Tag: 77030

09/15/16 2:45pm

Uncensored Views of the Med Center’s Giant Syringes, Now Flashier Than Ever

Medical Buildings, Texas Medical Center

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O'Quinn Medical Building, 6624 Fannin St., Medical Center, Houston, 77030

The doubleÂ hypodermic needles atopÂ the Cesar Pelli-designedÂ O’Quinn Medical Building have just gotten brightened up: a lighting designer fromÂ FUSE sends Swamplot these bare-allÂ shots of the Madonna tower’s roof following the company’s just-wrappedÂ installation of a new LED setup around the tips.Â Down below, Texas Children’s HospitalÂ announced earlier this week that it has bought the tower from Baylor-slash-St.-Luke’s, along with aÂ Baylor outpatient clinic down the street. Texas Children’sÂ told the ChronicleÂ that it isn’t planning to boot tenants until they can move into thatÂ under construction campus on Cambridge St., somewhere around 2020.

Nor does the new owner haveÂ plans to change the tower’sÂ name right away — though many of the physicians who petitioned against the building’sÂ O’Quinn christening inÂ 2005 aren’t likely to mind if they do. At the time, dozens of doctors signed a documentÂ insistingÂ that the current namesake, Houston’s own John O’Quinn (of fen-phen and breast implant lawsuit fame), “bears partial responsibility for the litigious environment in which we work,” and that it was offensive “to have money we earned — and which he took by suing us — going to name after him a medical building in which we work every day.”

The sunset shot above looks west across the Rice campus (that’s the stadium thatÂ played backdrop to JFK’sÂ go-to-the-moon speech, given 54 years agoÂ this pastÂ Monday, on the right above the octagonal base); the itty-bitty silhouette of the distant Williams Tower can be seen poking up from the horizon on the left. Here’s the tip itself, so close you can almost see the filament in the flashing bulb:

Feeling Shiny and New on Fannin

77030, Architecture, Lawsuits, Lighting, Medical Buildings, Naming Rights, Texas Medical Center

Condos

07/07/16 1:00pm

Giorgetti-Themed Condo Midrise Planned For Vacated Kirby Court Apartments Land

Proposed Developments, Upper Kirby

Giorgetti Houston, 2710 Steel St., Upper Kirby, Houston, 77098

Signage up on Steel St. near the corner with Virginia is now advertising a planned 7-story condo midrise called Giorgetti Houston. The notice is standing on the northwestern section of the land vacated in 2015 by the Kirby Court Apartments; the project’s 2710 Steel St. address isÂ immediately west ofÂ the land previously tagged for a planned restaurant-footed apartment highrise complex from Hanover (a project which spentÂ most of 2015Â in investmentÂ limbo).

The would-be-nextdoor condo midrise, which is touting interiors furnished by Italian designer Giorgetti to match the name, appears to beÂ backed by Stolz Partners (which last MayÂ announced aÂ differentÂ 7-storyÂ condo project called The Sophie at Bayou Bend).Â Here’s a clearer look at the rendering, direct from the project’s fledgling sales website:

Styling Steel St.

77030, Condos, Midrises, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment, Upper Kirby

07/07/16 10:30am

For $2.6 Million, You Could Be the Newest Owner of the Oldest Home on Braeswood Ct.

Homes for Sale, Interiors, Old Braeswood, Uncategorized

2330 N. Braeswood Blvd, Old Braeswood, Houston, 77030

Per historian Steven Fox’s telling, the 1933 home at what’s now 2330 N. Braeswood Blvd.Â is the work of architect Joseph FingerÂ (a few years after the Lancaster Hotel was built, andÂ a few years before Finger went on to design City Hall). The 4-bedroom house sits on 1.13 acres and was the first one built along Braeswood Ct. (which loops off of N. Braeswood just west of S. Main St.). The exterior railings shown above are copper, andÂ the enthusiastically tropical painted tile mural on the chimney reportedly dates back to the 1930s as well.

The Old Braeswood Property Owners Association traces the house’s Houston-history-heavy ownership record in a 2013 newsletter; the article follows the trail from a mysterious associate of Spindletop oilman T.P. Lee,Â to friends of future Texas governor Ross Sterling, to the son of Meyerland namesake Frank Meyer and beyond.

Want to add your name to the list? The current asking price is $2.6 million. Look around below:

77030, Architecture, Home Listings, Homes for Sale, Houston History, Old Braeswood

Quicklink

05/05/16 2:30pm

Where the Heck Is Houston’s BioTech Boom?

77030, Development Patterns, Industrial Sites, Texas Medical Center

Texas Medical Center

13 Comments

WHERE THE HECK IS HOUSTON’S BIOTECH BOOM? TMC Commons Parking Garage, 6550 Bertner Ave, Houston, TX 77030 AlmostÂ $3 billion in new construction projects are underway in the Texas Medical Center, says Roxanna Asgarian in last month’s Houstonia. The district is known as the world’s largest cluster of medical practice and research facilities — but “what the TMC is not known for,” writes Asgarian,Â “is turning that research into new drugs and devices . . . The situation is, in many respects, baffling. All the major building blocks for a thriving biotech industry exist here, including huge clinical and research institutions, world-renowned physicians and researchers, highly skilled engineers, and a bustling business community. So whatâ€™s missing?” [Houstonia]Â Photo of Texas Medical Center Commons parking garage at 6550 Bertner Ave.: Texas Medical Center

04/06/16 12:15pm

Blossom Hotel To Sprout Up Next to TMC’s Proposed Double Helix Site and That One Last Corner Townhome

Texas Medical Center

5 Comments

Proposed Blossom Hotel on Lehall St. at Bertner Ave., Cecil Street Courts, Houston, 77030

Here’s a preview ofÂ the 9-story hotel planned for the stretch ofÂ now-mostly-cleared land alongÂ Lehall St. at Bertner Ave. south of the Texas Medical Center. The land slated to hold the Blossom Hotel Houston isÂ right across Bertner from where the TMC wants to build aÂ double helix park and collaborative campus;Â Zhejiang Blossom Tourism Group has been buying up lots on the east and northeast of the block, which have held a mixture of homes, a commercial building, and nothing over the last few decades.

Not shown in the rendering: Â the loneÂ house still standingÂ right on at the corner of Lehall St. and Bertner Ave.:

Last One Standing

77030, Demolition, Holdouts, Hotels, New Construction, Proposed Developments, Texas Medical Center

04/05/16 11:30am

Abbreviated Signage Now Up for MD Anderson’s Longest-Monikered Tower

6 Comments

UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Building for Personalized Cancer Care, Morsund St. at M.D. Anderson Blvd., Texas Medical Center, Houston, 77030

Here’s a glance down MacGregor Dr.Â across Cambridge St. towardÂ theÂ University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer CenterÂ Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Building for Personalized Cancer Care — now labeled the “Sheikh Zayed Building” for short, a reader notes. The 4-tower structure, now standing where Moursund Dr. meets MD Anderson Blvd.,Â isÂ one of the projects funded by theÂ $150 million grant given to MD Anderson in 2011 by the building’s namesake’s son, current UAE president Khalifa bin Zayed al Nayhan.Â HDR designed the building, which went up on the space formerly occupied by UT’s Mental Science Institute (shipped off to the nearby UT Research Park back in 2010).

Here’s a glitzier shot of the building, looking eastÂ across MD Anderson Blvd.Â with The Spires condominium tower rising on the left in the background:

Med Center Labels

77030, Highrises, Medical Buildings, Texas Medical Center

Apartments

02/04/16 11:30am

Stars Align To Bring Apartments Back into Medistar’s Med Center Hotel Plans

Hotels, Proposed Developments, Southgate, Texas Medical Center

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Proposed Apartment Tower at 6750 Main St., Medical Center Area, Houston, 77005

Greystar plans to squeeze a 375-unit apartment highrise on the same 1.35 acre lot at 6750 S. Main St. as an in-the-works hotel from Medistar. That Medistar project, which was originally planned as a 220-unit hotel-slash-apartment building on the same spot, will now be a 357-room just-hotel, and will share a lobby with Greystar’s apartment towerÂ on the southern half of the block between Travis St. and S. Main at Old Main St. (across the street from the Texas Women’s University building.)

The two towers (rendered above styled as 1850, seemingly in reference to the Old Main address) will slip in between a Best Western and a Wyndham Hotel, and would total in the neighborhood of 800,000 sq.ft. of floorspace, Greystar’s David Reid tells the HBJ’s Cara Smith.Â The apartment unit floorplans range significantly in size— the largest 2 suites measure in around 3,800 sq.ft., and the smallest bottom out at an Ivy-Lofts-esque 349 sq.ft.

Old Main St. at Main St.

77030, Apartments, Highrises, Hotels, Proposed Developments, Southgate, Texas Medical Center

01/07/16 4:15pm

Embassy Suites To Send Envoy to Baylor’s Old Dryden Haunt in the Medical Center

Proposed Developments, Texas Medical Center

9 Comments

Rendering of Medical Center Crossing, 1709 Dryden Rd., TMC, 77030

Just north of the hypodermic peaks of the St. Luke’s Medical Tower on Main St., the tower at 1709 Dryden Rd. is slated for redevelopment as the Medical Center Crossing complex — the office space, leased by Baylor as recently as 2013, will be converted into an Embassy Suites hotel (shown from the northeast corner in the rendering above). The tower was sold at the end of 2014 to an entity connected to Pritesh Patel — the Fort Worth developer who previously purchased the Samuel F. Carter building at 806 Main St. and turned it into a JW Marriott after peeling off the building’s extra glass-and-marble skin.

Ground-level retail will remain and expand — a siteplan released by Transwestern shows most of the building’s remaining restaurant tenants still in place, with an existing parking garage ramp exiting onto Fannin seemingly replaced by a 1,670-sq.-ft. storefront spot (Retail E in the plan below):

Crossing the Med Center

77030, Adaptive Reuse, Hotels, Proposed Developments, Restaurants, Retail, Texas Medical Center

12/21/15 10:00am

Injecting 420 More Beds into Baylor’s Once-Catatonic McNair Campus South of the TMC

Proposed Developments, Texas Medical Center

Proposed Baylor McNair Campus, 7200 Cambridge Dr., Texas Medical Center, Houston, 77030

After a 4-year coma and slow recovery, the Baylor College of Medicine’s McNair Campus at the corner of Cambridge St. and Old Spanish Tr. may be back on track to eventually lead a normal life — new renderings released late last week to Joe Martin of the HBJ show the next phase of construction for what is now being called the Baylor College of Medicine Medical Center facility. Following a bleed-out of construction financing and subsequent failed merger negotiations between Baylor and Rice University, the building’s shell was completed in early 2010 and sat empty until a partial buildout gave the structure new life in late 2013.

St. Luke’s (owned by Catholic Health Initiatives) teamed up with Baylor shortly thereafter and made plans to move its Texas Medical Center hospital operations to the new facility. The Texas Heart Institute, which operates independently in St. Luke’s existing building,Â will also be transplanted into the new facility.

The newly released site plan ties in to the double-helix-reminiscent campus recently proposed by the TMC for the parking lot next door — the campus is shown at the top of the site plan below:

77030, Baylor College of Medicine, Hospitals, Medical Buildings, Proposed Developments, Texas Medical Center

Recovery on Cambridge St.

12/14/15 9:30am

Unraveling the Structure of the Double Helix Campus Proposed for the Texas Medical Center

Hospitals, Proposed Developments, Texas Medical Center

TMC3 Proposed Campus, Old Spanish Trail, Texas Medical Center, Houston, 77030

Genetics play a major role in Houston’s economic landscape — if the Texas Medical Center has its way, a twist on the structure of DNA will become part of the city’s physical landscape as well. A new research campus proposed by the organization would center around a 250,000-sq.-ft. park reminiscent of a double helix, pictured above. The TMC3 Innovation Campus is designed to take the place of an existing parking lot bisected by William C. Harvin Dr. between S. Braeswood and Old Spanish Trail, just south of Braes Bayou. The 30-acre facility would represent the TMC’s official expansion across the bayou, linking the existing campus to research institutions further south; the once-again-developing Baylor-slash-St.-Luke’s complex on Cambridge would also be right next door (pictured above with some already-in-the-works glassy expansions, and linked to the helix’s surrounding structures by a skybridge over Staffordshire).

Texas A&M, Baylor College of Medicine, M.D.Anderson and the University of Texas would anchor the 1.5-million-sq.-ft. collaborative research facility — if they agree to do so. The institutions have yet to formally sign off on participation (or partial funding) of the project, which is estimated to cost on the order of $1.5 billion; UT is currently pushing plans for its own campus of yet-ambiguous purpose nearby.

Designs for the campus are still largely conceptual. The helix would be open for use as public greenspace:

77030, Proposed Developments, Texas Medical Center

Genetic Engineering

Condos

06/23/15 3:30pm

Houston Home Listing Photo of the Day: The Tower Table

by Swamplot

Highrises, Homes for Sale, Real Estate Marketing, Texas Medical Center

9 Comments

Balcony, 2001 Holcombe Blvd. Unit 3201, The Spires, Houston

2001 Holcombe Blvd. Unit 3201 [HAR]

77030, Condos, Highrises, Homes for Sale, Real Estate Marketing, Staging, Texas Medical Center

New Construction, Quicklink, Texas Medical Center, Transportation

05/06/15 12:00pm

Houston Methodist’s New Suburban-Style TMC Helipad

by Swamplot

6 Comments

HOUSTON METHODIST’S NEW SUBURBAN-STYLE TMC HELIPAD Houston Methodist Helistop, Bertner Ave. at S. Braeswood Blvd., Texas Medical Center, Houston From reader Stephen J Alexander comes this pic of the new helistop that’s landed at the corner of Bertner Ave. and S. Braeswood, just over the southern (Brays Bayou) border from the Texas Medical Campus, as viewed during construction last month. It’s directly across the street from M.D. Anderson’s 25-story Mid Campus Building 1, but the helicopter landing pad is a project of Houston Methodist Hospital, according to permit info posted onsite; it sits on a portion of Methodist’s West Pavilion remote lot. Photo: Stephen J Alexander

77030, Helicopters, New Construction, Parking-Lots, Texas Medical Center, Transportation

Apartments

01/15/15 11:45am

Never Mind the Oil: Med Center Area Y-Plan Apartment Tower To Start Climbing in Less Than 2 Weeks

by Swamplot

New Construction, Proposed Developments, Texas Medical Center

6 Comments

Proposed Millennium Tower Apartments, 1911 Holcombe Blvd., Texas Medical Center, Houston

If you’re scoring which large residential projects are going aheadÂ — despite concerns about a price-of-oil-induced downturn — and which ones are being quietly shelved, score this apartment tower from the Dinerstein Companies in the first column. “The medical center will shield us from the oil situation,” Dinerstein marketing director Emily Prevost declares to HBJ reporter Paul Takahashi.Â Construction on the Millennium Tower on a vacant lot at 1911 Holcombe St., just southeast of the Brays Bayou border of the official Texas Medical Center campus, is scheduled to begin on January 26th.