“I drove by yesterday and there were two large U-Haul trucks backed up to the back door. I think Las Alamedas is toast. What a shame; I’ve had many good times there.” And later: “Well, I drove by a couple of hours ago and the sign out front says something like ‘Thank you for 28 great years. We will relocate.’” [Clive, commenting on Las Alamedas: Landlord Wants More]
Some of you may be ready for a refresher: What does a $5 million teardown look like again? Here’s one answer: It looks a lot like a very large lot in a tony neighborhood that doesn’t like the land, at least, to be chopped into smaller pieces.
This 1962 estate on more than 3.3 acres in Sherwood Forest, designed by Houston society architect John Staub, showed up in Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report this morning, which means it received a demo permit on Friday. The permit report identifies the owner as developer Giorgio Borlenghi, but HCAD records indicate Borlenghi sold the property in October 2007 to an entity known as ALV Interests, Ltd.
Only 2 months after that sale, the 7,334-sq.-ft. home went on the market — at $6 million. And it’s still listed, now for $1 million less. Though these photos, included with the listing, now might be slightly out of date:
Last week the Houston Business Journal reported that the owner of Las Alamedas had reached agreement on a new lease with its landlord and would reopen on February 6th. But the upscale Mexican restaurant on the Katy Freeway at Voss is still closed.
What happened to that agreement?
“The landlord came back and wanted at least 50 percent more rent and other things that we didn’t originally agree on,” says [restaurant owner Jorge] Sneider.
Sneider had previously told reporter Allison Wollam that the original landlord died in a plane crash, and various surviving family members had been fighting over ownership of the property for the last year and a half. “He now hopes he can work out another lease in a couple of weeks,” Wollam reports today.
He may have officially retired last summer, but the former CEO of Houston’s HCC Insurance Holdingsdoesn’t seem to have slowed down! A settlement with the SEC, which accused Stephen L. Way of backdating stock options on at least 38 occasions, means the former executive is barred from serving as an officer or director of any public reporting company for five years. But Way has apparently found a way to keep himself busy, making improvements around his Bayou Woods home.
There’s just one problem with the lovely boxwood-hedged and pine-shaded parking lot pictured above, along with a concrete driveway and speed bumps Way also had built down the street:
Las Alamedas Restaurant — the hacienda on the Katy Freeway — is on hiatus pending renegotiation of its 28-year-old lease.
According to a message on the restaurant’s voice mail, the storied location of countless wedding, birthday and anniversary fiestas is “temporarily closed” while negotiations continue.
When Las Alamedas opened in 1980 it was the first grand, high-end Mexican restaurant in town. The Memorial location — 8615 Katy Freeway at Voss — attracted diners who sought genuine Mexican cuisine in a large elegant setting. Colonial-style architecture, bayou views, banquet facilities and highly professional service pleased customers for whom Ninfa’s on Navigation was terra incognita.
From HAIF, a brief but classic conversation from earlier this week about the house for sale at 423 Electra in Memorial Bend:
Has anyone been inside this house lately? The realtor seems to be a little confused in the HAR listing. It reads that it is 2 bed from 3, has 6 bathrooms, a garage and a manned gate?? well I guess the fence and gate was put in by a man. And its a “absolutely gorgeous must see” and also sold for “lot value”. huh? My biggest question is what’s with that front yard nursery plantings?
Is the house re-muddled too far?
The response, after the jump — from someone who’s been there. Plus: all the remaining photos from the listing!
Problems with equipment deliveries are being blamed for the delayed opening of the Lucky Strike Lanes in the Houston Pavilions project Downtown. The party and pool venue, 16-lane bowling alley, and restaurant was originally supposed to debut this Wednesday, but now may not open for business until the beginning of next year. There are 20 other Lucky Strikes open or planned; the Pavilions location will be the first in Texas.
Meanwhile, all is swell at the new 300 Houston, the reimagined and rebranded former AMF Bunker Hill Lanes bowling alley that opened earlier this month near the Memorial City Mall:
. . . instead of an apathetic teen in a ill-fitting polo attending bowlers’ needs, each lane is outfitted with its own personal lane captain who is outfitted in a tuxedo vest.
“[The captain will] get them their drinks, get them any food and beverage that they want, take care of any issues on the lane - if they have a scoring issue, they miss a frame, one of the pins gets stuck - the lane captain takes care of all of that and they close out with the lane captain,” [Sales Manager Jill Maxwell] says. Before that you head to an equipment specialist who sizes you for a ball, gets your shoes and escorts you to your lane.
A third Pronto Cucinino “fast casual” restaurant is on its way: “The new restaurant will be located at 791 Town & Country Boulevard, Town & Country Village, on the west side of Houston. A March 2009 opening is planned. Mary Mandola will design the interior, as she has done for all of their restaurants. . . . This will be the sixth restaurant in the Vincent Mandola family of restaurants. The two other Pronto’s are located at 1401 Montrose, Houston and 3191 West Holcombe Boulevard . . . The family also owns and operates Nino’s, Vincent’s and Grappino’s in Houston.” [Cleverley's Houston Restaurant Blog]
There’s trouble in Sherwood Forest: Newman Branch, a stagnant finger of Buffalo Bayou that traipses between Little John and W. Friar Tuck Lanes, had fire hydrants running full force on Friday to flush out raw sewage that mysteriously appeared in the waterway, reports Allan Turner in the Chronicle:
Houston oilman Dewey Stringer, who lives near the point where the bayou passes Memorial, said similar pollution has periodically plagued the waterway for at least five years. Generally, however, heavy rainfall dilutes the contamination.
Stringer, who was among residents to report the pollution to authorities, said the odor was so severe that he and his wife found it difficult to sleep. He had planned to relocate to Galveston this weekend and commute to work.
Stringer said he has developed eye irritation from vapors rising from the bayou and both he and his wife have developed persistent coughs.
From one of Swamplot’s initial correspondents, K, comes word of a redo in Memorial Hollow she says
looks like a Mr. Potatohead gone wrong — parts and bits and pieces on a foundation that don’t really go together. It still looks to me like the bottom half of an older house that someone plopped new construction on top of.
At first, K thought the house
was being torn down like so many other 1960s-era homes in my neighborhood. It was a one-story, typical little cottage on a big lot — the kind they love to demolish and then fill up the entire lot with a three-story monstrosity. But then I realized that they were, in fact, totally remodeling it. They tore the roof off and blew out the back of the house until only three brick walls were standing.
Then they rebuilt the back wall and added a second story to the house. It looks pretty bizarre now, although I can’t tell if that’s because I was used to the little bungalow that was there before or because the house really does look weird. You be the judge.
Below: More before-and-after photos of this hollow sixties memorial in Memorial Hollow, ready for your verdict!
Opening in two weeks: A 15,000-square-foot generic sports bar in Memorial City Mall. Hey, wasn’t that supposed to be the Rocket Sports Grill?
Allison Wollam reports in the Houston Business Journal that Roger Clemens’s plans for a burger empire appear to have been scuttled:
. . . all traces of the seven-time Cy-Young award winner have been erased from the would-be restaurant site.
Just one month ago, construction workers were busy erecting a large red “Rocket” sign at the entrance of the restaurant, while Clemens’ baseball jerseys from the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Houston Astros and The University of Texas Longhorns hung in the entry.
As of this week, the Clemens memorabilia had been removed. The restaurant — which is still under construction — now houses wide-screen televisions, NASCAR video games and a variety of non-Clemens’ related baseball memorabilia.
Having finished with the Memorial Villages, Robert Boyd’s latest bikeride documentary takes us through the neighborhoods lining Gessner, south of I-10:
The houses here were built mostly between 1959 and 1965. The lots tend to be small compared to those in the Villages (just east of these subdivisions). In fact, if you go immediately south or west, the lots and the houses tend to be larger. This is where Memorial starts to become the more familiar kind of Houston suburb–similar houses on same-sized lots, with developers reusing floor-plans and exterior designs.
As usual, Boyd is on the lookout for anything unusual:
I had a Steve Reich album on my IPod as I rode (Sextet, Piano Phase, and Eight Lines played by the London Steve Reich Ensemble–I recommend it highly), and it occurred to me that a neighborhood like this is like a Steve Reich piece, where there is a comfortable, rhythmic sameness with tiny changes as you go along. The tiny changes wouldn’t have even caught my eye while riding through the much more heterogeneous Memorial Villages, but here they stand out.
After the jump: A few more pix of Boyd’s West Memorial picks!
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Comments of the Day: Las Alamedas Packs Up
“I drove by yesterday and there were two large U-Haul trucks backed up to the back door. I think Las Alamedas is toast. What a shame; I’ve had many good times there.” And later: “Well, I drove by a couple of hours ago and the sign out front says something like ‘Thank you for 28 great years. We will relocate.’” [Clive, commenting on Las Alamedas: Landlord Wants More]