Has Whole Foods Market finally signed a lease for the store on Post Oak Blvd. near San Felipe that the developers of BLVD Place have been promising since 2007? Yesterday Whole Foods announced it had signed leases for new grocery stores averaging 37,500 sq. ft. in 12 cities, including Houston. Whether that means a new location near the Galleria or somewhere else in the city, it could still be a while before it opens: “These stores,” says the press release, “currently are scheduled to open in fiscal year 2014 and beyond.” [MarketWatch; previously on Swamplot] Rendering: Wulfe & Co. Update, 2:50 pm: The new store will be in Champions.
Read more about: 77056, BLVD Place, Galleria, Grocery Stores, Leasing, Retail, Uptown, Whole Foods
California chef Bradley Ogden spent 2 days investigating 16 different restaurant locations in Houston recently. And he now has signed letters of intent for leases on 3 of them: One near the future site of ExxonMobil’s corporate campus south of The Woodlands, and the other 2 “across the street from each other five minutes from River Oaks.” Ogden says they’ll be “branded, quick, casual, farm-to-table restaurants. The Bradley Ogden restaurant inside Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas is shutting down next month. [Eater Vegas]
Read more about: Leasing, Restaurants, River Oaks, Spring
“Update on this corner: Elevation Burger is set to open up in the near future. Jonathan Kagan Properties bought the property and did a fairly extensive update to the structure, then turned it over to Elevation Burger for their build out, which is currently well under way.
Trust me, Mai Thai’s closing was a good thing. I own the property next door and saw a steady parade of roaches, rats, and various other vermin going in and out of that building over the past few years. Anytime you see a blue tarp on the roof of a building for months and months on end, it’s a pretty sure sign that they are in decline. If you don’t have the funds to fix your leaky roof in Houston, the end can’t be far off.” [Jared M, commenting on Bye Bye, Mai Thai? Feeding Another Kirby High-Rise Rumor]
Read more about: 77098, Buying and Selling, Comments, Leasing, Restaurants, Upper Kirby
Does the conversion of 2 former Borders Books locations (or at least part of them) into some sort of medical facility constitute a trend? Texas Children’s Pediatric Associates is building a clinic in the former Borders mezzanine space in the not-in-River-Oaks Centre at River Oaks at the corner of West Alabama and Kirby. And Kelsey-Seybold announced yesterday it’ll be turning the former Borders store in Meyerland Plaza — along with the long-vacant Planet Music space above it — into a new medical clinic and pharmacy. Of the 72,000 sq. ft. in the new “Multi-Specialty Care Center,” 27,000 will be used as warehouse space, according to a company press release.
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Read more about: 77096, Big Box Stores, Leasing, Malls, Medical Clinics, Meyerland Plaza, Renovations, Retail
A new website launched by a Houston startup aims to simplify the complicated process of leasing and setting up shop in a new office, warehouse, restaurant, or retail space. Kicked off this month with about 1,500 Houston property listings from about a dozen local and national brokers, The Square Foot is targeted at small and medium businesses that have never leased commercial property before. After steering customers to properties that match their criteria, the site intends to smooth out the process of finding helping tenants find furniture, IT services, movers, and related services as well. Co-founder Justin Lee tells Swamplot the site is focusing on Houston for now, but hopes to expand coverage to Texas’s other major cities by the end of the year.
Read more about: Commercial Real Estate, Leasing, Online Resources
On its way to building a new headquarters at some yet-to-be-revealed location “within the I-10 and Beltway 8 corridors,” newly jettisoned refining and chemicals company Phillips 66 announced back in March that it’ll be parking employees in a few separate temporary office locations in the meantime. Many will stay in the Two and Three Westlake Park office buildings on Memorial Dr. east of George Bush Park where they are already. But a previously unidentified third temporary location has just been revealed: The top floors of the Pinnacle Westchase building at 3010 Briarpark, where the company will be taking over 209,482 sq. ft. [Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Pinnacle Westchase
Read more about: 77042, Leasing, Office Space, Westchase
This 1963 warehouse on the corner of Delano and Dallas in East Downtown was converted into an ultramod residence in 2003. But its new owners, who purchased it about a month and a half ago, are turning it back to commercial use as a co-working space and high-tech accelerator intended for small startup companies developing applications for mobile phones. The 5,000-sq.-ft. building now features a single 800-sq.-ft. dedicated office space and a 3,000-sq.-ft. co-working area which entrepreneurs can use for a $199-a-month per person fee (all-hours access, wi-fi, printer, and coffee included) — or reserve a specific desk in for $299. Here’s how it looks:
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Read more about: 77003, East Downtown, Leasing, Office Space, Openings and Closings, Warehouses
How do you discover that the house you’re renting out has become the focus of a scam? Well, If the scam’s targets show up on your doorstep, that’s one clue. The owners of the Heights home on Rutland St. pictured above found themselves in that situation last night. So this morning one of them sent Swamplot this tale, hoping readers will have some helpful advice to offer:
We recently bought a bigger house in the Heights and listed our current house for rent on the MLS. All went well (had a lease signed with a great tenant in just three days!) until last night. This friendly couple rang the doorbell and told me that they had been texting with the owner of the house for a week about renting it. She told them she was on a mission trip in Washington DC and couldn’t show them the house right away, but that they should come by the house and look in the windows. If they liked what they saw they were to send her a deposit check. I was flummoxed since I am the owner and had signed a lease two weeks earlier with someone else. I had heard about this happening with rentals listed on Craigslist but didn’t think the scammers would take it to this level. They had posted fraudulent listings on several sites, including Trulia.com and HotPads.com. They listed it for less rent than the real posting and said we’d take dogs and cats.
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Read more about: 77008, Crime, Houston Heights, Leasing, Scams
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
Read more about: 77002, Downtown, Government Agencies, Leasing, Office Space
Did yesterday’s announcement that Dunkin’ Donuts plans to open 16 new franchises in Houston over the next 5 years add fuel to the persistent rumor that one of them is headed for the recently cleared northwest corner of Westheimer and Dunlavy in Montrose? A leasing agent who says he’s negotiating with “a couple of very strong retailers” to get them into the new 4,829-sq.-ft. center planned for the site by owner SFT Investments is ready to quash it. “I will tell you that at no time were we in negotiations with Dunkin Donuts,” Jed Mandel of Edge Realty Partners tells Swamplot. “I do not know how that rumor was started but I still get phone calls on the property begging us not to put them in.” [Swamplot inbox] Rendering: Edge Realty Partners
Read more about: 77006, Fast Food, Franchises and Chain Stores, Leasing, Montrose, Proposed Developments, Restaurants, Retail
For the first time since 2008, when Aurora Picture Show left the converted church in Sunset Heights currently commandeered by 14 Pews, the quirky flickhouse founded by microcinema pioneer Andrea Grover will be gaining its own dedicated moviehouse. In the interim, Aurora’s succeeding directors have been organizing film programs from a bungalow on the Menil campus at 1524 Sul Ross. But starting this June, the organization will have a new home with a big screen. It’s a metal-clad building at 2442 Bartlett St. currently used as a studio and gallery by artist and former Aurora board member Molly Gochman, in the small arts compound she owns just east of Kirby.
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Read more about: 77098, Attractions, Leasing, Movie-Theaters, Upper Kirby
Comment of the Day: The Lowdown on the Elevation Burger Lease
Trust me, Mai Thai’s closing was a good thing. I own the property next door and saw a steady parade of roaches, rats, and various other vermin going in and out of that building over the past few years. Anytime you see a blue tarp on the roof of a building for months and months on end, it’s a pretty sure sign that they are in decline. If you don’t have the funds to fix your leaky roof in Houston, the end can’t be far off.” [Jared M, commenting on Bye Bye, Mai Thai? Feeding Another Kirby High-Rise Rumor]