Here’s a second rendering of that new office tower Hines tells the Houston Chronicle it hasn’t announced it will build. Of course, a different story is coming out of this neighborhood near River Oaks, where the 35,000-sq.-ft. property on the corner of Spann and San Felipe, purchased in November by an entity connected to Hines, has been cleared of its garden home and staked with flags, as the photos after the jump show:
Hines is planning to build an 18-story office building on a 3-lane section of San Felipe between Shepherd and Kirby, across the street from tony River Oaks. The site is the 35,000-sq.-ft. former lushy garden and grounds of a Vermont Commons home, which features several trees and at least one giant oak. “No one knows anything about this,” a source tells Swamplot. “They think a few nice townhouses are about to rise from the earth. That is the story that’s circulating the hood.”
The last 2 restaurants in the tunnels underneath the 18-story former Houston Club Building on Rusk St. are preparing to get up and out of there, reports Prime Property’s Nancy Sarnoff: The below-ground Skyline Deli and KoKoro Sushi will have sold their last lunches by the end of May, in advance of what a rep from new building owner Skanska says will be “selective interior demolition and abatement.” And that demolition is about to become much less selective, adds Sarnoff, since Skanska says it’s designing an office tower for this Downtown lot bound by Rusk, Capitol, Travis, and Milam. [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Silberman Properties
A few more views of the renovations from Cisneros Design Studio planned for the office buildings at 3701 and 3801 Kirby Dr., near the Elevation Burger and the closed Maggie Rita’s on Richmond: To be removed from the façade, it appears, is that throwback turquoise-and-red detailing, replaced with what architect Tim Cisneros tells the Houston Chronicle is a kind of stretchy vinyl skin.
Count ‘em: That’s a 9-building office park proposed to go in near the Walmart and Splashtown in Spring, south of the ExxonMobil campus. Finial Group is developing — that is, clearing the trees away from a 13-acre parcel just behind all that freeway retail at Whitewood and Louetta Rd.
A poster on HAIF has leaked this rendering that might show what Southwestern Energy is planning to build to consolidate its employees in Springwoods Village. It was first reported to be a 10-story office building on 22 acres at I-45 and the future Grand Pkwy., just south of the ExxonMobil campus.
Central Square Plaza has been sold, and new owner Keeley Megarity, whose LLC closed on the 1-acre Midtown property at 2100 Travis St. about a week ago, says that a decision about how to renovate these buildings — and what to renovate them into — will be made in the next 30-45 days.
It’s parched and scruffy, sure, and there’s an abandoned slab without any load-bearing walls to keep it company, but this less-than-a-half-acre patch of grass on Yoakum Blvd. could be the site of a 3-story office building: A rep from Owens Management Systems says that a variance application for the site just west of Castle Court in Montrose has been approved by the city planning commission, and a commercial architecture firm is considering moving to what’s being dubbed the Yoakum Enclave. The 0.4-acre lot backs into Mt. Vernon St. and up against the U.S. 59 barrier wall at the very end of the 4300 block of Yoakum, south of the University of St. Thomas and the construction site on Richmond Ave. of the 6-story Campanile South.
This flag-flying 12-story tower planned for the under-development Block 10 West Office Park might end up hiding the renovations underway on the former Great Indoors, which you can see peeking out in the distance in the rendering above. Real Estate Bisnow’s Catie Dixon reports that Hicks Ventures is building out the out-of-business big box into a 2-story, 245,000-sq.-ft. spec office building. Plans include the construction of a 5-level parking garage behind the new building and a 6-level garage between it and this proposed I-10-facing tower.
Here’s an aerial view of the park and its neighbors:
The only thing that’s really changed about 3400 Montrose, a tipster tells Swamplot, is the name of its owner: Global Paragon, which bought the former podium for Scott Gertner’s Skybar in 2011, went “belly up” this past November, the tipster says, and the vacant 10-story building’s now owned and managed by a 40-person LLC that’s looking for a buyer or a joint venture.
And that’s where these interior photos, from a short-on-info listing posted recently on Cushman & Wakefield’s website, come in:
Kirksey submitted the rendering above in a 4-firm competition to design a general office with some temporary housing for the Saudi Consulate, now occupying a suite in the 22-story Westheimer highrise shown here, which dates to 1982 and sits across the street from an IHOP. But Kirksey lost that competition — to Studio RED.
Spring’s a time of renewal: And the Yoakum St. apartments — and palm trees, too — pictured here came down this winter so something very like this office building could begin going up. Campanile South, it’s called, is being described by developers Hansen Partners as a 6-story, 82,000-sq.-ft. “boutique” space with retail and restaurants facing Richmond Ave. Setting up on a lot between Yoakum and Graustark, Campanile South will be be the 7th member of the Campanile family that’s clustered around St. Thomas University the University of St. Thomas and Montrose Blvd.; it’s expected to be ready for tenants in 2014.
And something like this 3-story, 2-building office complex should start going up this spring in Spring, reports the Houston Business Journal’s Shaina Zucker. Planned to sit on 7 and a half acres at 460 Wildwood Forest Dr., the 127,794-sq.-ft. Wildwood Corporate Center will be across the street from apartments and about 3 miles north of the ExxonMobil campus being built among comparatively tame woods where 385 acres have been clear-cut around the intersection of I-45, the Hardy Toll Rd., and the likely path of the Grand Pkwy.
Rendering: Houston Business Journal
Hines has confirmed that it will be putting up something new — maybe this glow stick of an office building, maybe not — at 609 Main, just north of the former MainPlace, now BG Group Pipe Wrench. Pickard Chilton, says Hines, will design a 41-story, 815,000-sq.-ft. office tower just as soon as an anchor tenant is signed. This view of the rendering released this week seems to look south toward the Hines-owned downtown block bound by Main, Texas, Fannin, and Capitol. Now, half that block is an $8 a day parking lot. If you look closely at the rendering, you’ll see an Apple logo just to the left of that entrance teepee. Whether that will actually be a new Apple store is not confirmed — and anyway, before anything new can come in, Hines will have to tear down what’s already there: The unoccupied Texas Tower, the former Sterling Building, at 608 Fannin:
Where’s all the new office space in Houston? Here, reports Metrostudy’s David Jarvis. The lemming-like red dots cramming together on the Beltway and Katy Fwy. out toward the Grand Parkway denote locations that are already under construction, totaling 12.5 million square feet of new office space. The green dots denote planned locations that would add 6 million more. The ExxonMobil campus up near the Woodlands, reports Jarvis, accounts for almost half of the new construction.
Map: Metro Study Report
