April 22, 2013 – 11:00 am
Just flip the sand traps to sandboxes and the water hazards to water features, and you’re most of the way there: A 440-home master-planned community, reports The Rancher’s Zach Haverkamp, is aimed for the site of the old Green Meadows Golf Course in Katy: Lennar Homes, Meritage Homes, and Village Builders have started construction on the first model homes of the Falls at Green Meadows on the 242-acre, 36-hole course groomed out of the prairie near Franz Rd. and Avenue D. The course was open from 1965 to 2008. Developer Tim Fitzpatrick tells Haverkamp: “We wanted to be in the heart of Katy, and if you look around, this is one of the few tracts . . . that remain.” [The Rancher] Photo: Zach Haverkamp
Read more about: 77493, Golf Courses, Katy, Master-Planned Communities, New Construction: Residential, Proposed Developments
Each of these purple specks — or black holes, depending on your perspective — represents a demolition permit issued by the city in 2012. The planning and development department has posted this and a few other maps online with an overview of demographic data.
After the jump, you can see in more detail the demos inside the Loop from 2012 and 2011, juxtaposed with other maps showing the permits for single- and multi-family construction. You know. For balance:
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Read more about: Demolitions, Houston Data, Maps, New Construction: Residential, Online Resources
February 25, 2013 – 2:30 pm
Most of this East Downtown property, according to city records, was purchased in November 2012 by CitySide Homes; signs recently posted here suggest that the contemporary townhome’s eastward expansion will continue to continue — this site is just 5 blocks from where Urban Living says it’s building around that leaning Leeland St. live oak — on these 2 purchased parcels between Polk, Clay, Nagle, and Delano that add up to a little more than an acre.
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Read more about: 77003, East Downtown, Land Development, Land Sales, New Construction: Residential, Signage, Townhomes
January 17, 2013 – 4:00 pm
The four squares that were the Bissonnet Village Apartments are gone, and Hanover Co. has now denuded the site near Bissonnet and Dincans, preparing it for something else “residential,” says a company rep. The site extends along Dincans between Bissonnet and North, backing into the Bank of America that faces Kirby. Swamplot reported last week that Hanover has purchased property on Morningside for Phase II of their mixed-use midrise now under construction, less than a mile away, in Rice Village.
Photos: Allyn West
Read more about: 77005, New Construction: Residential, Proposed Developments, Rice-Village
January 15, 2013 – 3:30 pm
The sporty midsize sedans are probably not included, but this rendering — included in a replat application to be voted on Thursday by the city planning commission — does give us a clue about what Dallas-based developer Trammell Crow might be considering for the 3.5-acre Heights lot between Yale and Allston that Swamplot reported on last week.
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Read more about: 77007, Apartments, Land Development, New Construction: Residential, Proposed Developments
January 15, 2013 – 11:00 am
They’re both Pearls. But one of these Morgan Group renderings is destined for a lot in Midtown; the other for Greenway Plaza. Can you tell which is going where?
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Read more about: 77006, Apartments, Midtown, New Construction: Residential, Proposed Developments
January 14, 2013 – 2:46 pm
Last March, this all was an empty lot. The owner’s home at 1648 Vassar had been destroyed by an electrical fire. Given a budget restricted by the insurance company’s payout, Scott Strasser and Dave Guthrie thought they’d build a replacement clad in untreated cedar.
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Read more about: 77098, New Construction: Residential
Never lived in. Never finished, actually, since its start in 2004 by the owner’s son, a builder. An update posted last week to the property listing says “an unfortunate automobile accident prevented completion.”
As is, the stucco structure on 1.2 acres in Braeburn Acres has 2 silo-shaped wings. One contains a room 50 ft. in diameter intended to hold the living, dining, and kitchen areas. Above the center of that combo space is a skylight within a dome that rises 18 ft.
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Read more about: 77074, Braeburn Acres, Home Design, Homes for Sale, New Construction: Residential
August 15, 2011 – 1:50 pm
What can HBJ reporter Jennifer Dawson tell you about the filming she attended over the weekend of 2 Meritage model homes in Fall Creek, for a new HGTV show called Showhouse Showdown? Not a whole lot. Five rooms in each of the 3,000-sq.-ft. houses on Robbie Creek Ln. had been decked out over a period of 3 days by a different interior designer, each wielding a $50,000 budget. The first 150 attendees got to vote on a winner: “I was game for standing outside in the heat, because I was eager to see who won the competition. But, no such luck. HGTV shot the reveal segment twice. Once as if the decorator of House A won. And once as if House B’s designer won. That’s a sure-fire way of making sure the cat doesn’t get out of the bag before the show airs. The producers also didn’t want the designers’ names revealed before the show airs, terms I agreed to. We also weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the houses.” [BizBlog] Photo of “Windrose” model used in competition: Meritage Homes
Read more about: 77396, Fall Creek, Interiors, New Construction: Residential, TV
Actual trees are still standing in the Magnolia Grove lot where that live-oak clearance event began last month. What’s left: A little street mustache lining Feagan St., between Snover and Jackson Hill. The reader who sent these photos — and says she appreciates “raw” local real-estate news — wants to know what’s going in.
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Read more about: 77007, Demolitions, Magnolia Grove, New Construction: Residential, Proposed Developments, Townhomes, Trees
These are probably the last images you’ll see of two large oak trees on the 4200 block of Feagan, says the reader who snapped pix this morning of the clearance event that’s been going on there for the last few days. There’ll be no designing around them, apparently: A worker on the property “said he hated to do it but both remaining oaks were coming down.” Coming in, gathers the reader: maybe 28 new townhomes between Dickson and Feagan St., just west of Jackson Hill. “Numerous smaller oaks, pecans, hackberries that are now crunched on the ground” were hacked away earlier.
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Read more about: 77007, Demolitions, Magnolia Grove, New Construction: Residential, Proposed Developments, Townhomes, Trees
In an email to the West University city council, public works director Chris Peifer sounds the alarm about the steel-frame home with metal siding currently under construction at 2723 Centenary St., a couple blocks west of Kirby: “As the street view of this structure will deviate greatly from the typical street view/appearance of the neighborhood I wanted to give you notification,” Peifer writes, after noting that the city doesn’t prohibit the use of the materials on the home or regulate “personal taste or esthetics.” And then he adds this: “FYI…Heads up. There are high value properties directly adjacent to this property that may take exception.”
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Read more about: 77005, Construction Materials, Development Restrictions, Home Design, Houston Architects, New Construction: Residential, Tin Houses, West University
November 8, 2010 – 1:21 pm
A little Midcentury Modern, a little Galveston: Except here, there’s a view of the oil-stained freeway and Downtown’s skyscrapers in the distance, instead of oil-stained beaches and faraway platforms. UH architecture professor and Renzo Piano Building Workshop refugee Ronnie Self‘s house for himself and MFAH museum shop book buyer Bernard Bonnet is perched on the edge of 288, just north of 59, on the Third Ward’s western freeway frontier. All the living space in the 1,600-sq.-ft. box (HCAD scores him with an extra 256 sq. ft. for that open-air central stairway, but not for the ground-floor utility room) is raised 8 ft. above ground level on a tapered slab, just high enough to peek over the sound wall. Which means that even when 288 fills up with water, Self’s house will still stay dry, above it all.
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Read more about: 77004, Freeways, Home Design, Houston Architects, New Construction: Residential, Third Ward
October 27, 2010 – 4:40 pm
Included in the $1,470,000 asking price of this just-finished 3-bedroom, 3-1/2 bath house in the northern reaches of Boulevard Oaks: a pair of doors from a 19th-century house near Osaka; that Chinese wine pot (of similar vintage) sitting at the end of the central hall by the kitchen; a 46” Sony Edgelit TV; those planters on the back terrace; the dining room table and chairs; and of course the coffee table, upholstered pieces, and Buddha in the living room. “Many of my buyers have relocated to Houston without anything to sit on,” explains developer Carol Isaak Barden.
Barden’s house replacement at 1916 Banks St. is the 15th project she’s built to sell — if you count each townhouse in her earlier multi-unit ventures separately — and the second one designed by Seattle architect Rick Sundberg. Sundberg, who’s since left to start a new firm with his daughter, was still with Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen when he designed Barden’s Wabi Sabi house a few years ago (they’re now down to Olson Kundig without him). Barden called this house Wabi Sabi II until she started spending a lot of time coordinating the work of local designers and craftsmen on the project.
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Read more about: 77098, Boulevard-Oaks, Construction Materials, Deed Restrictions, Home Design, Homes for Sale, New Construction: Residential, Ormond Place
