Redevelopment

09/25/18 12:00pm

How White-Collar Workers Will Fit into a Former East Downtown Factory

East Downtown, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment

A Chronicle article dug up by the group proposing to renovate 612 Live Oak St. into a coworking space called Brass Tacks reveals that the 4,750-sq.-ft. building — 2 blocks from BBVA Compass Stadium — was originally put there by architect S.R. Slaughter in 1938 to house Oliver Armature Works, a manufacturing plant that produced electrical doodads. It’s now up toÂ Schaum/Shieh Architects to make room inside for a variety of different business professionals who’ll come and go as they please from bothÂ private and communal work areas (and a bar).

New previews of the planned venue showcase one way of accomplishing that task: by installing a hive of productivity cubbyholes along the side of the main room. They’re shown at top lining the building’s north wall, with open-air booths on top of them.

To get down from the upper level, take this narrow side corridor up to the spiraling stair structure by the door:

Adaptive Reuse, East Downtown, Office Space, Proposed Development, Redevelopment

Brass Tacks

Apartments

08/27/18 2:00pm

Khun Kay Thai Cafe’s Second-Gen Owner Now Tracing Out 20-Story Highrise in Its Place

Mixed Use, Montrose, North Montrose, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment

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The outline of a 20-story apartment building called Montrose Gardens made its first public appearance late Friday in the city’s planning commission agenda, where its footprint covers over that of the Khun Kay Thai Cafe on the corner of Montrose Blvd. and W. Clay St. Only 9 of those stories will be for living, so what’s going into the rest? According to the building’s engineer: “A variety of retail stores, restaurants, and coffee shops” — all 24,000 sq.-ft. of which would be buffered from the 150-or-so upstairs apartments by 9 stories of resident-only parking. Underground, a separate 2 floor garage will gobble up retail traffic from an opening on W. Clay.

Also present on the 19,900-sq.-ft. site where the apartment’s staking its claim: the restaurant’s 2 parking lots. The northern one ran over the duplex-turned-psychic-shop directly south of it after the structure — memorialized in the aerial below — was demolished in 2016:

Montrose Gardens

77019, Apartments, Mixed Use, Montrose, North Montrose, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment, Retail, Variance Requests

Demolitions

08/27/18 12:00pm

Sunset Heights Church’s Receives Last Rites, Strip Retail To Succeed It

Proposed Developments, Redevelopment, Restaurants, Retail, Sunset Heights

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A pile of building parts is now all that stands in the way of the 4,500-sq.-ft. strip that Houston developer Ancorian wants to place at Yale and E. 27th, opposite the other shopping center it’s now ushering tenants into across the street. In place of the standalone Church’s Fried Chicken drive-thru — pictured above before and after its demo last week — a rendering now shows 3 newcomers lined up next to each other at 2702 Yale.

One of them carries on the site’s fast-food legacy with more of a niche focus:

Chickening Out on Yale

77008, Demolition, Fast Food, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment, Restaurants, Retail, Strip Centers, Sunset Heights

Cornered by Construction Fencing, Westchase El Palenque Will Soon Give Way to New Regions Bank

Redevelopment, Retail, Westchase

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Orange fencing is condoning off the corner of the Westchase Shopping Center where a new Regions Bank is planned in place of the El Palenque that shuttered there in May. A demolition permit issued for the restaurant building exactly a week ago means its days are numbered. But for now it’s still standing, fronted by landscaping and the new Port-o-Potty pair visible in the photo at top from Walnut Bend Ln., just shy of Westheimer.

Also on its last legs: the bank’s nearest existing branch on S. Kirkwood near the Westheimer H-E-B. A company spokesperson told the HBJ‘s Olivia Pulsinelli in June that the planned new branch will take over business in the area.

Regions Bank appoints Houston market leader, plans several new branches [HBJ]

Photos: Jose Galvan (fencing); Troy M. (El Palenque)

Branching Out

77042, Banks, Redevelopment, Restaurants, Westchase

08/08/18 1:30pm

Latest Newcomer Lining Up Next to East Downtown I-45 Reroute: F45 Training

East Downtown, Redevelopment, Renovations, Retail

Add F45 Training to the list of businesses taking over warehouses next to where I-45 will run over a few of its own once its rerouted through East Downtown.Â That’s the gym’s black box in the photo at top, neighbored by the Ferris wheel that new-ish bar Truck Yard recently installed in its own next-door lot. North of an adjacent portion of the building that F45 hasn’t touched, exterior work added new horizontal siding a couple shades darker than the previous off-white onto the structure, as well as the doorway — pictured above — atop which the national fitness chain has been flexing its COMING SOON signage for the past few months.

A permit filed yesterday for the building at 1110 Hutchins indicates rehab work is about to head inside to deal with a 2,650-sq.-ft. portion of its space. It’s 10,000 sq.-ft. total and backs up nearly halfway down the block on Lamar St. where it stands off from the south side of the Kim Hung Supermarket, long-whispered to be about to be demolished for something much taller.

Previously on Swamplot: The Buildup To Tear Things Down for the New I-45 Has Begun; The East Downtown Block West of Truck Yard Has a New Owner

Photos: F45 Training

Bodybuilding Buildings

77003, Adaptive Reuse, East Downtown, Redevelopment, Renovations, Retail, Warehouses

08/07/18 1:00pm

Second Tres Market Heading to Upper Kirby Warehouse Pair Across from Ghanian Consulate, Behind River Oaks Donuts

Proposed Developments, Redevelopment, Restaurants, Upper Kirby

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Memorial Dr.’s Tres Market Foods is expanding to the pair of black and off-white buildings pictured above at 2620 Joanel St. behind the Westheimer strip home to River Oaks Donuts and across the street from the 2-story building housing the Honorary Consulate of Ghana. Formerly a row of separate lots, Houston’s city planning commission approved a request to consolidate the warehouse parcels all into a single property earlier this year. Since then, a handful of permits have come through as part the paperwork to prep the structures for remodeling.

Together, they total 5,400 sq.-ft.:

Prepared Food Preparations

77027, Adaptive Reuse, Proposed Development, Redevelopment, Restaurants, Upper Kirby

08/06/18 5:00pm

New New Magnolia Brewery Now Staking Its Claim to a Shady Acres Warehouse on Bevis St.

Bars and Clubs, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment, Shady Acres

And in even more beer-related news, another local warehouse is now turning to drinks as its primary occupation. ThisÂ 7,725-sq.-ft. one — pictured above from Bevis St. between W. 16th and 17th — is about to become New Magnolia Brewing. Its name is a cheers to the original Magnolia Brewing Company — formally theÂ Houston Ice and Brewing Company — that did its concocting along Buffalo Bayou at the corner of Franklin and Milam streets until Prohibition forced it to make ice its flagship product. Following its shutdown, the Magnolia Ballroom took the place over roughly 40 years ago.

The New Magnolia’s 43,560-sq.-ft. digs at 1616 Bevis include this front yard, more than twice the size of the building to its north:

The Brew and the Old

77008, Adaptive Reuse, Bars and Clubs, Redevelopment, Shady-Acres

08/06/18 2:15pm

Former Harrisburg Dry Cleaners Now Getting Its Feet Wet with New Bar Tenant as Part of Planned Redo

Bars and Clubs, Redevelopment

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Note: This story has been updated.

The first tenant slated for the soon-to-be redone Imperial Linen & Cleaners building a block west of the Green Line’s Coffee Plant/2nd Ward stop is now on its way there courtesy of Mike Sammons, one of the partners behind Midtown’s 13 Celsius, Mongoose vs Cobra, and Weights + Measures. A TABC notice is up on the building, reports a keen HAIF user, and last month an entity linked to Sammons called How To Survive on Land and Sea LLC filed plans to start converting 2,371 sq.-ft. of interior room into a bar.

That’ll still leave lots of space for the other attractions that developer Jeff Kaplan wants to usher into the 19,969-sq.-ft. structure shown above that he’s now calling the Plant at Harrisburg.Â (One of them would’ve been Xela Coffee Roasters; it announced plans to move into the building in 2016 but has since rerouted to an forthcoming spot on Canal St., 5 blocks west of Lockwood) Before Kaplan made public his intention to transform the former cleaners, it played host to an art space that presented “visual art, literary readings and guided meditations; in the interest of, open-minded exploration of the transubstantiative properties of art and space.”

That creative endeavor is over — but speaking of transubstantiation, new windows shown above fronting both the south and west sides of the building will reopen its planned retail spaces to look out on Harrisburg and Sampson St. like they used to:

Plant at Harrisburg

77003, Adaptive Reuse, Bars and Restaurants, Redevelopment, Retail, Second Ward

08/06/18 11:00am

Local Group Planning Local Brewery in Local Warehouse Across from Hardy Yards

Bars and Clubs, Near Northside, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment

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Here’s the next target in Houston’s continuing warehouse-to-brewery turnover trend: 1504 Chapman St. A group of local brewers got their hands on the 6,283-sq.-ft. building — pictured aboveÂ from the south — in April and a budding Facebook page now shows its address as the location of a venue they’re calling Local Group Brewing.

It’s within the same general parish as St. Arnold’s recently-opened beer cathedral and existing brewery. They’re both less than half a mile away on the other side of the former Union Pacific brownfield pictured below, now giving rise to the complex of mixed-use buildings dubbed Hardy Yards:

Aerial Redevelopment Reconaissance

77009, Adaptive Reuse, Bars and Clubs, Near Northside, Redevelopment

08/03/18 12:45pm

New Industry Brewery On Tap Across from the Houston Center for Sobriety

Bars and Clubs, Downtown, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment

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A new brewery is now in the works for the industrial building that sits across the Downtown 59 on-ramp from the Houston Center for Sobriety. Just like the adjacent drunk tank which opened in 2013, the new business at 100 N. Jackson will be housed in a repurposed warehouse. Its lawn includes several signs pointing drivers to the neighboring sobering center — like the one shown above fronting the exit ramp off the Eastex, on the west side of the soon-to-be beer venue dubbed Industry Brewery. (Also in the frame: signage for the building’s most recent tenant the American Engine & Grinding Company.)

At that corner, a left on Ruiz St. followed by another quick one on Chenevert gets you outside the recovery facility:

Downtown Wet and Dry Spots

77002, Adaptive Reuse, Bars and Clubs, Downtown, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment

Downtown

08/01/18 4:30pm

Downtown Is About To Get a Rise Out of Hines’s New 47-Floor Office Tower HQ on the Houston Chronicle’s Old Texas St. Block

New Construction, Office Buildings, Redevelopment

Dump trucks are now filing onto the barricaded block once home to the Houston Chronicle building — and more recently a parking lot — at Texas and Travis to start laying the foundation for Hines’s new 47-floor tower and soon-to-be new global headquarters. The photo above views the traffic from way up on the 31st floor of the site’s catty-corner northeast neighbor Aris Market Square — which the new building will overtop along with pretty much everything else nearby except the Chase Tower directly south of it. Law firm Vinson & Elkins will occupy the building’s top 7 floors.

A series of glassed-in atria shown in the rendering above from architecture firmÂ Pelli Clarke Pelli hang out along the structure’s edge facing Milam St. Viewed from closer up, you can even see some people and trees inside them looking out on what’s below:

Dump Truck Parade

77002, Downtown, New Construction, Office Towers, Redevelopment

Cherryhurst

07/31/18 1:15pm

Demolished Westheimer Spy Emporium’s Next Mission: Surface Parking

Montrose, Quicklink, Redevelopment

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DEMOLISHED WESTHEIMER SPY EMPORIUM’S NEXT MISSION: SURFACE PARKING The new-ish owner that brought down Spy Emporium‘s abandoned building at 1550 Westheimer Rd. earlier this year is now getting ready to turn the property into a parking lot, reports one local urban planner. The building changed hands at the beginning of this year — around the time the spy shop left for 610 and Westpark — to a group that owns the parcel home to Hugo’s on the other side of Mandell St.. That roughly half-acre property already includes its own set of spots in a back lot north of the restaurant building. Spottier in terms of parking availability: the recently-opened UB Preserv restaurant that took over Poscol’s former space in the strip center across Westheimer from Hugo’s about 2 months ago. It currently shares one lot with the other tenants lined up next door to it: Star Tailors & Alterations, D & S laundromat, and Urban Vapes. [C Money; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Spy Emporium

77006, Cherryhurst, Montrose, Redevelopment, Retail

New Heights Homeowner Wants To Squeeze Simply Coffie, Parking and Driveway Fixings onto 24th St.

Houston Heights, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment, Restaurants

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The complicated thing about trying to turn an old Heights home — like this one at 733 W. 24th St. — into a coffee shop is that the neighborhood’s original lots are smaller than Houston allows for commercial use. Although the house pictured at top sits on a pair of adjacent 25-ft. lots, their combined frontage still falls short of the 60-ft. minimum required to lump them together into a space for something other than single-family residential.

But that’s not stopping the owner that bought the house earlier this year from seeking an exception to the rule. On Thursday, Houston’s city planning commission will consider a variance that’d allow the plans to go ahead anyway by consolidating the lots into a single 50-ft.-wide, business-friendly parcel.

Then comes the question of parking. Right now, a driveway leads up to a carport on the west side of the house:

Cafe Conversion

77008, Coffee Shops, Houston Heights, Proposed Development, Redevelopment, Renovations, Restaurants

Blank Abel Motors Sign Now Directing N. Shepherd Traffic to Its Burger Joint Replacement

Houston Heights, New Construction, Redevelopment, Restaurants, Strip Centers

8 Comments

Although the lettering’s been gone from Abel Motorsâ€™ roadside sign since the auto shop moved in 2016, it’s still got a helpful pointer for passers-by: The Burger Joint is about to take the place over. Pictured above is what the dealership looked like on the northeast corner of Shepherd and 20th St. in its heyday. Since peeling out for a new spot at 9102 Airline Dr., its old digs have been transformed by the brick strip center pictured at top — soon to house the burger restaurant’s first venture north from its sole existing location on Montrose at Westheimer.

Another view of the new burger sign shows it’s still drawing a blank on lower-level messaging: