November 4, 2009 – 2:54 pm
Here they are: More renderings of the Perennial, the mixed-use development the Redstone Companies is hoping to fit onto a block at 2200 Post Oak Blvd. just north of the Galleria — on the former site of the Compass Bank building, which was imploded in a small ceremony earlier this year. Does this thing look familiar? An earlier drawing of the project appeared on the SkyscraperPage forum and was featured on Swamplot in May. Now HAIF poster Urbannizer digs up a leasing brochure for the property from the development’s otherwise password-protected website.
What’s for lease? Two separate buildings: a 20-story office tower incorporating an 8-level parking garage as well as lots of retail space at the base; and a separate hotel tower to the north — combining just under 300 guest rooms and 100 residences. In all, the developers are counting just under 74,000 sq. ft. of retail space, including 3 levels meant to face the action on Post Oak.
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Read more about: 77056, Galleria, Light-Rail, Metro Rail, Mixed Use, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment, Uptown, Uptown Corridor
November 4, 2009 – 11:28 am
Among yesterday’s election results: Victory for Propositions 1 and 2 in Friendswood. That means grocery, wine, and convenience stores will be able to sell wine and beer, and restaurants will be able to serve wine, beer, and mixed drinks in the city’s downtown. “Both propositions allow alcohol sales in a corridor along FM 518 between FM 528 and FM 2351. The city, founded by Quakers, banned alcohol sales in April 1963, the year Friendswood was incorporated.” [Galveston County Daily News]
Read more about: 77546, Friendswood, Nightlife
November 4, 2009 – 10:02 am
A house and a garage. That’s okay for now, but won’t you be hungry by mid-afternoon?
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Read more about: Daily Demolition Report, Demolitions
November 3, 2009 – 11:51 pm
Hey, how about another round of the Neighborhood Guessing Game? There’s a membership in the Rice Design Alliance on the line this time!
Here’s how you can win it: Just guess the location of the pictured home. If more than one of you guesses the correct neighborhood, we’ll send that one-year individual RDA membership to the player who provided the best explanation for the guess.
If you have already seen this home or its listing, or if you find it while we’re playing the game, please don’t blurt out the answer and ruin the fun for everyone else. Instead, send Swamplot a link to the listing — so we’ll know what you’re up to. Then submit an incorrect guess — but make it seem plausible. If you do this well, you’ll get special recognition when the winner is announced. And if nobody guesses the actual location, you could end up with the prize!
Have a look around:
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Read more about: Interiors, Neighborhood Guessing Game
November 3, 2009 – 10:15 am
Let’s see . . . there was today’s planned foreclosure auction for Wilshire Village. What else does Matt Dilick of Commerce Equities have going on?
Swamplot’s neighborhood correspondent for Bellaire reports on Commerce Equities’ proposed development on one portion of a couple of long-vacant tracts at the northeast corner of Bissonnet and Newcastle:
The plots of land at 4400 and 4500 Bissonnet, between Newcastle and the Centerpoint service center, are being cut up and sold. . . .
Evidence of surveying and subdivision in recent weeks has recently given way to signboards indicating that the north third of the open land at 4500 Bissonnet will be cut up into six residential lots while the two-thirds fronting Bissonnet is reserved for commercial. The next block over, across Howard Street, commercial space is being developed to open before April of 2010. According to flyers on broker David Nettles’s website, approximately 62% of the 20,000-some-odd square feet of office space is still available.
But the two parcels — totaling almost 4 acres — have more of a connection to Wilshire Village than just the involvement of Dilick.
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Read more about: 77401, Bellaire, Commercial Real Estate, Land for Sale, Leasing, Proposed Developments, Retail, Strip Centers
November 3, 2009 – 10:14 am
Some classic building takedowns are featured in today’s smash-hit roundup. And here ya go with it:
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Read more about: Daily Demolition Report, Demolitions
November 2, 2009 – 2:37 pm
Blogger Robert Boyd does what every Houstonian who’s driven the Eastex Freeway has been meaning to do — one day: get off the freeway and see what the deal is with that brightly lit marble and marbleish Greco-Roman edificial smorgasbord on the 59 feeder road:
When I was taking pictures, I got a chance to speak with the young watchman. He told me that the church took five years to build. He offered to let me see the interior, but I wasn’t allowed to take pictures there. A shame, because as mindblowing as the outside is, the inside is even moreso.
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Read more about: 77093, Camden Woods, Churches, Religious Structures
November 2, 2009 – 1:26 pm
The Swamplot Price Adjuster needs your nominations! Found a property you think is poorly priced? Send an email to Swamplot, and be sure to include a link to the listing or photos. Tell us about the property, and explain why you think it deserves a price adjustment. Then tell us what you think a better price would be. Unless requested otherwise, all submissions to the Swamplot Price Adjuster will be kept anonymous.
Location: 301 E. 10th St., Houston Heights
Details: 2 bedrooms, 2 baths; 1800 sq. ft. on an 8,200-sq.-ft. lot
Price: $600,000
History: On the market for 6 weeks.
A reader thinks this property is overpriced:
. . . even if it is lot price at 8,200 sq ft - listed for $600K it’s about double the price - I’ve seen 10,000 sq ft lots go for $325,000 (May 09). For a lot in the Heights it’s too high - yes it’s a corner lot - but there are no curbs on the street and it’s right near a church. To keep the house for a “conversion” as suggested would be too high as the house doesn’t even have central air or heat.
What would be a better price?
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Read more about: 77008, Home Prices, Homes for Sale, Houston Heights, Price Adjuster
November 2, 2009 – 12:06 pm
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Let’s start the week right, with these fine knock-downs:
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Read more about: Daily Demolition Report, Demolitions
October 30, 2009 – 11:58 pm
How about joining in the fun with next week’s group photo feature? It’s easy. We’re looking for photos taken within 500 ft. of the intersection of West 43rd St. and Ella Blvd., up in the Oak Forest-Garden Oaks-Shepherd Park Plaza area. Again this week, reader Mr. Kimberly has been kind enough to supply a map of the target area, above.
Submitting your photos is a cinch: Just add them to the Swamplot Flickr pool, and make sure they’re tagged with the phrase “West 43rd & Ella” (including the quotation marks). The deadline is midnight next Thursday, November 5th. The feature will run the next day.
Graphic: Mr. Kimberly [license]
Read more about: Notices, Photography, Swamplot Projects
October 30, 2009 – 11:48 pm
Photographers head to the corner of Washington Ave. and White St., by the Old Sixth Ward. What do they come back with?
These pics and more! There were more participants and many more photos to choose from this week — the second round of Swamplot’s new group photo feature.
How does this one look?
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Read more about: 77007, Friday Group Photo Features, Old-Sixth-Ward, Photography, Swamplot Projects
October 30, 2009 – 2:52 pm
By popular demand — and in hopes that even more exciting or sordid detail might be gleaned from the legalese therein — we’re making available the trustee’s sale notices for Wilshire Village that were sent to Swamplot yesterday. The notices describe the foreclosure peril faced by Alabama & Dunlavy Ltd., the limited partnership apparently controlled by Matthew Dilick of Commerce Equities. That partnership owns the 7.68-acre now-vacant property at the corner of West Alabama and Dunlavy.
Here they are:
Think there’s more — or less — to these documents than meets the eye? Find any clues, factoids, or muck hidden between the lines? Think any of it helps explain the bizarre sequence of events that’s taken place at Wilshire Village over the last few years? Let us know!
Photo of Sign at Wilshire Village, 1701 West Alabama St.: Swamplot inbox
Read more about: 77098, Financing, Foreclosures, Lancaster Place, Land for Sale, Wilshire Village
Comment of the Day: Beauty Is in the Intention of the Landholder
“Houston is full of architectural bad taste, but it tends to be bad taste that politely pays obeisance to prevailing norms of bad taste. Hence the faux-Tuscan McMansion becomes a self-perpetuating meme. Developers keep building them and homebuyers keep buying them [and] because they see so many other versions of the same crap, they start believing that turrets are good. La Luz del Mundo utterly ignores the norms of architectural tastes in Houston (which are horrible but all [too] common). Its crimes against taste are unique and displayed with gusto. Unlike the buyer of a faux-Tuscan architectural travesty, the congregants of La Luz del Mundo don’t care what other people think. To which I say, right on!” [RWB, commenting on Freeway Church of the Eastex Holy Roaming Empire: Shining a Little Light on La Luz Del Mundo]