03/19/09 4:07pm

TAKING A BITE OUT OF WHOLE FOODS That new Whole Foods Market coming to Post Oak Blvd. in the Galleria may not end up being quite the giant originally envisioned, says Nancy Sarnoff: “Developer Ed Wulfe, who’s building the BLVD Place mixed-use project where the Whole Foods will go, recently said the parties are working on amending the lease to reduce the size of the store, originally planned for 80,000 square feet. Put in context, the Kirby Whole Foods is about 40,000 square feet and Central Market is about 75,000 square feet. An 80,000-square-foot store would have been on par with the company’s flagship market in Austin, where customers can eat at mini-restaurants, chose from hundreds of varieties of beer, cheeses and a seafood counter that smokes, slices and fries to order. In a related move, Whole Foods recently announced that it was keeping its store on Woodway and Voss open. The plan was to close it when the Post Oak store opened. [Houston Chronicle; previously in Swamplot]

10/21/08 11:22am

Aerial View of BLVD Place, Showing Proposed Ritz Carlton and Hanover Apartment Towers

Remember the two 30-plus-story towers planned for Boulevard Place on Post Oak — the Ritz Carlton Hotel and the Hanover apartment tower? How have they been surviving the rumbling credit crunch?

A HAIF user last week

got slight confirmation that both the hanover tower and the ritz are going to be delayed at least slightly… they still expected both to happen, but they will be phased in.

Then yesterday came another comment:

i can confirm this in regards to hanover.

dont expect their tower to be built anytime soon.. i would consider it postponed indefinitely rather than slightly.

Followed by this:

As a sub on this project I will also confirm this. We have been told at least 6 months of delays.

But they still look great on paperscreen!

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08/08/08 12:13pm

View of Proposed New Galleria Whole Foods at Blvd Place

Whole Foods Markets’ recently announced plans to scale back some of its planned store openings will not disturb plans for new Houston stores on West Dallas at Waugh and in Boulevard Place — according to a report in the Houston Business Journal:

Scott Simon, executive marketing coordinator for Whole Foods, says this announcement will not impact any of the company’s plans in Houston.

The Austin-based health foods supermarket chain is planning to develop a 78,000-square-foot store at the southwest corner of Post Oak and San Felipe.

“Our Post Oak store would very likely not open until 2010 anyway, so this decision doesn’t affect our Houston plans,” says Simon.

Boulevard Place Whole Foods image: DMJM H&N

06/05/08 4:16pm

Proposed Whole Foods on Post Oak Blvd., Blvd. Place, Galleria, Houston

Yesterday’s brief Uptown Whole Foods parking mystery has been solved by one of our most helpful tipsters . . . who points to an older but more complete set of Boulevard Place plans. Shoppers, there is no need to worry. You will be able to park above, below, near, or yes — right in front of Whole Foods . . . and you won’t get stuck having to sneak your whole-grain-laden shopping cart past Hermès. Just imagine what awkward social situations that would have caused!

Below: 5 levels of out-of-date Blvd Place site plans explain it all!

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06/04/08 3:08pm

Post Oak Blvd. Parking, Blvd Place, Uptown, Houston

Sure, the super-Mod architecture, elevated sidewalks, artistically moistened streets, and glistening rotunda in the new Boulevard Place renderings make the place look pretty swank, but what’s with the token strip of parking spots out front? Is this gonna be pay-to-display valet? Some kind of shopping-center twist on a velvet rope line? Or just a stab at maintaining Houston street cred: Sure, Post Oak Blvd. might be going urban upscale, but this is one development that won’t be forgetting its strip-center roots!

Updated views of Blvd Place, including the new Ritz-Carlton and Hanover towers — plus a site plan and a Whole Foods puzzle! It’s all below:

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05/16/08 10:03am

Hanover Company 37-Story Apartment Tower at BLVD Place, designed by Solomon Cordwell BuenzToday’s Chronicle has details on that apartment tower the Hanover Company has been planning for Boulevard Place, Ed Wulfe’s Post Oak redevelopment just north of the Galleria. Doing the math, your average 1,650-sq.-ft. apartment in the glass tower will rent for more than $4,000 a month.

That’s before it goes condo, of course.

At 37 stories, the 236-unit Hanover tower may end up even taller than the slender Ritz-Carlton planned directly to the south.

More info from Nancy Sarnoff:

Solomon Cordwell Buenz of Chicago is designing the building, which will have “boutique hotel style” amenities, including a concierge and bellman, as well as a lounge and catering kitchen.

A 19,000-square-foot rooftop pool terrace will be atop an attached parking garage.

The units will be similar to those in 7 Riverway, another Hanover project in the area. They will include stainless steel appliances, granite slab countertops, crown molding, hardwood floors and travertine tile, but will be larger and have additional features and amenities.

Hanover chose to design the building with larger units because it said there was considerable demand at 7 Riverway for oversized kitchens and living spaces.

After the jump: Where it’s going to land!

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02/26/08 8:36am

Still from Video of The Titan, Randall Davis’s Proposed Condo Tower on Post Oak Blvd., Uptown, Houston

If you’re looking for clues to help you figure out what the McDonald’s on Post Oak is gonna look like when it gets rebuilt, the flashy new website for the Titan doesn’t help much. There’s a video that shows Randall Davis’s latest theme-heavy condo tower from all sorts of dramatic angles, but it never answers the question most of us have been asking since the project was announced last fall: How, exactly, is the drive-thru gonna fit next door?

Davis told the Houston Business Journal last September that the new McDonald’s would be a “long, skinny building” facing Post Oak, between the Titan and the new Alexan Post Oak apartments directly to the north. In the new video, though, there are no Golden Arches, and camera angles artfully block the most direct views of that portion of the building site.

There’s no mention of the McDonald’s on the Titan website. There is, however, a welcome second confirmation that another fine food establishment will be built down the street at Boulevard Place:

A newly planned Whole Foods Market, only half a block away, places hard to find gourmet items at your fingertips.

Okay, so it’s just advertising copy. But it’s recent!

After the jump, more views of the Titan — none of which show where the real Big Macs are gonna live.

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02/21/08 10:34am

View of Proposed New Galleria Whole Foods at Blvd Place at Former Eatzi’s Site

It may not count as confirmation exactly, but we now at least have repetition — from two separate sources — that the new Whole Foods Market our readers have been worrying about will in fact be coming to the Galleria area.

The first source is the Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff, who — after interviewing Boulevard Place developer Ed Wulfe — states that a new Whole Foods will be the anchor of Wulfe & Co.’s new mixed-use development on Post Oak Blvd. . . . though it won’t open until 2010.

The second source is . . . a little unusual. We’ll tell you about it in our next an upcoming post.

Update, 2/26/08: That second source.

Boulevard Place Whole Foods image: DMJM H&N

02/13/08 11:27am

View of Proposed New Galleria Whole Foods at Blvd Place at Former Eatzi’s Site

Uptown residents have had a lot of fun speculating about just how enormous and feature-filled the new Galleria Whole Foods flagship store on Post Oak Blvd. will be. The Whole Foods website lists it at a massive 78,000 sq. ft. — though the page it’s on hasn’t been updated since last October.

But now from our mailbox comes this gushing report:

Rumors have been circulating for the last week that Whole Foods has pulled out of Ed Wulfe’s BLVD Place development on Post Oak Blvd. The owners of a prominent jewelry store across Post Oak Blvd. have been telling people that the deal fell through.

Is this just shopping-center trash talk? Or has something changed? Our informant provides more Boulevard Place and Whole Foods FUD:

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09/21/07 10:23am

Aerial View of Blvd Place

Having trouble leasing upscale retail space in your giant mixed-use redevelopment project? No prob. Just build sleek new quarters for your existing tenants first. When they move, demolish their old building and build your new project in its place. Somebody else has gotta sign up by then, right?

The Houston Business Journal gives some details of Wulfe & Co.’s plans at the Galleria-area Boulevard Place:

The first building will rise at the project’s southern boundary, at the northwest corner of Post Oak Boulevard and Ambassador Way. The 70,000-square-foot building will house seven tenants currently in the Pavilion on Post Oak and Fashion Place retail centers that are relocating to Blvd Place — including Cafe Annie, Americas and Hermes. Once the tenants move, the older retail centers will be demolished and the remainder of Blvd Place will go under construction.

Retail, of course, is just part of the picture. There’s a hotel, condos, and an apartment building in the project . . .

Wulfe would not disclose the hotel name because the hospitality company wants to make the announcement, probably in about a month. However, he did reveal that the 225-room luxury hotel will include 175 to 200 high-end condominiums on the upper floors.

Wulfe also said it is “pretty definite” that the apartment building will be developed by Houston-based Hanover Co. An industry source says Hanover plans to buy Wulfe’s land for a 55-story apartment tower, making it the second-tallest building in the Galleria area behind the Williams Tower.

But what about the rest of that retail?

Whole Foods Market Inc. announced last year that it will build a 78,000-square-foot flagship store at the southwest corner of Post Oak and San Felipe. There are currently no other new tenants signed.

No other new tenants signed? That leaves just over 350,000 square feet of planned retail space in the development still available. No word in the article either about the 120,000 square feet of boutique office space, mostly on two stories above the retail. And construction is scheduled to start next month.

Wulfe joked at last week’s Commercial Real Estate Women luncheon that come Oct. 1, “somebody’s going to be shoveling something” at the site . . .

After the jump: renderings of that superbig, supermod Whole Foods that ate Eatzi’s, plus more Boulevard Place images.

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12/03/18 12:15pm

A flyer posted on the Marquis II at 2631 Bissonnet yesterday announces that the place is now closed indefinitely, leaving West University almost entirely devoid of bars (except for the one inside the Whole Foods on Bellaire Blvd.). The Marquis II’s predecessor, the Marquis, opened in the then-fledgling River Oaks Shopping Center in 1945. After the bar’s original owner died in the late 1960s, a pair of cocktail waitresses bought it and decamped to Bissonnet and Buffalo Spdwy., where the suffix became part of the venue’s name.

Following a stint at Bissonnet and Weslayan, the bar wound up in its current spot near Kirby in 1985. Houston architect Lars Bang had originally designed the building to house a branch of California donut chain The Big Donut, which it did until the 1970s when a gentleman’s lounge dubbed The Bunny Club blacked out the windows and took over. It left after a fire in the early ’80s, but not entirely: During the Marquis II’s last major remodel in 2011, workers uncovered a painting of a women wearing a low-cut outfit with a bushy tail that had been hiding behind one of the building’s walls, an unmistakable relic of the shuttered strip club. “Although badly charred,” according to the bar’s website, “the painting underwent a little restoration and still hangs proudly on our wall.

Photos: Marquis II

Last Last Call
08/29/18 10:15am

HOW POST OAK’S NEW ROOFTOP MOVIE SCREEN PLANS TO GET TEXANS BEHIND IT Tickets sales start today at noon for the first movie to hit the new Rooftop Cinema Club screen atop the Whole Foods BLVD Place garage on October 3: Dirty Dancing. Following a few more blockbusters like Coming to America, Back to the Future, and Footloose the London-born chain will begin courting Texans with a home-grown lineup including Rushmore, Reality Bites, Dazed and Confused, Selena, and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (with a showing of Black Panther thrown in there on October 16 just because). At the end of its second week, the theater takes a hard turn out of state with Mel Brooks’ Mike Nicholls’ South Beach feature The Birdcage, only to come back in a big way with Texas Chainsaw Massacre the day before Halloween. [KHOU; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Whole Foods at 1700 Post Oak Blvd.: Dung L.

08/22/18 8:30am

Photo of construction on Bay Colony, Dickinson: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool

Headlines
08/09/18 1:00pm

A POST OAK PARKING GARAGE SOLUTION TO THE DEMAND FOR DRIVE-IN THEATERS The head of the company now bringing a movie theater to the top of the BLVD Place garage at Post Oak and San Felipe tells the Chronicle’s Ileana Najarro that he “hopes to offer a social experience for those nostalgic for drive-in theaters.” What better place to do it than in Houston, where people drive in and out of buildings all the time? The catch: you’ll have to get out of your car and amble up to the garage’s top floor above Whole Foods and other retail, where it might get noisy — especially with that bus lane construction happening now on Post Oak. But there’s a solution: wireless headphones for each audience member — which Rooftop Cinema Club’s head says will “replicate the intimate setting of one’s car,” just like the old days. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Whole Foods at 1700 Post Oak Blvd.: Dung L.

07/06/18 5:00pm

Signs are up outside AT&T’s West U. building on Bellaire Blvd. announcing the changes the carrier wants to make to allow service vehicles to load and unload gear in its backyard. Laid down on a row of 4 former residential lots in 1970, the parking lot was expanded by 2 parcels in 1975 and now backs both the telecom building and the Whole Foods–anchored shopping center adjacent to it. Service vehicles and their associated personnel have used the lot since it was first paved, according to the company’s rezoning application.

West U. officials signed off on the land’s new use for parking back when it was first paved. The question now is what is what sort of backyard activities are permitted within that area — an issue on which the city has flip-flopped. In 2016, it gave AT&T the all-clear to keep conducting service activities in the lot. But following a challenge from a neighboring resident that same year, officials changed their minds. AT&T filed a lawsuit in response, but just this January agreed to work toward a settlement with the city.

A public hearing on the zoning request was originally scheduled for June 11 but was postponed to a date TBD — prompting some timely yard sign edits like the one shown below

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West U.