- 1919 Marlberry Ln. [HAR]
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Tag: 77084
Hey, it worked for the River Oaks Cleaners and CityCentre! The latest, perhaps only half-unwitting entry into the ongoing Houston name-sprawl competition is “Heights at Park Row,” an apartment complex announced yesterday by an Atlanta developer but apparently already under construction in advance of an announced October opening date. The 342-unit rental compound, a mere 14 freeway miles west of the similarly named Houston neighborhood not known (yet) for its apartments, will hang back a tad from the southern freeway exposure of Wolff Companies’ this-and-that-use Central Park development, wedged ’twixt I-10 and a planned the recent extension of the Terry Hershey Park Bike Trail.
Central Park will, in fact, be entirely central to its own location, along Houston’s central concrete ribbon but only a little east of Hwy. 6:
Name Creep
- 5134 Glentworth Ct. [HAR]
Just north of the Katy Fwy. at Park Row and Park Ten Blvd., construction is underway on Park Ten Center. The 301,932-sq.-ft. complex will comprise a pair of 3-story office buildings designed by O’Brien Architecture out of Dallas. Developed by Lincoln Property and Stonelake, the 150,966-sq.-ft. buildings are being built mostly on spec: Only 1 tenant, and an undisclosed one to boot, has signed on. Houston Business Journal reports that the complex will occupy the Energy Corridor property where a cluster of smaller industrial buildings were demolished back in June.
- 5415 Cairnleigh Dr. [HAR]
UNBAKING A LONELY STRIP CENTER SPOT 
Saddled with a “terrible” location — a lonely strip center on Barker Cypress Rd., halfway between Katy and Cypress, year-old Ranch Bakery is taking to Kickstarter to raise funds to — break its lease? No — start up a food truck, explains owner John Homrighausen. It’ll be a souped-up delivery truck with “a giant pair of longhorns for the front & a horn that plays ‘The Eyes Of Texas,'” he promises. The spot at 5431 Barker Cypress is good for his catering company, Homrighausen explains, “but an unfortunate one for a retail store.” He hopes to lure fans of kolaches and Big John’s King Kong Ding Dongs to donate a total of $19,965 towards the effort by the end of the month. [Kickstarter, via Eater Houston] Photo: Ranch Bakery
“I love burst mode on my Samsung S3,” writes the Swamplot reader who used it to capture these photos looking north from the Katy Freeway just west of Hwy. 6. “What’s the deal with the giant flagpoles?” More than 2 dozen of them are up now, arranged in a semicircle on I-10-facing property, immediately west of Sam’s Club adjacent to a building under construction. As of yesterday evening only 1 flag was up, flying at half-mast.
According to an attorney for a woman who was raped and sodomized for more than 12 hours in her second-floor apartment in the Promenade Cullen Park 3 years ago, managers of the apartment complex just west of the Addicks Reservoir had in fact sent out a notice to residents after a through-the-balcony break-in of the unit next door to her 2 weeks earlier. However, it was “the same warning that they would send out if a bicycle was stolen off a balcony or a TV was stolen out of an apartment,” attorney Troy Chandler tells the Houston Chronicle. “The notice failed to mention that a burglary occurred, that the assailant waited inside, that a tenant was attacked and that there had been an attempted rape.” After that incident but before she was raped, the woman renewed her lease on the apartment — without being informed about the nature of the attack, according to her attorneys.
THE BLACK FOREST MIX How do you follow your recent purchase of the FBI-invaded office building at 5050 Westheimer — you know, the former Galleria headquarters of that charmingly creative Stanford Financial Group? Black Forest Ventures — a Woodlands-based venture capital firm started by a member of the family behind the Bruker biomedical empire — has the answer: Go out west near Katy and buy Mustang Engineering’s 175,000 sq.-ft. office building in the Park Ten office park off I-10. Just add both to Black Forest’s growing potpourri of properties. Other holdings gathered by the company: Woodlands gourmet grocers Hubbell & Hudson; 3 Black Walnut Cafes in the The Woodlands, Sugarland, the Rice Village; a few Woodlands office buildings; numerous rental homes; and a 15,000-sq.-ft. hangar at David Wayne Hooks Airport in Spring. [Houston Business Journal]
Katy residents living near a pool supply company got breathtaking views of the spectacular black plumes emanating from the RAM Chemical and Supply warehouse at 4949 Greenhouse Rd. during last weekend’s fire.
But the fun wasn’t entirely over: A separate episode yesterday resulted in a shelter-in-place order for a few hours last night — for downwind neighborhoods east of the Windstone Colony subdivision, stretching from Greenhouse Rd. to Barker Cypress. Fire officials warned of toxic clouds billowing out from a supply of hazardous chemicals still housed in the singed remains of the warehouse.
- Breaking News, Ram Chemical Warehouse Fire! [YouTube]
- RAM Chemical Fire, the Day After [iReport]
- Shelter In Place Order Lifted [Click2Houston]
- Warehouse fire prompts shelter-in-place [abc13]
- Cy-Fair warehouse fire prompts air-quality concerns [Houston Chronicle]
Video: Kevin Neugebauer
AND JULY IS MEAT CANDY MONTH Its first Houston store (at Main and Kirby) apparently a patty-smashing success, 3 new Smashburgers are now ready to open in a few other strip centers: “First up is a restaurant in the Westchase area at 10705 Westheimer, Suite C, opening on July 15. A second will open July 22 in the Energy Corridor at 1635 Eldridge (Eldridge and Briar Forest). And a third, located at 5520 Buffalo Speedway (Buffalo Speedway and Bissonnet) in the West University area, will open July 29.” [Eating Our Words; previously on Swamplot]
FLOODING REPORT FROM THE NORTHWEST HOUSTON PRAIRIE BOWL The worst flooding damage from those late April storms centered around a swath of Highway 6 stretching from the Katy Freeway to 290 in northwest Houston. The heaviest rainfall was centered further west, along the planned path of the Grand Parkway Segment E. “[Jennifer] Bayles said her section of Bear Creek Village wasn’t within the 100-year flood plain when she and her husband bought their house 17 years ago. But it was added to the flood plain in new maps developed after Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, and the couple purchased flood insurance despite the steep premiums. ‘We’re well-insured; we’ll be fine,’ she said, but some neighbors don’t have the coverage they need. And their recovery efforts grew more complicated when they learned that if their homes sustained sufficient damage they would have to elevate when they rebuild. In the past few years, Bayles said, her street has flooded regularly during heavy rains, stranding residents in their homes for hours. But the April thunderstorms were the first time she’s had water in her house, she said.” [Houston Chronicle]
This place is huge! 6000 sq. ft. of living space, reads the listing:
Includes 4 Big Bedrooms, 2 full baths, Large Formal Dining, Huge kitchen w/gas cooking, Granite Counters, Porcelain sink, walk-in pantry, breakfast bar, serving bar and tile floor. Living/Family area w/gas fireplace, wood laminate floors. large inviting entry. Study or 5th bedroom.
That’s a lot of home! How could anyone furnish it all?
Not a problem!
MOVING THE KATY PRAIRIE, ONE CLUMP AT A TIME Threatened patch of prairie? Shovels to the rescue! “The 90-acre patch at Saums and Greenhouse roads north of I-10 is a subtly spectacular example of what the dwindling Katy Prairie looked like before development spread west out of Harris County. Sometime later this fall, construction on the extension of Greenhouse Road, plus a detention pond, will start there. Folks in straw hats, with shovels, buckets and bug spray, spent several mornings digging up clumps of this mature prairie for transplanting to other sites. . . . Digging up clumps of little blue stem, rattlesnake master and bee blossom gives prairie gardens a jump start they couldn’t get from seeds – and seeds are hard to come by.” [Inside Fort Bend]
THE MICHAEL B. SMUCK APARTMENT FLIPS BEGIN Triumph Land & Capital Management, the company that bought two other former Smucked apartment complexes, has already flipped a third: “‘The seller had bought the loan on Village at Loch Katrine, then foreclosed on it, then sold the property,’ says Russell D. Jones, vice president of Apartment Realty Advisors in Houston. He says Andrew Chong had signed the purchase agreement before Triumph Land & Capital foreclosed on the loan. Although Jones kept mum about the price, area sources believe the Village at Loch Katrine, situated at 16545 Loch Katrine Lane, sold for $6.5 million to $7 million.” [Globe St.; previously]