Construction is well underway at the site of the torn-down Studewood Fiesta on the Village of the Heights. This updated (and softer) rendering shows the 4-story, 103-unit senior living facility as seen from near the intersection of 14th and Studewood; it will be bordered on the north by Algregg. A rep from developer Bridgewood Properties — which operates 3 similar facilities in Houston — says that the 1st floor will be devoted to a clinic for “memory care,” and the 2nd floor will include a fitness center, library, beauty salon, and assisted-living suites; the top 2 floors will be reserved for apartments, ranging from 1-bedroom, 524-sq.-ft. spaces to 2-bedroom, 753-sq.-ft. ones.
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The photos show that much of the parking lot has been framed and poured; the facility should be open by next summer.
Below: Plans for the apartments on the 3rd and 4th floors:
- The Village of the Heights [Bridgewood Properties]
- Previously on Swamplot: Assisting the Living in the Heights, Daily Demolition Report: Vargo’s Goes, Heights Fiesta Out, “Senior Living†Complex Going In, Heights Grocery: Not Gone Yet
Images: Bridgewood Properties (renderings and site plan); Allyn West (construction photos)
Well the rendering is a improvement over the first one that was released.
Drove by it the other day. Looks like they are putting a sizable surface parking lot on the side facing 14th street. I found it surprising since the trend with most inner loop apartment type complexes have parking garages either below or next to the apartments.
This is senior living/retirement home, so perhaps they have different requirements for parking/vehicle accessibility.
Can you even call it an apartment if there is no kitchen? Maybe more like a dorm room.
Considering what it could have been… Welcome to the neighborhood!
ARP, a kitchen isn’t exactly a good idea when many of the people there might have dementia or Alzheimers.
The apartments likely have a sink, microwave and a small refrigerator. The reason for no kitchen: avoiding the possibility of fire, for example from a pan left on a forgotten stove burner. These establishments have a dining room for meals, which are usually included in the monthly fees. The dining room also serves as a de facto social venue three times a day, which is good for the residents.
I declare pissed-off-edness.
The old Fiesta store was a cultural artifact of a part of Heights history that is rapidly being lost to rampaging developers. The city should have ensured that the Fiesta store was preserved for future generations to enjoy and contemplate.
The old people that will be housed in this “SRO Housing Bloc of Terror(!)” will drive slowly and sloppily (much as they accomplish other activities, if anybody remembers that George Carlin bit). The children of the Heights will be placed in imminent danger, especially as these old people cross the bike trail. And oh my god, think of the cyclists! This is a travesty. We will choke on the fumes of the city’s belligerence by allowing the traffic to destroy the best most special neighborhood in the city. It should be built somewhere else. The developer should be arrested and imprisoned indefinitely. His constitutional rights should be suspended because he is a traitor.
It doesn’t really fit the spot or area that well, but it could have been a lot worse. Meh.
Bravo TheNiche, Bravo. But you failed to mention the alarming uptick in mobility scooter crime that is sure to accompany this den of elder depravity. Not to mention the bridges and pipes–oh the suffering.
@theniche
your humor is so 2011.
It might have been better if the building were on the 14th street side of the site, with the parking behind. There is a church close to the street on the other side of 14th, and Reagan High is built close to the street a block away. That part of Algregg is lined with little bungalows that will be overwhelmed by the size of the new building.
The apartments seem to offer a middle level of independence that folks really like to have. Good to see it available close in.
Guys I had to get my grandma into Heights House in 2000(HUD subsidized housing) at 20th and Heights. That was not fun but necessary. And I took care of her, nobody was around to buy her groceries or take her to “physical therapy” except me. And it was not in the convenient location of the bottom floor of her compex. I tell you want – This complex they are describing on Studemont does not sound like it will be designed to help the average folks like my grandma was. This sounds like something for the elderly with money, plenty of it. Here we go again-build stuff for people with lots of money and everyone else – well then we don’t know what happened there, it’s out of our hands.
bethsheba: You should totally build stuff for people with no money. That would be a very nice and humanitarian thing to do.
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I told my bank I’d like a loan to buy a property where I was going to be super nice and rent to people with no money and charge them $0. The bank laughed at me. That hurt my feelings :(
This isn’t an apartment complex the way most of you understand the term. I am, sadly, pretty familiar with these places as my partner’s parents both suffered from Alzheimer’s. this is a medical facility for that will provide services like prescription management, doctors visiting the site, as well as assistance with ordinary activities. Residents aren’t going to be doing a lot of driving in and out and the parking was probably planned around access for staff, visitors, and emergency vehicles.
There are very few places like this inside the loop and if you have a family member suffering from dementia, there are not a lot of choices, period. I wish this place had been here a few years ago; it would have saved a lot of driving to the suburbs, and made life a lot better for everyone involved.
Your family may have to deal with the kinds of things ours did and if so you may find yourself very glad to have something like this in the Heights. It fills an important need.
@ J: I find it disturbing and a little telling that my faux complaint regarding the scourge of the elderly is considered to be so plausible rather than as a joke. I guess the expectation really is that Heights people will genuinely whine about everything. (My take on it is that they whine disingenuously.)
Niche – I’m not sure J was responding specifically to you, but rather to the folks who grudgingly accept this development since, to paraphrase others, “it could be worse”.
I live one block away from this development, on a nice little street that supports a growing population of young families. My kids have made a lot of new friends in the last 2 years and play outside more here than they ever did when we lived in Meyerland.
At first, like most others, I was saddened by the news of the loss of that Fiesta. It was a nice convenient alternative to the Kroger Triumvirate.
However, my feelings did a 180 after I was sitting in my car one day out in front of my house (finishing a phone call). I observed a young male (late teens, I guess) ride by on a bike up to a car sitting in the Fiesta’s overflow lot. They made a quick exchange in what I surmised was a drug deal. The very next day as I walked through the parking lot with my 11 year old daughter to the store, she pointed down and said, “Ewww! What’s that???”. It was a used condom.
I was quickly done mourning the loss of that Fiesta. I hope that overflow lot eventually gets sold to a developer who builds two over-large 3 story Craftsman style houses that block the view of the retirement facility from my front yard. And I hope that more young families of the caliber already here move in so that my kids can increase their own social network.
You see, Niche, Heights residents aren’t a monolithic body of bohemian hipsters and historical preservationists. We don’t all regret the gentrification of a neighborhood that was once on a cusp of full-blown ghetto-tued. Please don’t let a small handful of very vocal NIMBYs who decry every single change that occurs create the impression that we’re all of the same mind. We are not.
Seabird,
How surprising it is to hear that you desire a bunch of people just like yourself to move into your neighborhood. Just remember, there are plenty of people in the Heights that aren’t like you, and they might not see yourself as a desired future for the Heights.