Buying and Selling
01/20/11 1:21pm

An Affordable Condo in Rice Military You Can Buy, But Can’t Look at or Live In

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“Can’t wait to find a buyer for this condo!” writes real-estate agent Veso Kossev. “Too bad I can’t take [anyone] to see it…..” Huh? Oh, yeah . . . it’s unit E5 at the Park Memorial Condominiums, otherwise known as the 4.85-acre land of limbo just north of Memorial Dr. at Detering. As of a few days ago, you can pick up this 2-bedroom, 2-bath, only partially smashed condo for the low, low price of just $47,000. But you won’t be able to have it inspected — or see it yourself — because the entire complex has been condemned by the city. Where’d these lovely interior photos in the listing come from, then?

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Demolitions
01/20/11 10:58am

Where M.D. Anderson Will Put the UAE President’s New Building

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One of the things UT’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center will be doing with that $150 million gift the president of the United Arab Emirates is handing over: Constructing a new 600,000 sq.-ft. therapy building, named after the donor’s dad: the Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan Building for Personalized Cancer Care at MD Anderson. But where in the Med Center will they fit it? It won’t be replacing M.D. Anderson’s Houston Main Building, the former Prudential Life Insurance Tower already being hacked away at, and which the medical institution reportedly plans to demolish within weeks — a new treatment facility of some sort has been planned for that site for almost 9 years. The new building funded by the Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan Charity Foundation will land instead on a different demo site: the southeast corner of Moursund St. and M.D. Anderson Blvd., a 5-acre lot which until last year was the home of the UT Health Science Center’s Mental Science Institute. M.D. Anderson bought the 2-story concrete-and-brick building at 1300 Moursund from its sister institution, then had it torn down over the summer, identifying the land at the time only as a location for “future expansion.”

A couple more photos of that site, from last year’s demo:

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Comments
01/19/11 11:04pm

Comment of the Day: Gotta Know Your Chinese Imports

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COMMENT OF THE DAY: GOTTA KNOW YOUR CHINESE IMPORTS “I think some people are confusing the ‘Chinaberry’ [tree] (Melia azedarach) with the ‘Chinese Tallow’ (Triadica sebifera), the former being much messier but easier on the bare feet, and the latter being much more invasive.” [Superdave, commenting on Don’t Chop Down the Rodney Crowell Tree!]

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Commercial Real Estate
01/19/11 10:08pm

Here’s Your Missing Story About the Galleria Barnes and Noble

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“Dear Swamplot, Have I missed the story or has anyone else noticed that Barnes & Noble across from Galleria has closed and is being gutted?” Signs were posted at the Centre at Post Oak Shopping Center store as far back as September; the bookstore’s lease came up at the end of the year. Last we heard, Weingarten was still looking for a replacement.

Photo: Aaron Carpenter

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Attractions
01/19/11 1:29pm

Out of the Way, Tiny Soldiers, Here Comes the Grand Parkway: Katy’s Forbidden Gardens Is Closing Down

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Segment E of Houston’s new Grand Parkway — more commonly known as the new ring-road highway planned to cut through the Katy Prairie to link the Katy Mills Mall to the Houston Premium Outlets mall in Cypress (and to facilitate cultural exchange programs between those two institutions) — has its first casualty, and it’s not an Attwater prairie chicken. One of Katy’s quirkiest and most beloved attractions, Forbidden Gardens, has announced it will close. The Chinese history and cultural museum’s peculiar but convenient location on a former rice field along Franz Rd. just off the Grand Parkway’s stub end likely wasn’t “just off” enough. Forbidden Gardens’ last day open will be January 30; a note on its website says the closing will “make way for the Grand Parkway expansion.” Forbidden Gardens opened in 1996.

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Braeburn Acres
01/18/11 5:34pm

Comment of the Day: Take It From Someone Who’s Been There

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COMMENT OF THE DAY: TAKE IT FROM SOMEONE WHO’S BEEN THERE “That’s too bad; this home was quite the beautiful antique. Just the other day I broke into the backyard shed and spent the night in there, along with a pile of scrap metal… It smelled very old.” [Cornelius Rostiger, commenting on Daily Demolition Report: Whacking Wateka]

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Jacinto City
01/18/11 4:38pm

Don’t Chop Down the Rodney Crowell Tree!

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DON’T CHOP DOWN THE RODNEY CROWELL TREE! Two Chinaberry trees the country-music star planted with his mother by the front sidewalk of his childhood home at 10418 Norvic St. in Jacinto City never grew at all, but a third one Rodney Crowell named after himself did well. “It’s a Spanish-speaking fellow that lives there now,” Crowell tells the Chronicle‘s Andrew Dansby. “He had built a house where our house had fallen down. I got him out in the yard and tried to explain everything. I gave him a record of The Houston Kid. He looked at me like, ‘What do you want me to do with this?’ So we had a pointing conversation. I told him, ‘I planted that tree. Don’t chop it down!’ After a while he said, ‘Yes! Shade!’ I thought, OK, well the tree’s safe. A few years [later] I go back by, and it was cut down. I was livid. But the good news is the trunk is still there, and the trunk had started to sprout some little limbs. So maybe it’ll grow back in some way. These trees are tougher than we give them credit for. But I was mad; I was sure I’d gotten the point across.” [29-95]

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Commercial Real Estate
01/18/11 2:37pm

Where the Other New Gulf Freeway Outlet Mall Is Supposed To Go

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Just days after Simon Property Group announced it would build a new 100-store Galveston Premium Outlets shopping center in Texas City, Tanger Factory Outlet Centers is ready to talk about the outlet mall it’s been planning for a 35-acre site just 4 miles to the north, in League City. Tanger’s 300,743-sq.-ft. mall, which the company says is in the “predevelopment phase,” would sit just north of the Bay Colony shopping center and just south of the Big League Dreams sports complex. And like the Simon Mall, it’ll be right near a Walmart too — the Supercenter across I-45 at FM 646.

If both malls sign up enough tenants to get built along the I-45 feeder road, it’ll help adjust the impression that huge swathes of undeveloped land remain between Houston and Galveston — at least for drivers headed south. The Chronicle‘s Purva Patel also reports on a third new mall being discussed for the area — from Taubman, but that company hasn’t announced its plans.

Rendering: Tanger Outlets

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Art
01/18/11 12:12pm

Here’s Your Next Big Freeway Sign, Houston

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Sculptor David Adickes is almost ready to plant this giant concrete-on-steel sign on property he owns along Chester St. on the south side of I-10, just east of Patterson. You’ll be able to get your best view of it when traffic comes to a standstill on your way downtown. Just needs a few more finishing touches, like a figurine or 2 or 8 to accompany that little guitar player hanging out between the O and the U. And hey, you’re right! If the Hollywood sign were 15 feet shorter, came down from the hillside, grew an ego, and stood by the freeway, it would kinda look like this.

Photo: Imelda Bettinger [license]

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Air Quality
01/18/11 11:18am

Rainy Days and Sundays Always Get Me Down

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RAINY DAYS AND SUNDAYS ALWAYS GET ME DOWN “So it stinks like something awful again where I am today (the Heights). I look at the calendar and realize it’s been 2 prime dump days in a row, a wet Sunday followed by a national holiday. An old friend of mine who grew up on the east side used to say that a Sunday when it rained was the perfect day for all the refineries to release their nastiest emissions, because the rain masked it and for some reason there wasn’t any enforcement on the weekend. I’m wondering where else in the city it smells like what I’m smelling, and is there any truth to the rainy-day-dump theory? That’s some strong anecdotal evidence in my nostrils.” [Swamplot inbox]

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Demolitions
01/17/11 3:19pm

The Prudential Tower’s Grand Entrance, Before Its Not-so-Grand Exit

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Responding to Swamplot’s request last week for photos of the former Prudential Life Insurance Tower the University of Texas’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center is getting ready to demolish, architect Karen Lantz sends in a few photos she took while on a mod-gawking expedition in September 2003. Last week the medical institution began knocking down the porte-cochere at the building’s Holcombe St. entrance — to allow workers to remove one of the few items being preserved from the building: a mural in the building’s lobby painted by Peter Hurd in 1952. Lantz, who’s a bit of a demolition expert herself (her piece-by-piece dismantling of a home in Ranch Estates was awarded Swamplot’s Best Teardown Award in 2009), includes a few views of the grand entrance to Houston’s first-ever corporate campus:

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Art
01/17/11 12:02pm

Galveston’s Dead-Tree Sculptures: Now Entirely Fee Free!

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Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski now says he will waive the $10 annual permit fees the city had planned on charging 3 homeowners whose dead-tree sculptures stand in the public right-of-way. Homeowner Donna Leibbert started a small local-media firestorm late last week after she received a permit renewal form in the mail for the sculpture of a Geisha that artist Jim Phillips had carved out of an oak tree outside Leibbert’s home at 1717 Ball St. After the Hurricane Ike storm surge killed an estimated 30,000 trees on the island, artists turned almost 2 dozen of them into sculptures. But Leibbert’s Geisha is one of only 3 of the works that sits on city property.

City spokesperson Alice Cahill, who has helped to publicize the sculpture program as a tourist attraction, tells Amanda Casanova of the Galveston County Daily News that the license-to-use fee is normally required for any designed object that occupies a portion of the right-of-way. “A carved tree is treated the same as a cafe table.” Leibbert tells Casanova she was aware of the permit requirement at the time the Geisha was carved — getting approval for the sculpture required a formal application with the city’s planning commission. But she notes that the tree had stood in the same position for about 100 years, and for free.

Over the summer, Swamplot photographer Candace Garcia tracked down 22 of the tree sculptures, including Leibbert’s Geisha. Here’s her photo tour:

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