Touring a local home for an upcoming TV news story on green building in Houston, abc13 reporter Miya Shay comes across some recycled leftovers from the last election:
The home isn’t finished yet. So, while the family waits for the stairs to be stained, carpeted, or whatever, they have cut up old campaign signs to use as temporary flooring on the stairs! As the homeowner told me, “They are very durable, and comfortable to walk on.”
This landscape plan from the Boymelgreen website is our first glimpse of the two condo towers the company is planning for 5.5 acres on the southwest corner of the intersection of San Felipe and a short segment of Woodway — just west of Voss, on the Right Bank of Buffalo Bayou. And this morning the Houston Business Journal has more to report:
New York City-based Boymelgreen Developers is developing the project for landowner Azorim, a publicly traded company in Israel of which Boymelgreen owns 64 percent. . . . The unnamed project will consist of two buildings with 28 residential floors each and an 18,000-square-foot fitness center and spa. The project will have a total of 237 condos starting at $1 million each. Units will be an average size of 2,500 square feet.
The architect is Ziegler Cooper. Boymelgreen’s website refers to the project as the San Felipe Condominiums. (And it reports a building that’s 14 condos smaller.)
Jennifer Dawson’s report in the HBJ says that sales won’t start until the fall, after a sales center — which will later “be converted into a spa, restaurant or office building” — is built on the site of the formerDolce & Freddo next door.
Below the fold: That 1960s office-and-shopping center on the site won’t go quietly!
It’s a little old bungalow on a small lot . . . but it’s clean and green inside! The sellers of this 2-bedroom, 1 1/2-bath, 960-sq.-ft. home say they’re trying to get this Sixth Ward home LEED certified:
The 1920 facade has been preserved, but when you open the door, its all about 21st century. The hm has been renovated using non toxic materials, low VOC paint & sustainable design materials.
A neighbor who watched the work reports the house was sold to the current owners as a teardown:
It was a nasty, dirty, filthy, funky house with a garage in the front yard. They tore the garage off the front, moved the house around on the lot a tad, and have done an outstanding renovation.
Plus: the neighbors are very very quiet, says our correspondent. The house is next to Glenwood Cemetery.
Blogger and head Michael Pollack cheerleader Lou Minatti posts this street-level video report on the state of the real-estate market in Katy and West Houston, and includes the following odd claim:
That house built out of shipping containers on Cordell St. in Brookesmith looks like it’ll be ready for delivery soon. Yes, this was a spec house — and yes, there already is a buyer.
Last year, Numen Development owners Katie Nichols and John Walker used shipping containers to construct the Apama Mackey Gallery on 11th St. in the Heights — because the gallery owner wanted a structure she can move when the property owner kicks her off the land. But the house Numen is building on Cordell looks like it’s going to be around for a while. It comes with its own, uh . . . doublewide lot, and it’s right across the street from a meat-processing plant.
After the jump: drawings, models, and an earlier construction photo of this neat little three-bedroom, three-bath,1,851-square-foot package!
How do you pack so many condos into an old warehouse building in Houston’s First Ward? Easy! You knock the warehouse down, build a gate around the block, and pack ’em in!
Permit in hand, Terramark Homes begins construction on the Sawyer Brownstones at 2110 Shearn St. The forty-two units will take up the block surrounded by Shearn, Hemphill, Spring, and Henderson Streets, just south of I-10.
No images of the outside yet, so it’s hard to say if these brownstones will indeed have brown stone or just be brownstone-like. But continue after the jump and we’ll show you the secret to shoehorning so many townhome-style condos into a single block!
This, reports Houston Architecture Info Forum member Porchman, is a drawing of the $30 million, 195-unit, five-story apartment complex about to go up on the former site of the Kaplan’s Ben Hur department store on Yale, which was demolished back in June. Except it’ll be different: That giant yellow steel Y bracket you see won’t be there. And the retail indicated on the building’s ground floor is apparently just for show.
The Retreat at the Heights, the newest “Retreat” development from Allied Realty Services, will reportedly feature an equal mix of one- and two-bedroom units, a pool and fitness room, residents willing to shell out an average of $1500 a month, and a two-level parking garage. One of those levels will be below grade (detention-pond parking, anyone?) and each will be accessed from a separate street.
Notable: Top floors are shown with metal siding, a nod to the many simple metal warehouses that littered the Heights before they were replaced with historic homes.
Porchman adds:
Another developer is going to put 4 townhomes on the lot west of Long John Silvers, which is currently being currently being used as the construction lot. They’re targeting the fried fish lovers market . . .
From the design mags to demolition . . . in less than ten years! Remember the modern house with the curious metal proboscis off Bissonnet, near the Museum of Fine Arts? It won a couple of design awards a few years back from the American Institute of Architects, but if the judges had realized it was temporary housing it probably would have swept that category.
A week ago 1 Waverly Ct. appeared quietly in our demolition report, but it became a smashing success just a few days later. It was built in 1999.
After the jump, what lurked behind the proboscis: photos of this record-shattering short-timer from the architects’ website.
Swamplot covers real estate, home design and renovation, architecture, and the landscape of Houston, Texas. Swamplot did not flood during Allison. Honest! Read more
