It’s a bit of a nature walk to this hidden-from-view home’s front entry. But then, isn’t that the point of living in a property arranged like a treehouse? The woodsy spread in Piney Point Village’s Shady Point neighborhood is a 1972 design by an early advocate of “energy aware” homes, Roger Rasbach. (He also designed this home in Bellaire.) It’s built on a gated cul-de-sac located near one of the designer’s other projects, Vargo’s Restaurant (soon to be replaced by apartments) on Fondren. Listed last week — on the same day demo work began on Vargo’s — the home has an asking price of $1,995,000. That includes several levels of outdoor decks and a nifty open-air workout space in a treehouse of its own (above).
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Read more about: 77024, Homes for Sale, Interiors, Piney-Point-Village, Roger Rasbach, Shady Point
Somewhere within this newly listed 1964 Hunters Creek home in the Tara Oaks neighborhood, a plain-old white ceiling or 2 has evaded upgrades. Most of the rooms, however, cap their decor with what the description dubs “carefully chosen finishes,” be they color, exposed beams, soaring vaults, more color, skylights, or some combo thereof. (No glass ceilings or debt ceiling, however — the Memorial Villages asking price hovers at $2,395,000.)
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Read more about: 77024, Ceilings, Home Decor, Homes for Sale, Hunters Creek, Interiors, Tara Oaks
Even if the Astrodome’s still around and Houston’s bid to host the 2016 Super Bowl falls through, an important international competition might still be staged here: “ESPN said in January [that] Houston was one of 13 contenders it was considering as a host” for the 2014-2016 X Games, reports the Houston Business Journal’s Bayan Raji. The Lee and Joe Jamail Skatepark on Sabine St. (shown here) is at the center of the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority bid to put on the tricksters’ event that’s been in L.A. the past 9 years, writes Raji, along with Reliant Stadium and the Dynamo’s BBVA Compass Stadium. Whether the skatepark going up in Greenspoint, billed in January as the largest in the U.S., also figures in the bid Raji doesn’t say; ESPN will announce which of the 13 cities are finalists this spring. [Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot] Photo: David Fross
Read more about: 77024, Dynamo Stadium, Parks, Reliant Stadium, Skate Parks, Sports, Stadiums, Tourism
February 8, 2013 – 11:35 am
Sharing Benignus Plaza with Jason’s Deli, Texas State Optical, and a salon, this 2,500-sq.-ft. suite at 10321 Katy Freeway will be the first Club Champion store in Texas. The Chicago-based company sells custom golf clubs built to fit, and it provides a demo space for practice. Sitting just east of Town & Country Village, the Benignus Plaza store will be almost directly across I-10 from Hicks Ventures’ proposed Block 10 West Office Park.
Photos: Swamplot inbox
Read more about: 77024, I-10, Openings and Closings, Renovations, Retail, Strip Centers, Town and Country Village
February 4, 2013 – 4:30 pm
Don’t ever say sluggers don’t need their creature comforts: This 16,000-sq.-ft., 5-bedroom, 9-bathroom mansion at 405 Timberwilde was home to former Houston Astro and 1994 NL MVP Jeff Bagwell, who retired with 449 homers after 15 seasons. Oh, and his mansion? It’s for sale for $15 million.
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Read more about: 77024, Home Decor, Homes for Sale, Houston Astros, Interiors, Listings, Memorial Villages
January 30, 2013 – 12:00 pm
A Swamplot reader sends in this photo of the shuttered Rice Epicurean on Memorial, 1 of 4 stores (of 5) that the longtime Houston grocer said it would close and lease to North Carolina-based The Fresh Market this year. (The location on Fountain View at Inwood will remain open.) Those splashy signs say that the store’s liquidating its fixtures and “supermarket equipment.” So, you know, act fast! While supplies last!
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Read more about: 77024, Interiors, Openings and Closings, Shopping Centers, Signage
January 23, 2013 – 2:30 pm
Brick-fired, you think? Swamplot tipster Ryan Lankford says that when he convinced his mom to add this tantalizing topping to her sign, the 2-story, 4,700-sq.-footer in Memorial that she’s standing in front of was shown 18 times and received 3 offers on its first day. Listed at $1.5 million, the house went option pending not 24 hours later.
Photo: Ryan Lankford
Read more about: 77024, Homebuying, Memorial West, Real Estate Marketing, Signage
September 17, 2012 – 10:52 am
Yes, the shots above are front-yard views of the exact same house on Kimberley Lane in Memorial Hollow, before (at top) and after a thoroughly de-Modernizing revamp completed earlier this year. Just about every sixties-era feature of the original home has been scrapped and “corrected” with — well, something else. The ask for this brilliant flip: a $224K premium over the sales price of the home from December of last year. You are so welcome:
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Read more about: 77024, Homes for Sale, Memorial Hollow, Modern Design, Postmodernism, Remodeling, Renovations
Developer Gerald Hines added a lake to a 32-acre slice of woodsy Memorial back in 1978. Around it, he built Ethan’s Glen, a townhome community with 288 units divided into 2-building clusters of quadplexes. One of the enclave’s larger units came on the market earlier this month, asking $275,000. The 2-story townhome, which has east and north exposures, retains some of that seventies style, such as rough-hewn cedar siding outside and a living room with walls of rustic planks installed in a herringbone pattern. But it also has new paint, new bathrooms, and new, as in last month, carpet upstairs.
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Read more about: 77024, Ethan's Glen, Gerald Hines, Homes for Sale, Memorial West, Townhomes
House or lot? While the listing mentions this home’s architectural pedigree, most of the photos in the description feature the heavily wooded 2.8 acres on an oxbow of Buffalo Bayou in Memorial’s Village of Hunters Creek.
Built in 1967, the home looks very much as originally designed by architect Richard S. Colley a decade earlier. Houston Mod recently spotlighted the distinctive domain, dubbed the Greer House after its original and longtime owners. Beneath its rooftop pyramid, which has a span of about 30 ft., there’s an even larger interior courtyard with ancillary gardens and a 200-year-old fountain from Mexico. The plantings are a bit overgrown these days since the owner moved out 5 years ago. But here’s how things looked when the property was still occupied:
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Read more about: 77024, Homes for Sale, Houston Mod, Hunters Creek Village, Interiors, Modern Design
April 30, 2012 – 12:44 pm
That topless mannequin will likely have a coverup before tomorrow’s grand opening of the J. Crew inside CityCentre. A Swamplot reader snapped this peekaboo photo of the store’s innards yesterday, through a gap in the window paper. The only other J. Crew store in Houston is in the Galleria (there’s also one in the Katy Mills Mall). Photo: Swamplot inbox
Read more about: 77024, Chain-Stores, CityCentre, Openings and Closings, Retail
April 25, 2012 – 12:36 pm
All the pieces are there, but now here comes the hard part. A scene familiar to many IKEA customers is now taking place on a large scale on top of the Houston IKEA store’s roof, where workers from contractor REC Solar are assembling flat-packed stacks of 3,962 solar panels into a 116,400-sq.-ft. PV array. The panels arrived on site at the end of last year, but construction won’t be complete until sometime this summer. When it’s done, the company says, the installation will generate enough energy to power 113 homes — or a larger number of in-store room displays. [Swamplot inbox; previously on Swamplot] Photo: IKEA Houston
Read more about: 77024, Afton Village, Furniture, Retail, Solar Power, Utilities
