COMMENT OF THE DAY: A 3400 MONTROSE BLVD. INSPECTION REPORT “I did due diligence on this building a few years ago for the prior owners (The Ali Brothers). It was in pretty bad shape back then. The chilled water system was byzantine and the egress (especially from the Skybar) was not anywhere near complying with code. The garage needed work and had headroom problems on the ramps. For re-purposing, 3400 Montrose actually laid out well into residential or a hotel. I thought that given the limited parking situtation that they should give the Skybar the boot and convert the building to rental apartments. The structural bay depths and the continuous glazing on each floor laid out nicely, and the garage was almost the perfect size for this. Of course the entire building would have to be gutted in the process to accomplish any major update to the building. I swore I would never go into the Skybar again when I saw how unsafe the egress would be in a fire.” [mt, commenting on Why Scott Gertner’s Skybar Is Leaving the Montrose Sky]
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Red Tags back up.
Something tells me the building is probably beyond renovation. I doubt the various owners the past 40 years really have done much in terms of maintenance. I go back to the “sinking elevators” we all knew and loved way back when.
Here’s a real life example from the building: So I walk into the basement mechanical room and see some very old chillers. These are ‘magic’ (think Forest Gump) chillers, as there is condensation on the piping, indicating cooling of the water, but there is no noise coming out of what would normally be almost deafening equipment. Hmmm, so we go outside, and at the rear of the building, in the first level of the garage, are what appear to be several relatively new Carrier chillers. Aha! here are the chillers, but wait, upon closer inspection, however, these are in fact only ginormous condensing units that you would expect to find in a split system. They are cycling refridgerant into the original chillers (1950’s) in the basement, which are acting as heat exchangers on the closed loop chilled water distribution system on the building (very old). Wow! Neither I nor my MEP engineer had ever seen anything like it.
@mt
That is so neat. Thanks for the interesting story and explaining the complexity of an MEP system.
Well I was about to call the skybar to make reservations for tonight to celebrate my birthday. I have been going to this location for over 20 years since it was Cody’s I thought this would be a opportunity for me to hear some nice jazz over Houston for my Birthday sorry to hear you guys are closed.
It was very obvious that the previous owners of 3400 Montrose Blvd. have neglected the bldg. for a long. This is a shame because, we will probably lose another Montrose land mark, only to be replaced by a typical strip center. 3400 Montrose was build in a very good urban design with shops at street level and a connecting garage. This building could serve the area well at a time when our Central City is becoming so dense.