Hold on tight as you tour the sights in this 4-bedroom home overlooking a ravine in Bayou Woods. The dressed-up 1998 mansion jumped onto the market on Wednesday for just under $8 million.
AÂ landscaped path leads up to the entry fountain and circular drive:
Renovations after Hurricane Ike appear to have maximized the lighting and open plan of a streamlined Bayou Woods home cited in separate records as a 1960 or 1964 edition. The property listed a week ago; it has a $2.9 million asking price.
The daintily decorated Bayou Woods mansion owned by a Vincent Cabella — put up for sale last year for $4 million but reduced to $3.45 million by the time Swamplot featured it in March — has been discounted again. Now come up with just $2.45 million and the cozy little 5-6 bedroom, 5 1/2-bath retreat is yours!
How could you refuse an offer like this?
Of course, this isn’t just your run-of-the-mill elephant-statues-by-the-front-yard-fountain Memorial Dr. show-off-piece. According to the New York Daily News, it’s actually the hideaway mobster Vincent Palermo — aka Vinny Ocean — retired to after he testified against some of his former underlings in New Jersey’s DeCavalcante crime family and joined the federal witness protection program. (Cabella, crime reporter Greg B. Smith explained, was the former Mafia boss’s new Houston name.)
But he’s led an active retirement:
What inside info does Swamplot have to spill about this 6,648-sq.-ft. mansion on more than an acre off Memorial Dr. in Bayou Woods?
Absolutely none. Really: We don’t know a thing about it.
Okay, okay — nothing other than . . . uh, publicly available information. And this little reader comment last week that tipped us all off. Yeah, you read it too!
“Vinny Ocean†is selling his Memorial mansion. It is now listed at [$]3.5M. How much would YOU offer knowing that some mouthbreathing NJ thug might not know Palermo sold it and no longer lives there? I’d knock 3M right off the top. You really oughta amble over to HAR and take a look at this place – over the TOP!
Who’s Vinny Ocean?
The Swamplot Price Adjuster needs your nominations! Found a property you think is poorly priced? Send an email to Swamplot, and be sure to include a link to the listing or photos. Tell us about the property, and explain why you think it deserves a price adjustment. Then tell us what you think a better price would be. Unless requested otherwise, all submissions to the Swamplot Price Adjuster will be kept anonymous.
Location: 8906 B Memorial Dr., Bayou Woods
Details: 7 bedrooms, 5 1/2 baths; 7,521 sq. ft. on a 25,740-sq.-ft. lot
Price: $1,650,000
History: On the market for more than 2 1/2 years. 8 separate price reductions, totaling $925K. Just cut $100K at the beginning of this month.
Says the nominator of this home:
This place is just too much. Really. I mean … 22 ft. ceilings in the Living Room? Who’s got that much of a swelled head? And 2 separate game rooms? One of them has its own kitchen and dining room! I think “built for builder” says it all.
But what do I know? At only 7,500sf maybe it’s not grandiose enough for the new Bayou Woods.
I don’t really know much about this place, but it sure has been hanging around on the market for awhile.
What should the price be?
He may have officially retired last summer, but the former CEO of Houston’s HCC Insurance Holdings doesn’t seem to have slowed down! A settlement with the SEC, which accused Stephen L. Way of backdating stock options on at least 38 occasions, means the former executive is barred from serving as an officer or director of any public reporting company for five years. But Way has apparently found a way to keep himself busy, making improvements around his Bayou Woods home.
There’s just one problem with the lovely boxwood-hedged and pine-shaded parking lot pictured above, along with a concrete driveway and speed bumps Way also had built down the street:
A reader directs our attention to this proposed 16-story office building facing the south side of the Katy Freeway, just outside the Loop — on the current site of a Houston’s First Baptist Church parking lot.
Hines plans to build the office building and an 11-level, 1,500-car parking garage on the lot, which the developer would lease from the church. The congregation has already voted to authorize church representatives to finalize and sign a 99-year ground lease for the property.
The garage would help solve the church’s chronic parking problems: According to the HFBC website, 300 cars currently park off-site on weekends. With the Hines development, the church would lose the 480 spaces in the lot now available during the week, but gain 1,500 spaces for church use on weekends and after office hours.
Below the fold, lots more images of the proposed office building and garage on HFBC property.
