It looks like the 10.53 acres behind this sign where the Spring Branch RoomStore stands have been fosoldale, and the buyer has said it plans to build some rental townhomes. Broker David Littwitz says that the RoomStore here at 1009 Brittmoore Rd. facing the Katy Fwy. closed about a year ago, after the Richmond, Virginia, company filed for bankruptcy near the end of 2011. Real Estate Bisnow’s Catie Dixon reports that the buyer, a joint venture called Houston Texas Properties, intends to tear down the showroom to develop what they’re dubbing Arabella, desribed by Dixon as a “240-unit, upscale rental townhome community.” And they’re not wasting time: Dixon adds that the RoomStore should be coming down within the next few weeks.
Photo: Real Estate Bisnow
Read more about: 77043, Buying and Selling, Demolitions, Land Sales, Proposed Developments, Retail, Spring-Branch, Townhomes
The news that Downtown’s old Savoy Hotel has been sold and will be converted into a Holiday Inn seems to have inspired some nostalgia in the Houston Chronicle’s Craig Hlavaty. Going back over the hotel’s past as housing for law students and even boarding for Lee Harvey Oswald, in town one day to apply for a job at nearby Conoco, Hlavaty also finds evidence that the supposedly vacant building was anything but: “In 2004, someone named “squatterkid” was posting on a Houston architecture forum about living inside . . . even getting phone calls there from people expecting to make reservations at the long dormant hotel. The number was still listed. At the time, he said that there was still electricity running in the place, too. The squatter, who went by Sean when he spoke with the Houston Press in 2007, said he and some homeless folks made the hotel their home using the leftover furnishings.” You can read more from “squatterkid” here. [Houston Chronicle; HAIF; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Allyn West
Read more about: 77002, Buying and Selling, Downtown, Hotels, Houston History, Vacant Buildings
The long-vacant Savoy Hotel at 1616 Main has been sold to a group of investors and will be converted sometime this year into a flagship Holiday Inn, reports the Houston Chronicle’s Erin Mulvaney, adding to Downtown’s stock of both new and renovated hotels. Crews were spotted at the 17-story Savoy last month opening windows and building a wooden chute that was sending dusty innards down into a Dumpster, where the 7-story, pigeon-poop-encrusted original 1906 Savoy Apartments stood until that building was demolished in 2009. Once called the Savoy-Field Hotel, the 1960s-era building stands on the lot bound by Leeland, Main, Travis, and Pease, across from the construction site of the new 24-story SkyHouse apartments.
- Old Savoy Hotel to be Holiday Inn flagship [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Previously on Swamplot: Airing Out, At Least, the Old Savoy Downtown, Downtown SkyHouse Clearing the Ground First, New Convention Center Hotel Seems a Done Deal, Downtown Landmark Lancaster Hotel To Be Upgraded with ‘Prestigious Plumbing Accouterments’, Apartments in Old Humble Oil Building Downtown To Go the Way of Its Hotel Neighbors, Where Downtown’s New Residential Tower Will Go, Guano with the Wind: Demolishing the Savoy Asbestos Possible, Emergency Demo: The Savoy Hotel’s Final Weekend Stay Downtown, Downtown’s Pigeon Poop Powder Keg Will Not Go Boom
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Read more about: 77002, Buying and Selling, Downtown, Hotels, Renovations, Vacant Buildings
This 1940 bungalow in Magnolia Grove had been all set to be torn down, showing up in the Daily Demolition Report on Wednesday. But the previous owners, who bought the 1,200-sq.-ft. Gibson St. house in 2005 and sold it in 2012, say that it has been “spared.” Here’s their story:
After discovering that we were expecting our second child, we quickly realized that the 2 bed, 1-1/2 bath was not large enough for our growing family. We hoped that perhaps a single person or couple would purchase the property. We were naive, of course, as the only offers received were from builders planning to build the typical 3 story, 4K square foot beast near downtown. After much heartache and a few tears, we accepted an offer from Urban Living and fully expected the home to be demolished.
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Read more about: 77007, Buying and Selling, Demolitions, Magnolia Grove, Relocations
The Leader is reporting that the Baptist Temple Church on Rutland and 20th St. in the Heights has sold 2 of its oldest buildings to Braun Enterprises, which says it will tear them down and replace them with less sacred spaces — that is, retail or a restaurant. If the almighty dollar has triumphed, there’s still a silver lining — or so Charlotte Aguilar suggests, reporting that the sale of the buildings — the church’s original sanctuary, built in 1912, and a larger one built in 1940 — will fund a $3 million renovation to its remaining 65,000-sq.-ft. T.C. Jester Building on 20th; a new 300-seat sanctuary will be added and classrooms and offices updated. [The Leader] Photo: Charlotte Aguilar via The Leader
Read more about: 77008, Buying and Selling, Churches, Demolitions, Houston Heights, Religious Facilities, Restaurants, Retail
“I am thankful for Ben’s research and for putting me in touch with Robert who had the right buyer for my Dad’s house. I have always loved this house and have great memories here. It’s where I learned to appreciate unique architecture. I now live in NYC.
I will have an open house on June 1st 10a to 4p if anyone would like to stop by, say hello — see the ‘before’ and the Texas shaped hot-tub my dad made in the back before it probably goes. If you are allergic to dust, wear a mask.
PS — the boat is gone. long story.” [laura kellner, commenting on The Century Built Home in Garden Oaks That Sold in About an Hour]
Read more about: 77018, Buying and Selling, Comments, Garden Oaks, Modern Design, Open Houses
“The fact is that the neighbors are not part of the transaction. The transaction happens between a developer who legally acquired land and new customers who will come from an outside area. Therefore developers do not have to and do not listen to them.” [commonsense, commenting on Comment of the Day: An Atmosphere of Mistrust]
Read more about: Buying and Selling, Comments, Neighborhood Disputes
Here’s the third of 4 houses designed by not-so-famous Houston architect Allen R. Williams in the 1940s and fifties, dubbed “Century Built” homes. If the name was intended to indicate how long the concrete-block homes were all supposed to last, the record isn’t so stellar: The one off Campbell Rd. was torn down some time ago. But the others are doing fine: One in Idylwood was snatched up by an architect a few years ago, and another in Country Club Place has served as a showcase for the renovation work of its current owner, architect Ben Koush.
But this unrenovated Century Built home at 851 W. 43rd St., in the middle of Garden Oaks, didn’t last so long, either: Real estate agent Robert Searcy tells Swamplot he had it locked up in a contract very quickly earlier this week, after he made a few phone calls. Not to a builder — the sellers didn’t want the place to be torn down — but reportedly to a serial renovator interested in Midcentury modern design.
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Read more about: 77018, Buying and Selling, Garden Oaks, Houston Architects, Modern Design, Real Estate Marketing
The low-lying Skylane Central apartments beside the Taylor St. bridge are about to be sold to Greystar, which says it plans to tear them down and put up something like this parkside 8-story complex — but that’s just one of several renderings the Houston Chronicle is reporting that the developer is considering for the site near White Oak Dr. at the southern end of the Woodland Heights. The deal should be done by September.
Rendering: Meeks + Partners
Read more about: 77007, Apartments, Buying and Selling, Demolitions, Proposed Developments, Woodland Heights
April 25, 2013 – 10:00 am
Central Square Plaza has been sold, and new owner Keeley Megarity, whose LLC closed on the 1-acre Midtown property at 2100 Travis St. about a week ago, says that a decision about how to renovate these buildings — and what to renovate them into — will be made in the next 30-45 days.
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Read more about: 77002, Buying and Selling, Commercial Real Estate, Midtown, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments, Renovations, Vacant Buildings
Note: Read an update to this story here.
What’s left of the Gramercy Place apartments on the 200 block of Portland St. were sold this month. A few of the apartment buildings, which date to 1935, were torn down before being replaced in 2002 by the Museum Tower on Montrose. Now, the seller’s agent says that the remaining 5 buildings and 31 units that records show have been owned for the past 15 years by an entity controlled by Rebecca Parsons were closed on two weeks ago.
And the buyer? The seller’s agent wouldn’t say. But a Swamplot reader with knowledge of the transaction shares a document and some rumors that suggest the buyer is an LLC presided over by Hungry’s Cafe and Bistro owner Fred Sharifi. And the document states an intent to smash the rest of the apartments and put up “residential rental midrise buildings.”
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Read more about: 77006, Apartments, Buying and Selling, Cotswold Court, Museum District, Proposed Developments, Real Estate Investing
“It looks like someone has bought the whole block between Feagan, Westcott, and Knox in Rice Military next to the Commonwealth Title office building,” a reader writes in accompaniment of a series of photos. “There are several old cottages with for sale signs showing the houses as ‘to be moved’ although they don’t look salvageable to me.” What, the reader wants to know, is going to happen here?
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Read more about: 77007, Buying and Selling, Commercial Real Estate, Rice Military, Signage
The new home of a new San Jacinto Stone is being set up here, behind the begonias and bamboo shoots at Wholesale Gardens in Bellaire. The stoneyard, dating to 1947, closed at 195 Yale St. at the end of last month when longtime owners Sarah and Don Hunt sold the 8-acre property near the Washington Heights Walmart to a commercial developer. Greg Thompson, owner of the landscape architecture firm Thompson + Hanson that runs Wholesale Gardens, says that the Hunts agreed to sell the San Jacinto Stone name — and the remaining inventory, too, after that February fire sale.
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Read more about: 77401, Bellaire, Buying and Selling, Landscaping, Openings and Closings
March 20, 2013 – 12:34 pm
Back in 2003, 2 of the 3 Humble Oil buildings at 1212 Main and Dallas St. were turned into hotels. The oil-to-hospitality transformation will soon be complete, reports the Houston Business Journal’s Shaina Zucker: A Maryland company has acquired the 3 buildings for about $80 million and says it will convert the last of them into another hotel. Presently, that tower at 914 Dallas St. holds 82 apartments. By 2015, reports Zucker, it will become a 166-room SpringHill Suites, joining the 191-room Courtyard and the 171-room Residence Inn — each of which is now dubbed a “Houston Downtown Convention Center” hotel. [Houston Business Journal] Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Read more about: 77002, Apartments, Buying and Selling, Downtown, Hotels, Proposed Developments, Renovations
Comment of the Day: Cheaper, Close-In
“I would just add to what Cody said. You can avoid traffic AND get a big house and lawn here in Houston. You just need to set aside your prejudices about certain neighborhoods. We’ve been living in the Brays Oaks area, formerly known as Fondren Southwest, since 2007, and it’s wonderful. Houses prices are on-par with far-flung suburbs like Jersey Village and Spring; far less than Inside the Loop. Barring any major accidents we can get from our house to the Museum District in less than 25 minutes; the Medical Center in under 20. My commute to work only takes me one exit on the Southwest Freeway. I take a certain satisfaction and watching all the people from Sugar Land sit in traffic, knowing that they spent more and got less house than we did.
(Crime issues here are overblown, by the way – the result of sensationalized local news reports. The public schools are lousy, but we have some great private schools.)” [ZAW, commenting on Comment of the Day: First We Crowd]