AUGUSTA DEMO AND STORAGE The new owner of a small Galleria-area office building directly across the street from the parking garage for San Felipe Plaza plans to tear down the 2-story 1977 structure, which suffered a roof collapse and $2.7 million worth of damage from Hurricane Ike. “[Seller Robert] Clay is under the impression that a self-storage facility will be built there. In fact, four parties interested in buying the site wanted to build development storage units there, he says. [Hasad Development’s Sam] Amber, the buyer, has developed several ProGuard Self Storage locations around town. However, a company spokesman in Houston would not comment on future plans for the nearly one-acre site. Based on buyer interest, Clay concludes that, ‘This location is a perfect private mini-storage location.’” [Houston Business Journal]
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Tag: 77057
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE GREAT WEST HOUSTON DIVORCéE BELT “It basically runs in between Beltway 8 and 610 and is crossed by the likes of Westheimer, Woodway, Richmond, Bissonnet et al. Basically these people met in drunken stupors along the Richmond strip in the early 80s at those cheesy night clubs; tried to make lasting marriages but eventually divorced; and then bought homes and patio homes close but not too close to their old stomping grounds. Incidentally, many of them work non-descript office jobs at middle market companies in the Westchase district and raaaaaave about the tres leches cake at the Churrasco’s out there on Westheimer. Yay Divorcee Belt!” [Bobby Hadley, commenting on Neighborhood Guessing Game: Blue Check]
THE WOODWAYS AND THE WESTHEIMERS “I sometimes think that Woodway is made nicer by the fact that Westheimer exists. There are certainly numerous suburbs and exurbs where the Westheimers look like Woodways. Oh, there’s retail, but it’s set back from the street, perhaps behind a tree buffer, with tasteful monument signage out front. I’ve always found such environments to be stifling. It’s so obviously contrived. All-night, six- and eight-lane arterials are SUPPOSED to have large illuminated signs. They’re SUPPOSED to have ratty businesses alongside the nice ones. Every suburb has a Target and a ratty convenience store. Westheimer has a Target and twenty ratty convenience stores, plus ’24 hours video and news.’ I’ve never been in there, but its existence tells me that this strip is whatever it wants to be. This holds true of Woodway. It’s not a pure residential drive; there is retail, much of it even with tasteful signage. The signage follows from the road – Westheimer has large signs because it’s big and straight and a larger sign means higher visibility. Put up a larger sign on Woodway and it’d just be obscured by trees. Some people think of Westheimer (and other streets like it) as ugly. I don’t, but I understand where they’re coming from. Perhaps if they wanted to do something about it, they should plant trees instead of making rules about commercial signage. Proactive versus restrictive. Woodway is a nice drive because it was built to very nice design standards (10′ median with staggered trees) and because the people who own stores and homes along Woodway want to keep it pleasant. And so it is.” [Keep Houston Houston]
PENTHOUSE STRIPPED The Penthouse Club at 2618 Winrock has been closed by court order — the first such action stemming from Houston’s 11-year-old sexually oriented business ordinance: “State District Judge Mark Davidson issued a temporary injunction Tuesday afternoon and ordered the club to shut down immediately. A trial in which the city will argue for permanent closure is set for Oct. 27. Davidson’s order is a major victory for the city, which has spent more than $1.2 million defending the ordinance against challenges by adult-oriented businesses, said attorney Patrick Zummo, hired by the city to help it enforce the law. ‘It means that this ordinance that we fought so hard to pass and prove constitutional, that it will actually work,’ Zummo said. ‘We’re not through. We’re looking at other locations around The Penthouse.'” [Houston Chronicle]
Good work this week! Four of you guessed Briargrove. Meyerland, Tanglewood, and Old Braeswood attracted two guesses each. Fall Creek, Memorial outside the Beltway, the Elkins Lake Country Club area in Huntsville, Fonn Villas, Tealwood, West Grove Court, Buffalo Speedway & Braeswood, Shepherd Park Plaza, and Afton Oaks attracted guesses as well.
And Briargrove it was! The winner was tcpIV, the first to stake that claim in our comments section — with this pithy entry:
Briargrove?
Yes!
An honorable mention goes to a later Briargrove guesser, BJ, who came up with plenty of story:
The front room with the big window screams ranch. That cavernous master bedroom looks big enough to pull in mom’s Chevy Suburban LT-1 and dad’s 5-series, so it is likely a converted garage. It also looks like the owner dropped a small fortune on antiques in Round Top, white-slip covered furniture and big fancy flat-screens. I also see an orange blanket on one of the kid’s beds–probably Longhorn fans. Lastly, several kids clearly inhabit those rooms–they’re likely playing out front while mom and her friends sip martinis, or at soccer practice at Kinkaid. I say Briargrove all the way!
Special recognition this week for the bamboozling skills of David W, who emailed us the actual listing but whose attempt to throw other players off the scent ended up sounding rather plausible:
Looks like a 60’s subdivision house to me – maybe Fonn Villas? Tealwood? Those aluminum framed bay windows and shiny brass chandelier scream Kickerillo circa mid 60’s. I’m guessing the master bedroom is an add on as well as the breakfast room with skylights. Those rooms almost look like they are from a different house.
Want the scoop on this place?
Briargrove and Briargrove Park are 5 miles and (to judge from this weekend’s open houses), about $700,000 apart. But both feature homes so eager to be sold that they’re giving up a good portion of their Memorial Day weekend just so you can visit.
Location: 10335 Lynbrook Hollow St.
Details: 4 bedrooms, 3 baths; 2,958 sq. ft.
Price: $410,000
The Scoop: 1976 brick home on cul-de-sac in Briargrove Park, built around brick courtyard. Two bedrooms, including Master, downstairs. Partial second story. Partially covered deck in back. On the market since mid-January. Price cut $25K last week.
Open House: Sunday, 3-5 pm
More Briargrovian homes below:
Westhaven Estates is patio-home heaven! There are no wasted yards, and all homes are carefully protected from the streets. This weekend: Tour some freestanding homes for sale here!
Location: 2323 Potomac Dr.
Details: 3 bedrooms, 3 baths; 3,018 sq. ft.
Price: $584,900
The Scoop: 1999 Dollhouse Mediterranean in 8-building gated compound. Carport fronts 2-car garage. Master retreat has gas fireplace and bay window; adjacent Media Room with wet bar and balcony is next to separate Study. Hardwood floors on second-level living areas. Has been on market for 2 months already.
Open House: Sunday, 2-4 pm
More patio homes this way . . . !
Pedestrian scribe John Lomax and Marfa City Council candidate David Beebe have, by this time, earned the right to make a few sweeping statements about various Houston neighborhoods. And Lomax exercises that right in his chronicle of the pair’s latest adventure on foot, along Richmond Avenue from Mission Bend to Midtown:
. . . the epicenter of H-Town cheese is the corner of Fountainview and Richmond. A four-story, day-glo, red, white, turquoise, and tan building looms over the southeastern corner there, and it houses a Sprint shop, a little downstairs bar with the godawful name Identity, a scalper’s office, a massage therapist, and a huge Darque Tan outlet.
Sure, Westheimer’s got some cheese, and is a little tattered around the edges in spots, but there’s a veneer of gentility as expressed by old-line businesses like Christie’s Seafood. Richmond, by contrast, used to have that sub-Landry’s fried seafood emporium King Fish Market, which despite the incessant awful commercials that polluted local airwaves circa 1999, is now out of business and practically in ruins. The whole lot of it is a great vat of rancid Velveeta.
As is much of the Richmond Strip. That giant sax outside of Billy Blues is looking more and more like the torch sticking out of the sand at the end of Planet of the Apes.
After the jump: how’s the nightlife?
Here’s the plan: Buy a fourplex on a cul-de-sac near the intersection of Woodway and Voss. Do some painting, replace the roof and repair the exterior, put in granite countertops and stainless-steel appliances in one of the units and new appliances and carpet in the rest. Then . . . convert the place to condos, and flip them one at a time!
Except . . . there are a heck of a lot of condos out there in the $150K-$230K range, and selling is tough.
Bummer. But there’s still a moneymaking way out: If you can’t make the condo flip yourself, that doesn’t mean you can’t sell someone else on the idea of doing it. And you’ve already done the conversion work!
Just listed on MLS: 6323 Deerwood. Four units built in 1975, totaling 7,564 square feet, on a 10,171-sq.-ft. lot. Apartments lease for $1200 and $1400. Asking $645,000:
Units have already been condo converted! Investor can sell units separately or keep as a fourplex.
Will consider seller financing!
After the jump: the renovated innards.
It looks like our earlier report about the Fairmont at San Felipe — the strip-center-apartment combo planned for the southeast corner of San Felipe and Winrock — was wrong. Judging from this new rendering of the complex, it sure looks like those apartments will actually be stacked directly on top of the retail spaces, forming a lovely parking-lot-courtyard tableau!
Permits for construction of the apartments were just approved by the city. After the jump: closeups, plus the plan that led us astray.
Remember that fancy 27-story condo tower planned for Voss between San Felipe and Woodway? The one that was “for seniors only” and featured three floors of assisted living? Where you could buy a spacious 950-square-foot unit for just a tad under $500K?
Well, neither did we.
But if you were too busy pursuing an active lifestyle to notice that the sales center had shut down and the website disappeared, today’s Houston Business Journal makes the official announcement: The Sterling at Memorial Villages is dead, for lack of interest.
The project site holds a shuttered retail facility where a Chipotle formerly operated. The western-most part of the site, which is not owned by [Sterling developer] Sunrise Senior Living, is being marketed for sale by McDade Smith Gould Johnston Mason + Co. The eastern portion of the property — where the condo was to be built — is now being marketed by Wheless Properties.
The public company will see what offers it gets for the land, but [Sunrise Senior Living rep Jamison] Gosselin says it also is considering developing a rental property at the site.
Not mentioned in the article: Links to The Sterling of The Woodlands on the company website no longer work either.
- Condo project flops as seniors fail to buy in [Houston Business Journal]
- The Sterling
Photo: HAIF user BuilderGeek
Looking for a couple strategic locations on Westheimer for Big Box stores . . . say one near the Galleria, the other near Kirkwood? You’re in luck: CompUSA is toast.
Turnaround firm Gordon Brothers Group has acquired computer manufacturer CompUSA for an undisclosed amount. As part of the deal, Boston-based Gordon Brothers is closing all 103 CompUSA stores, which will remain open through the holiday season.
Sound familiar? CompUSA shut down 176 locations nationwide this past February, including stores in Sugar Land, Baybrook, Willowbrook, and another on FM 1960.
- CompUSA Acquired, Stores Closing [Globe St.]
Photo of empty Willowbrook CompUSA: Ailona Gellert
Sure, there’s Post Properties, the Sonoma in the Rice Village and all those tired old buildings downtown, but most Houston developers won’t put apartments on top of retail unless they’re dragged kicking and screaming. And really, the idea of living next to a strip center evokes a much warmer, more folksy feeling. Isn’t that what Houston is all about?
The latest: The Fairmont on San Felipe, on the southeast corner of San Felipe and Winrock. A couple of apartment courtyards, connected by a central garage, behind two strips ready for 41,500 square feet of retail. It’s now under construction, on the site of the old Regency Arms apartments, which burned last year after it had already been vacated for demolition.
Update, 2/14/08: Looks like they have been dragged!
- The Fairmont on San Felipe (PDF) [Hunington Properties]
- Regency Arms Apartments, @San Felipe and Winrock [HAIF]
Another day, another round of Houston demolitions. Find out where the action is in our list of structures approved for destruction—after the jump.
Yet another warehouse on Studemont goes down. Plus more homes in and around town. Our daily address list of demolition sites is after the jump.