Galveston
10/26/10 9:21pm

Swamplot Street Sleuths: Calling the Kettle

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Got an answer to any of these reader questions? Or just want to be a sleuth for Swamplot? Here’s your chance! Add your report in a comment, or send a note to our tipline.

  • Galveston: Watercolor artist Don Springer, who makes a habit of rendering area oddities, wants to know more about the Galveston Kettle House on the San Luis Pass between Pirates Beach and Pirates Beach West he painted a few weekends ago. “I know that it was not the radio station KUFO which once broadcasted from the foot of the Flagship (That flying saucer is now a house on West Beach).” He passes on a story he heard from “credible sources” that the half-water-tower turned house was the home of a landscaper who recently passed away, but asks, “Can you use your unlimited resourses, connections, and talent to determine the history of this landmark before it rolls off into the sunset?” Readers? He’s talking to you.
  • Montrose: Chronicle tech guy Dwight Silverman wants to know what’s going into the building at 1721 Waugh, just south of the Commonwealth split; at about the same time, another Swamplot reader sends us this recent pic of what looks to be a refacing job on the building:

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Comments
10/26/10 6:32pm

Comment of the Day: Our House

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23 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: OUR HOUSE “I imagine that a lot of people are like us: we lived in a 1500 sqft old bungalow in the Heights during our DINKhood, but cashed out and moved to the burbs once the children came. Now we have 3000+ sqft and 4 baths for our growing family and for visiting family. We have no extended family in Houston (this thread has already established the fact that no one is actually from Houston) so we have to house a lot of people throughout the year. The big house helps. We do miss Heights-style living, but function trumps form now, and the burbs aren’t that bad. Another thing: A lot of professionals that I work with have no intention of living in Houston long term. They are here for the cash and aren’t terribly concerned about building up the fabric of the inner loop. They may not particularly like living in suburban Houston, but [it’s] cheap and temporary.” [CV, commenting on Comment of the Day: Battle Hymn of the Inner Loop]

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Downtown
10/26/10 6:13pm

Some Plans in Their Wrench

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SOME PLANS IN THEIR WRENCH And who thought a building shaped like a pipe wrench wouldn’t attract a natural-gas firm as its lead tenant? Hines announced yesterday that UK-based BG Group will move its Houston offices from the Panhandle Energy Tower where Westheimer hits Alabama in the Galleria to MainPlace, the Pickard Chilton-designed spec building still under construction at 811 Main St. Downtown. The company will take over floors 29 through 34 in the 46-story tower, but may fill up more later. And it’s changing the building’s name — no, not to Pez Tower — but to BG Group Place. KPMG put dibs on the building’s top 4 floors more than 2 years ago. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Skyscraper Page user Johnme

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New Construction
10/26/10 1:53pm

Tony Mandola Plants His Own Restaurant on Waugh

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A roving reader-photographer sends in pix of the action on the corner of Waugh and West Dallas, planned site of the new Tony Mandola’s Gulf Coast Kitchen. Mandola told CultureMap last year his new restaurant will be larger than its current space in the River Oaks Shopping Center on West Gray and will be “very French Quarter, with lots of brick, wrought iron, and courtyards.” His GC for the project is a noted builder of fast-food restaurants. Whatever the building ends up looking like will likely mix up this little stretch of Waugh, which includes a brick CVS and Pei Wei in a strip center across the street, the modern Houston Area Women’s Center building directly to the north, and — across West Dallas, the eternal faceoff between Jack-in-the-Box and the brand new Whole Foods Market. The earth-shaking — or . . . well, at least earth-moving — news from the scene: “Ground is being re-graded slightly, sticks with colored ribbons have been planted and there’s quite a bit of construction equipment on the lot.”

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Comments
10/25/10 6:00pm

Comment of the Day: Battle Hymn of the Inner Loop

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34 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: BATTLE HYMN OF THE INNER LOOP “Obsolete is obsolete. Out with the old. In with the new. That’s the Houston way. Forget living in the past. I want progress. I want Houston’s core to continue to grow and thrive. Bring in the bulldozers. What if West U was still filled with crappy little termite infested cracker boxes? Would Houston be a better place? I say No. Progress is good. Rich people want to live in big houses. If Houston refuses to accommodate them, the suburbs will gladly accept them. Let’s send the rich packing. Then we’ll let the high paying jobs and commercial development follow them outside the city limits. Houston will rot from the inside out.” [Bernard, commenting on Comment of the Day: How We’re Building the Heights]

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Online Resources
10/25/10 4:26pm

New: How Anyone Can Find Houston MLS Sale Prices Online

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The website of upstart real-estate start-up Sawbuck Realty has a little something that anyone researching the Houston housing market might find helpful: the prices properties actually sold for. Well, at least the ones recorded in the MLS in the last year. Sale prices aren’t ordinarily made public in Texas — it’s a non-disclosure state. Instead, that info is hoarded by the keepers of the MLS, who now share it with a few appraisal districts but otherwise do their best to keep it out of the hands of consumers. But a 2008 settlement between Justice Dept. and the National Association of Realtors allows “virtual office websites” the same access to MLS data as regular brokers. That’s Sawbuck’s in: “When a user registers on our site they are establishing a relationship with us so we’re able to show them more information than just a standard public facing website,” explains Sawbuck’s Chewy Redding.

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Condos
10/25/10 1:31pm

Mirabeau B. Condos in Montrose Don’t Owe Anything to Anybody

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Just what is it that’s allowed construction on the Mirabeau B. condos on the corner of Hyde Park and Waugh to go forward when so many other projects have stalled? How about a little thing called . . . zero debt. After flirting with turning the building rental last year, developer Joey Romano now says he’s back to the original plan of selling all 14 units in the 4-story building — though he’ll also consider leases with purchase options “on a case by case basis.” Construction began in May; Romano expects the building to be complete by next July.

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Development Restrictions
10/22/10 7:20pm

Bandit Billboards Banished

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BANDIT BILLBOARDS BANISHED By order of a U.S. district judge, 59 Houston-area billboards will be taken down over the next 12 months by the receiver in charge of the now-bankrupt company that erected them in violation of city ordinances. Approximately half of the billboards are between I-45 and 290 outside Beltway 8; none of them are on Highway 59. All were constructed recently outside Houston city limits but inside its “extraterritorial jurisdiction.” [Mayor’s Office; map (PDF); more detail from the Chronicle]

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Comments
10/22/10 6:17pm

Comment of the Day: How We’re Building the Heights

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42 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW WE’RE BUILDING THE HEIGHTS “. . . I’ve been in the Heights for 17 years and I can count the ‘stucco mcmansions’ on one hand. 90% of new construction in the Heights is 3,000 to 4,000 sq. ft and at least gives a nod to some turn of the century style. A 4,000 sq.ft house is ALWAYS 2 stories and would . . . have an average footprint of about 2,400 sq.ft including porches. With a 500 sq. ft. garage that is a total of 3,000 sq.ft of coverage on a 6,600 sq. ft. lot, which, according to my calculations, is 45% of the lot. Where do I get my numbers? I’ve built about 50 of them and designed close to 200. All of my houses sell at the top of the market so I know EXACTLY what my competetors are building. The days of dividing a lot and building multiple units is over, at least for now. Prevailing Lot size and Building Line rules cover about 60% of the Heights and the market just doesn’t want them, so nobody is even thinking of doing it. The exception on 15th and Rutland has been in the planning since 2003 and is going to fail badly. . . .” [SCD, commenting on The Houston Historic District Repeal Scramble Begins]

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Apartments
10/22/10 5:24pm

The Montrose Apartment Where Mother Passed Away, but Lingered for a While Anyway

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The 31-year-old man who lived in unit 2 of this fourplex at 601 Fairview in Montrose apparently didn’t get out much; at the moment he’s being evaluated at the Harris County Mental Health Service Center. The body of his 66-year-old mother, Abigail Saucedo, was discovered in the apartment yesterday morning; it will soon undergo an autopsy. The wafting odor of her decomposing corpse had been noted even across the street — at the original Barnaby’s Cafe, where patio diners over the weekend couldn’t quite place that curious smell. Ultimately, a neighboring tenant found the unidentified stench too much to bear, and called the police. The tenant at No. 2, who had been living in the property for 8 months, at first told the cops that the smell was probably from a dead animal underneath the property, and that he didn’t want to let them in to check out his place because it might disturb his mother, who was not feeling well. Earlier, he’d turned away the property manager with a similar excuse — that his mother was asleep and he didn’t want to wake her.

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Lancaster Place
10/22/10 1:34pm

The Latest Wilshire Village Stakeout

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So many different sets of tiny signs on the former site of the Wilshire Village apartments have mysteriously appeared and disappeared over the last few years, it’s become hard to keep track. This week, the color is: blue! A reader notes the appearance earlier this week of survey crews on the corner of Dunlavy and West Alabama — the site now slated for a new Montrose H-E-B Market — along with a bunch of new stakes with blue streamers around the perimeter trees. “Also some trees either being trimmed or cut by a tree company,” reports the Montrose Magnolia watcher. Candace Garcia, our on-the-ground (or in this case, pretty darn close to the ground) photographer, has these exciting photos from the scene taken late Wednesday:

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Avondale
10/21/10 3:14pm

Comment of the Day: Funny, That’s Not How Doctor Gale’s Meatloaf at Barnaby’s Usually Smells

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1 Comment

COMMENT OF THE DAY: FUNNY, THAT’S NOT HOW DOCTOR GALE’S MEATLOAF AT BARNABY’S USUALLY SMELLS “I was around there last weekend and ate outside. I smelled the odd waft from time to time but couldn’t place it. This is so much more disturbing now that I know what it was.” [eiioi, commenting on Oh, That’s Just Mom]

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