HISD intends to demolish the last remaining non-garage portion of the Shamrock Hotel complex early next year as part of its plans for a new DeBakey High School for Health Professions. The Shamrock’s former ballroom (pictured at right), now called the Edwin Hornberger Conference Center, has been operated as an event space by Trevisio Restaurant since 2011, but closed in May of this year. That structure will be scrapped, but the parking garage that shares the conference center’s 2151 W. Holcombe Blvd. address will remain, according to renderings of the new high school project. (The garage is the building bathed in white at right in the rendering above.)
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The new 5-story Michael E. DeBakey High School for Health Professions will sit on a wedge of property on Pressler St. just south of Holcombe currently occupied by the conference center, its circular drop-off, and a small parking lot. A good chunk of its footprint will occupy space where Glenn McCarthy’s famed hotel, which was featured in the James Dean movie Giant, once stood. Since the Shamrock’s 1986 demolition, its site has been covered by a surface parking lot. The new high school will cover just the northern portion of the hotel’s former footprint but leave much of the lot untouched; its southern border will bound the current driveway that lines up with Bellefontaine St. to the west.
The 195,000-sq.-ft. high school building, designed by WHR Architects, will feature an internal atrium and cafeteria (below) flanked by two classroom-and-lab-space volumes meant to accommodate 1,000 students.
According to the current schedule, students would leave the current DeBakey school on Shenandoah St. near 288 at the end of the 2015-2016 school year and occupy the new building in the fall of 2016.
- New health care high school to rise in Houston’s medical center [Houston Business Journal]
- Previously on Swamplot: Former Shamrock Hotel Ballroom Out of Coma, Reopens as Conference Center; Just When You Thought It Was Already Long Gone: A Second Demolition for the Shamrock Hotel
Renderings: WHR Architects. Photo: Steve Ueckert/TMC News
They were so quick to demolish the Shamrock, then put some lame water feature in its place that has spewed water for years like some kitchy relect of the go go 80’s. I’m pleased they’re finally tearing down that ugly outbuilding and building something more functional. The Debakey School is one of the few things HISD can point to as an actual success, instead of cooking the books at schools like Yates to make it look like the district is actually respectable so the top brass can justify their absurd salaries.
Looks like a beautiful school for these high performing students to use!
that water feature is one of my favorite in houston. not many people know about, so people are rarely there, which makes it even better.
LOL It says something about Houston, that at a “historic” site, the only thing the city is keeping is the parking garage!