Tag: 77002

01/31/19 12:45pm

Renderings Show Midtown Sears Building Donning Upper Story Glass Cap, Welcoming In Both Tech Stars and Wannabees

Midtown, Proposed Developments, Renovations

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The first illustrations of what Rice University wants to do with the Midtown Sears building it bought 2 years ago and has since stripped down emerged yesterday, casting a glance across Fannin St. to show what the northeast corner of the building — to be renamed The Ion — could look like once it’s been reworked into a nexus for tech entrepreneurs and students of various academic institutions who want to be like them. Among the Art-Deco-era bells and whistles shown intact are the sets of vertical mosaic tilework that flank the building’s corner entrance; they’ve got some new shine going on courtesy of light fixtures that appear to be installed directly above and below them. Up above the original late 1930s structure, the 4 architecture firms at work on the building (Gensler, James Carpenter Design Associates, James Corner Field Operations, and SHoP Architects) propose adding a 2-story glass-curtain-walled topping that’d help funnel sunlight into a whole bunch of empty space they’re calling a “central light well.” It would run vertically through the building’s interior, from the roof down to the lobby.

Work and meeting areas would go along the perimeter of the abyss:

Midtown Growth Spurt

77002, Midtown, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments, Renovations

Midtown

01/15/19 11:00am

Midtown Apartment Developer Could Outdo Itself on the Other Side of La Branch St.

Proposed Developments, Quicklink

MIDTOWN APARTMENT DEVELOPER COULD OUTDO ITSELF ON THE OTHER SIDE OF LA BRANCH ST. The developer with a 7-story apartment complex underway at 2111 Austin St. “is debating putting a 12- or 20-story high-rise on a second piece of land” across the street,” its president tells the HBJ’s Fauzeya Rahman. Winther Investments bought both the formerly vacant parcels in 2013 and broke ground on the first project last June. It’s going up catty-corner southwest of the St. Josephs Professional Building off the Pierce Elevated. [HBJ ($)]

77002, Apartments, Midtown, Proposed Developments

01/14/19 10:45am

U-Haul Picking Up Right Where It Left Off at the Corner of San Jacinto and Pease St.

New Construction, Retail

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A Swamplot reader perched up in the SkyHouse Main Apartments has been documenting the evolving scene 3 blocks away from his living room, where the block once home to U-Haul Moving and Storage of Midtown at San Jacinto — now completely demolished — is now giving rise to a larger, replacement U-Haul building. The photo at top looks east down Pease St. to show workers planting the earth with beams for the new structure. On the left, you can see what the previous moving and storage building looked like during its final stand at the end of last year.

The demolished building consisted of 28,376 sq.-ft.Â for self-storage, moving supplies retail, and truck parking. Building permits filed for its replacement indicate it’ll be 220,160-sq.-ft.:

Downtown Block 348

77002, Downtown, New Construction, Retail

01/10/19 12:30pm

Where a New Shake Shack Might Be Headed Downtown, Down the Block from Finn Hall

Renovations, Restaurants

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A building permit filed yesterday for renovations to the former Brown Bag Deli at 702 Main St. has this familiar name on it: Shake Shack. The photo at top of the storefront’s north side along Capitol St. show its windows completely whited-out to prevent passers-by from getting too curious about what’s going on inside. On Main St., Brown Bag Deli’s December 21 closure notice remains stuck to the front door.

The storefront takes up the northeast corner of the 10-story Great Jones Building and is right next door to the WeWork that arrived in the structure last year. At the opposite, south end of the block, the adjacentÂ Chase Building (formerly known as the Gulf Building) became home last month to Houston’s newest food hall Finn Hall.

Photos: Swamplot inbox

Main and Capitol

77002, Downtown, Fast Food, Restaurants

12/20/18 4:00pm

Midtown’s Greensheet Building Is Ready To Get In on the Mixed-Use Menagerie Planned Along Main

Midtown, Office Buildings, Renovations

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Any and all rumblings you may have heard coming from inside the former Greensheet building on Main St. lately should have now ceased, at least for a little while: Demolition and abatement inside the 5-story structure are done and the architects at Metalab studio are thinking over a redo of it that’ll include “creative office space” and “probably retail, food and drink on the ground floor,” writes the firm’s principal Joe Meppelink (adding that before Greensheet moved in, the 1955 structure was occupied by IBM.) That roster of tenants should feel right at home next to the other mixed-use buildings that Australian developer Caydon has said it plans to build between the former Greensheet building and the condo tower — dubbed The Midtown — that it topped out earlier this month 2 blocks to the south, between Drew and Tuam streets.

Inside, the upper-story windows of the office building frame a view of the upper-Midtown skyline:

Turning the Page

77002, Midtown, Office Buildings, Renovations

12/20/18 12:45pm

County Commissioners Hold Off on Repairs to Downtown’s Soggy Criminal Justice Skyscraper

Flooding, Quicklink

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COUNTY COMMISSIONERS HOLD OFF ON REPAIRS TO DOWNTOWN’S SOGGY CRIMINAL JUSTICE SKYSCRAPER The County Commissioners were set to approve repairs to the chronically wet Harris County Criminal Justice Center on Tuesday when District Attorney Kim Ogg — who occupies the building along with her 735 employees — convinced them to tap the brakes, calling it “unseemly . . . that we would be spending $14 million when we still don’t know the cause of the flooding.” Writing in November, the Houston Chronicle‘s Brian Rogers blamed it on: “unprecedented amounts of standing water,” that “seeped into the underground walls” of the building even though its flood gates remained secure. But he noted that some county officials believe there were “multiple sources,” of water and remained unsure about how it all got in. The 18-year-old building at 1201 Franklin St. partly reopened in June. The repairs that the commissioners had planned to authorize this week included fixes to its elevator shafts and parts of floors 2 through 20. (They suffered damage when the electronics in the basement — dampened by floodwaters — malfunctioned, sending gallons of water through the building’s anti-flood pumping system, which ironically, burst pipes and flooded the upper stories.) Following up on Ogg’s remarks, County Engineer John Blount raised the possibility of building a new criminal justice building from scratch. The estimated cost he gave for doing so: $430 million. [Houston Chronicle] Photo: Harris County

77002, County Commissioners, Downtown, Flooding, Harris County, Hurricane Harvey, Quicklink, Renovations

12/19/18 3:45pm

St. Joseph’s Building Readies Itself for Co-Working, Restaurant Patrons

Midtown, Office Buildings, Renovations

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Just because the St. Joseph’s Professional Building isn’t getting a pair of massive exterior arms doesn’t mean it isn’t getting some of the more, um,Â professional building upgrades you might expect to see in an office structure. Boxer Property CEO Andrew Segal tells Swamplot that the company — which bought the building last year — is adding wine storage to its basement and plans to start work soon on a restaurant for its ground floor. It’ll go at the base of the red brick podium where a couple of cherry-pickers have been spotted in recent months shoring up deteriorating portions of the brickwork. (In place of the illuminated crosses Boxer removed from the building’s upper facades about a year ago, some sort of “fun graphic” is still planned, according to Segal.)

On the 8th story — part of which is shown above — new collaborative office space and adjacent amenities have already cropped up:

Along the Pierce Elevated

77002, Midtown, Office Buildings, Renovations

12/17/18 4:45pm

Houston’s Oldest Underground McDonald’s Is History Now

Openings and Closings, Restaurants

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From the tunnels beneath the building formerly known as Two Shell Plaza, a Swamplot reader reports that the McDonald’s has closed. By management’s tally, it had been open down there for 30 years. The photo at top shows the notice that’s been up on the restaurant’s spot since last week.

Previously on Swamplot: A Pair of Departures from the Former Two Shell Plaza Tunnels

Photos: Hines (811 Louisiana); Swamplot inbox (flyer)

811 Louisiana

77002, Downtown, Fast Food, Openings and Closings, Restaurants

12/14/18 11:30am

The Art Guys’ Walking Building by the Pierce Elevated Isn’t Going Anywhere

Midtown, Public Art, Renovations

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Last year, Boxer Property told reporters it wanted to do something “iconic” with the St. Joseph’s Professional Building along the Pierce Elevated. Well, how about this idea: bringing the 18-story Midtown office building to life by attaching 2 massive, swinging arms to its east and west sides. Boxer engaged The Art Guys (Jack Massing and Michael Galbreth) shortly after purchasing the building in September 2017 to make it happen. They worked on the project in secret, dubbing it The Walking Building. It had an estimated budget of $2.8 million.

Alas, the vision of a giant robotic pedestrian attempting to cross a busy section of I-45 into Downtown was not to be. Boxer informed The Art Guys 2 months ago that it would no longer pursue the project.

The arms would have swung back and forward roughly once a minute, making for a somewhat leisurely gait:

St. Joseph’s Professional Building, Reimagined

77002, Midtown, Office Buildings, Pierce Elevated, Proposed Developments, Public Art, Renovations

Comments

12/13/18 4:30pm

Comment of the Day: What Else Left Midtown When Richmond Ave Met Wheeler St.

Demolitions, Houston History, Midtown, Quicklink, Retail

2 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT ELSE LEFT MIDTOWN WHEN RICHMOND AVE MET WHEELER ST. “In addition to the Delman Theater, an adjacent retailer named the Delman Juvenile Shop was also destroyed. The popular 1950s childrenâ€™s clothing store featured a behemoth machine, the â€œShoe-Fitting Fluoroscope,â€ that zapped the kidsâ€™ feet with unshielded x-rays, ostensibly to make sure the new shoes were a correct fit. In reality, it was used as a babysitter while Mom shopped. I couldnâ€™t wait to grow tall enough to actually peer down the metal tube to view my wiggling skeletal toe bones.” [Patsy Schillaci, commenting on Comment of the Day: The Delman Theater Lives On, on Google Maps] Photo of Delman Theater and adjacent retail: Predator [license]

77002, Comments, Demolition, Houston History, Midtown, Retail, Streets

Buying and Selling

12/12/18 5:30pm

Abandoned Battelsteins’s Building Bought by Its Main St. Marriott Neighbor

Downtown, Retail

The new owner of 812 Main St. (shown above) is the same entity that owns the JW Marriott next-door at 806 Main St. Well, sort of. Technically, the properties belong to 2 separate entities, but they both tie back to the same real estate overlord: Pearl Hospitality, a Houston-based hotel operator with a few extra properties in Lubbock. Pearl closed on the 812 Main St. building last month for $3.6 million.

Designed by Houston architects Joseph Finger and George Rustay the recently-transacted tower was completed in 1950 for the Battelsteins’s department store — which occupied each of its 10 floors. It’s now been vacant for roughly 30 years. Battlestein’s signage has been replaced by the smudges visible above the mural-ized storefront face in the photo at top. But 2 naked flagpoles remain on either side of where the lettering once was.

After visiting the property in December, 2015, PDG Architects estimated it’d cost nearly $17 million to renovate it into something suitable for office tenants to inhabit. Just bringing it up to code could cost $8 million, according to public records.

The JW Marriott next-door at Rusk St. — formally known as the Samuel F. Carter building — underwent its Pearl-Hospitality redo starting in 2010 with a bit of financial help from the city and HUD, as well as architectural know-how from Gensler:

Department Store Skyscraper

77002, Abandoned Properties, Buying and Selling, Downtown, Hotels, Retail, Skyscrapers

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12/11/18 5:00pm

Comment of the Day: The Delman Theater Lives On, on Google Maps

Midtown, Quicklink, Retail

1 Comment

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE DELMAN THEATER LIVES ON, ON GOOGLE MAPS “If you look at Google Maps satellite view, you can still see the patterned terrazzo floor of the theater.” [Benjy Compson, commenting on How the Marriage of Richmond and Wheeler Came Too Late to the Midtown Sears Building’s South Side]

77002, Comments, Demolitions, Google Maps, Midtown, Movie-Theaters, Quicklink

12/07/18 2:45pm

How the Marriage of Richmond and Wheeler Came Too Late to the Midtown Sears Building’s South Side

Houston History, Midtown, Streets

Ever notice that the Wheeler-Ave. side of the Midtown Sears (shown above) doesnâ€™t quite jibe with the rest of the building? Itâ€™s become even clearer since all that beige metal cladding was stripped off the structure earlier this year. Upon its removal, the biggest revelations were cascading green, red, and blue art-deco tile mosaics (shown here) running from top to bottom on every side of the building, except the Wheeler one, where the array of facade openings pictured at top are a bit less architecturally refined despite their prominent positions overlooking crosstown traffic.

So, what gives? Well, it turns out that Searsâ€™s south side wasnâ€™t all that visible when the building opened in 1939. Back then, Wheeler was just a narrow side street off Main and did not flow directly into Richmond as it does now, explains Preservation Houstonâ€™s Jim Parsons. Richmond, a much larger thoroughfare, also dead-ended into Main St., across from the Sears and just north of where Wheeler began. You can see the missed connection in the 1950 street map above.

It wasnâ€™t until the early 1960s that the 2 streets were joined through a partial annexation of the Delman Theater property at 4412 Main, catty-corner southwest of the Sears:

When Roads Collide

77002, Houston History, Midtown, Retail, Streets

12/05/18 12:45pm

Man Who Lost Half His Foot to a Travis St. Storm Drain Wins $200K from the City

Drainage, Lawsuits

Think your street’s drainage is bad? Listen to this: In 2015, Kris Handoyo was heading north on Travis St. in the backseat of a Mazda when the downtown storm drain cover pictured above came loose and punched through the floorboard of the car, severing half of his right foot. Handoyo, a digital content employee of the Houston Rockets, filed a lawsuit against the city asking for up to $1.25 million in recompense. And this morning the city voted to give it to him. Well, some of it: After mediation, the parties had settled on $200,000.

The drain in question — shown above in the Travis St. bus lane just north of Clay St. — is still there, although the particular grate that impacted Handoyo has been removed and patched over with concrete. Many of its relatives remain in their asphalt habitats however, where they’ve been since the late ’90s and early 2000s.

And where neighbors in Downtown and Midtown have been complaining about them for at least a decade: