A helpful reader who lives across the street from “what will hopefully become Regent Square and not self-storage” sends us a link to this revised master-plan drawing for the proposed North Montrose multi-block monster. The new plan matches the new drawing we posted yesterday.
After the jump: some closeups, plus another look at the old version for comparison.
Read more about: 77019, Mixed Use, Montrose, North Montrose, Proposed Developments, Streets
Whole Foods Market has just signed a 25-year lease with the Finger Companies for land at the northeast corner of West Dallas and Waugh in North Montrose. The company plans to build a new 50,000-sq.-ft. store there, reports the Chronicle’s Nancy Sarnoff. That’s the same size as the new Whole Foods that recently opened in Sugar Land, but the new Uptown store the company is planning as part of Boulevard Place will be 50 percent larger.
The North Montrose location is only a few blocks east of the site planned for Regent Square. And Finger has more ideas for the full 11 acres fronting West Dallas it bought from Knickerbocker Corp. earlier this year:
Plans for the site also call for 60,000 square feet of additional retail space and hundreds of apartments. The Finger Cos. will build a six-story, 445-unit multifamily complex on the property. Construction will start early next year.
A ring road will be created in the center of the development to tie into the AIG complex, located to the north of the site.
A future phase includes a high-rise apartment tower for the land closer to Montrose. Developer Marvy Finger said the building could be similar to his company’s 20-story Museum Tower on Montrose near the Museum District.
Photo of the corner of West Dallas and Montrose, proposed site of Finger highrise: Charles Kuffner
Read more about: 77019, Apartments, Commercial Real Estate, Highrises, Land Development, Montrose, North Montrose, Proposed Developments, Retail, Whole Foods
This new drawing provides a sneak peek of the latest plans for Regent Square in North Montrose. And it shows a few changes from earlier views of GID Urban Development Group’s new 24-acre mixed-use project.
Earlier drawings showed several new streets cutting diagonally through the site of the recently demolished Allen House Apartments. But this latest leaked drawing of the complex’s first phase shows a straightened north-south axis coming off Allen Parkway, resulting in buildings with fewer odd angles.
This new drawing dates from late April. Our tipster reports:
. . . they will have some pretty cool apartments there in addition to condos and retail. This pic shows allen pkwy on the far right. The 2 shadows are the condo towers. The apartments will be 5 and 8 stories in multiple buildings and will have some awesome amenities including the rooftop pool you can see there.
After the jump: Closeups of the new drawing, plus a longing last look at those kinky old plans!
Read more about: 77019, Mixed Use, Montrose, North Montrose, Proposed Developments, Streets
The location: the Kroger on West Gray, next to the River Oaks Shopping Center. The time: yesterday afternoon. The song: Eric Prydz’s “Call on Me.” The performers: SexyATTACK, along with a cast of butter- and egg-loving walk-ons.
You’d think this sort of grocery celebration would have gone over better at the Disco Kroger on Montrose, but that effort got shut down. No problems outside the Menil, though.
Read more about: 77019, Grocery Stores, Montrose, Performances, Public Art, River Oaks, Street Theater
This time, the folks selling the home at 3740 Willowick in River Oaks are really going all out.
Maybe last November they hoped that the release of Stephen Fox’s The Country Houses of John F. Staub would unleash a new era of interest in the Houston architect — and result in a recordbreaking price for the 1955 Staub-designed ranch-like mansion backing up to Buffalo Bayou, across from Memorial Park.
The book did fine, but Staubmania never really took off. Now, almost five months later, the sellers can’t harbor any illusions.
This time, the John Staub marketing machine kicks into full gear:
Read more about: 77019, Books, Broadacres, Buffalo Bayou, Buying and Selling, Homes for Sale, Houston Architects, John Staub, Lectures, Memorial-Park, Ranch-Houses, Real Estate Marketing, River Oaks, Shadyside, Tours
This massive 20,000-sq.-ft. home featured on New York Architect Alexander Gorlin’s website is under construction at 2950 Lazy Lane in River Oaks. The Museum of Fine Arts’ Bayou Bend Collection is next door.
Gorlin’s client is the youngest member of the Forbes 400 list of the Richest Americans (he’s number 317): 34-year-old former Enron trader John Arnold, who now runs secretive Centaurus Energy, a small but extraordinarily successful hedge fund company that trades energy commodities.
Four years ago, Arnold bought a recently renovated 1926 home in the French Norman manorial style in the Homewoods subdivision of River Oaks. The home, which had sat on the market for close to three years, had been designed by Houston architect Birdsall Briscoe in collaboration with John Staub, who was building the Bayou Bend estate for the children of former Texas governor James Hogg next door. Briscoe’s creation was dubbed “Dogwoods” by Hogg’s son Michael, who lived there for many years with his wife.
A year after purchasing Dogwoods — valued by HCAD at $4.9 million — Arnold angered River Oaks preservationists by tearing it down.
After the jump, more illustrations of the house John Arnold will be trading into, plus a few photos of the one he didn’t leave behind.
Read more about: 77019, Demolitions, Historic Preservation, Home Design, Homewoods, Houston Architects, John Staub, Land Sales, Modern Design, Neighborhood Disputes, New Construction: Residential, River Oaks
Carol Isaak Barden, developer of the towering white now-a-lot-less-than- a-million-dollar townhouses near Allen Parkway, explains to Swamplot why she thinks the second unit hasn’t sold yet:
We always expected that it might take longer to sell the homes. They are bachelor pads. They are not for people with children, they are not for residents with bad knees, they are vertical structures for people who don’t mind using the stairs. Since both Francois [de Menil, the architect] and I have lived in Manhattan in buildings without elevators, we didn’t think it would be such a big deal. We were wrong.
Hey, nothing a little retrofitting can’t solve! Barden says a 4-story lift could be put in “easily” — but she hasn’t, because some potential buyers preferred it as the architect designed it, and “didn’t want to give up the extra storage.”
Francois lives in a 4-story townhouse in NYC, my first apt. in NYC was in the Apthorp, an old pre-war building on the upper east side without an elevator. I schlepped luggage and groceries up the stairs, and stayed thin and fit. Francois and I were dead wrong about the elevator issue. Houstonians valet park at restaurants, stores, hospitals, and even some churches. (New Yorkers don’t). And therein lies the problem.
608 Stanford Unit B sold three months after completion, last May. Unit A? Not so lucky:
The second unit has had contracts, unfortunately, none of them have closed. . . . we’re hoping to close on a contract with a buyer who happens to be an architect. It seems that the people who most appreciate these homes can’t afford them. (Architects, engineers, designers)
After the jump: what a bargain! Plus, a bit of news . . .
Read more about: 77019, Buying and Selling, Elevators, Home Design, Homes for Sale, Montrose, New Construction: Residential, Price Reductions, Real Estate Marketing, Temple Terrace, Townhomes
Remember those sleek modern million-dollar white-stucco townhouses designed by New York architect Francois de Menil for a small lot over in Temple Terrace, just behind Allen Parkway?
It was unusual to include the One-Two Townhomes being on the AIA Houston 2006 Home Tour in that they were, and are, unfinished. “My concern was that they would soon be sold,” says [developer Carol Isaak] Barden, “and then nobody would get to see them.”
She shouldn’t have worried. One of the units apparently sold a little less than a year later, and the other is still on the market — though it’s not a million-dollar townhome anymore. After construction finally ended last July, there were five successive price reductions. Since the end of last month this 3-bedroom, 2-bath, 2,845-sq-ft. townhome has been available for a humbling $779,000. If you count the garage level below and the rooftop deck as a single story, that’s almost as good as getting one whole floor . . . free!
After the jump, a brief gawk inside.
Read more about: 77019, Buying and Selling, Home Design, Homes for Sale, Montrose, New Construction: Residential, Price Reductions, Real Estate Marketing, Temple Terrace, Townhomes
Houston interior designer Joni Webb takes time out from her usual focus on French design to tell the story of a home in Avalon Place that was done up first in an English country style (top photo), and then — some years later — completely redone by the same owners to something more . . . 18th century Swedish (second from top).
The English incarnation, which was captured in a Country Living magazine feature in the 1990s, had taken years to perfect, Webb reports:
. . . the finished project was perfect: a cozy English, country-style home, filled with authentic antiques, Italian oil paintings, wall to wall seagrass, faux painted yellow and red walls, toile wallpapers, Bennison fabrics and Kenneth Turner candles. It was an open, fun house - the site of many parties where people gathered around a roaring fire and lounged in the deep George Smith sofa, all the while remarking on how warm and inviting the home was.
So, it was a great surprise to many, including [Houston interior designer Carol] Glasser herself, when the wife declared she had changed. She no longer loved her home’s decor, she wanted a new look - a Swedish look - and not just a Swedish antique here and there, but a total, complete Swedish home. And so, for the second time, everything in the house was either sold or was stored and they started the process of decorating their home, completely from scratch, again.
Who best to complete this European migration? Carol Glasser, the same designer who had created the house’s first look. (This time, she enlisted help from Swedish Style expert Katrin Cargill.) After the jump, more before-and-after photos, plus nitty-gritty details of international style-travel.
Read more about: 77019, Avalon Place, Furniture, Home Decor, Interior-Design, Interiors, Renovations, River Oaks, Theming
A reader writes in to report that a house discussed recently on Swamplot had also been featured in Architectural Digest last October. And so it had! But really, they called it “Trapezoidal Transcendence”?? Whatever. Swamplot had the guts to call it what it really was: A River Oaks teardown.
Oh, well — there’s no accounting for taste. Unless, of course, you consider demolition a form of judgment:
By the way, that amazing modern house in the Tall Timbers section of River Oaks is definitely toast.
In this case, apparently, the decision of that judge was final.
Read more about: 77019, Buying and Selling, Demolitions, Home Design, Land Sales, Modern Design, River Oaks
How’s that River Oaks “you loved the book, now try the home” marketing tie-in going?
Well, Stephen Fox’s volume on The Country Houses of John F. Staub is currently ranked #10,535 on Amazon.com, which probably isn’t so bad for a book about a dead architect. It is heavily discounted, but it’s collected several favorable reviews online.
The reviews aren’t looking quite as good for the Staub ranch-mansion at 3740 Willowick: The asking price was dropped earlier this month from $7,495,000 to $6,950,000. For a 2.3-acre River Oaks lot with Buffalo Bayou frontage, that’s a healthy step closer to . . . yes, land value. And looky at all the excitement just down the street!
Read more about: 77019, Books, Buffalo Bayou, Buying and Selling, Homes for Sale, John Staub, Land Prices, Ranch-Houses, Real Estate Marketing, River Oaks
Here’s the problem with these sleek houses on full-acre lots in River Oaks: They’re selling for too damn cheap! The gorgeous land at the southern boundary of Memorial Park fronting Buffalo Bayou at 3840 Willowick — hogged by this eighties-modern home designed by New York architects Stonehill and Taylor — got swept up for between $45 and $57 a square foot at the end of August.
At that price, wouldn’t your head be spinning with the themed-towering-mansion possibilities? Bring on the demo and stucco crews!
Well, the stucco and foam cornice pieces will probably take a while, but the big machines with the giant claws are on their way, according to this morning’s demolition report.
Photos, plans, and details of the house-that-got-in-the-way — including some fine examples of how to distract from a River Oaks land sale — after the jump:
Read more about: 77019, Buffalo Bayou, Buying and Selling, Demolitions, Development Strategy, Home Design, Land Prices, Land Sales, Memorial-Park, Modern Design, River Oaks
A 1955 River Oaks “country house” designed by John Staub appears on MLS just days before architectural historian Stephen Fox’s book on the Houston architect appears in bookstores. Mere coincidence? Or brilliant upper-end home-marketing technique?
There’s a slight price difference between the two: The Country Houses of John F. Staub lists for $75, though Amazon.com whacks 37 percent off of that. No telling if the sellers will accept a similar discount off the $7.495 million asking price of 3740 Willowick.
The house overlooks Buffalo Bayou and features four fireplaces, three bedrooms, and six full and one half baths — all in a single story. Yes, it looks like some ranch-house flavor got mixed in here. There’s a garden loggia and lots of trees, plus a three-car attached garage. It’s a 5,532-square-foot home on a quarter-acre lot.
The book is 408 pages long and comes in hardcover. It features photographs by Richard Cheek, and will take up just three-quarters of a square foot on your coffee table.
After the jump: the not-so-ranchy interiors.
Of the house.
Read more about: 77019, Books, Buffalo Bayou, Buying and Selling, Home Design, Homes for Sale, Houston Architects, Interiors, John Staub, Ranch-Houses, Real Estate Marketing, River Oaks
Charles Kuffner shows us a few photos from the Allen House demolition last week. Going up in its place: Regent Square.
Read more about: 77019, Demolitions, Proposed Developments
Note: Story updated below.
A house in Houston can’t earn much more of a modern Texas pedigree than this: Designed in 1970 for Oveta Culp Hobby by quintessential Texas architect O’Neil Ford. Built by Brown & Root. Later, the home—until his death earlier this summer—of former Texas secretary of state, attorney general, chief justice, and 1978 Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Hill.
It’s just been listed with Greenwood-King agent Colleen Sherlock: three stories, five to seven bedrooms, five full and two half-baths, 8275 square feet on a quarter-acre lot in River Oaks. Asking only $2,395,000.
From O’Neil Ford, you’d expect a classic Texas modern design: clean brick lines with a sense of history, an easy flow between indoors and out. Until you get inside, where—it appears—an early-1960s interpretation of a New England colonial interior has somehow been grafted in.
Sound like a jarring contrast? Continue after the jump, and see for yourself.
Read more about: 77019, Architects, Homes for Sale, Houston History, Interiors, Modern Design, ONeil-Ford, River Oaks
Yet another warehouse on Studemont goes down. Plus more homes in and around town. Our daily address list of demolition sites is after the jump.
Read more about: 77004, 77005, 77007, 77009, 77019, 77057, 77096, Daily Demolition Report, Demolitions
