- 1705 Huge Oaks St. [HAR]
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Tag: 77055
Comically large ceiling fixture purveyor Big Ass Solutions (the Kentucky-rooted parent company of exactly-what-they-sound-like Big Ass Fans and Big Ass Lights) will be opening its first not-on-the-internet retail space in the West Loop II office-warehouse strip at 1224 N. Post Oak Rd., Mike D. Smith reports. A statue of the company’s donkey mascot will mark the company’s territory in Suite 120, between Yellow Rose Distilling’s whisky operations at the west end of the building and Appliance Parts Depot to the far east. The 1980s office park (pictured above in listing photo form) is nestled in among the cluster of business spaces and warehouses to the northwest of the West-Loop-I-10 junction, across N. Post Oak to the northeast of the all-in-a-row Edwards Marq*E complex, Awty International School, and Beth Yeshurun cemetery.
Here’s a quick peek from last week at work going on inside of the showroom-to-be, currently getting prettied up for the public:
Cooling It on N. Post Oak
- 7819 Bryonwood Dr. [HAR]
Positioned above a fork in Spring Branch Creek just north of I-10, this 1971 mod was designed by former occupant Roland Beach, who passed away last April after living in the home for more than 40 years with his family. Beach, an exporter of construction materials to Barbados, produced much of the 2,630-sq.-ft. home’s extensive wood paneling and detailing in his own shop in the property’s detached 2-car garage.
His 3-bedroom, 3-bath dreamhouse was remodeled in 2008, when Beach added a master suite containing a round sleeping area, a sauna, and a kitchenette with dining space — allowing occupants to get away from it all without actually leaving the home. The house was named one of Houston Mod’s “Mods of the Month” for November; the asking price dropped to $825k from just under $840k at the end of October, after a few weeks on the market.
Suburban Retreat
- 1308 Krist Dr. [HAR]
Developer MetroNational is calling the 6-story Energy Corridor District office building and parking garage it officially announced today “the first step in expanding Memorial City north of I-10.” The 240,000-sq.-ft. structure planned for 10100 Katy Fwy. will house 15,000 sq. ft. of retail space on its ground floor — but the rendering of the building designed by Powers Brown Architecture sent out by the company does make the development look like an outpost in an even more suburban office park. As Swamplot reported last week, Mexican building-materials company Cemex will be leasing 80,000 sq. ft. in the complex for its U.S. headquarters.
New Cemex HQ
MetroNational appears to have concrete plans for the new development it’s putting together for the 24-acre corner of Gessner Rd. and the Katy Fwy. feeder directly across I-10 from the company’s distinctive headquarters: It’s already signed up building materials company Cemex USA to become the lead tenant in a new office building intended for a portion of the site, a source tells Swamplot. The company will be leasing around 80,000 sq. ft. of space in the Energy Gateway District.
What looks to be the last structure standing in the way of MetroNational’s hush-hush Energy Gateway District project across I-10 from its headquarters is now ready for its exit. The 32-year-old PoMo style strip center at 1055 Gessner Rd., which formerly housed an HPD substation, Terrace Limousine, and the Asiana Garden restaurant, appears fenced off and ready for demolition in this photo sent to Swamplot by a reader. The center stands at the far northern end of the 24-acre property, which — following the city’s approval of a variance request last month — will be bisected by the extension of Mathewson Ln. to Gessner Rd. from Conrad Sauer Rd.
- Previously on Swamplot: Hints of MetroNational’s Energy Gateway District in Conrad Sauer Detention Basin Redo Plans
Photo: Bayan Raji
Going Soon
Here’s a purty watercolor-filtered drawing that shows how a portion of the concrete-lined Conrad Sauer Detention Basin extending north from the I-10 feeder road between Gessner and Conrad Sauer Dr. is supposed to look after MetroNational and TIRZ 17 upgrade it into a grassy, bike-lane-crossed area with park space that improves on its current ditch functions. It sits directly across the little ol’ Katy Fwy. from MetroNational’s ‘Death Star‘ HQ; the normally secretive company reveals a tiny bit about its plans for the area around the detention basin, lining the northwest corner of Gessner and the outbound I-10 feeder, in a variance application that’s scheduled to be discussed and possibly voted on in a planning commission meeting this Thursday.
MetroNational is calling the cleared 24-acre site (shown below) the Energy Gateway District.
From the Death Star to You
HOW THE 610 LOOP EARNED ITS PRESTIGE 
“I’ve heard 610 called a lot of things, but never ‘prestigious,'” writes a Swamplot reader who is curious to learn how the phrase “the prestigious 610 Loop” nevertheless came to appear in Wikipedia — in the entry for Hines’s gated Somerset Green complex, now under construction on 46 acres of an old industrial operation at 7002 Old Katy Rd., just east of the Houston Design Center. Ah, but such is the value of Wikipedia’s references and external links sections: The source of the phrase turns out to be Hines itself. A press release that predates by a couple of years the billboards now seen advertising the 500-home development along a few (less-prestigious, no doubt) Inner Loop highways still bears the implicit declaration in its headline: “Hines to Develop 46-acre Planned Community Inside Houston’s Prestigious 610 Loop.” And so it is. [Wikipedia; press release] Photo of the 610 Loop: PINKÉ (license)
- 1516 Campbell Rd. [HAR]
You might want to grab a spoon to dig into this 2001 neo-Victorian on a big corner lot in the Bellewood (spelled Bellwood in some places) neighborhood of Spring Branch. Its frothy paint pairings with chocolate- or vanilla-stained trim would be right at home in an ice cream shoppe. The pier-and-beam property last changed hands in June 2012, at $765K. Its listing last week has a $1.15 million asking price. There’s an open house scheduled for Sundae afternoon.
Lots of Lot
Note: The original version of this story misreported the home’s asking price. It is being offered at $749,900.
Blue. Red. Green. Orange. Were it not for the Dublinesque color rotation on the doors of a 4-pack of eco-friendly contemporary homes in Spring Branch’s Melody Oaks neighborhood, might owners accidentally enter the wrong one? Unit 1 — the bluesy one (top) that shores up one end of the lookalikes — is back on the market. Its listing by the owner-agent over the weekend has a $789,900 $749,900 price tag attached. That’s up, uh, somewhat from its purchase price in April 2013: $484,950.
The team at The ODD Group, (aka Open Design & Development, and including Royce/Eagleton Architects), is behind these “urban cottages” (above) proliferating in a newly minted “pocket community” tagged Janak Place. It’s located north of Westview Dr. between Wirt Rd. and Antoine Dr.
Urban Cottage Cluster
