CANDLEWOOD GLEN: RENO OR DEMO? Near Northwest residents ask City Council for help with the squalid Candlewood Glen and Candlelight Trails complexes. “A sign posted at the entrance to the complex would suggest there were plans to reopen the buildings under a new name. They would be called Palm Terrace, and phase one was scheduled for construction during the summer of 2008. But it’s now August, and there is no sign of construction.” [11 News, previously in Swamplot]
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Tag: 77091
City officials posted signs at the Gables of Inwood Apartments near Antoine Forest yesterday notifying residents that they need to vacate the property by Monday. The owner of the 165-unit complex, Collins Ofoegbu of El Sobrante, California, has received notices of more than 240 violations from city inspectors since purchasing the property in 2006.
Some received the news from orange “notice to vacate” signs affixed to their doors. The signs also warned residents that power would be disconnected Monday.
“I need, like, two or three months,” said an agitated Jolanda Hernandez, who waved a recent rent receipt while complaining in Spanish. “I need time so I can move out of here.”
Matt Stiles’s report in the Chronicle indicates there are also problems at a closer-in property with a much larger group of owners: the Park Memorial Condominiums near the corner of Memorial and Detering. Stiles says city inspectors planned to post notices at the condominiums at 5292 Memorial warning residents that the parking garage is unsafe and “may experience catastrophic failure at any time.”
After the jump: More highlights from reporter Matt Stiles’s personal collection of dangerous-apartment photos!
Chronicle reporter Matt Stiles continues his tour of substandard Houston apartments, stopping this week for a visit at the 172-unit Candlewood Glen Apartments, near the 5400 block of DeSoto:
Now, only about 12 units remain legally occupied, and the management office is shuttered. Rotting trash sits in piles. Copper pipes and air conditioners’ coils have been ripped on a mass scale from burglarized units. The swimming pool is filled with water the color of crude oil.
“It’s just a horrible place,” said Roy Millmore, executive director of the Near Northwest Management District, an organization that focuses on reducing crime in the area.
The poor conditions inside the complex have persisted for months, in part because many of the property’s 43 fourplexes are owned by out-of-state investors, rather than a single owner. That makes applying pressure to improve conditions more complicated for city inspectors.
Still, code inspectors had not visited the property in a decade until the Houston Chronicle documented its conditions. City officials say they had not received complaints from people living there and that they are trying to enforce codes more aggressively than in years past.
After the jump: Stiles’s Candlewood Glen Apartments photo tour. Plus: Available now!
From Abc13’s Wayne Dolcefino:
To get the winning hand, it helps to have the luck of the draw. Maybe that’s what Michael Surface has.
In January of 2005, one of his corporations buys an old H-E-B store on Antoine. The appraised value — $1. 2 million.
Two months later, Harris County announces it’s looking for a big building to replace Commissioner Lee’s Annex A in the same neighborhood that Michael Surface now owned his old H-E-B.
Maybe it was just a lucky hand for Mr. Surface. But years earlier, he was the guy in charge of Harris County’s building department.
(Hey, isn’t this the same guy who brought in the proposal to redevelop the Astrodome into a hotel? Good thing he’s outta there, so that deal can go forward!)
. . . tax records show [Surface] sold the [H-E-B] building and land to a corporation called HC5815 for $2.2 million. That corporation, in turn, got the winning hand months later. The head of that corporation was David Blumhardt from Dallas, who we’ve learned got the winning hand in at least nine Harris County real estate deals. His local representative on the Antoine project was the guy whose name we found on a worn out real estate sign — Jason G. Hall, Weston Partners, Ltd.
Where have I heard that name before?
Jason Hall used to work for Michael Surface at Harris County. Now, his real estate operation is located in Michael Surface’s offices.
When Jason Hall worked for the county, one of the projects he evaluated was 2525 Murworth. It’s now the home of Children’s Protective Services, part of a $35 million county real estate deal developed by Michael Surface just months after he left county government.
After the jump: a longer view!
More structures approved for demolition at the Allen House. Plus a trio of houses around town. Where? See our demo address list, after the jump.
A lovely and diverse group of demolitions in today’s edition. See them after the jump.
Today’s list of Houston demolition permits features six houses ready to bite the dust. Where are they? Keep reading.