- 1111 E 7th 1/2 St. [HAR; more here]
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You’ve missed your last chance to catch a view like these from the Chase Tower at 600 Travis St., unless you’re there on business. Craig Hlavaty reports that Hines has permanently closed the downtown skyscraper’s 60th floor Sky Lobby to the public, just 3 years after that 2013 redo by Gensler, to cut down on tenant-bothering “extra non-business-related traffic” on the floor (which is also an elevator swapout zone.) Time to update that list.
- The Sky Lobby at Houston’s Chase Tower is now closed to the public [Houston Chronicle]
- Previously on Swamplot: The Best Places To Watch Houston Go By
Photos: Bill Barfield (top) and Russell Hancock (bottom) via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Grounded Downtown
The Uptown PAC angling to stop both a planned Dinerstein highrise (which they say would increase area traffic) and the Post Oak Blvd. dedicated bus lane project (designed to reduce area traffic) has been ramping up for a legal fight lately: On Monday the organization asked the city to stop approving permits for any new highrise developments in the area, and to stop work on the bus lanes, both pending the completion of a new traffic study. Paul Takahashi writes that the group is also taking legal fund donations and looking at filing lawsuits over the matters.
What is the PAC worried about, exactly? Back in 2014, when the group formed to fight the bus lane project and a nixed AmREIT tower previously planned next to the Cosmopolitan condos (where many of its members reside), spokesman for the group said it was worried that ambulances wouldn’t be able to quickly move through increased gridlock stemming from additional development. The talking points have expanded significantly since then; now ABC 13 reporter turned hired investigator-slash-media-attention-consultant Wayne Dolcefino is on the case (the self-consciously horse-centric video below was released late last month), and recent talking points even include calls for the bus lane money to be used to fix flooding issues in not-in-Uptown Meyerland and Greenspoint instead:
Stop Requests on Post Oak
Today’s edition of Swamplot is brought to you by the 4-bedroom, 3-1/2-bath home at 2115 Gostick St. in the Heights subdivision known as Gostic. Thanks for the support!
Okay, Heightsers (or would-be Heightsers): Which shopping district? Old standby 19th St. (Vietnam Restaurant, Cutthroat) or up-and-coming E. 20th (Nam Eatery, Birds Barbershop)? Heights & Yale or N. Main & Studewood? No need to stick to one or the other — if you’re living in this American Foursquare built in 2007 by Modern Bungalow on Gostick St. between E. 21st and E. 22nd. Because it’s convenient to both. Plus: porches. A nice welcoming one streetside, as well as the screened-in one in back pictured above for mosquito-free outdoor hobnobbing.
You’ll find a familiar rooms-to-the-corners layout inside (that’s why it’s called a Foursquare). A 2015 renovation added the fourth bedroom and full bath on the third floor (teen suite, office, studio, or playroom). The 2-car garage has its entrance off the alley, leaving room for an actual back yard.
If this perch and its porches is of interest to you, check out the property website for 2115 Gostick St., where you’ll find more details and photos.
Got the perfect home in the perfect spot looking for the perfect buyer? A stint as Swamplot Sponsor of the Day might be just the thing.
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Lovett has been dropping a few crumbs regarding the selection of restaurants and shops that will fringe the parking lot of the retail development planned for the former Fingers Furniture warehouse site on Cullen Blvd., across I-45 from the University of Houston’s main campus. No anchor tenant for the site has officially named (though talk of Walmart has made its way to several tipsters in the Eastwood Civic Association this spring, along with assurances that the marker memorializing the former site of Buffalo Stadium’s home plate will likely be preserved).
A site plan from December (shown above, with north angled roughly toward the top right corner) shows several pad sites along the feeder road marked up as QSR (presumably Quick Service Restaurant). A later sketch now up on Lovett’s website as well adds more clues, however — including  a cryptic label on what could be the first Starbucks to venture into the East End:
Cullen at I-45
- Commercial Building Permits in Houston $400M Behind Pace Set Last Year from January to April [HBJ]
- Carson Cos. Starts Third Phase of Bayport Industrial Park, Adding 397,775 SF Across 4 Buildings [Houston Chronicle]
- Dow Chemical Latest Tenant for Clay Development’s Deerwood Office III Office Building in Deer Park [Realty News Report]
- The Market at Springwoods Village Now 80% Leased After Signing Torchy’s Tacos, Chick-fil-A, MOD Pizza [Houston Chronicle]
- This $13M River Oaks Unit Might Be the Most Expensive Penthouse Ever Listed for Sale in Houston [Houston Chronicle]
- Sneak Peek Inside The Grand at LaCenterra, the First Midrise Apartment in Katy [HBJ]
- Elon Musk-Chaired Solar Power Installation Company SolarCity Expanding to Houston Market [HBJ]
- How Houston Stacks Up On Transit Equity [The Urban Edge]
- New Houston Bike Plan Expected To Go Before City Council for Adoption in August or September [Houston Public Media]
- Houston Has the Qualities Millennials Want in a City But Fewer Than 1% Want To Live Here, Finds Abodo Study [Houston Chronicle]
Photo of the San Jacinto Monument: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Another 1920s home goes down on that old Houston street named for Theneuille-to-Houston tanner Piere (Peter) Saulnier, and some other little pieces of Houston crumbling away in today’s report.
CONTINUE READING THIS STORY
- 4214 McKinney St. [HAR]
A perennial contender for the dubious honor of Houston’s gaudiest mansion may be trying to shake its claim to the title. The mansion at 12930 Memorial Dr. is back on the market this month for at least the sixth time in 5 years — and back down to an asking price of $1.5 million, after a 2014 upward jump and subsequent slow decline. Ownership of the house was traded back and forth between Costello family members until an April sale to an entity called Triple Gate Investments; the new sellers seem to be aiming for a more understated presentation. In this round of listing photos, all but a few of the house’s 11,760 sq. ft. have been stripped of furniture, chandeliers, and giant high-heel statuary, allowing distraction-free contemplation of the colorful interior.
Even the apply-your-own-head wildlife has been reset to its original state:
New Management
The Texas Revolution-themed southeast corner of Goliad and Crockett streets looks to be getting blanked out to make way for more townhomes in the increasingly formerly industrial section of First Ward between Sawyer St., Washington Ave., and White Oak Bayou. Chris Andrews noted the planning commission application asking  the city to chop up the land beneath the former New Hope Missionary Baptist Church buildings into 7 smaller pieces. Also probably getting chopped up into smaller pieces: the structures themselves, which the city’s archaeological and historical commission says may have been among those designed by 1940s African-American church architect James M. Thomas.
Remember Goliad Grove
Swamplot’s sponsor today is Houston’s own Realty News Report, an online publication covering commercial and residential real estate markets in Texas. Thanks for the support!
If you’re hungry for Houston real estate news — and gee, if you’re reading Swamplot, it’s likely you are — you should be reading Realty News Report. But . . . who are we to judge?
Realty News Report’s editor, Ralph Bivins, came back from New Orleans earlier this month loaded down with an unprecedented 5 awards — 2 golds, a silver, and 2 bronzes in various categories — in the National Association of Real Estate Editors’ 66th annual Journalism Awards. What for?
“This writer covers Houston real estate like a glove,†the panel of expert judges from the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism wrote of Bivins’s work. “Whether he is writing about new building construction methods, the future of the Astrodome, or the acquisition of the land and the building of a new campus of ExxonMobil, he gives readers new insights into area real estate. He is a must read.â€
Bivins’s competitors for the NAREE awards were journalists from the Wall St. Journal, Bloomberg, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other well-known publications. Before founding Realty News Report, he covered real estate for the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News for decades.
To keep up with the Texas real estate scene, you’ll want to check out the Realty News Report website — regularly. For a free trial subscription to Realty News Report’s weekly newsletter, send an email to RealtyNewsReport@gmail.com.
Swamplot readers sure do appreciate Swamplot sponsors! Get in on the action by becoming a Sponsor of the Day.
Sponsor of the Day
COMMENT OF THE DAY: A GUESS AT PROPER ETIQUETTE FOR OUT-OF-FASHION DEED RESTRICTIONS 
“My old neighborhood – two houses ago – should be very worried as well. Right before I got there, some people had tried to rewrite the deed restrictions. Some other people blocked the rewrite. Which basically meant that the old restrictions – from the 1950s – were still in force – or were they? Half the regulations were either moot (who has a garbage incinerator in their back yards nowadays?) or illegal today. But more importantly: the restrictions were supposed to have been renewed in the 1970s and again in the 1990s, but it’s not clear they ever were. I wound up basically following the practical rule that whatever the county clerk has on record is in force whether it makes sense or not, so long as it is not rendered illegal by some other law. But I am not a lawyer, and I know that approach probably would not hold up in court.” [ZAW, commenting on Comment of the Day: Garden Oaks Question Marks Raise Question Marks Citywide] Illustration: Lulu
TEXAS SUPREME COURT: FLOOD CONTROL AGENCY DIDN’T CAUSE WHITE OAK FLOODING BY NOT CONTROLLING IT 
On Friday the state’s highest court reversed course on a class-action lawsuit filed by White Oak Bayou-adjacent homeowners flooded by turn-of-the-century storms including Allison, writes Mike Morris. Gabrielle Banks previously reported that some 200-plus families living along the upper reaches of bayou between Jersey Village and Houston Rosslyn Rd. had been asking for a collective $85 million or so to make up for flood damage and property devaluation they say was caused by the agency not completing some planned detention projects that haven’t gotten expected federal funding. The court decided last fall that the plaintiff’s case was strong enough to warrant a juried trial — at which point more than a dozen city and state government bodies filed letters asking it to please reconsider. Friday’s ruling came down in favor of the flood control agency, though the 4 dissenting judges wrote that the organization knew approved upstream development would lead to flooding without the planned projects, and therefore caused flooding by not requiring enough mitigation. The ruling could impact the similar lawsuit recently filed by a group of Memorial-area homeowners against the city and TIRZ 17, though in that case the group Residents Against Flooding is asking for flood control-related action rather than money. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Map of White Oak Bayou watershed: Harris County Flood Control District
- Hines Completes First Phase of Beltway Southwest Business Park [Realty News Report]
- How ExxonMobil’s North Houston Migration Has Shaped Houston [Realty News Report; previously on Swamplot]
- D.R. Horton/Express Homes The Biggest Builder in Houston as Entry-Level Homes Expand [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- Oil Market to Stabilize at Some Point This Year, Forecasts BP Economist [HBJ]
- Healthcare Dominates Houston Job Growth as Energy Hurts [Houston Chronicle]
- Leading GDP per Capita, Rise in Patent Count Make Houston a City of the Future, Says AT Kearney [Tech Insider]
- What Houston Can Do About All Those Floods [Texas Observer]
- Fulshear, Cinco Ranch Ranked Among the Best Suburbs in the Houston Area To Raise a Family by Niche [Houston Chronicle]
- Remembering Tootsie’s Founder Mickey Rosmarin [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
Photo of Rice University: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Whether in or out of love for these houses, straight down to the ground is the only guaranteed fall.
