A Swamplot reader writes in with some identifying info about the Katy homebuilder whose Heights Blvd. townhouse construction collapsed into a pile of sticks over the weekend. The collapse of two 4-story structures under construction shortly after the end of Saturday night’s storm didn’t end up injuring anyone, but it did set back construction and marketing efforts for the Madison Park development just south of White Oak Bayou.
The builder of the toppled properties at 103-117 E. 2nd St., in a corral of townhomes built earlier by another developer, is Keystone Classic Homes, an LLC managed by Michael D. Surface. That appears to be the same Mike Surface who found himself in local headlines a couple of years ago, before and after he admitted to a judge that he intended to influence his longtime friend, Harris County Commissioner Jerry Eversole, with approximately $100,000 in cash and gifts. As part of a plea deal, Surface ended up pleading guilty to filing a false income tax return and making false statements to federal officials in connection with that bribery case, which centered around county contracts; in November 2011 he received a sentence of 2 years’ probation, along with a restriction barring him from being able to do any business with federal, county, or city governments for 5 years.
And then there was Surface’s job on the Astrodome.
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Read more about: 77007, Astrodome, Construction Accidents, Crime, Homebuilders, Houston Heights, Townhomes
A Houston man’s arrest for Dumpster diving outside City Hall was news to Mayor Parker: “And I had to say, really?” says the mayor in teevee reporter Doug Miller’s story. “There’s an ordinance for that? Give me a break.” And Mayor Parker has since requested that city council revise the 1942 ordinance that criminalizes rummaging: Lawyers who want to see it repealed, reports the Houston Chronicle’s Mike Morris, say that the ordinance “adversely impacts homeless persons and absorbs law enforcement time that could otherwise be spent preventing more significant criminal activity.” But, reports Morris, potential changes won’t mean Houstonians will be free to help themselves to whatever and wherever they’d like: “[S]pokeswoman Janice Evans said the proposed repeal will be amended . . . to ensure that it only addresses the situation which saw [the man] cited for picking through a public trash can. Rummaging through trash cans or recycling bins at homes and businesses still will not be allowed . . . .” [KHOU; Houston Chronicle] Photo of Dumpster: Flickr user nicksaltman
Read more about: Crime, Mayor Parker, Ordinances, Public Space
February 13, 2013 – 1:00 pm
Thieves made off with copper wiring from UH’s University Center late Saturday night, a UH public safety department bulletin reports: A contractor noticed early Sunday morning that the wiring had gone missing; a reader tells Swamplot that this knocked out the building’s power and is delaying renovations. The Barnes & Noble and Cougar Byte stores inside the UC have been scrambling to set up temporary locations elsewhere on campus.
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Read more about: 77004, Construction Materials, Construction Problems, Crime, Electricity, Renovations, Schools, University of Houston, Utilities
October 24, 2012 – 2:58 pm
“Houstonians just don’t celebrate death and the past the way New Orleanians do,” writes John Nova Lomax in his recounting of 4 creepy tales from Bayou City history. “In fact, we tend to simply forget all the awful and weird things that have happened here over the last 176 years, and mercifully so, because there have been an enormous number of terrible episodes.” It’s much easier to forget, of course, when the gruesome settings themselves are summarily disposed of. The “Houston Heights House of Horror” — a 3-room shack at 732 Ashland St. that was the scene of a noted hatcheting in 1910 — by 1937 had been torn down and replaced. Its substitute is gone now too; a warehouse that’s home to a company called SemaSys now stands in its place. And down in Seabrook, condos occupy the site of the famous warehouse-like “Mansion on Todville Rd.” (in photo) where in 1984 a group of housesitting youngsters murdered its owner, child predator Bill List. [Houston Press] Photo of atrium, 3300 Todville Rd., Seabrook: Carl Guderian [license]
Read more about: Crime, Demolitions, Houston Heights, Houston History, Seabrook
October 23, 2012 – 3:05 pm
Here’s a view from earlier today of the ceiling inside Rizwan Siddiqi’s Cell Phone Wholesale shop at 3633 Hillcroft. Shortly before 4 this morning, a thief dropped into the store and grabbed as many as 80 smartphones before climbing back out the way he came, through the roof. Surveillance video shows the phoneburglar missing on his first attempt to jump back into the plenum space, hitting the display case before crashing back onto the floor. A tall stool placed on top of the case eventually allowed a gentler exit. The shop is carved out of one side of the Valero In-N-Out store at the corner of Windswept. [abc13] Photo: Phillip Mena/Click2Houston
Read more about: 77057, Burglaries, Crime, Hillcroft, Retail
October 17, 2012 – 1:31 pm
An investor in a possibly nonexistent real-estate venture headed by his friend Billy Frank Davis tells Chronicle reporter Mike Tolson that Davis didn’t let on to his friends that other friends had also invested with him: “He didn’t want word of mouth. Bill’s image was always the most important thing to him. He always portrayed himself as a very successful and wealthy person. Everybody thought Bill had money.” On Monday, the disbarred attorney pled guilty to a single count of wire fraud in connection with a Ponzi scheme that bilked his friends and golfing buddies at the Champions Golf Club, the River Oaks Country Club, and the Braeburn Country Club out of $7.8 million. According to Tolson’s report, however, the losses may have been much higher than that.
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Read more about: Crime, Golf Courses, Real Estate Investing, Scams
October 9, 2012 – 12:35 pm
In the suit filed yesterday against the operator of strip club Babes North at 10610 FM 1960 just east of Jones Rd., Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan accuses the club, formerly known as the Bikini Wing Bar, of flouting the laws governing sexually oriented businesses. “Babes is not a bikini bar. It is a topless and bottomless den of prostitution and drug dealing.” Notably, the lawsuit is also directed at the owners of the pad site in the Cypress Plaza Shopping Center, PJM Properties — for not taking reasonable measures to prevent criminal activity on its premises. [Cypress Creek Mirror] Photo: Click2Houston
Read more about: Crime, FM 1960, Lawsuits, Shopping Centers, SOBs
August 2, 2012 – 12:52 pm
If it’s, say, 1980, and you’re trying to get rid of a dead body, burying it at the foundation level of a brand-new condo complex going up over the reported site of an ancient cemetery might sound like a perfect after-offing disposal plan. But in Houston, you never know what’s going to get dug up next. HPD detective Carlos Cardenas tells Chronicle reporter Mike Glenn he doesn’t think the partial skeleton unearthed by construction workers yesterday on the site of the recently demolished Park Memorial Condominiums at 5292 Memorial Dr. (pictured above in a late stage of assisted decomposition) belongs to the native American graveyard reported to have existed there previously.
Forensic testing should give a clearer answer, but the circumstances of the body’s burial appear to tell a story on their own: The human remains were discovered along Chandler St. near Arnold, at the far northeastern corner of the complex, wedged between a retaining wall and a concrete slab that workers were taking out. The body was likely concealed there when the Park Memorial Condos were built, police detectives tell Glenn.
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Read more about: 77007, Apartments, Cemeteries, Condos, Construction Problems, Crime, Demolitions, Park Memorial Condominiums, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment, Rice Military
That new helpful “what to do if a crazed gunman starts shooting up your workplace” video posted last week by Houston’s Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security features the city’s new Washington Ave Permitting Center in a starring role, along with a cast of cleaned-up would-be plan checkers and health officials — and a bald, cold-blooded shooter wearing dark glasses and toting a menacing backpack. The gunman starts by offing a security guard and a bystander at the lobby elevators behind the receptionist’s desk, then works his way into various city departments. The video was completed 2 weeks before the recent well-publicized attack on theatergoers in Aurora, Colorado, where 12 people were killed and 58 injured. DHS’s advice for permit officers or anyone stuck in an office that finds itself suddenly transformed into a scene out of an action movie: Run. If you can’t run, hide. And if you can’t hide, fight. Here’s the scene:
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Read more about: 77002, City Officials, Crime, Downtown, Hazards, Videos, Washington Ave.
The robbers who held up a couple of IBC Bank locations inside Houston-area Kroger stores in 2 separate incidents over the last few months won’t have those branches to kick around any more. The IBC Bank in the Kroger at 11565 Hwy. 6 South in Sugar Land (at the corner of West Airport) and the one in the store at 3135 FM 528 and Bay Area Blvd. in Friendswood (featured in the surveillance video still above) have now been shut down — along with 2 other in-Kroger locations. The closings weren’t a direct result of the robberies, but part of International Bancshares Corp.’s plan to close up grocery-store locations — which have grown unprofitable as a result of new restrictions on bank fees — and open a few more standalone branches. IBC closed 20 Houston-area grocery-store branches — 19 in H-E-B Markets and another inside a Randall’s — last December.
Photo of suspect in Friendswood Kroger IBC Bank: Bay Area Citizen
Read more about: Banks, Crime, Grocery Stores, Openings and Closings, Retail
For the last 7 or so years, the atomic-ranch-era front of this 1929 bungalow at 1710 Welch St. served as the Scott Childress Studio, a hair salon. If you recognize that name, you likely know at least the outline of the rest of the story that goes with it: Childress was found on the floor of the property one Friday morning this past January, beaten to death with a pipe wrench; his roommate, Reginald Eaglin, was charged with the murder. The home was listed for sale in late February, but there’s a contract pending now. How that ends likely depends on a planning commission hearing scheduled for this afternoon. Up for approval: plans by Carnegie Homes to replace the modern-front house and the 2 apartments behind it — all on 7,500 sq. ft. — with 4 townhome lots along a central drive.
Photo: HAR
Read more about: 77006, Buying and Selling, Crime, Homes for Sale, Hyde Park, Montrose, Redevelopment, Townhomes
R. Allen Stanford, the former Houston real estate investor who made it to the big time before being convicted earlier this year of heading up a $7 billion Ponzi scheme, could be spending the next turn-of-the-century in federal prison — if he works it right. The former chairman of the Stanford Financial Group has been imprisoned since June 2009. In a Downtown Houston courtroom today, after Stanford maintained he “didn’t defraud anybody,” U.S. District Judge David Hittner sentenced him to 110 years. [L.A. Times; ; previously on Swamplot]
Read more about: Allen Stanford, Crime
Comment of the Day Runner-Up: Cameras on the Street, Before and After Boston
“Before Boston, my attitute on red light cameras was (1) there is no expectation of privacy on the roads, in your cars or otherwise in public, (2) no person is actually monitoring these cameras, you paranoid freaks and (3) only those who were breaking the law had anything to worry about. After Boston my attitude is the same plus (4) WE NEED MORE CAMERAS and for tapes to be saved at least thirty days to aid law enforcement!” [mel, commenting on Headlines: Challenging Keystone Pipeline Challenge; Watching ExxonMobil Campus Grow]