“Yesterday, a friend of mine sent an e-mail out with this in the subject line: ‘You can’t own anything nice if you live inside the loop…’ She sent this because the large wooden bench she keeps on her front porch had been stolen. Carted off. In broad daylight. This was a big bench. It was not a one-person job. This tells me there must be a big gang of these people in the Heights, strolling around while we sit at our desks in office buildings, treating our houses like unattended garage sales. I would tell her to get a dog, but we have a dog. And we’ve still had every single thing not attached to our concrete foundation pilfered. Maybe she should get a dog bred for something besides decoration. Maybe that’s the key.” [A Peine for Your Thoughts]
Before his dog Teddy runs off with it, new Norhill resident John Whiteside finds a convenient doorstop solution: “None of the doors in my house close. Well, the closets do. But the actual doors into rooms – no. . . . It is a little more crooked than most Heights houses (which are always a little crooked, unless they’re new, in which case they will be crooked soon as the shitty modern constructions settles in). I would like it if the doors latched, but I’m not going to deal with that until I am sure there are no additional foundation repairs in the offing. This is normally fine because it doesn’t really bother me if I’m peeing and suddenly the door comes in and Teddy strolls in. ‘Hey, whatcha doin’?’ However, on Saturday I had people over for a little housewarming open house, and I realized on Saturday afternoon that guests might not enjoy Teddy visits during personal moments quite as much. What to do? Why, a doorstop seemed like the ideal answer. I looked around the house for a suitable heavy object. Then I had a great idea; there’s been a pile of red bricks sitting outside next to the air conditioning unit since I moved in. Solid, compact, easy to slide over in front of the door, and kind of rustic – the perfect doorstop!” [By the Bayou]
The Swamplot Price Adjuster needs your nominations! Found a property you think is poorly priced? Send an email to Swamplot, and be sure to include a link to the listing or photos. Tell us about the property, and explain why you think it deserves a price adjustment. Then tell us what you think a better price would be. Unless requested otherwise, all submissions to the Swamplot Price Adjuster will be kept anonymous.
Location: 1005 Cordell St., Brookesmith Details: 2 bedrooms, 1 bath; 980 sq. ft. on a 5,000-sq.-ft. lot Price: $229,900 History: On the market for 3 months.
Why does the nominator of this bungalow think it’s overpriced?
Brooke Smith is one of the most transitional areas of the Heights area, and this house is not on one of the better streets in terms of curb appeal. Also,the next block over (Enid) has lots of poorly kept rental and commercial property.
The house does not have central air conditioning.
The house is only a 2/1.
The lot is only 5000 SF. You can buy a similar house in nearby Sunset Heights (better area, IMO) on a larger lot (6000 SF) for much less than $230K.
There is a similar house on Jewett listed at $160,000. This house is on a better street in terms of curb appeal, and it has central air conditioning.
Okay, then: What would be a better price for this home?
New Fifth Ward resident James M. Harrison follows the Astros’ “Race for the Pennant” 5K to the front steps of his own neighborhood:
After running the 3.1 mile race with a friend, I decided that 5K’s should be the next topic on [Christian] Lander’s blog, “Stuff White People Like.” Hundreds of people (many of whom were caucasian), rose with the sun for the big race at 7.00 AM. They came outfitted in their lightweight synthetic clothes and hot-to-trot running shoes– the perfect accessories for the meaningless number we all slapped on our chests to make us look like we were about to compete in the Boston Marathon (mine was 2757).
Nobody trains for a 5K. But if you’re up at daybreak, among the crowd of socially aware locals who are in good enough shape for 25 minutes of running, thanks to their motivated lifestyles (and the iPods strapped to their arms, cued to amp the jam for the blitz across town)– then you must be doing something right with your life. It’s so important to be a part of the healthy crowd, that you’ll even pay $25 to get in on the action for a morning. I am a victim of this system.
“Kids don’t need yards- not grassy ones anyway. For a 2 year old, concrete is complete perfection. He practices his tricycle riding. He pushes Tonka trucks at near warp speed. We inflate ‘the pool’ with no worries of it killing the grass underneath. Balls bounce and bubbles pop and sidewalk chalk art covers every inch of visible ground. We just had another baby- another boy. Like our 1st, the new one will lay on a blanket on the deck. He’ll be shaded by the car port and we’ll have no fear of accidentally laying him down in a bed of fire ants. We bought our older son a giant playhouse to help occupy him while we are attending to the demands of a newborn. It has a gas station on one side and his little scooter can easily glide down his ‘road.’ The basketball hoop on the other side benefits from a hard bouncing surface.” [The Heights Life]
What would Courtney Barton consider the oddest item in her old bungalow at the corner of Melwood and Julian?
Hands down, the horse leg! People are freaked by it. And when they find [out it's] real, they really cringe. I couldn’t help but add fuel to the fire, so I hung a John Derian plate above the leg that has a picture of a horse’s head on it. That little area of the den makes me laugh.
Then there’s that guinea pig genetics poster. Those pieces and more are featured in the latest issue of online-ish magazine Refueled, an “alt-country style and design” journal. Photographer Cheryl Schulke shot the design blogger’s Norhill Historic District home back in February, not long before Barton and her husband held a notablegarage sale, packed up just a few of their worldly possessions, and decamped to Kuala Lumpur.
A few more scenes from the Refueled shoot, including a few pics that didn’t make the mag:
That North Main St. Intermodal Terminal planned for just north of the UH-Downtown business school has been renamed a little more humbly as Burnett Plaza, according to a note on the Metro website. And . . . it’s going to be just a little simpler than the fancy rendering shown above.
Rail watcher Christof Spieler points to a few key sentences that describe the downgrade:
The initial phase will include a half-circle on the east side of Burnett Station. There will be vertical circulation down to a 4-bay transit center with access to a “kiss and ride.”
METRO intends to construct the facility in phases, commensurate with funding and environmental clearances. Phase I transportation services will include METRORail, and local bus service, along with shuttle vans and taxis.
Spieler translates:
What this means is Phase 1 is an elevated light rail station with an elevated half-circle plaza with stairs down to a small parking lot with 4 bus bays.
What’s the status of those plans for a big Intermodal Transit Center at North Main and Burnett just north of I-10 Downtown, meant to link commuter rail and bus lines to the coming northern reaches of Metro’s existing rail line?
L.A.’s Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects are now showing off this rendering of the terminal at the company’s website, along with the kind of encomium that usually accompanies abandoned or massively scaled-back projects. Rail-watcher Christof Spieler reported back in March that the terminal project on the North Line had been “shelved (for now, at least)”; plans to extend the new East End Line to that station were abandoned last year.
Demo artist Dan Havel sends in positive and negative preview photos of Give & Take,a sculpture he and partner Dean Ruck carved and carefully extracted from a dilapidated bungalow on West Cottage St. in East Norhill. The 30-foot-long egg-shaped piece they removed will be on display as part of a group show at the Contemporary Arts Museum featuring Houston-related work by various Houston artists. The exhibit, called No Zoning, opens this Friday.
Here’s a whizzy reel showing what the new Metro trains and stations on 4 upcoming light-rail lines are supposed to look like. Dowling St. in the Third Ward, the Edloe Station in Greenway Plaza, the Moody Park Station on the North Line, MacGregor Park Station on the Southeast Line, and Lockwood Station on the East End Line each get about 30 seconds of CGI treatment, from a low-flying camera buzzing some extremely lifelike — though torpid — pedestrians.
Christof Spieler finds a few flaws:
The Third Ward footage seems to be out-of-date; it shows the old alignment crossing Dowling on Wheeler, not the new route that switches to Alabama. But other details are correct: the stations shown are the new prototype station design (by Rey de la Reza Architects), minus artwork.
It’s nice to be able to visualize what these lines might look like. But it’s also a reminder that it’s important to get the details right. At Edloe, for example, the trees integrated into the canopy are nice, but there’s no crosswalk at the west end of the station platform, which means a 500-foot detour for some riders. The Moody Park and MacGregor stations do show that crosswalk, and the sidewalks look pretty good, too. But in all the images, the overhead wires are suspended from their own poles in the middle of the street, not from the streetlight poles on either side, as on Main Street. That makes for more poles and a more cluttered streetscape.
“Demo permits sold in the greater Heights last year - approx 220. (zips 007,008, 009) The Chron’s real estate report showed that 25% of 2008 home sales in the Heights were new construction. And how many were built in the last 10 years? Don’t know, but for anyone who thinks The Heights has NOT been decimated, go to HAR.com to see how nearly all listings were built since 1999 or are lot value only. Heard a story on the radio not long ago about how people stood in line for hours to see the Bill of Rights, but when an exact replica went on display, nobody bothered. What does that tell us?” [Sheila, commenting on Jack Preston Wood: Making an Impression in the Freeland Historic District]
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Comment of the Day: Heights Home Replacement Program
“Demo permits sold in the greater Heights last year - approx 220. (zips 007,008, 009) The Chron’s real estate report showed that 25% of 2008 home sales in the Heights were new construction. And how many were built in the last 10 years? Don’t know, but for anyone who thinks The Heights has NOT been decimated, go to HAR.com to see how nearly all listings were built since 1999 or are lot value only. Heard a story on the radio not long ago about how people stood in line for hours to see the Bill of Rights, but when an exact replica went on display, nobody bothered. What does that tell us?” [Sheila, commenting on Jack Preston Wood: Making an Impression in the Freeland Historic District]