Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Five to none, baby. No one here makes it out alive.
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The only part of M.D. Anderson’s Houston Main Building at 1100 Holcombe Blvd. being demolished today is a “coach canopy” outside the structure, cancer center spokesperson Laura Sussman tells Swamplot. Removal of the canopy will allow workers to extract a large mural from inside the space before the building is demolished. Sussman couldn’t confirm when demolition of the 18-story former Prudential Life Insurance Building would take place, but a source tells Swamplot it’s been scheduled for the middle of February. Mournful modernists, you have a few more weeks to get the building’s obituary in order.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: CLEAR PROOF THAT THEY WERE ONTO SOMETHING BIG, BEFORE IT ALL CAME CRASHING DOWN “well it would appear there’s lots of wind up there for harvesting!” [movocelot, commenting on Pieces of Wind Turbine Fall Onto Street from Top of Hess Tower Downtown; Blades on “Lockdownâ€]
Update, 5:14 p.m.: Today’s demo is just of an exterior canopy. But the entire building will likely be demolished next month.
The Rice Design Alliance is reporting that M.D. Anderson has begun tearing down the former Prudential Life Insurance building at 1100 Holcombe St. in the Med Center. Since 1975, it has served as the “Houston Main Building” for the medical institution’s campus. The 18-story limestone tower was constructed as the centerpiece of Houston’s first suburban office park in 1952, from a design by Kenneth Franzheim. For almost 10 years, the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center has been floating plans to knock it down and replace it with a new medical facility. Got any pics of the action, or images of the building’s notable interior to share? Send them in! We’ll publish updates as we get them.
- Prudential/Houston Main Building [arch-ive.org]
- Preservationists oppose plan to demolish historic building [Houston Business Journal]
Photo: Candace Garcia
Mike Morris hitches a ride on the city’s $500,000 Street Surface Assessment Vehicle, a modified van that’s been hard at work studying street bumps and cracks since last May. Operators hope to complete a pass on more than 16,000 miles of Houston streets by this coming June.
Inside the van, [Patrick] Johnson uses a modified PlayStation controller and a black box with 16 white buttons to run the system, from recording the type of pavement being scanned — cement or asphalt — to marking potholes.
The van’s front lasers, mounted where the bumper used to be, evaluate the pavement surface for rough patches. A second laser device, the “crackscope,” is mounted at the back of the van, recording a continuous bird’s-eye photograph of the street to reveal fissures in the pavement.
A round, 11-lens camera — looking not unlike a disco ball — sits atop the van, recording nearby street features, including culverts and fire hydrants.
Each street starts with a score of 100, but as the lasers find rough patches or cracks and Johnson records each pothole, the score drops.
SUMMARY REPORT FROM THE RECENT URBAN GARDEN SUMMIT “There is a 2 acre plot of land beside the parking lot at the Houston Food Bank’s new headquarters on I-10 east and that organization is looking for someone to build a demonstration garden there. Meanwhile, Covenant Community Capital is assisting a group of chefs including Randy Evans from Haven who are looking for a spot for a cooperative restaurant garden. Last Organic Outpost and the Harris County AgriLife extension office are looking for ways to help both groups. One idea under consideration is to turn the Houston Food Bank lot into a composting facility — at least to get that project started. The search for a restaurant garden is focusing on vacant lots in the Fifth Ward.” [Texas Eats; previously on Swamplot]
Sometime before the Christmas holiday last year, “high winds” caused a part of one of the wind turbines mounted to the top of downtown Houston’s Hess Tower to “detach” from its mounting point. “Two pieces of the debris fell to the street. Nobody was injured,” Hess Corporation spokesperson Mari Pat Sexton tells Swamplot today. Sexton had no comment on circulating rumors that one or more of the the pieces struck a car on the street.
The incident helps explain why the whirling turbines, installed as a featured element at the top of the new 29-story tower last summer, have been silent since mid-December. In the photo above, taken by a HAIF commenter shortly before Christmas, the turbines appear to be missing. “After the event occurred, (the turbines) were locked down,” Sexton says, adding she is unaware of the turbines’ current status or whether there are plans to replace them. “The building is still under construction.”
The Gold LEED certified skyscraper, named Discovery Tower until Hess signed on to lease the whole thing 2 years ago, sits at the northern edge of Discovery Green, a short walk from Minute Maid Park. It was developed by Trammell Crow, designed by Gensler, is the thirtieth-tallest building in Houston, and was the first in town to feature — and draw some power from — wind turbines. Here’s how they looked (and sounded) last year, before the incident:
The company behind the Houston Premium Outlets way up off 290 near Fairfield in Cypress has announced plans to build a similar outlet mall on the opposite side of Houston. Simon Property Group, also the owner of the Houston Galleria and the Katy Mills Mall, plans on calling the new 100-store, 350,000-sq.-ft. complex the Galveston Premium Outlets, but it’ll be located well north of the island in Texas City, just south of the Holland Rd. exit off I-45 and north of the Walmart Supercenter, on the west side of the freeway. From the drawing the company is passing around, the place should look a whole lot like its Cypress cousin, logo-tattooed tower and all.
The site is a 55-acre chunk of the stalled and probably flopped Lago Mar, a 7,000-home development announced 6 years ago.
The Galveston County Daily News‘s Laura Elder reports there are rumors another outlet mall is coming to the area as well, a couple of exits north on a 20-acre lot north of Cross Colony Dr. and west of FM 646 in Dickinson — this one from another national mall developer: Tanger Outlet Centers.
What’s the deal with the malls already in the area?
Everybody out? The garden-center conquest of the Skylane West begins. Plus a bungalow in Independence Heights achieves independence from the Heights:
PRICED OUT OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD 
“These days, South Park is undergoing yet another change: an influx of Hispanic residents, from 16 percent in 2000 to nearly 20 percent in 2009. That number is expected to jump to 22 percent in five years, while the number of black residents is on the decline: 82 percent in 2000 compared to an estimated 77 percent five years from now. Census data shows no white people living in the area at all. . . . The median home price is $50,400 — an increase of 15 percent since 2000. This sounds promising until another statistic is revealed: The median income is a mere $33,196 per year, which is nearly 15 percent less than ten years ago. The most expensive listing for a [South Park] single family home on HAR.com right now — a completely remodeled three-bedroom house on Bataan with granite countertops in the kitchen — is less than $78,000, its asking price recently reduced in a bid to attract buyers. The modest house, built in 1955, has been on the market for months.” That price reduction doesn’t seem to have had much effect: The home at 5538 Bataan Rd. was just taken off the market. [Houston Press] Photo: HAR
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE WAY IT WORKS IN HIGHLAND VILLAGE “. . . Not that it matters, but everyone in this story probably has a lot of money (or is about to go bust – you never know).” [andso, commenting on Tootsies Beats Back the Landlord: The Sale Must Go On!]
CORNERING THE BURGER MARKET Helping to balance out the intersection of Highway 6 and West Rd. in Copperfield, currently home to a Wendy’s, a Whataburger, a Chick-fil-A, a Shell station, and 2 banks: Houston’s very first Carl’s Jr. Or the first one here, at least, in about 30 years. The company building the franchise plans to blanket Houston with 40 Carl’s Jr. locations by the end of the decade. Next up: Hwy 6 and S. University Blvd. in Missouri City, and just west of 288 on FM 518 in Pearland. [Cheap Eats in Houston; previously on Swamplot]
Highland Village owner Haidar Barbouti “probably didn’t get hung up on the legal nuances†of how to shake Tootsies free of its Westheimer store when its lease ended, a source explains to Swamplot. But both he and Tootsies owner Mickey Rosemarin are ready to move on. Now that the court skirmish over the eviction and the store’s subsequent request for a restraining order have been formally resolved in Tootsies’ favor, Rosmarin’s clothing boutique will be able to stay at its Highland Village location through the end of the month. At which point, according to a store spokesperson, “The store will close one night and open the next business day†at West Ave. The new mixed-use complex at Kirby and Westheimer reportedly lured the retailer into a lease with generous terms: forgoing base rent in exchange for a percentage of Tootsies’ sales.
These five structures made a choice to work, a choice to sacrifice, to put themselves on the line for years, to represent you, this city. That kind of commitment and effort deserves and demands your respect. This is your team.
