10/18/16 4:45pm

CityWestPlace Parking Garage, Briarforest, Houston, 77042

A reader sends a shot of the roof of the last of the 4 former BMC Software campus parking garages to get put on the parking-space straight-and-narrow. Last Friday the angled stripes got powerwashed off of the top floor of the turn-of-the-millenium structure, which sits along CityWest Blvd. north of the new Phillips 66 campus just outside Beltway 8. All of the remaining garages on the site appear to have been restriped one at a time over the past decade or so with 90-degree parking spots (as can be seen on the roof of another of the garages in the upper right, further north along CityWest). The office complex goes by CityWestPlace these days; the complex is one of the properties held by new Houston-only REIT (New) Parkway, which was formed earlier this month when old Parkway and Cousins Properties merged then dumped all of their Houston holdings into a new, separate REIT.

Perpendicular spaces will better fit in with the campus’s general rectilinear motifs — for example, with this series of narrow rectangular water features on the other side of that northern parking garage:

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CityWestParkingPlaces
08/09/16 4:00pm

Demolition of Belt West Shopping Center Northern Building, 10220 Westheimer Rd., Westchase, Houston, 77042

Belt West Shopping Center, which previously housed both Grace Presbyterian’s coffee shop The Well and Shelby’s Liquor, has been returning to dust of late, per a reader’s leafy photo of the site from this morning. The western end of the 1975 strip (largely hidden from the northwest corner of Westheimer and Seagler roads by 2 other retail strips and a Shell Station) has also been home to some of the operations of Project C.U.R.E. — a nonprofit named by the late July demolition permit as an occupant, which collects and donates medical supplies to the developing world.

Both the church’s Facebook page and a church representative reached by phone this afternoon indicate that the church-owned property will remain a part of the Grace Presbyterian fold. The shots below from Seagler show the strip midway through its retail-to-ruins transition last week:

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Plans To Rise Again
06/14/16 4:45pm

400 W. Sam Houston Pkwy., Westchase, Houston, 77042

The 24.5-acre plot along the W. Sam Houston Pwky. formerly snagged by Schlumberger’s Cameron International looks to be back on the market, a reader notes. Dow Chemical’s quadruple-decade-plus facility got cleared off the land at the end of 2009 following the purchase of the property by an entity connected to Apache Corporation; the spot was sold to Cameron in 2013, when rumor had it that the company would build a skyscraper’s worth of office space on the site. The property was listed afresh by Newmark Grubb Knight Frank around the end of April.

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Energy Corridor Fadeout
06/08/16 5:15pm

2 E. Rivercrest Dr., Rivercrest, Houston, 77042

2 E. Rivercrest Dr., Rivercrest, Houston, 77042

Remember that home that was being built in Rivercrest for twice-former Rocket Mike James when he got traded away (the second time) back in 2008? The one that looked uncannily like the Royal Oaks home of Juwon Howard, for whom the Timberwolves swapped James back down to Houston? The pricetag on the 11,384-sq.-ft. home, with full-size regulation basketball court included, is set at $6 million as of the property’s late-May reemergence onto the market. The house was listed at just under $7.5 million back in September 2014 (after reportedly being shopped around for $8 million previously) and was pulled in December of last year following a half-million drop. 

The new listing mentions hydrotherapy immersion tanks, a putting green, and the pool below:

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Home Court Advantage
05/25/16 11:51am

WILCREST WHOLE FOODS NOW ON HOLD WHILE BEING TRANSFERRED TO RANDALLS Whole Foods Market, 11041 Westheimer Rd., Westchase, Houston, 77042A reader reports that the Whole Foods Market at 11145 Westheimer was closed forever as of 4:15 pm on Sunday afternoon. The store’s new spot directly across S. Wilcrest Rd. in the former Randalls grocery store will be opening early in the morning on Wednesday, June 1, amid a flurry of gift-card giveaways; a DJ’d grocery store party will be held the afternoon before for those who RSVP. [Previously on Swamplot] Rendering of Whole Foods Wilcrest Market at 11041 Westheimer Rd.: Whole Foods Market

04/03/15 2:30pm

Whole Foods Market Under Construction, 11041 Westheimer Rd. at Wilcrest, Westchase, Houston

Crews have broken open the front of the former Randalls grocery store in the Westchase Shopping Center at the corner of Wilcrest and Westheimer, and are busy inserting a new, smaller Whole Foods Market inside. The photo above shows the view from the One Westchase Center office building, immediately to the east. This isn’t Whole Foods’ first Randalls redo; a new Whole Foods at 1407 S. Voss, on the former site of another Randalls, is scheduled to open next Wednesday.

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Westchase Front
03/12/15 4:00pm

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Was this stone-studded home in Walnut Bend one of the 30 or so properties featured in the 1960 Parade of Homes? The pebbly property’s price tag has stuck to $389K since its listing in January — with or without that pedigree. Located midblock on an interior street east of Wilcrest Dr., the domicile lands midway between Briar Forest Dr. and Westheimer Rd. The home’s exterior layers on the (mostly) non-original textures, particularly in the terracing of its courtyard entry . . .

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Stone Aged
03/12/15 2:00pm

Oaks of Brittany Apartments, 1201 Wilcrest Dr., Memorial, Houston

A reader wants to know what, if anything, is happening to the run-down apartment complex at 1201 Wilcrest Dr. just north of Briar Forest Dr. and across the street from the Westside Tennis & Fitness Club: “Some renovation work began many months ago, including new windows and the start of a roof. Unfortunately, the roof was never completed, windows have been boarded up, and now the whole place looks abandoned.” The complex is called the Oaks of Brittany.

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Boarded Up
02/24/15 3:45pm

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Viewed from the curb, this 1965 Briargrove Park home appears as neutral as its neighbors. But the rainbow room within spills Peep-like pastels throughout the interior. Listed last week, the extremely cheery property’s asking price stands at $625K. It’s located midblock within the neighborhood, which is located east of the West Belt between Westheimer Rd. and Buffalo Bayou; this lot’s listing touts its north section pedigree.

Let’s hop inside for the Easter Parade . . .

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Optic Verve
02/13/15 1:15pm

Proposed Saudi Arabia General Consulate of Houston, Wilcrest Dr. Between Richmond Ave and Meadowglen Ln., Westchase, Houston

“Does a building have diplomatic immunity to local ordinances if [its site] is deemed international soil?” asks Architect’s Newspaper reporter Jay Thomas, reporting on the variance request made on behalf of a new General Consulate of Saudi Arabia complex in Westchase — which Houston’s planning commission denied in December. The applicants for the variance appear to say yes, it does: “The Consulate should be considered foreign soil and should be allowed to develop the property as they have planned as long as it doesn’t harm the public in any way,” reads the application.

But the design team went ahead and applied for the variance anyway. Why?

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International Setbacks