[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdPOOkjNzzw 400 330]
What the house sounds like.
- Beer Can House [YouTube]
- Roads Less Traveled: Beer Can House a taste of Houston [San Antonio Express-News]
- Ever been to The Beer Can House? [Orange Show Center]
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Tag: 77007
It’s a little old bungalow on a small lot . . . but it’s clean and green inside! The sellers of this 2-bedroom, 1 1/2-bath, 960-sq.-ft. home say they’re trying to get this Sixth Ward home LEED certified:
The 1920 facade has been preserved, but when you open the door, its all about 21st century. The hm has been renovated using non toxic materials, low VOC paint & sustainable design materials.
A neighbor who watched the work reports the house was sold to the current owners as a teardown:
It was a nasty, dirty, filthy, funky house with a garage in the front yard. They tore the garage off the front, moved the house around on the lot a tad, and have done an outstanding renovation.
Plus: the neighbors are very very quiet, says our correspondent. The house is next to Glenwood Cemetery.
Read on for more pics, from before and after!
A househunter writes in with questions about the townhome at 5248 Larkin St. Unit D, calling it “possibly the strangest property I’ve ever seen.”
When I saw it on HAR.com, I thought I’d better be ready to spring with an offer immediately . . . I’m a first time home-buyer, so honestly, no expert. I’ve looked in Cottage Grove before, but with the exception of 2620 Detering, nothing of this size is that cheap.
On the same lot are three other identical townhouses, all advertised as new and offered at $315,000 by Mike Adams Enterprises. Unit D is listed for $219,000 and is being sold by a division of Sallie Mae.
The price is not weird for the neighborhood — I just think it’s odd that you have this foreclosure that is discounted $100k below the three new properties and they are on the same lot. . . .
The foreclosure sign is still hanging in the hallway, the red code violations are still on the door, and I’m just curious. . . .
Inspections were performed in spring of 2007 . . . but it doesn’t look like the code violations were addressed. If someone lived there, I’d be very surprised. . . .
I mean, it’s weird because they had nails in the wall –lots of nails, including ones in spots you wouldn’t necessarily hang pictures. At some point, someone had hung a television in the master bedroom. But it didn’t look as if the range had ever been used, that the showers, etc, had ever been used. If someone lived there, it was an extremely short period of time and they didn’t do anything but watch television. We were wondering at first if it had been a model home and that would account for the wear on the stairs and the holes in the wall and the nails. . . .
There were way too many red flags for me . . .
After the jump: more photos from the listing . . . and flags!
Archstone still isn’t saying much about its plans to redevelop the Memorial Heights Apartments at Studemont and Washington, but the Houston Business Journal‘s Allison Wollam digs up a little more detail:
While members of SuperNeighborhood 22 support the redevelopment, they are concerned that the project’s suburban design — which calls for the back of the residential components to face Washington Avenue — is hurting efforts to transform the avenue into a walkable, pedestrian-friendly destination.
- Archstone to raze, redevelop Washington Avenue apartments [Houston Business Journal]
- Memorial Heights Apartments: How Long Is Your Lease? [Swamplot]
This 1.35-acre lot at the end of the cul-de-sac on Glencove St. has been on the market for almost 16 months, so you can imagine during that time owner-broker Richard Maier has been trying just about every marketing angle possible. There’s some evidence of it too: The records are a little screwy, but it appears the asking price has been raised three times and lowered four. As of last week, we’re on an upswing! At $2.65 million, it’s back up $51K from its all-time low, but still down from the $3 million of early ’07.
So what do we got?
ABSOLUTELY ONE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SETTINGS NEAR DOWNTOWN JUST BEFORE MEMROIAL PARK. GORGEOUS VISTAS OF ROLLING HILLS, RAVINES, GARDEN TRAILS, CREEKS AND TURTLE POND! ALL LANDSCAPED WITH THOUSANDS OF EXOTIC PLANTS AND TREES! IRRIGATED BY PRIVATE WELL AND LIGHTED BY NIGHT! THE GROUNDS ARE CONTIGIOUS WITH ACRES OF NATURE PRESERVE & BIRD SANCTUARY!
Clearly, though, Maier’s latest sales tactic has just got to work — now he’s even gonna throw in a genuine Midcentury Modern home with the property. Absolutely free!!!
ALSO INCLUDED IS A CLASSIC MID CENTURY MODERN HOME BY NOTED ARCHICTECT TALBOT WILSON WITH 14 FT.WALLS OF GLASS!
Yeah, it’s a risky strategy: This is Memorial. So better end the listing on a more direct note:
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!
After the jump, exotic plants!!! Plus an actual interior shot of the 5,000-sq.-ft. 1950 home Maier snuck in.
Archstone is planning to redevelop the 28-acre Memorial Heights Apartments complex fronting Studemont, Washington Ave., and Heights Blvd.:
The current plan to be realized over a 5-year period features mid-rise mixed-use at the Washington/Studemont corner, and a series of six mid-rise residential nodes with incorporated garages on a new internal central Paseo that will parallel Washington Avenue mid-way through the complex. Archstone suggests visiting their nearly completed Esplanade project on Hermann Drive west of Almeda for a representation of product quality.
Hey, that’s a pretty short life for the apartments. They were built in 1996.
- SN22 News (PDF) [Super Neighborhood 22, via Off the Kuff]
- Some News About Washington Ave. [Off the Kuff]
- Archstone Memorial Heights [Archstone-Smith]
- Memorial Heights Redevelopment [HAIF]
Modern, Mediterranean, or Watchamacallit: Cottage Grove‘s got a townhouse to vaguely approximate your sense of style. Tour these this weekend!
Location: 2601 & 2603 Detering St.
Details: 3 bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths; 2,494 sq. ft.
Price: $319,000
The Scoop: Just-almost-completed mostly stucco mirrored-twin townhomes with indeterminate “traditional” look. Hanging drystack stone columns, head-in parking.
Open House: Sunday, 1-5 pm
After the jump: more Cottage Grove townhome treasures!
This is the best image we’ve been able to find online of the 25-story apartment tower about to go up at the site of the former Ed Sacks Waste Paper Co. at 440 Studemont, just north of Memorial Dr.
And it makes you wonder: Do these out-of-town developers really know what they’re doing here? First they give the project a name — “Legacy at Memorial” — that makes it sound like a funeral home, in a town where death is already a major industry. Then . . . they think Houston residents will stand for 15 percent of the units in the combination highrise-lowrise development being marketed as “affordable housing.” But weirdest of all . . . it looks like they forgot to give their building a theme!
Memo to Legacy Partners and your California retiree funders: Your tower is going up against some aggressively themed competition. When renters can go next door and feel like they’re in Italy, or go down the street to get a little stucco taste of New Orleans, or cross Allen Parkway for a full-fledged Beaux-Arts Alamo resort revival, just who do you expect is going to want to want to live in an apartment that looks like . . . a building in Houston, Texas?
More on the tower that forgot to put on its clothes and makeup . . . after the jump.
It’s not just the rice silos that’ll be leaving the First Ward. Next thing you know, they’ll be demolishing . . . the used-auto-parts yard across the street. A source very close to Charles Kuffner reveals that the owner of Johnny Franks Auto Parts at 1225 Sawyer St., across the street from the Mahatma Rice silos, has already sold the land to residential developers.
But wait. Johnny Franks Auto Parts bills itself as “The Nation’s Oldest Salvage Yard.” Is this true? If so, how could Houston let such an important historical site be destroyed? Founded in 1910, the salvage yard for years advertised itself as “the house of a million parts.” Sadly — like so many other historic structures in Houston — that may be its ultimate fate.
After the jump, Kuffner counts the reasons why there’s probably no stopping residential development from taking place on this historic site:
Gone to subdivisions, everyone!
Riviana Foods chief Bastiaan de Zeeuw gives more details about the company’s decision to close the Mahatma and Success Rice processing plant at 1702 Taylor St.:
De Zeeuw points out that the acreage devoted to rice-growing in Texas decreased by 75 percent from 1980 to 2006. In the 1980s, he says, Texas represented about 20 percent of total rice acreage in the United States. Now, it represents only 5 percent.
So what will happen to the 9.4-acre site in the increasingly less industrial area just south of I-10 once a new facility is built in Memphis? Read on, after the jump.
Say a long goodbye to those silos that hover over the Winter St. Studios in the industrial area just east of Sawyer St. Mahatma Rice owner Riviana Foods says it is closing its Houston plant and building a new facility in Tennessee:
Over the two-year time period, production and packaging at the Houston plant will be phased out and transferred to the new Memphis facility. At the end of this transition period, the Houston plant, which includes the Instant and Packaging Plants, Warehouse and Technical Center located at 1702 Taylor Street, will then be closed and operations will cease. Currently, approximately 250 employees work at the Houston facility. Riviana’s headquarters will remain in Houston at its Allen Parkway location.
- Riviana Foods Announces Plans to Build New Rice Processing and Packaging Plant in Memphis [PR Newswire via Houston Business Journal]
Photo of Rice Silos at 2200 Summer St.: Flickr user emilyj82
Looks like a lot of pedestrian action going on in these marketing drawings for Orr Commercial’s new Heights Village, a five-acre restaurant, retail, office, and “upscale housing” development slated for the current site of the Sons of Hermann hall just south of I-10, between Heights Blvd. and Yale St. and an adjacent parcel abutting railroad tracks to the south.
Why, with all those people in the drawings walking to and fro, it looks like this development will have all the charm of a small old-town Main Street . . . or at the very least all the charm of an old small town that decided to build a multi-level parking garage, but still turned its Main Street into a parking lot anyway, just to hedge its bets.
After the jump: more parking-lot pedestrians!
The owners of Otto’s Bar B Que and Hamburgers — a Houston institution since the early days of air conditioning — are retiring, closing up shop, tearing down their building at 5502 Memorial Dr., and putting it and the shopping center they own next door (including Biba’s Greek Pizza) up for sale, reports Allison Wollam in the Houston Business Journal:
Word of the end of Otto’s has already been circulating among customers, many of whom Sofka says are saddened to hear about the impending closure.
“If those people like it so much, where have they been?” she asks. “Why don’t they frequent our restaurant more? We still have our faithful that come in three times a week, but other than that, we’re stressing out each and every day to pay our bills.”
Maybe folks stopped coming by because there’s no chance they’ll run into Marvin Zindler there anymore? Anyway, it’s likely June and Marcus Sofka won’t have to stress about their bills for too much longer:
Real estate sources predict the land will sell for a minimum of $150 per square foot and say the highest and best use for the land would be a high-rise residential tower.
The Otto’ses in Sugar Land and Downtown are franchised, and will not be affected, reports Wollam, who also leaves us with this strange — but quintessentially Houstonish — image:
Another franchised Otto’s is scheduled to open next year in Chase Tower, and Sofka says the barbecue pits behind the original restaurant will be moved to the new Chase Tower location.
- Family sale signals farewell to Otto’s [Houston Business Journal]
- Two Tracts Just off Memorial Drive [Cushman Wakefield]
Photo: Flickr users Bob & Lorraine Kelly
A Sixth Ward reader writes in with this report from the sneak preview of Beaver’s, Monica Pope’s new barbecue joint at 2310 Decatur near Sawyer, just south of Washington Ave.:
Tasty food there, nice interior. There is also a rumor (overheard at Beavers from someone that should know) that a man bought the Pig Stand on Washington, and another Pig Stand (my guess the Beaumont one) and plan to reopen them.
The shuttered Pig Stand stands just north of Beaver’s, at the corner of Washington and Sawyer. Bring on the roasted animals!
After the jump, menu highlights from the now-open Beaver’s (hint: there’s more than meat on the grill), plus a considered summation of the rehabbed ice house from a Beaver’s barbecue stalker.
How do you pack so many condos into an old warehouse building in Houston’s First Ward? Easy! You knock the warehouse down, build a gate around the block, and pack ’em in!
Permit in hand, Terramark Homes begins construction on the Sawyer Brownstones at 2110 Shearn St. The forty-two units will take up the block surrounded by Shearn, Hemphill, Spring, and Henderson Streets, just south of I-10.
No images of the outside yet, so it’s hard to say if these brownstones will indeed have brown stone or just be brownstone-like. But continue after the jump and we’ll show you the secret to shoehorning so many townhome-style condos into a single block!
