A line of orange plastic barricades is now artfully wrapped around the base of the former Houston Chronicle headquarters at 801 Texas Ave., as is some construction fencing. Hines purchased the property last fall and is preparing to demolish the structure, which is actually an amalgamation of several slightly misaligned buildings wrapped up behind a single 1960s-or-so facade. The shot above looks down Texas Ave. from the corner with Travis St., with Calpine Center looming in the background between Milam and Louisiana.
Hines hasn’t said what it plans to do with the land in the long run, yet, and the company has other projects in progress at the moment — a block away on Main St., Hines’s 48-story 609 Main office tower is still under construction.
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The Chronicle staff finished clearing out of the building around the end of February; operations have moved over to the former Houston Post headquarters at 59 just inside the West Loop. Gensler’s recent redo of the campus brightened up the Brutalist building that faces the Southwest Fwy. by cutting some windows into the front.
- Downtown offices to be demolished [HBJ]
- Previously on Swamplot: Slicing a Window into the Houston Chronicle’s Brutal Freeway-Side Headquarters-To-Be; Behold the Revived Brutal Beauty of the New Freeway-Side Houston Chronicle Headquarters; Houston Chronicle Building Goes on Sale Tomorrow, the Chronicle Reports; Houston Chronicle Complex Downtown Going on Sale — A Year or 2 Too Late?; The Houston Chronicle Will Abandon Downtown for This Freeway-Side Post-Brutalist Bunker
Photo: ThaChadwick
“Former Houston Chronicle Headquarters Starts Getting Dressed Up To Go Away Downtown”
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If only the Houston Chronicle was going away with it. What did Houston do to deserve a horrible piss-poor daily like the Chronicle? The Chronicle works against Houston in nearly every article, in every way. Hardly any positive or respectable reporting…and when there is positive news, without fail the Chronicle will surely add negativity or a stupid negative slant to it to taint Houston’s good news. What a shitty news source. The Houston Chronicle DOES NOT have our city’s best interests at heart. I wouldn’t be surprised if the owners of and reporters for the Chronicle are Houston haters (hiding within the Chron as they try to sabotage the city from within) and they are not from Houston. Our great world-class city deserves much, much better…or at least the Chronicle should have a competitor. The Houston Chronicle sucks…bad.
I used to office across the street and watch the presses through the windows on lunch walkabouts. Another building gone…
It will be turned into surface parking until an upturn in the future market shows a need for additional office space. During the demolition, the tunnel connecting 717 Texas and the Chase tower will be temporarily closed.
the sad part is the building took years to get updated. Hopefully they deconstruct it and save some stuff.
Parking garage?
I agree with most of Honest Truth’s post. The “Comical” is a terrible news organization and does not come close the the New York Times or Washington Post for content. The Houston Press has better editorial content! A city with 4 million diverse people in it has some real stories to tell.
Regarding the building and whatever is put there, we all dream about a fabulous mixed use development. Oh well… another two years of construction is upon us…
Mattress store seems to be the most popular real estate “place holder” in Houston – is there one within a quarter mile radius? No? Then better get a Mattress Firm / Mattress One in there.
anyone know if they be imploding? We haven’t had one in a while.
To those of you dissing the Chronicle, I’m guessing you’re not subscribers. I would agree that chron.com is a not a good website, as it chooses to rank stories based on the number of clicks, which says more about reader preferences than the paper itself. But the print version is another beast entirely and has lots of those “real stories” you claim you want but never seem to read on the website, so they get buried 2-3 levels down. I’ve been a Chron subscriber for 20+ years, and I’ll take the print version over the website any day. But God forbid you should spend money supporting your local newspaper when you can get it online and make ridiculous comments for free. You get what you pay for…or don’t, in your case.