Sprawl

Land Development
10/04/07 12:34pm

Meanwhile, Way Way Way Outside the Loop . . .

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New Construction, Proposed Developments, Richmond, Senior Living, Sienna Plantation, Sprawl, Texas City
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Plan of Grandeur ParkHouston’s middle-age spread continues:

  • Just north of I-10 at the Grand Parkway, Kickerillo is starting a large residential development called Grandeur Park. It’ll be across the street from The Grand, Simon Property Group’s new mall. Homes there will cost 300 to 600 Grand.
  • Houston will soon stretch to Sealy:

    Silvestri Investments of Houston has purchased 1,375 acres just west of Firethorne, which is a mile south of Interstate 10 on FM 1463.

    The new owner will hold the land for future development.

    “With the historical trend of development in Houston, it was only a matter of time before someone purchased land in the next logical pattern of growth,” said Michael Carroll, president of Riverway Properties, who brokered the deal. The price was not disclosed.

  • Ross Perot Jr.’s Hillwood Development Company has bought Sienna Plantation South. What we’ll get there: about 7,000 single-family homes on the 3,827-acre site. Included in that total: 300 acres for offices and retail, 100 acres for schools and churches, and 1,000 acres of parks and open space. No breakdown available on the acreage of cul de sacs, lakes, or driveways.
  • The fourth Del Webb retirement compound in Texas will be near Richmond, at Highway 59 and Thompson Rd. Fifteen hundred homes on 500 acres. You’ll need to be at least 55 years old to live there, and drive at least 55 to get there.
  • It’s tough building slabs in Texas City:

    After what developers described as a “minor slowdown,” the 574-home Grand Cay Harbour project in Texas City is back on track.

    Persistent rain during the summer was part of the problem. But project manager Norman Reed didn’t elaborate about what other factors led to a long stretch of inactivity at the development. The project is on 250 acres beside Galveston Bay at the end of the Texas City levee system.

    And don’t you worry about flooding after the construction’s done. This gated community will keep out the tides, too.

Plan of Grandeur Park: Kickerillo Companies

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Apartments
08/07/07 11:05pm

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

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

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

So the project — which had an initial design including a hotel, high-rise and garden homes, a bookstore, grocery store and other features integrated into one “village” — 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.

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Cinco Ranch
07/19/07 9:31pm

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

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

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Alief
06/01/07 10:34am

Walking on Bellaire

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Bellaire, Gulfton, Sharpstown, Sprawl, Tourism
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Street Sign on Bellaire BlvdOver at Houstoned, professional barfly John Nova Lomax and crooner David Beebe take a long, strange trip down the entire length of Bellaire Blvd.—on foot. Lomax’s conclusion:

If Westheimer is mainly about the fetishes, broken dreams and vanities of Anglo whites, and Shepherd is all about the needs of cars, Bellaire is a world market of a street, a bazaar where Mexicans, Anglos, Salvadorans, African Americans, Hondurans, stoners, Vietnamese, Chinese, Koreans and Thais go to shop and eat.

The report from western Chinatown:

Tall bank buildings are sprouting, with glass fronts festooned in Mandarin. Strip malls fill with Vietnamese crawfish joints, Shaolin Temples, and acupuncture clinics. As we crossed Brays Bayou, a huge temple loomed in the distance, and it didn’t take much imagining to pretend you were gazing across a rice paddy toward a Vietnamese village. A Zen center abuts one of the last businesses in town to carry the all-but-forgotten A.J. Foyt’s once-omnipresent name. A couple of ratty old apartment complexes have changed into commercial buildings, each unit housing its own business.

The rice paddies, of course, have left the neighborhood.

More highlights of their journey, as they walk east: live turtles in the water gardens outside the Hong Kong City Mall; front-yard car lots in Sharpstown; Jane Long Middle Schoolers rushing convenience stores; the “Gulfton Ghetto.” Plus, this illuminating report from Alief:

Alief Ozelda Magee, the town’s namesake, is buried right there, under a slate-gray monument with a touching epitaph: “She did what she could.” And hell, maybe she still is. The adjoining apartment complex, which is rumored to cover some of the graves here, is said to suffer from a poltergeist infestation.

Photo: Cruising down Bellaire, by flickr user corazón girl

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