick exterior with cast-stone details. But best of all is the spin:

The project design has been chosen so that all building residential units will be above the tree line, ensuring the greatest level of privacy for the surrounding neighborhood and the maximum view of Houstonâ€™s skylines and tree canopy from the units.

Emerging Boulevard Oaks development strategy: You won’t be able to see us, because we’ll be above the trees.

We want development…but not that much! [Houston Political Blog]
High rise plan not picture perfect with Museum District residents [abc13]
Redevelopment of 1717 Bissonnet [Buckhead Investment Partners, Inc.]

77005, Apartments, Ashby Highrise, Boulevard-Oaks, Condos, Green Development, Highrises, Mixed Use, Neighborhood Disputes, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Proposed Developments, Retail, Southampton, Trees, Utilities

Attractions

09/07/07 10:19am

Astrodome Redevelopers: This Time We Really Know What We’re Doing

Development Strategy, Historic Preservation, Hotels, Proposed Developments, Public Buildings, Reliant Park, Tourism

Carnival in the Astrodome

The crack team that the Astrodome’s unelected caretakers selected four years ago to redevelop the Houston landmark—for the brilliance of their proposed idea and their ability to make it happen—has changed its concept yet again! This time, though, the secretive group really has got it right. No more Space Theme Park. No more Ye Olde Fake Texas Courthouse Hotel Under Glass. This time, it’s a . . . modernish hotel . . . wrapped by a parking garage . . . with rides . . . and ponds and trees . . . and leftover parts of a ballfield . . . and conventioneers!

A faux Texas courthouse and other features that played on the state’s past are out. Plans now call for including a section of the Dome’s seats, part of the diamond and an overall contemporary design that plays up the building’s cutting-edge nature when it opened in 1965.

“We’re going to have rides. There could be air rides that take you off the ground and make you say, ‘Wow,’ ” said Scott Hanson, president of Astrodome Redevelopment Co., the firm hoping to transform the Dome. “We’re going to have a few of those. They would be easy-going rides that would show off the venue.”

Brilliant! Now, all they’ll have to do is convince five county commissioners in secret session, and the private takeover of a public stadium county taxpayers have paid billions of dollars for will be complete.

Investors’ historic theme dropped for modern look [Houston Chronicle]

Astrodome carnival photo: Flickr user Jeff Balke

77054, Astrodome, Attractions, Development Strategy, Historic Preservation, Hotels, Proposed Developments, Public Buildings, Reliant Park, Tourism

Development Strategy

08/28/07 10:38am

Building Tissue Donated for New Organ Donation Facility

Institutional Buildings, Medical Buildings, New Construction, Proposed Developments, Reliant Park, Renovations, Texas Medical Center

New Headquarters Building for LifeGift, Viewed from Lantern Pt. Drive

How fitting: The former St. Catherine’s Montessori School across from a Reliant Stadium parking lot is gone, but its spirit will live on. The school itself now has a new location on the other side of the South Loop, but the concrete bones of the “castle-like” building it left behind at 2510 Westridge will be . . . reused!

That’s right, organ-donation organization LifeGift will be spending $7 million to graft new space onto the existing structure, which will be renovated and kept alive presumably with an infusion of stucco. The completed building will be the organization’s 26,000-square-foot headquarters. A new blue-glass prosthesis will connect it to a parking lot along Lantern Point Dr. and serve as the front entrance. Among the features inside: LifeGift offices, an organ-donation education center, and operating rooms for onsite tissue extraction and organ recovery.

Let’s hope the transplant is successful. But really, this is nothing new for the patient: Before it became a school, the building was a firearms museum.

After the jump, more views of the bionic building from m Architects and Burwell Architects.

77054, Building-Reuse, Development Strategy, Institutional Buildings, Medical Buildings, Reliant Park, Renovations, Texas Medical Center

08/27/07 8:34am

Houston Pavilions: Woulda Coulda Shoulda

Condos, Development Strategy, Downtown, Mixed Use, New Construction, Nightlife, Office Buildings, Parking, Proposed Developments, Retail, Shopping Centers

Houston Pavilions Aerial View, Downtown Houston

If you’re curious why the developers of Houston Pavilions, the $70 million mixed-use development under construction downtown, decided not to mix anything other than office space with their 360,000 square feet of retail and “entertainment” space, you’ll be interested to read the comments L.A. developer Bill Denton made to the CoStar Group:

[Entertainment Development Group] put the site under contract in January 2004, then three surface parking lots and a multi-level parking garage sitting on just over 4 acres, and the project has evolved ever since. “We originally planned for a hotel/condo component, but at the time, the city was just finishing off convention center hotels and hotel occupancy was only 52%; now its difficult to find a hotel room in Downtown Houston. So, we changed the plan into two residential towers, which stuck until 12 months ago. Demand on the residential was tremendous, but because of the mixed-use and density, we would have had to do subterranean parking, which blew the economics of the residences out of the water. So now its 200,000 square feet of office space, and based on demand for that so far, I wish we could do 400,000 square feet.”

77002, Commercial Real Estate, Condos, Development Strategy, Downtown, Houston Pavilions, Mixed Use, New Construction, Nightlife, Office Space, Parking, Proposed Developments, Retail

Demolitions

08/24/07 7:43pm

MainPlace: Hines’s 46-Story Green Pipe-Wrench Dream

Downtown, Green Design and Development, Highrises, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments

View of MainPlace, Hinesâ€™s Proposed 46-Story LEED Silver Office Building on Main Street in Downtown Houston It rises dramatically from the center of Downtown to face the morning sun. And the renderings sure make it look like a sleek, giant pipe wrench, the business end looking out over Houston’s industrial east side. Yep, there’s nothing the head office won’t be able to fix!

It’s MainPlace, a 46-story, one-million-square-foot green spec office tower, planned for most of the block surrounded by Fannin, Rusk, and Walker, at 811 Main.

The developer is the Hines CalPERS Green Fund, established by Hines and the California retirement fund to develop “sustainable” office buildings around the country. The core and shell, they promise, will be given a LEED-Silver rating by the USGBC. Don’t worry too much about all that, though: tenants will presumably be free to decorate their interiors with the usual endangered rainforest hardwoods and petroleum-based finishes.

That’s a five-story atrium up there on the 39th floor, facing a “sky garden.” Enjoy those trees in the rendering while you can; eventually, the engineers will start to think long and hard about hurricanes. More details and lots more zoomy pics, including closeups of that ~~pipe-wrench jaw~~ sky garden, after the jump.

77002, Commercial Real Estate, Demolitions, Green Design, Green Development, Highrises, Historic Preservation, MainPlace, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments

Demolitions

08/22/07 10:36am

Foundation Clears Midtown Lot, Sets Sights on Emergency Rooms

Midtown, Proposed Developments

Demolition of the Fu Kim Grand Palace, Midtown Houston, June 2007

Christus Foundation for HealthCare, liberated a year ago from ownership of St. Joseph Hospital downtown, is planning a new family health center in Midtown at the corner of Fannin and McGowen. That’s the recently cleared lot where the Fu Kim Grand Palace complex used to stand.

Foundation president Les Cave tells the Chronicle the new building will be

a 55,000-square-foot “super clinic” designed to keep the uninsured out of emergency rooms whenever possible while giving them specialized care in everything from cardiology to orthopedics to dentistry.

The San Jose Clinic, the oldest charity clinic in the country, will move into the new facility from its current location under Highway 59 near Minute Maid Park, along with social services functions from Associated Catholic Charities.

Moneymakers: Five questions with Les Cave [Houston Chronicle]

Photo of Fu Kim Grand Palace demolition: Flickr user Dan Sandler

77002, Demolitions, Health Clinics, Midtown, Proposed Developments

Condos

08/21/07 8:00am

Tune In to the Turnberry Tower

Galleria, Highrises, Proposed Developments

Turnberry Tower Residences at the Galleria Exterior Rendering

This wide headstone, set to rise behind the Galleria Waterwall like a giant radiator grille poached from a 1948 Packard Custom 8, is Houston’s Turnberry Tower. At 34 stories (marked down from 42 threatened previously), it’ll reach just above the groin of the adjacent landmark Williams Tower.

The 184 condominium units inside, which will range from $1 million to $8.5 million, go on sale in two weeks when the 12,000-sf sales center opens. The building is scheduled to be finished by the start of the next decade.

What’ll $8.5 mil get you? One of two 15,000-sf units at the top, each of which boasts four bedrooms and—no, we’re not shitting you—nine-and-a-half bathrooms. Why will residents need so many?

For the entry-level price of $1 million, you’ll have to make do with less than 1800 square feet. But all residences feature private elevators, 10- and 11-foot ceilings, a fireplace to keep you warm on chilly Galleria nights, and terraces with glass railings. The building will have a spa and fitness center, a theater room, social rooms including a tea room and library, and a swimming pool atop the four-story parking garage.

Uncomfortable with the communal parking? Don’t worry: Twenty-five private air-conditioned garages will also be available.

Turnberry Tower Residences at the Galleria
Turnberry Tower beginning sales push [Houston Business Journal]
Proposed tower near Galleria high on luxury [Houston Chronicle]

Image: Robert M. Swedroe Architects and Planners

77056, Condos, Galleria, Highrises, Luxury Highrises, Turnberry Tower, Williams Tower

Buying and Selling

08/20/07 3:54pm

Sonoma Units Available?

Condos, Development Strategy, Mixed Use, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Proposed Developments, Rice Village

77005, Buying and Selling, Development Strategies, New Construction: Residential, Proposed Developments, Rice-Village, Sonoma

Interior Rendering of Model Living Room, Sonoma

Our story on the Rice Village’s Sonoma development last Thursday repeated KHOU reporter Lee McGuire’s claim:

The developer says potential buyers have reserved all but four of the new condos.

But Jennifer Friedberg’s writeup in this past weekend’s Chronicle sez otherwise:

A total of 115 of the 220 units for sale in Sonoma are already reserved, Tysor said.

That’s quite a number of buyers backing out of their reservations in a very short period, no? But even more curious is this:

The number of units continues to change depending on the square footage potential residents select for each condo.

Contracts won’t be signed until later in the process.

That’s right, ma’am, just tell us how big you’d like your kitchen and we’ll move the wall there.

Why Houston is $1.5 M richer [KHOU]
City Council approves sale, abandonment of Bolsover in Rice Village [Houston Chronicle]
Council Bowls Over, So No More Street [Swamplot]

08/16/07 10:43pm

Council Bowls Over, So No More Street

Condos, Leasing, Lofts, Mixed Use, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Proposed Developments, Rice Village

Rendering of Sonoma in the Rice Village, Showing Bolsover Street

Ignoring the objections of snooty inner-loopers who think they’re somehow entitled to a continuous grid of streets, City Council voted yesterday to let a block of Bolsover in the Rice Village become two private circular driveways and a restaurant patio. The deal nets the city a whopping $1.5 million—the price of a couple of small luxury condos, maybe.

That’s the last hurdle for Sonoma, which appears to have gained two stories since its last appearance here. Developer Randall Davis claims buyers have “reserved” all but four of the 225 condos. There’s also 125,000 sq. ft. of retail and office space in the complex.

After the jump, a revised aerial view of the new Bolsover dropoff.

77005, Commercial Real Estate, Condos, Leasing, Mixed Use, New Construction, Randall Davis, Retail, Rice-Village, Sonoma, Streets

Apartments

08/10/07 7:29pm

River Oaks To Move West, Add Hotels, Apartments, Offices, and Shopping

Commercial Real Estate, Condos, Highland Village, Highrises, Malls, Mixed Use, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments, Retail, River Oaks, Shopping Centers

Street Perspective of Proposed River Oaks District Development by Oliver McMillan

Aerial View of Proposed River Oaks District Mixed Use Development The Houston Business Journal gives more details on the River Oaks District, a 15-acre, $600 million mixed-use development proposed for Westheimer just inside the loop, on the site of the Westcreek Apartments, between Highland Village and the Galleria. It’s hard to imagine River Oaks moving further west than that. Once you get to the other side of the loop of course, you might as well call yourself Tanglewood.

Two luxury hotels are on tap. The five-star properties will have a total of 500 guest rooms, and 150 condominiums for sale at the top of one tower.

Another building will hold 300 upscale apartment units. A 10-story office building with 250,000 square feet of space also is part of the mix. And since the Galleria is synonymous with shopping, the developer plans 350,000 square feet of mostly ground-level retail space.

San Diego developer OliverMcMillan says groundbreaking is scheduled for a good year-and-a-half from now. So there’s plenty of time for this project to morph into a more typical Houston-style mixed-use project: maybe a stylish Sam’s Club next to some shiny new apartments?

After the jump, plans and more flashy drawings!

77027, Apartments, Commercial Real Estate, Condos, Galleria, Highland Village, Highrises, Hotels, Mixed Use, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments, Retail, River Oaks, River Oaks District, Shopping Centers, Westheimer

Financing

08/08/07 10:13am

Elrod Place: Credits Crunched

Katy, Proposed Developments

Katy residents upset with the prospect of a new low-income housing development in their community have won a round: Elrod Place, a 126-unit, 25-acre project proposed for 3700 Elrod Place—near Katy’s Bridgewater subdivision—won’t be able to get the $12 million in state housing tax credits the developers had applied for. The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs has denied the application by Barry Kahn of Hettig/Kahn Holdings.

State denies tax credits for low-income housing project [Houston Chronicle]
Is more low-income housing in store for the Katy area? [Inside Katy]
Low-Income Housing: Any Takers? [Swamplot]
Clay Rd. & Elrod Rd. [Google Maps]

77449, Financing, Low-Income-Housing, NIMBY, Proposed Developments, Tax-Credits

Apartments

08/07/07 11:05pm

Big, Expensive HISD Box To Be Replaced by Big, Cheap Costco Box

Commercial Real Estate, Demolitions, Development Strategy, Greenway Plaza, Mixed Use, New Construction, Proposed Developments, Retail, Shopping Centers, Sprawl

Former HISD Central Administration Building on Richmond

Proposed Costco on Richmond

The building was simply too big, too lavish, too expensive, too outmoded, and too hot a property for a school district to keep. The site was prime real estate, near the projected path of a new rail line, and perfect—said the buyers—for a dense “New Urbanist-style” mixed-use center. The big concrete box surrounded by parking just didn’t seem to make sense. So after HISD sold its Central Administration building on Richmond at Weslayan, Trammell Crow Co. had it razed last year to make the site ready for new, fresher, denser development.

And the new development is . . . a Costco! With an LA Fitness above it! Plus some outside-the-mall-style pad sites in a big surface parking lot facing Richmond! A small parking garage too. Oh, and an apartment complex tucked in back.

What happened?

[Trammell Crow project manager Craig] Cheney said the project had quietly shifted direction some time ago.

â€œWe looked around, and we had all these competing projects with integrated residential, office and retail, all competing for the same few retailers,â€ he said. â€œLife is too short to get into that kind of situation.â€

So the project â€” which had an initial design including a hotel, high-rise and garden homes, a bookstore, grocery store and other features integrated into one â€œvillageâ€ â€” took on a different form.

Shorter version: Costco wanted the site, so the developers jumped at the chance for some of that inside-the-loop big-box excitement.

After our jump, dreamy architect sketches of Paseo, the mixed-use European-style “lifestyle center” Trammell Crow and the Morgan Group waved in front of us for a brief, shining moment in our—yes, too-short lives.

77027, Apartments, Big Box Stores, Commercial Real Estate, Demolitions, Development Strategy, Greenway Commons, Greenway Plaza, Mixed Use, New Construction, Proposed Developments, Rail, Retail, Richmond-Avenue, Shopping Centers, Sprawl

07/27/07 2:16pm

My Tower Will Be 500 Feet Taller Than Your Tower

Development Strategy, Highrises, Mixed Use, Proposed Developments, River Oaks

Norfolk Tower One of the biggest office landlords in Texas has announced that he wants to build a very tall tower in either Chicago, Los Angeles, or Houston. Zaya Younan, who’s been in the real-estate business for five years, wants to show the world how tall a building he can erect. How tall is that?

. . . he doesn’t want a building that will barely rate a mention in the history books, a delicate titleholder surpassed in some Asian capital before its paint dries. “I want it to be the tallest for as long as I am alive,” Younan told the Sun-Times. . . .

The chairman of Younan Properties Inc. said that to build something with a lengthy hold on the record, he’ll need about 500 feet of cushion between his building’s height and any probable competitors.

By today’s standards, that means going up about 3,000 feet. It’s Sears Tower times two. It could cost $4 billion.

The Chicago Sun-Times article declares that the wealthy and powerful L.A. developer “is not crazy.” Younan Properties owns and manages the Norfolk “Tower” (it looks maybe ten stories tall; see the photo above) at Greenbriar and 59 in Houston. The company is the top office landlord in Dallas and the third-largest owner of Class A office space in Texas.

Houston airspace height restrictions blah blah blah downtown blocks too small a base blah blah blah free publicity in three cities blah blah blah.

Towering ambition [Chicago Sun-Times, via HAIF]
Younan Properties

77019, Development Strategy, Highrises, Mixed Use, Proposed Developments, River Oaks, Skyscrapers

07/26/07 8:05pm

The Beatles Slept Here

Downtown, Hotels, Proposed Developments, Renovations

Sheraton-Lincoln Hotel

And so, apparently, did Jack Ruby. The 28-story former Sheraton-Lincoln Hotel at 711 Polk downtown, vacant for more than 20 years and asbestos-free for almost nine, has a new suitor, reports the Houston Business Journal:

Omni [Hotels Corp.] said it and Atlanta-based Songy will transform the Houston hotel, near the George R. Brown Convention Center and what will be the new Houston Pavilions project, into an all-suites hotel featuring more than 400 suites, 30,000 square feet of meeting space and multiple culinary venues.

Other amenities will include a 13,000-square-foot wellness center with outside accessibility for nearby office workers, a fitness area with a Mokara Salon & Spa and personal trainers and nutritionists on staff to assist with creating customized wellness and fitness regimens.

After the jump, swank pix from the Sheraton-Lincoln’s sixties heyday.

77002, Commercial Real Estate, Downtown, Hotels, Proposed Developments, Renovations

Cinco Ranch

07/19/07 9:31pm

Developer To Take “Tuscany in a Parking Lot” Concept Nationwide

Commercial Real Estate, Development Strategy, Fort Bend County, Katy, Mixed Use, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Parking, Proposed Developments, Retail, Shopping Centers, Sprawl, Townhomes

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!