This house in Braeswood looks like a million bucks! And it sold back in August for just over that — $1.1 million — after lingering on the market for just over half a year with an asking price $400K higher.
And it’s featured in today’s Daily Demolition Report!
Below the fold, photos of demolition-ready interiors, plus some quick math.
So professional and amateur detectives have huddled over the Crowne Plaza demolition videos and what have they come up with? Here are the rumors . . . er, clues!
First, mysterious Flickr member txrice123 writes:
the police are investigating a report that there may have been someone inside the structure on the fifth floor in the middle. a video taken from the face of your side (from St. Luke’s) apparently shows this person run to the edge, then run back. if you have any shots from before, you may like to look closely and send them to hpd.
The photo txrice123 is commenting on was taken from the west side of the building, and St. Luke’s is to the north, so the comment is a little confusing, no? And, uh . . . which fifth floor? The hotel had a podium.
Next, KPRC-TV keeps talking about a “shadow,” but isn’t shedding any light on the subject:
The home video showed a shadow inside the building moments before it was destroyed on Sunday.
Who knows what lurked in there?
And of course there’s the mysterious sliding door, shown enlarged above from the video in Swamplot’s earlier post. ABC13 hypes this part of the video, but neglects to point out that several gust-inducing dynamite blasts have taken place and the building has already started to rumble by the time the door starts “sliding.” Hey, isn’t a fire door supposed to close in a case like this?
After the jump, the door slides shut!
Watch this video very closely. Do you see someone entering the building before the demolition begins? Maybe on the left side of the screen?
No? Well, keep looking. How about enlarging the video — or breaking it down frame by frame — so you can examine it more carefully?
Apparently someone who shot a video of the same event from the same angle saw something in it so disturbing that he brought the footage to the attention of the Houston Police Department. And officers found the evidence credible enough that they spent the greater part of Wednesday searching through rubble to see if maybe someone got into the Crowne Plaza Hotel in the Texas Medical Center shortly before it was imploded Sunday morning.
KHOU-TV reports that police are focusing their search on the Fannin side of the building, which would be the street on the left. The station also says that the video used as evidence was in fact taken from the St. Luke’s Medical Tower — the same vantage point as the YouTube video above.
So is the video above the same one the police are studying?
Here’s an awful thought: Was someone inside the Crowne Plaza Hotel when it was imploded Sunday morning? Channel 11 News is reporting that police received a tip earlier today “about a possible death on the site during the implosion.”
According to the tip, there may be video showing the person inside the building when it went down. It was unclear who had the video.
Police have yet to determine if the tip is legitimate.
Looks like Sunday morning’s Crowne Plaza Hotel implosion at the Medical Center was a real party! We have reader reports and pics, plus a roundup of video and images from around the web — all after the jump.
Update: Demo pics, videos, and more are now here.
Who says real estate isn’t a spectator sport? There’s nothing that brings out crowds of dedicated fans early in the morning like a good ol’ fashioned Houston building implosion.
This weekend, you’ll be able to combine your demolition obsession with a romantic weekend getaway at the Medical Center Holiday Inn — where, from the comfort of your own room (if you can reserve one facing north), you’ll be able to start your Sunday morning with a bang.
At 7:10 on November 11th, the Crowne Plaza Hotel across the street at 6701 Main will come down in a cloud of dust, to the cheers of onlookers able to sneak into prime viewing areas — such as the south side of the soon-to-be-the-former John O’Quinn Medical Tower. If you’re an explosives fan but don’t have that kind of access to medical-office space, you can try the view from Southgate, east of Travis.
Fannin and Main Streets will be closed from Dryden to Holcombe starting at 6:30 a.m.
What’s the best spot for viewing the Cherry Demolition job?
Why did St. Luke’s decide to sell the Texas Medical Center’s most recognizable building?
Once the tower sale goes through, St. Luke’s — which plans to lease back its current space on floors nine through 12 for continued hospital operations — plans to extensively renovate and update the 27-story patient tower, which opened in 1971. The original seven-story hospital building, built in 1954 and now used for administrative functions, will be torn down, and new facilities will be built on that space as well as possibly on other nearby undeveloped land owned by St. Luke’s, according to [St. Luke's senior vice president David] Koontz.
“That is the ‘why’ behind the move to sell this medical building,” he says.
For sale: The Madonna tower. Designed by Cesar Pelli. Officially named only a couple of years ago for donor and breast-implant litigator John O’Quinn.
After the jump, a picture-postcard-perfect view of the original 1954 St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital building, not long for this world.
Demolition begins at the Allen House Apartments, plus a few other structures around town. See our daily list of Houston destruction sites after the jump.
Another motel will be torn down, plus some demolition work at the Houston Zoo. Read our daily demo address list—after the jump.
A slow day in the Houston demo world, featuring the Memorial Hills apartments. Want more details? Continue reading after the jump.
Rice begins tearing down buildings to make way for new graduate apartments. Where? The address list begins after the jump.
A doctor’s office with a wacky backyard goes down to make room for a new residential tower. Three lost homes too, in today’s report.
The Crowne Plaza Hotel in the Med Center goes down, Green Hill Dr. gets flattened, and more in today’s demolition report, below.
Buried at the end of a Houston Business Journal report on a new Hilton Garden Inn that’s going to replace the Droubi’s boxcar at 7807 Kirby, between South Main and OST, is this gem:
Moody National had been on the hunt for more property in the area, and was especially interested in finding more land next to the Hilton site to create a larger footprint for the project. . . .
A 1.2-acre vacant lot on the northeast corner of Main and Braeswood, across from Moody National’s Residence Inn, also caught the developer’s eye, but the price was too high there as well. Moody says an offer of $140 per square foot was rejected by the owner, who said he would entertain an offer of $185 per square foot.
“The land has been extremely hard to come by,” Moody says.
Sure, that’s expensive, but there’s a premium for waterfront property.
Photo: Bradley Broom
A modernist classic gets its dust-conversion approval. That and other building-retirement news in today’s report, which begins after the jump.
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