THOSE EMPTYING GOVERNMENT OFFICES 
The federal government is still paying more than $3.3 million a year for the (as of last September) only 21 percent occupied 117,000-sq.-ft. U.S. Attorney’s office at 919 Milam St. Downtown (the lease expires in June 2013; the offices are moving to Wells Fargo Center). And over at Three Allen Center (at left), a much smaller lease for more than 11,000 sq. ft. by the General Services Administration that expires in 2014 is only 1 percent occupied. Those are the top Houston highlights in a report detailing unused office space the GSA is spending big bucks to lease. According to Texas Watchdog reporter Mark Lisheron’s scouring of data unearthed by a report in the Washington Examiner, 103 Texas properties leased by the GSA for government agencies are less than 5 percent occupied. [Texas Watchdog; spreadsheet of Texas leases] Photo: LoopNet
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Tag: Downtown
CITYCENTRE OWNER BUYING HOUSTON PAVILIONS 
Houston’s Midway Companies, along with an unnamed New York Partner, is set to acquire Houston Pavilions from the receiver who took over the Downtown mall last year, according to a report in today’s HBJ. Reporter Jennifer Dawson notes reports to the bankruptcy court indicate that the development’s retail space is now 66 percent leased, and the property has a positive cash flow — before debt service. In the year before its default, Pavilions’ original developer made no payments on its original $120.6 million 2007 loan. [Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Haynes-Whalley
THE SECRET HOMELESS CAVES UNDER DOWNTOWN 
Officers on HPD’s Homeless Outreach Team show teevee reporter Robert Arnold a secret den favored by a portion of Downtown’s homeless population — tucked under the Louisiana St. bridge over Buffalo Bayou. Dubbed “the caves,” the not-tall-enough-to-stand-in space snakes along the bridge, further back than Arnold’s flashlight can shine. Layers of occupied and unoccupied sleeping bags, clothing, and trash cover the surface, and Arnold describes the scent as “thick and unrelenting.” Arnold’s report doesn’t specify how many people are living in the warren-like hideaway, but from the pictures he shows, it’s easy to imagine dozens. “We’ve had whole families in here,” explains police sergeant Stephen Wick. [Click2Houston]
Harris County Housing Authority interim CEO Tom McCasland takes a visitor from Portland along the path of the bike trail he hopes will soon connect Downtown Houston seamlessly to the city’s northwestern suburbs. From Georgia’s Market downtown they head out the MKT Trail into the Heights, which dead ends near the Shepherd-Durham overpasses. “The lot turned into a truck path, which ended at a decrepit railroad bridge. We took a sharp right down a singletrack path along the edge of the bayou far below us,” writes Elly Blue, who’s been touring U.S. cities to assess their bikeability. McCasland, an advocate for expanding Houston bikeways, tells the Houston Press‘s John Nova Lomax that “part of the city’s latest grand biking plan is to dynamite [that burned-out bridge] and rebuild it as a bike/pedestrian thoroughfare. The trail will then continue along White Oak Bayou’s banks and connect with the existing trail that begins at West 11th and TC Jester and heads north through Timbergrove, Garden Oaks, Oak Forest and all the way up to Acres Homes.”
MEDITERRANEAN TWINS IN BAYOU PLACE 
Two replacement restaurants operated by a single owner are now set for the Bayou Place spot Downtown left vacant by Mingalone Italian Bar & Grill when it closed a year ago. Little Napoli Italian Cuisine is moving from its place up the street to share a kitchen with Kabobs Grill Mediterranean Cuisine in the space at 540 Texas Ave. [b4-u-eat; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Mingalone
A 4-year-old child got her foot stuck in the open, unmarked 3-inch gap between the rotating floor and stationary wall at the Spindletop Restaurant atop the Hyatt Regency Hotel Downtown, according to a lawsuit filed by her parents earlier this week. The incident, which took place last October, resulted in several deep lacerations and “likely permanent disfigurement” of the child’s foot, according to the complaint. Her parents were able to pull the girl’s foot out of the gap and trapped shoe after a minute, but only seconds before the floor rotated far enough to push her in front of a pole supporting a handrail along the window.
Looking down onto the roof of the couple-month-old Scott Gertner’s venue downtown, you can see the steel parts of the new rooftop bar soon to be made into a pavilion . . . atop Houston Pavilions. A reader sends this photo of the scene, taken from the Pavilions office tower. At the top left of the photo is the intersection of Fannin and Dallas:
The blue box area located in the middle of the set beams has been there since they started construction for roof access (It used to have the words “No Step” on it). We’ve seen construction workers go in and out of it since then. Most of this work was done last Friday and over the weekend. I’m guessing because of the steel beams they had to close off part of the street to crane it up there.
That’s a good guess, judging from this photo posted on the bar’s Facebook page on Sunday:
Already busy with 3 local apartment projects, including one just beginning construction next to the new Whole Foods on Waugh, a 399-unit development to replace the Montrose Fiesta on Dunlavy, and another on the site of the old Art Institute of Houston building at 1900 Yorktown, developer Marvy Finger says he’s planning to build Downtown as well, reports Real Estate Bisnow‘s Catie Dixon. In the works: an 8-story midrise at the corner of Texas and Crawford St. Yes, that’s the site of the 1926 Ben Milam Hotel, a long-vacant 10-story building remembered as the first Houston hotel ever to feature air conditioning.
ARCO OFFICE GOING DOWN; DOWNTOWN HOUSTON CLUB BUILDING WILL STAY PUT 
Dismemberment of the former ARCO office building west of Eldridge at 15375 Memorial Dr. should begin sometime within a month or two, Catie Dixon reports. What will new owner Skanska USA do with the 21-acre site — rumored as a possible location for the new Phillips 66 headquarters? Skanska is currently hunting for an architect to provide a master plan, Dixon writes, “potentially with a couple of offices.” Meanwhile, the other pre-owned office building purchased recently by the Swedish construction firm appears safe from the wrecking ball: The company’s regional manager tells Dixon he expects to begin remodeling the Houston Club building at 811 Rusk St. downtown by the end of 2012. [Real Estate Bisnow; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Houston Club building: Silberman Properties
EXXONMOBIL’S HUMBLE GIFT TO THE CITY? 
What will happen to its well-shaded 44-story downtown headquarters building at 800 Bell St., once ExxonMobil decamps for the new campus the oil giant is building at Houston’s northern reaches? The company “has not announced what will happen to its downtown building,” writes longtime real estate reporter Ralph Bivins about the iconic 1963 tower that houses at its top the storied Petroleum Club. “One of the most interesting rumors we’ve heard about it is that Exxon Mobil will donate the building to the City of Houston for municipal offices. You know, we can’t sell it, so let’s just give it to Annise Parker instead.” [Culturemap] Photo: Flickr user lc_db
THE DEEP RETAIL DISCOUNTS AT HOUSTON PAVILIONS 
Four years after its opening, the troubled Downtown mall-office complex known as Houston Pavilions may sell for $50 to $75 million below the cost of its construction. To avoid foreclosure on a loan valued at $130.7 million, the developers turned the property over to a receiver late last year; Transwestern is now marketing the project for sale. Offices are fully occupied, but the big problem is the 59-percent-vacant retail portion of the project, says Real Estate Alert: “More than half of the retail tenants haven’t been paying full rent because the overall retail occupancy rate remains below the prescribed threshold cited in their leases. A buyer could convert about 42,000 sf of vacant retail space into offices to exploit downtown Houston’s booming office market . . . However, a conversion of all the retail space isn’t an option, because doing so would make it impossible to meet the retail occupancy threshold necessary for the existing tenants to pay full rent.” [Real Estate Alert; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Flickr user cjt3
No photos of it, but there is this sketch from 1898, showing a 24-ft.-by-24 ft. pier-and-beam structure intended to house the fledgling Rice Institute vocational school. Rice University historian Melissa Kean says it was on 6 1/2 acres of property on Louisiana St. downtown — apparently somewhere near the YMCA building torn down last year. (A construction invoice, detailing the completed price of $498.71, references a fence facing a now-vanished Frederick St.) 14 years later, the Institute got a restart on a swampy 295-acre campus southwest of town.
REPAIRS DONE, WEDGE AS IT WAS 
The Swamplot reader who noted a color change in the panels at the top of the WEDGE International Tower at Louisiana and Bell St. downtown last week informs us that they’ve since been returned to their original appearance, and submits this pic from a perch at the Tellepsen YMCA a couple of blocks away to prove it: “Presumably, as one of the commenters surmised, they were just running through some routine maintenance.” We now return to our regularly scheduled Swamplot programming. Photo: Swamplot inbox
The reddish steel structure shown here is UH architecture grad Neil Denari‘s design for the new light-rail transfer station on Main St. between Capitol and Rusk downtown, where the new East End and Southeast Lines currently under construction will intersect with the existing rail line. Besides Denari, whose firm is based in LA, 3 New York and 1 local architecture firm were invited to dream up schemes for the long open-air, 11-ft.-wide rail platform. A jury selected by Metro will pick the winning design, but Metro is still asking for rider comments on each of them.
A SECOND RUN AT GROCERIES FOR DOWNTOWN 
Today is opening day for Georgia’s Market Downtown at 420 Main St., the same space where Byrd’s Market shut down last summer. The opening of Phoenicia Specialty Foods at One Park Place across from Discovery Green in the meantime means Georgia’s won’t be Downtown’s only grocery store. Like Phoenicia, Georgia’s is a second location of a more suburban operation (Georgia’s Farm to Market, in the former Kmart on the I-10 feeder just east of Dairy Ashford), and includes a cafe and bar (The Cellar, underground). [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Eater Houston
