WHAT’S NEXT FOR HALLIBURTON’S EMPTY OAK PARK CAMPUS ON BELLAIRE? 
A newly-formed group of real estate experts is now brainstorming ideas for Halliburton’s 48-acre former Oak Park campus at 10200 Bellaire Blvd., just west of Beltway 8. Included in the brain-trust: architecture firm HOK and landscape and planning firm SWA Group — as well as Hines and Transwestern, which will handle property management and leasing, respectively. They’ve all been called in by a private investment group that bought the complex over the summer and that’s headed up — reporter Ralph Bivins has said — by longtime Sharpstown land huckster Lawrence Wong. Halliburton employees began trickling out of their offices in the bow-tie-shaped 1979 building 3 years ago, leaving behind the amenities (a basketball court, daycare center, and auditorium) and adjacencies (a conference center and 5-story garage) that the new owner is now touting. Photo: LoopNet
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Tag: 77072
- 8620 Dairy View Ln. [HAR]
- 12630 Newbrook Dr. [HAR]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: NEIGHBORHOOD NAMES STICK “Alief didn’t start getting rebranded as the International District till about 3 years ago; as a matter of fact, no one that lived there knew anyone was calling it something other than Alief. It wasn’t until they put those idiotic balls in the medians that anyone local knew someone was calling it something other than Alief. The Super Neighborhood is still called Alief. Hong Kong City Mall was transformed from a pasture to a Mall over a decade ago, that huge strip center at Wilcrest and Bellaire is almost as old. Maybe in 40 or 50 years people may latch onto the name International District in favor of Alief, but then they’re going to wonder why the Library is still called Alief Regional Library, and the school district is still Alief Independent School District, or why the community center is called Alief Community Center. Or why there’s a animal hospital called Alief Animal Hospital. I have a strong suspicion Alief will always be called Alief, no matter how many weird balls they put in the medians. And I’d also rather just call it Montrose and have people ask me if I’m gay than call it Lower Westheimer and have the 15 minute discussion about where it is, and the end result being that I tell them it’s the new name for Montrose and I’ll still be asked if I’m gay.” [toasty, commenting on Headlines: Eating Steak at CityCentre; Watching SkyHouse Rise]
SOMEBODY FORGED TURTLEWOOD SQUARE SIGNATURES, BUT IT WASN’T HOANG 
Who forged neighbor signatures on a petition circulated to change the name of Turtlewood Dr. to Little Saigon Dr.? Someone who submitted them to city council member Al Hoang, a preliminary inquiry by the city’s Office of the Investigator General has determined. The report, issued last week, also appears to clear Hoang of allegations that he abused city resources in seeking to get the name of his street — in a development called Turtlewood Square, south of Bellaire Blvd. just outside the Beltway — switched. A lawsuit filed by neighbors in the case will continue; the decision on whether to proceed with an investigation of the forgeries will be up to the district attorney’s office. [Houston Politics; more detail; previously on Swamplot] Photo: HAR
Whatever happened to that Park 8 condo tower, hospital, and strip-mall development planned for Beltway 8 next to Arthur Storey Park, just south of Bellaire Blvd.? The Chronicle‘s Purva Patel surveys the wreckage of the self-styled “Land of Oz”: The highrise project has long been in bankruptcy, the contractor and lender are battling over ownership of the land in court, and 2 different groups of investors and condo buyers are suing developer David Wu for their investment losses (totaling more than $2 million), alleging he has or had no intention or ability to complete the project, and that he misled them about funding and leasing commitments. Neither Wu nor his attorney would respond to the reporter’s questions.
THE NANNY DIDN’T DO IT In a statement released last Friday, council member Al Hoang clarifies statements he made earlier to the Chronicle and KHOU 11 News’s Jeremy Rogalski that appeared to place blame for the forging of 16 neighbors’ signatures on a nanny no longer employed by Hoang’s family. The signatures were gathered for a petition requesting the name of Hoang’s street be changed from Turtlewood Dr. to Little Saigon Dr. “I have never placed blame on my former personal assistant, as some stories have portrayed,†the statement reads. “I have clearly said that the homeowners association tendered the petition to my assistant at home, not that she maliciously forged that petition.†Hoang says he welcomes the Office of Inspector General investigation into the incident, which Mayor Parker announced last week. [Houston Politics; previously on Swamplot]
Update, 6/20: Hoang has issued a statement about his nanny.
Mayor Parker has requested a separate city investigation into whether council member Al Hoang forged the signatures of 16 neighbors in a bid to change the name of his street from Turtlewood Dr. to Little Saigon Dr. A petition requesting the name change was circulated among the residents of Turtlewood Square — a development of 47 nine-or-so-year-old homes located behind a Bellaire Blvd. strip center just west of Arthur Storey Park. A lawsuit filed by several residents of the development alleges that the when the petition was given to Hoang it didn’t have the signatures of the required 75 percent of residents. The lawsuit claims that by the time Hoang submitted the petition to the city, it had gained an additional 16 names — all forged. Hoang appears to have told 11 News reporter Jeremy Rogalski that he believes his nanny — who no longer works for him — was responsible for the extra names. After the allegations of forgery, Hoang submitted a direct request for the name change to the city’s planning department. The mayor has put both name change requests on hold pending resolution of the investigation.
- Mayor calls for OIG investigation into Council Member Hoang and City council member accused of forging names to get his way [KHOU 11 News]
Photo: HAR
That was fast: Yesterday, just a day before Valentine’s Day — and almost exactly 2 weeks after a seemingly candid photo of one of the home’s 2 full bathrooms gained attention all over the internet — the owner of this well-appointed condo in Crescent Park Village accepted a purchase offer. Congratulations! On January 30th, a photo that just happened to include what looked like a 9- or 10-inch uh, stress reliever mounted on the back of the toilet was taken down quickly — followed, in short order, by the entire listing. Really? Some sellers would do anything for that kind of attention. Well, maybe a different kind of attention. But with a new MLS number, the offending photo removed, and a sub-$70K asking price, this home still got noticed. Of course, we’re all hoping the buyer’s likely-to-be-very-careful home inspection won’t turn up any additional surprises.
For any of you who might have missed it the first time, Swamplot’s uncensored photo home tour from the original listing is reprised here:
It’s not clear exactly who it was that first noticed the oh, maybe 9- or 10-inch-tall object sitting upright in the background of a bathroom photo included in the for-sale listing on Cressida Glen Ln. in Crescent Park Village. The listing for the Alief property — just minutes from the Westpark Tollway! — was first posted 15 days ago, but it wasn’t until early yesterday morning that email and online discussions about it really got going. The photo caption read “Large master with jacuzzi tub” and showed the sink, toilet, and a bit of the shower curtain, but that’s not what caught your attention. “I called [the real estate agent] to give her a heads up and she hung up [on] me so I took a picture to post on the internet for eternity,” a Reddit user commented around 1 pm. An hour or so later, the photo was gone from the listing.
What photo? The NSFW one below:
University of Houston architecture professor Susan Rogers explores the Bellaire-Holcombe corridor from Highway 6 to the Med Center and finds a donut in her path.
For each census tract that intersects Holcombe or Bellaire Blvd., Rogers tallied the total number of residents born outside the United States and those residents’ country of origin, using 2000 Census data. The results surprised her:
Most of the action is in the zone between the Loop and the Beltway. “The diversity drops steeply inside 610,” she notes:
I had graphed the street from just 610 to Hwy. 6 for a talk on the links between Asia and Houston and then decided to add the rest as a potential “contrast†– what I found when I completed it absolutely astounded me – the absolute drop is so stark – and of course the income graph is nearly the exact opposite . . .
That graph showing median household income in the same census tracts:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: STILL WAITING FOR PARK 8 TO ARRIVE IN THE LAND OF OZ 
“Do you have any update on this project? I’m very curious to find out more about the status and what the projected outcome will be for the many buyers of this condo that is 3 years behind schedule.” [Caroling, commenting on Park 8 Chinatown Condo Project: Parked?] Rendering: Marketing Park8
Many of the buildings on the campus were completed last August, but this weekend marked the official grand opening of “one of the largest Buddhist developments in the nation,” just northeast of Hempstead. The American Bodhi Center, a new retreat on 515 acres off FM 2979 in Waller County, was created by the Texas Buddhist Association — in part to relieve crowding at the 1,500-family-strong Jade Buddha Temple in Alief.
Among the new buildings: the Memorial Hall pictured above. There’s also a new Meditation Hall:
Here’s a surprise: a construction permit for a new 23-story Chinatown Asiatown condominium tower was issued yesterday for Park 8 Place. Remember Park8? That’s the freeway feeder megastrip project planned for just across Brays Bayou from Arthur Storey Park, along Beltway 8 south of Bellaire Blvd. The one that called itself “The Land of Oz.”
The entire development was supposed to include three 20-something-story residential towers, a hospital, two 2-story retail-and-office strips, and a couple of parking garages — all in a quaint freeway-and-park-side setting. A foundation was poured for the first condo building last year, but Park 8 CEO David Wu put the project on hold after he was unable to secure financing. So the construction crane came down.
FORGET IT, JAKE. IT’S ASIATOWN The Chronicle quietly debuts that new, more inclusive name for the pan-Asian strip along Bellaire Blvd. between 59 and Highway 6 formerly known as Chinatown: Asiatown. A recent email describing marauding, gun-toting, and noodle-slurping gangs in the area is wrong: “Janet Chiu, manager of Tan Tan, one of the purportedly robbed restaurants, said the tales caused business to drop by 20 percent. ‘It’s more Dead Town than Asiatown,’ she complained, voicing a strident denial that her cafe had been robbed.” [Houston Chronicle]