Uncategorized
10/07/10 12:25pm

No, I Said Sell High: Allen Stanford’s Real Estate Investment Advice Is Being Ignored

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What galls jailed billionaire Allen Stanford even more than having to sit through the court-ordered sell-off of his entire hard-earned real estate portfolio? It’s that it’s all happening in a down market! Stanford’s lawyers have been arguing in court that liquidating the accused huckster’s properties while real-estate prices are depressed isn’t such a smart idea. A good $9 million of the $12.2 million the folks behind the Black Forest Cafe are paying to buy the clunkily ornate former Stanford Financial Group headquarters building at 5050 Westheimer across from the Galleria, for example, will go to pay off the property’s mortgage and back interest. What’s the guy gonna have left to live on once he’s acquitted of all those ridiculous Ponzi scheme charges? But an attorney for the receiver managing the sales says he’s just trying to save money for the estate. Next Stanford property on the block: The former Stanford Aviation hangar (above) at 100 Jim Davidson Dr. near Sugar Land Regional Airport, at an auction this week.

Photo: Loopnet

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Historic Districts
10/07/10 11:17am

Historic Districts Vote: Next Week

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HISTORIC DISTRICTS VOTE: NEXT WEEK Yesterday’s scheduled city council vote on the latest version of revisions to Houston’s preservation ordinance was postponed for a week — but not before 7 council members offered their own separate amendments. Among them: a proposal by mayor pro tem Anne Clutterbuck that would allow historic districts to keep their current rules — or submit an application to be governed by the new stronger protections. But Mayor Parker doesn’t want a tiered system: “The mayor argued that leaving the ordinance unchanged would allow districts to be weakened ‘one house at a time,’ such as when owners legally could proceed with demolition even after their request to do so was denied. ‘We may lose some of the footprint of existing historic districts, but we’ll have an ordinance that actually protects them,’ she said.” [Houston Chronicle]

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Comments
10/06/10 2:03pm

Comment of the Day: Dumpster Modern

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COMMENT OF THE DAY: DUMPSTER MODERN “This one looked like the love child of Bushwood Country Club and the Houston Junior League building on the inside, but remove the Boise State football field, consign grandma’s victorian chandelier collection, remove grandpa’s smoke infested wood paneling and replace with a mix of ranch-modern interior and 21st century awesome…[and] this place would rock.” [jg, commenting on Daily Demolition Report: Ocee What’s No Longer There] Photo: HAR

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CityCentre
10/06/10 1:27pm

The Next 2 Buildings at CityCentre

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Early renderings are out for the next round of construction — promised for 2011 — at CityCentre, Midway Companies’ mixed-use assortment on the former site of the Town and Country Mall. The 3rd and 4th office buildings in the complex will together be called CityCentre 3, and they’ll go on the leftover patch of grass just west of the Hotel Sorella, sidling up to Beltway 8. Like the others, the two new 6-story buildings will feature retail space on their ground floors: more than 33,000 sq. ft. out of a total 250,000. The feeder-road view:

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Attractions
10/06/10 10:30am

Landry’s Kicking Galveston’s Flagship Hotel Off the Pier, for Amusement

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First order of business for Tilman Fertitta, now that he’s finally succeeded in turning Landry’s Restaurants back into a private company under his control (the deal closes today): announcing the demolition of Galveston’s hobbled-on-a-pier Flagship Hotel. Actually, Landry’s officials jumped the gun slightly, showing plans for a large hotel-free amusement park on the 25th St. Pier site of the shuttered hotel to Galveston’s city council yesterday. In place of the Flagship — which was built a few years after Hurricane Carla hit the island in the early sixties — yep, you guessed it: There’s gonna be a Ferris wheel. Plus: a double-decker carousel and other attractions meant to vaguely resemble the amusement park originally on the pier when it was built in 1943.

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Fires
10/05/10 3:45pm

Hot Hot! Pumpkin Alert: Jack O’ Lanterns Burn the Kirby Whole Foods Market

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The scene outside the Whole Foods Market on the corner of Kirby and West Alabama this afternoon, where a ginormous outdoor pumpkin display turned into fire and smoke. Five fire trucks later, the flames were out, and the store was closed. Store managers report there were no injuries and no damage to the store’s interior.

Photo: Justin

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Buying and Selling
10/05/10 2:56pm

Is Springwoods Village the New Exxon Mobil Eco-City?

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Coventry Development’s senior VP Keith Simon wouldn’t answer media questions today concerning the possibility that the new 1,800-acre mixed-use community his company wants to develop just south of The Woodlands might have the newly consolidated headquarters of the largest oil company in the world as its very first neighbor. In January, the Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff reported on plans shown to her — apparently prepared for Exxon Mobil — showing an “elaborate corporate campus, including 20 office buildings with 3 million square feet, a wellness center, laboratory and multiple parking garages” on a 400-acre site near the intersection of I-45 and the Hardy Toll Rd.

Meanwhile, an informant tells Swamplot about a real-estate “study” Exxon Mobil has reportedly been conducting of all the properties it owns and leases in Houston: “the old Humble building at 800 Bell downtown, the Chemicals complex at Katy Fwy. and Eldridge, the lovely Greenspoint campus across from Greenspoint Mall, the research facility on Buffalo Speedway, and others.” The company is considering vacating all these sites — as well as its large and valuable Fairfax, Virginia campus outside Washington, D.C. — and consolidating all employees in the new megacampus just south of The Woodlands. (Baytown refinery employees, don’t worry — you’d get to stay put.)

Writes our informant:

Although the company is telling its understandably concerned employees who happen not to live in Spring or The Woodlands not to worry, that this is still just a study, there is already work being done to prepare the site for building.

Where might have Exxon Mobil have come up with those 400 acres?

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Green Design and Development
10/05/10 12:19pm

Spawn of the Grand Parkway: Huge New Woodlands-Like Development, Just South of The Woodlands

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A New York land development firm called Coventry Development has just announced grand plans to establish a giant eco-friendly, mixed-use development modeled heavily on the ecological principles first demonstrated decades ago by The Woodlands — on an 1,800-acre site just south of that community. It’s now a pine forest near the intersections of I-45 North, the Hardy Toll Road, and the projected path of the Grand Parkway, about 30 miles north of Downtown Houston. Some portions of that forest will remain: Plans call for a 150-acre nature preserve along one section of the community’s northern reaches, which stretch to Spring Creek. South of that, and along the northern border of the Grand Parkway, the developers are planning a town center with the hallmarks of major mixed-use employment centers: office space and retail, a medical district, townhouses and apartments, and single-family homes. But they’ve gone ahead and given the place a formula-tested suburban-housing name: Springwoods Village.

Springwoods Realty Company has owned most of this land since the 1960s. Why develop it now? Because it’s now pretty clear that the Grand Parkway will actually be built right at the property’s southern border, the developers say. Plus, there’s development on all sides now.

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Development Strategies
10/04/10 11:22pm

Swamplot Street Sleuths: Trees for River Oaks Blvd.

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Got a question about something going on in your neighborhood you’d like Swamplot to answer? Sorry, we can’t help you. But if you ask real nice and include a photo or 2 with your request, maybe the Swamplot Street Sleuths can! Who are they? Other readers, just like you, ready to demonstrate their mad skillz in hunting down stuff like this:

Well, our readers didn’t come up with answers to these questions from last time, so Swamplot did a little digging:

  • River Oaks: Will the recently denuded River Oaks Blvd. host any actual oaks again? According to River Oaks Property Owners general manager Gary Mangold, that decision hasn’t been made yet. ROPO, the River Oaks Foundation, and boulevard residents will eventually vote on one of 3 separate proposals for reforestation.
  • Houston Heights: Design firm APD‘s Mark Van Doren tells Swamplot there never was a plan to put parking under the scooted-over and raised Perry-Swilley House now settling into its new digs at 1103 Heights Blvd., one lot north of its original site (see photo below). But there are plans to park an enclosed wine cellar and gameroom under about 30 percent of the house’s elevated footprint. What’s going into the lot on the corner of Heights and 11th St. the house vacated? Either a single-story commercial building or a 2-story house fitted for commercial purposes, Van Doren says. Either one would be “historically styled.” But nothing’s happening for now — the property owner is waiting for an anchor tenant to appear.

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Boulevard Oaks
10/04/10 4:42pm

Comment of the Day: A Low-Cost Lighting Option for the 59 Bridges

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COMMENT OF THE DAY: A LOW-COST LIGHTING OPTION FOR THE 59 BRIDGES “Send someone over to Walgreens and you can cover the whole thing in holiday lights for a 100 bucks a bridge. Chevy Chase will install them for free.” [kilray, commenting on What It Would Cost To Get Those 59 Bridge Lights Working Again » Swamplot: Houston’s Real Estate Landscape]

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