Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
It is wise for us to demolish our troubles, there are always new ones to replace them.
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Like the looks of this light-display-slash-townhouse-trio at Prospect and Chenevert streets on the Almeda side of the Museum District? All 3 of the homes hit the market yesterday for between $925,000 and $975,000 (that’s 5313 Chenevert, 1805 Prospect, and 1807 Prospect, from left to right). Developer Dreamscape Modern posted the (rendered) view above to its website for Phase 2 of its The Art Colony townhouse development, which includes a see-through panel to catch shifting colored light projected onto the house after dark.
The light displays shown in the rendering and in the video above are a bit more intricate than the particular pattern shown in the new listing photos — though the illuminated driveway strips appear to be the same shade of aqua, amid the xeriscaping in place of the grass lawns originally depicted:
Lighting Up in the Museum District
COMMENT OF THE DAY: A DIFFERENT TAKE ON THE BELLAIRE HIGH CAMPUS SWAP QUESTION 
“Currently, Sharpstown High is being rebuilt. Rather than tearing down the old school building when the new one is complete, let that become the temporary home of Bellaire. Stagger hours of the 2 schools, rent parking space at nearby vacant lots, run shuttles, etc. They’re geographically not that far from each other. This would allow Bellaire to be rebuilt on the same footprint and keep the student body together.” [Terri Bamberger, commenting on Hitting the Brakes on the Bellaire High School Chevron Campus Swap Talk] Photo of Bellaire High School campus at 5100 Maple St.: Houston ISD
Above is an updated view of plans for the stretch of Fairview St. between Taft and Genesee being redeveloped by the owner of the redeveloped restaurant strip containing Cuchara and Max’s Wine Dive — a CBRE marketer announced that the project will be branded as the Fairview District, and will include 4 buildings of the mixed-office-retail-restaurant variety. In the center of the rendering above is a sleeker view of the 5-story bike-encrusted parking garage previously drawn up for the former site of Meteor Lounge (which sent its drag show over South Beach and shut off the showers for the last time over the summer). It’s unclear from this vantage whether the garage’s bicycle decor is still part of the plan for the area, but some bike lanes appear to be. The glassy structure on the far left looks to be the standalone structure planned for the parking lot next to Max’s Wine Dive (previously tagged as a dessert shop): CONTINUE READING THIS STORY
Viewing Fairview District
Today on Swamplot our sponsor is Jamestown Estate Homes. Thanks for the support!
Jamestown Estate Homes is a luxury custom homebuilder that’s been serving Houston since 2010. Founder Greg Hawes’s first building in Bunker Hill Village was the treehouse he built in his backyard as a child in 1957. After graduating from UT, he worked at US Home (then the largest homebuilder in the nation), where he was soon offered a corporate position. Instead, he left to found Partners in Building, where he served as president for 18 years. When he sold his interest in Partners, it was ranked as one of Houston’s 10 largest homebuilders by the Houston Business Journal.
In 2010 Greg started Jamestown Estate Homes to get into what he calls “true custom homebuilding” — focusing on every detail and getting back to working one-on-one with buyers. His love for homebuilding is shared by his 3 daughters, and Jamestown has allowed him to fulfill his dream of working with his kids. (Elizabeth, the oldest, worked for Jamestown until her husband was transferred to the Hague. The “commute is just too far,†she explained when she resigned.)
Named valedictorian at Klein High School in 1999, Katy Hawes earned a degree in molecular biology from UT and an MBA with a concentration in accounting from Rice. This makes her a great fit for the role of controller at Jamestown. Katy’s construction budgets take into account every element, no matter how tiny — and have often come within $10 of actual construction expenditures.
After a brief stint in Los Angeles pursuing film (she worked as Britney Spears’s body-double in 2 music videos), youngest daughter Victoria Hawes graduated first in her class from UH with a degree in corporate communications before getting a master’s in communication from Purdue. She joined Jamestown Estate Homes as a superintendent and was named Houston’s Best Custom Home Superintendent for 2013 by the Greater Houston Builders Association (GHBA) and Project Manager of the Year in 2014 by the Texas Association of Home Builders. A skiing accident in 2014 helped her transition from construction to sales, marketing, and design.
Jamestown Estate Homes was named Custom Builder of the Year by the GHBA in 2013. The company has active projects in the Memorial Villages, Oak Forest, and the Heights, and is looking to expand into Meyerland, Bellaire, and Tanglewood. (Jamestown Estate Homes will also build on a client’s land in surrounding areas.) The company completes 6 to 12 homes a year, with projects starting around $500,000 (for the house only).
For more information, contact Victoria Hawes (832) 296-1663 or victoria.hawes@jamestownestatehomes.com, or check out the company’s website. To find details about the home pictured above, click here.
Got a custom message for Swamplot readers? Check out our Sponsor of the Day program.
Sponsor of the Day
FINDING CHEAP HOMES AT THE 20 MILE COMMUTER SWEET SPOT 
Data type Scott Davis tells Paul Takahashi this week that the average commute distance among Houstonians with a $265,000 home is 30.5 miles, according to his company’s real-estate database. The middle 2 thirds of that price group makes a slog of anywhere between 15 and 47 miles to get to work; Davis says some folks in that range drive as far as 60 miles. He does note to Takahashi, however, that the homes closer in — say, within 15 or 20 miles of a major employment hub — tend to sell much faster; HAR even rolled out a tool last year to allow searches for housing by commute time. [HBJ] Photo: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
- Houston Home Sales Slow Slightly in September While Home Prices Set Records, Finds HAR [HBJ]
- Houston Real Estate Market Uneven Amid Energy Slump [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Greater Houston Partnership Unveils New Downtown Digs [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- Future Construction in League City To Feature More Brick and Stone Buildings [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- Where Have the Repeat Home Buyers Gone? [The Urban Edge]
- Blink Fitness Expanding into Houston Next Year with 25 to 30 Locations in Downtown, Sugar Land, Baytown, Spring [Houston Chronicle]
- Houston School Board Agrees To Accept $7.5M Gift, Rename HSPVA’s New Downtown Campus After Kinder Family [Houston Chronicle]
- City Breaks Ground on Segment of 1.8-Mile Sims Bayou Greenway, Part of The Bayou Greenways 2020 Project [Houston Public Media]
- Tech Startup HomeMe Raises $3.2M To Expand Apartment App Across Texas [HBJ]
- Houston’s Secret Area Code Class Warfare [Houston Chronicle]
- Traffic Worsens as Kirby Street Work Halts in Upper Kirby District [abc13]
- How To Stage a Home To Sell, According to Frankel Building Group [Culturemap]
Photo of CityCentre Five: elnina via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Sharing tales of houses we’ve lost is how we keep from really losing them.
- 5900 Highway 290 [HAR]
HITTING THE BRAKES ON THE BELLAIRE HIGH SCHOOL CHEVRON CAMPUS SWAP TALK 
Prior to this afternoon’s closed HISD executives meeting, trustee Mike Lunceford told Charlotte Aguilar that he’ll no longer be supporting that plan to turn the former Chevron campus at 4800 Fournace Pl. into a new campus for Bellaire High School, citing the potential price and a lack of support from the HISD board for the plan. Bellaire got money to replace the 1955 school at its existing location along S. Rice Ave. during the 2012 bond election; Aguilar writes that the redo “has lagged behind schedule and increased in cost because of the complexities of dealing with Bellaire’s tight zoning regulations, and the question of what to do with the school’s 3,500-plus students during construction.” [InstantNewsBellaire; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Bellaire High School at 5100 Maple St.: Houston ISD
Across W. 24th St. from the currently-grocerless former N. Shepherd Fiesta lot, a reader notes that MFT’s makeover of the former Texas Cafeteria building seems to be shaping up roughly as previously planned — the building’s previous overhangs and high elevation roof decor have now been fully flattened out, and the spot’s 6,125 sq. ft. are currently listed for lease in 2 pieces on LoopNet. Per the listing and the previous rendering labeling of the spot as BURGERS, the 3,250-sq.-ft. space intended for a restaurant tenant appears to be on the potentially-H-E-B-facing southern end of the development:
Future Food by Former Fiesta
CITY PLANNING APP TO REDUCE USELESS DOWNTOWN CIRCLING, $80 PARKING FEES 
The city approved $9,600 yesterday toward planning a system to help drivers (particularly out-of-towners) find parking Downtown, Dug Begley writes. The system would be designed to display prices and current space availability for 7-or-so to-be-finalized private parking vendors on a smartphone app, along with a series of electronic signs like the ones installed around the city’s airports. The city would pay for about 20 percent of the $4.1-ish million project, which would be mostly funded by federal money aimed at reducing air pollution (in this case, extra emissions from excessively long and looping parking space searches). Begley also writes that city leaders think the system could cut down on price gouging, noting that prices for recent special events, “especially near Minute Maid Park, have spiked to $80 as demand increased.” [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo of downtown parking garage: Bill Barfield via Swamplot Flickr Pool
A mobile reader sends some fresh shots of not-quite-green-yet redone greenway along Brays Bayou, looking west from Buffalo Spdway. along S. Braeswood Blvd. The Harris County flood control folks have been widening this section of the channelized stream this fall as they work their way through the Project Brays checklist; the stretch seen above and below is about 2 miles downstream of some of those more submersion-prone areas of Meyerland near the Brays crossing under 610.
The new trail is a fair bit wider and smoother than the one it’s replacing — for some soggy comparison, here’s a view of the trail from around noon on Tax Day, just up past the next bend near where Ilona Ln. meets S. Braeswood:
Widening Greenways and Waterways
- The Sublease Space Discounts at Houston’s Largest Multi-Tenant Office Buildings [HBJ; previously on Swamplot]
- Houston’s Apartment Vacancy Rate Expected To Climb to 7% by End of the Year, According to Marcus & Millichap [HBJ]
- Deteriorating McCrory’s Building in Downtown Galveston Poised for Revival [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- Podcast: Why Houston May or May Not Have Zoning [Houston Chronicle]
- Nao Ramen House Set To Open Later This Year at 5510 Morningside in Rice Village [Houston Chronicle]
- Dual Italian Restaurant Concepts at 500 Crawford from Bill Floyd and Bryan Caswell To Now Be Called Kristalla and Osso [Houston Chronicle]
- Juice Girl Opening in Montrose This Weekend [Eater Houston]
- Southern Goods Chef Sues Business Partner Alleging Fraud [Culturemap]
- Grimes County Residents Concerned About Eminent Domain in Dallas-Houston High-Speed Rail Project [Houston Public Media; previously on Swamplot]
Photo: Ruben S. via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Demolition is like a cow of desire. It, like her, yields in all seasons.
