Homes for Sale
06/20/13 12:00pm

One in a Row Behind the Orange Show

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Fonde Park, Brays Bayou (and its hike-and-bike trail), and the Orange Show Center for Visionary Arts are among the outdoor diversions near this window-grilled 1977 home on a small lot in Hampshire Oaks. The neighborhood is tucked behind the former Schlumberger facility off the Gulf Fwy. and is just a TX-5 Spur away from University of Houston’s main campus. Aluminum-sided, the once-contemporary home is one of four in a row with the same tipped-top street elevation and similar proportions, though each sports its own signature tree or bush in its front yard. As the newly listed of the lookalikes, this home has an asking price of $109,900.

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Mobile Resources
06/20/13 11:00am

Applied Technology at UH’s New Coffee Nook

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APPLIED TECHNOLOGY AT UH’S NEW COFFEE NOOK A pair of University of Houston alums will be running a coffee shop and wine bar out of this new retail center in the cranny of Calhoun Rd. and Spur 5. The Nook, they’re calling it, will open July 15, reports The Daily Cougar, with more student-friendly hours, staying open until midnight — even on school nights. And there will also be a kind of caffeine-expediting service well suited to a spread-out campus that can require some serious between-classes hoofing: “‘The unique piece of The Nook that we’re actually proud of is a smart phone app where you can actually order your coffee the way you like it. You tell us when you’ll show up, you pay with your credit card and come to the pick-up counter and pick it up,’ Shaw said. ‘Anything on the menu, except for alcohol, can be ordered on the phone app.’” [The Daily Cougar; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Allyn West

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Houston Landmarks
06/20/13 10:00am

Neat Trick from Sports and Convention Corp. Cuts Astrodome, Everyone Else’s Ideas Down To Size

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Correction: An earlier version of this story repeated an assertion included in a Houston Business Journal blog post by Shaina Zucker — that the Sports Corporation’s proposal for the Astrodome included a plan to lower the building’s roof. That reporting is in error; we’ve now corrected the information in the story below. Although the Sports Corporation is not proposing to lower the roof, it is proposing to raise the structure’s floor to ground level, which would result in a smaller interior for the Dome. Swamplot regrets the error.

The clearest sign so far that the Harris County Sports and Convention Corporation wasn’t really into the half-hearted call for bids to redevelop the Astrodome it sorta-but-not-really issued a couple months ago? At yesterday’s press conference where it — surprise! — announced its own plan to reinvent Houston’s most recognizable landmark, officials didn’t even bother to describe any of the 19 submissions it had received. None of them, declared executive director Willie Loston, actually came with private money attached. (At least not in the inside pockets of their presentation binders.)

The Corporation’s own new idea of turning the dilapidated former sports stadium into additional convention space doesn’t have any private funds attached to it either, but the estimated $194 million plan does already appear to have gained the enthusiastic support of County Judge Emmett — which isn’t so surprising, since he proposed a similar idea a mere 4 years ago. Rodeo chief Leroy Shafer tells the Chronicle’s Kiah Collier that he considers the latest plan to be a scaled-back version of a proposal the Corporation — with the Rodeo’s backing — promoted last year, after a half-million-dollar study led by some Dallas consultants.

Turning the Dome into a space for swim meets, graduations, and overflow events of the Offshore Technology Conference may not be the bold transformation many Houstonians had imagined for the city’s monument to innovation and reinvention, but the plan’s true proponents are hoping the ominous “this is your last chance or we’ll demolish it” framing — along with the lower price tag — will be enough to garner support from the Commissioners Court and the voters who’ll likely have to approve any bond issue.

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Headlines
06/20/13 8:30am

Headlines: Houston Sells Smog Credits for Millions; Pico’s Exits Bellaire

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Photo of “pop-up” sculpture by Lee Littlefield, I-10 at 610 West: d.gerhardt via Swamplot Flickr Pool

Art
06/19/13 4:00pm

Buffalo Bayou Pump-n-Spritz On the Fritz

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BUFFALO BAYOU PUMP-N-SPRITZ ON THE FRITZ Open Channel Flow — that 60-ft. public showerhead behind the Lee and Joe Jamail Skatepark — cost $154,000 to build. Apparently, that sum didn’t include any rainy-day money for maintenance: Pump all you’d like, reports Hair Balls’ Brittanie Shey, but nothing’s coming out. To find out why, Shey says she contacted the artist, Matthew Geller, city council member Ed Gonzalez, and members of the Buffalo Bayou Partnership and Houston Parks, and no one had an answer. Eventually, Gonzalez’s chief of staff was able to pass the buck: “He told me that the artwork falls under the jurisdiction of the Public Works and Engineering department, and that the department had fielded a request in March to repair the sculpture. That repair had apparently not been made. ‘We’ve asked for that to be investigated,’ he said.” [Hair Balls; previously on Swamplot] Photos: Metalab

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Condos for Sale
06/19/13 3:00pm

A Corner Spot Opens Up in a Pioneering Warehouse District Loft

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Early in the last-century rush to loft downtown properties, this 1914 warehouse got converted into 15 condo units, each with a glass-and-iron fronted balcony. That was back in the mid-eighties. A see-it-all-at-a-glance corner spot on the 2nd floor within the San Jacinto Lofts showed up in the listings last week for $195,000.

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Buying and Selling
06/19/13 2:00pm

Comment of the Day: Why They Aren’t Building on the Vacant Lots

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COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHY THEY AREN’T BUILDING ON THE VACANT LOTS “Spoonman hit the nail on the head. Speculators jack up the price of open land so far that it pushes developers to buy existing buildings. This is also why you don’t see a rush of new construction immediately adjacent to light rail lines. My advice to the owners who haven’t already sold: do what the speculators do; hold out for more money. If Hines wants your house bad enough, they’ll pay it. I usually don’t advocate for this kind of thing, but if everyone did it, it might help push development back to open land.” [ZAW, commenting on Hines Buying Up Museum District Property To Build Highrise Apartments]

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Comments
06/19/13 1:00pm

Comment of the Day Runner-Up: How To Kill the Grid in the East End

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COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: HOW TO KILL THE GRID IN THE EAST END “What happened when the quiet zone went in in the First Ward? Every street got closed. Holly, Goliad, Hickory, Johnson, Colorado, Sabine, Silver, Henderson, all gone. The neighborhood was cut in two. The grid died, leaving something that looks like the cul-de-sacs-and-thoroughfares of the ’burbs. Now, Cullen could probably use an underpass. Sampson/York too. But what’s gonna happen in the East End when stuff gets value engineered out? Nance: gone. Commerce: gone. McKinney: gone. Milby: gone. Leeland: quite possibly gone. All those little side streets you like to ride your bike or walk your dog on because there’s low traffic, these will all be severed. And for what? So UP can operate remote-controlled locomotives? This is not a positive development.” [Jeff Davis, commenting on Headlines: Waiting for Trains in the East End; Waiting for Dunkin’ Donuts in Montrose]

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Houston Data
06/19/13 12:00pm

See Houston Sprawl

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Putting Google’s Landsat Annual Time Lapse function to work, Texas architect Samuel Aston Williams has created animated .GIFs that give a satellite’s view of how certain cities — Shanghai, Atlanta, Lagos, etc. — have changed during the past 30 years. And here’s Houston.

Image: Samuel Aston Williams via Atlantic Cities

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Freeways and Toll Roads
06/19/13 11:00am

What Houston’s New Phillips 66 Global HQ Might Look Like

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This rendering appears to show the new Phillips 66 global headquarters planned to go up in Westchase. Back in September, the ConocoPhillips offshoot announced it would be building something on the Beltway 8 feeder next to a pair of hotels just north of Westheimer. The announcement went on to say that the 14.2-acre site bound by City West Blvd., Private Dr., and Cityplace Dr. will have a training and development center, conference space, credit union, gym, cafeteria, coffee shop, and convenience store.

Rendering: Swamplot inbox

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Apartments
06/19/13 10:05am

Hines Buying Up Museum District Property To Build Highrise Apartments

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A few sources are telling Swamplot that Hines is planning to build either a 20- or 22-story apartment tower on the entire city block where this house stands in the Museum District. The house is at the corner of Caroline and Southmore, directly across from Yoshio Taniguchi’s Asia Society Texas Center and that recently cleared residential lot immediately behind it. The block is bound by Caroline, Southmore, Oakdale, and the light rail line along San Jacinto. One of the sources says that 3 of the 4 property owners on the block have agreed to sell, and that Hines will be taking those properties over on July 1. Another source speculates that Hines might go ahead and build around the holdout. As of this morning, there’s been no word from Hines — though a rep in an email writes: “No deal has been closed so it is too preliminary to discuss,” which sure makes it sound as though there is an “it.”

Photo: Swamplot inbox

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Headlines
06/19/13 8:30am

Headlines: Considering the Astrodome; Slamming ‘One Bin for All’

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Photo of the West Loop: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool

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