OAK FOREST’S 350-FT.-TALL HOAX TOWER 
Two signs posted last week on a half-block west of Ella at 1250 Du Barry Ln. that appear to serve notice of a 350-ft. tower coming to the site — and include reference to a permit number — are some kind of trick, Charlotte Aguilar assures us. Planning Dept. spokesperson Suzy Hartgrove tells her the permit number may be connected to a 5-year-old project; the listed city phone number is obsolete. She says she doesn’t “know why anyone would do that.” [The Leader] Photo: Charlotte Aguilar
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The proposed tower would have scary-looking eyes, pointed teeth, and arms waving about.
Google Street View may offer an explanation. That house doesn’t fit in on that street. Apparently neither does its resident.
Chef:
Someone I knew dressed as the Ashby Highrise for Halloween one year, so great.
I know this one is a joke but someone thought it would be really funny to put a highrise smack in the middle of a residential neighborhood at 150 Gessner. I wonder if back in the day the neighbors were up in arms over it with scary signs on their front lawns.
Google Street View shows that the house looks like the other houses in the neighborhood. ???
Gessner is a major thoroughfare…its not even remotely similar.
Gessner is a major street but that part of it goes right through a residential neighborhood and there’s no multi-family or even commercial around for at least a mile in any direction. It was also built before city center, Memorial hospital, or even before Memorial City Mall was revamped. In comparison, Ashby makes perfect sense.
Commonsense, there were no scary monster signs, but there was a huge wail and cry from the neighborhood around the Gessner highrise at the time. Similar to the Ashby thing today, but with less lawsuits. Around the same time ( 1983 or 84?) there was an office building on Bering near Woodway built that had a multi-story parking garage built up to the lotline behind some Tanglewood homes that face Chimney Rock. I could be wrong, but I think those two events led to the vote on having zoning in Houston that occurred around 1990 ( and which failed).
ShadyHeightster, wow: http://goo.gl/maps/QEbES
If you ever wanted to find an advocate of zoning, it’s probably the guy that lived in that house in the early 80’s.
That’s the one Rodrigo!