Silent sentries accent the brick colonnade and look over the “motor court” of this Lazy River listing in the Tanglewood area. Were the lions not of concrete, they might roam the home’s half-acre corner lot, which has grassy areas, a pool, an outdoor “summer kitchen” with dining pavilion, and an arbor.
Inside, a paneled library of near-collegiate proportions includes a second-floor balcony. Also: a wine cellar.
KELLER WILLIAMS’S NEW OFFICES ARE IN THE OLD STANFORD FINANCIAL GROUP BUILDING 
“To this day, people still refer to 1400 Smith as ‘the old Enron building,’ even though the company collapsed more than a decade ago and Chevron now owns the property. Will 5050 Westheimer face a similar fate? That’s the building that housed Stanford Financial Group, whose founder, R. Allen Stanford, is awaiting a jury verdict on federal charges that he ran a $7 billion investment fraud. . . . Bruce Kink of Keller Williams said the company chose the space for its prime location directly across from the Galleria mall. He doesn’t focus on who used to occupy it. ‘They removed the name out front,’ Kink said. ‘To us it’s 5050 Westheimer.'” [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Wikimedia Commons
ALLEN STANFORD’S UPTOWN STAGECRAFT 
“The place was always odd. There was always more elegance, more shine . . . and yet there weren’t always people to fill the desks. There was more real estate than people. There was just such pomp. It felt like 1955, the way people were dressed and were ushered in and offered coffee in fine china. They had a private dining room — everything was over the top . . . and you’re like, OK, maybe some of these enterprises are making some money. In retrospect, it was like a Hollywood town. It was like the front, but if you peek around the back, it’s just two-by-fours holding it up.” — Houston videographer Dave Henry, who plans to craft a documentary using footage he created for the Stanford Financial Group, describing the company’s former headquarters on Westheimer. [Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot] Still: Magpie River Films
Note: Story corrected below.
Houston’s transit agency is scheduled to close next month on the twice-delayed $550,000 purchase of a 3,589-sq.-ft. strip of land across Post Oak Blvd. from the Waterwall Park — even though the Uptown Line, the light-rail line the land would be used for, isn’t part of its current construction contract, and isn’t even expected to be complete before 2020, according to Metro documents. Negotiated under the real-estate happy regime of Metro’s previous administration, under Metro’s current administration, under an authorization approved by its earlier real-estate-happy board, the contract Metro signed for the property at 3009 Post Oak prohibits the agency from backing out of the purchase — even if its plans or route alignment have changed. But a Metro spokesperson tells Memorial Examiner reporter Michael Reed that the purchase still makes sense, and turns out to be a less expensive option for it than using eminent domain to acquire the parcel later. Going up next door to the site: a 20-story office tower for its owner, the U.S. subsidiary of Swedish development firm Skanska.
Photo: Memorial Examiner
Where’s Randall Davis gonna find buyers for the glitzy condos in this new 24-story Uptown highrise he’s planning — you know, the kinds of carefree, fun-loving sophisticates who’d regularly leave all the lights on in their bedrooms at night just to make sure the whole building glows like this? In other countries, probably. But they’ll be moving to Houston soon!
Workers began taking down the engraved stone Stanford Financial Group sign embedded in the facade of the company’s former headquarters building at 5050 Westheimer last Friday, reader Andrew Tyler reports with this tweeted photo. Federal law enforcement officials raided the building and Stanford Financial offices in Galleria Tower II almost 3 years ago; company founder Allen Stanford was arrested 4 months later. In July of 2010, Woodlands-based Black Forest Ventures bought the 3-story, 71,000-sq.-ft. structure across the street from the Galleria for $12.5 million.
Photo: Andrew Tyler
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE DRIVE HOME “I work in the Galleria. When I leave work, all of the main roads near my office and pretty much gridlocked. The first leg of my journey home (from the office to passing under the West Loop is 2 miles, and can take me as much as 30 minutes. (The rest of the trip, once I’m past 610, is a lot better.) That’s 4 mph, or the speed of a brisk walk. I’d get home faster walking. But I have no other choices. The bus sits in the same traffic and then would involve transfers and take about 2x as long as driving. That’s a normal day. Bad weather? Worse. And what happens as Houston grows and more and more people are using those roads? Where do you build more street capacity in the Galleria? We have a non-scalable system in a growing city, and our needs have already surpassed our transportation model in places. It’s only going to get worse. And what if you don’t have money? What if you have a disability that keeps you from driving – so much for being productive, you can’t get to work. What about when you get old and can’t drive? Sorry, go sit and rot. That’s freedom?” [John (another one), commenting on Comment of the Day: Parking Lot City]
A delightful backyard scene at this home in the Galleria-area Del Monte subdivision. But hmmm . . . what’s that lurking behind the wood fence at the rear of the property? Could it be . . . the first of 19 stories of a new luxury apartment tower working its way to the sky? Or something more modest? Strangely, the listing for the just-on-the-market $576K home, at 5237 Chesapeake Way, includes this photo but no further details of the backyard goings-on. And yet there’s a crane and plenty of highrise construction action on the former parking lot on Brownway behind the home, between Sage and Yorktown, just west of the Walgreens on the corner of Sage and Westheimer. A Swamplot reader was kind enough to send in some photos of the project so far — along with a plea that someone who knows something about it provide some details:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: GOOD ENOUGH FOR VISITORS “. . . I’m always befuddled when my husband’s family comes in from Boston or New York and is eager to go to the Galleria. Apparently, that’s enough of a tourist destination for some people . . .” [Adrianne, commenting on City Playing Musical Blocks with Downtown Houses]
Silicon Valley automotive startup Tesla Motors plans to open a Houston dealership for the company’s all-electric cars within the next 60 days — in the Nordstrom wing of the Galleria. The company-operated store, inspired by Apple Stores, Starbucks, and airport frequent-flier clubs, will include samples of the company’s Model S and Roadster models that visitors will be encouraged to climb into, as well as a Design Studio for assembling and pricing an EV to your own specifications.
Photos: Tesla Motors (store in Lone Tree, Colorado); Purva Patel (Galleria)
This home nestled on the south bank of Buffalo Bayou north of Woodway and just outside the West Loop has made brief appearances in the MLS for the last 2 fall seasons. This time, though, the price is almost $200K lower. It’s a 4-bedroom, 3-1/2-bath open-plan home designed by William Floyd in 1954, sporting a few obvious updates and alterations. The 3,519-sq.-ft. home is now on the market for $1,299,000; it’s just a few doors down from the home fellow architect Preston Bolton built for himself on Pine Hollow Ln. 16 years later.
Also in the brand-new listing for a single-story “patio home” designed for the original owner by Preston Bolton off Yorktown: photos of the 2-bedroom, 2-bath pad from closer to its 1971 debut. If the now-empty home and its original blue kitchen don’t convey quite the air of Watergate-era sophistication you were looking for, try picturing yourself relaxing, internet-free, in the included black-and-white views. The 2,630-sq.-ft. home’s roof, AC, electrical panel, and water heater have all been replaced recently, but almost everything else is still as it was:
When last we left this little number in Pine Hollow — the longtime home of Preston Bolton, the Houston architect who did tall ceilings before tall ceilings were cool — it was 2008, and the place was listed for just south of $2 million. But it didn’t sell at that price, or a few other ones tried later. Last week it went back on the market at a new low: $1,450,000. Anything in this 1970 structure been, well, updated in the 3 intervening years? Well, the photos at least:
YOUR FEEDBACK WAS IMPORTANT TO US 
The Borders “nothing held back” liquidation sale has brought out a slew of not-so-well wishers to the Galleria store, Jef Rouner finds: “The clerks told us that a pretty significant amount of customers had come in to gloat about the liquidation prices, scold the clerks for bad business practices, harp about how Borders got just what was coming to it, and finally, openly mock the soon to be un-employees.” [Art Attack; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Flickr user e_walk [license]
