La Demo de la Montrose Fiesta

It is no more: A few weeks after the rest of this old strip center on Dunlavy at W. Alabama started coming down, the Montrose Fiesta was finally reduced to rubble, this reader’s photo, taken just before 1 p.m. today, shows. And what’s next for the site? Developer Marvy Finger says he will replacing the grocery store with apartments, telling the Houston Chronicle’s Nancy Sarnoff in early 2012 that the ensuing complex will be both “Mediterranean” and “really beautiful.”

Photo: Thomas Stazer

25 Comment

  • “Mediterranean” and “really beautiful.”

    strike up the complaints…

  • Mediterranean, huh? Is Marvy trolling Swamplot users?

  • Well that is the view from across the street at the HEB terrace, right?

  • Allow me to extend my translation services for the developer speak: the new stuff is gonna clash horribly with the character of the neighborhood but rich folks dig the gaudiness so we don’t care.

  • I would like, just once, to hear a developer say that the result will be ‘meh’, ‘suitable’, ‘OK’, or ‘within the budget’. Not everything is beautiful (or really beautiful). And that’s OK.

  • Marvy must be taking notes from the Great Combover–this is pure Trump-Speak–all his gaudy garish Eurotrash shit is “the best” “superior in everyway”–which means every inch is faux guilded and as over the top as a Vegas bordello–in fairness I lived at The Creole once and I think Marvy overall builds good properties–he certainly understand the importance of a great location

  • If it were a 5 story brick and stucco box a la The Fairmont on Dunlavy, you’d complain.

    If it were any Randall Davis style building, you’d complain.

    If it were designed by Cesar Pelli, you’d complain.

    There are several “Mediterrannean” homes from the 1920s and 1930s in the neighborhood so I suppose the only suitable style to appease you whiners is some overgrown frame bungalow with cheap double hung windows and a composition roof and a Sears catalog sign in every window.

  • Does anyone know what this development is going to do to the dead end streets of Sul Ross and Branard right behind this lot?

  • Apartments, eh? Wow, what refreshing change.

  • Who cares about the design! Another Living Quarters. The Area is turning into a Prison Housing block. Man give us something else.

  • it’s top secret, but it will be a copy of the Menil Museum (the architect of which is the “mediterranean” connection) with a few more stories, more windows, and a lot of little balconies, with italianate railings, hanging off the side.

    where’s the garage?

  • Marvy’s new bright & shiny Turd.

  • @Artful Guy–the Menil is not exactly of Mediterranean design, granted Renzo Piano is Italian, and thus I guess Mediterranean, and did design it, but the Museum building isn’t what you’d see on the Amalfi Coast, I hardly think this will be a cypress covered gray barn writ large–at least let’s hope not

  • @Shannon
    i was joking
    thx
    AG

  • I hope that that this project is mixed use and has retail on the first floor. This would leverage people already parked in the HEB parking lot who have shopped at the grocery store and then stroll across the street for a coffee or to cater to a business there.

  • This pink Zinfandel is really beautiful and Deee-lightful, redux?

  • Tacky and really expensive. Density and really gauche. Those are the adjectives that come to mind in place of Mediterranean and really beautiful..

  • @artful guy–lol ok

  • Okay so what do all of you armchair architects suggest should be the design off this apartment building? Be specific and reference some other complex if you have any tangible thoughts.

  • Art deco, brick, and in the vein of what Wilshire Village was on the parallel corner. Not 5-10 stories of ugly stucco preferably.

  • In the title shouldn’t it rather be “La Demo” since it’s short for demolición? /Swamplot complainer

  • Jason, I agree. Get the Spanglish right, guys! :)

  • @Jason C. and @Rodrigo: You’re right! Why did I think demolition was masculine? The headline is fixed. Thanks!

  • always felt like that Fiesta was going to be the last straw symobilizing the ‘trose i fell in love with and sitting here looking at that pile of rubble it feels about right.

    bring on the yuppie ‘trose, guess i’m ready now.

  • That whole southern Montrose area seems destined to morph into Musuem District Adjacent and this new building might eventually be a sort of landmark to that transition circa 2014.