The L-shaped glass building at the center of this drawing is apparently a new 742,000-square-foot office tower planned by Hines for the northeast corner of Main and Capitol Downtown. But Hines hasn’t officially announced it yet. Houston Architecture Info Forum user ChannelTwoNews found the drawing earlier this week — only a few days after it had been posted on the website of an engineering firm working on the project. Fellow forum user lockmat later spotted it again . . . in a Hines presentation from February posted on the Texas A&M Real Estate Center website. By the end of the day yesterday, the engineering firm’s site had been scrubbed of all information about the building.
The tower is planned for a corner most recently occupied by a languishing sales trailer for the appropriately named Shamrock Tower, and a full-size McDonald’s before that. At the far end of the block is the vacant Texas Tower, which the new Hines building appears to wrap around.
The drawing shows a view looking northwest. The tower looks like 28 or so office stories perched atop a parking garage of . . . maybe 10 levels? After the jump, a closeup . . . and an even closer-up, so you can count the floors for yourself.
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Read more about: 77002, Commercial Real Estate, Downtown, Highrises, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments
Christof Spieler returns from a Metro meeting with some new detail on the proposed Downtown routes for the Southeast and East End light-rail lines.
Spieler politely calls the latest plan a compromise. (”I doubt anyone is really happy with it,” he writes.) It has Metro siting the two lines — which will run on the same tracks for most of the crosstown trek — along the south side of Capitol (heading west) and the south side of Rusk (heading east). But unlike the trains that run down Main St. today, the new vehicles won’t have any right-of-way advantages over cars:
Like buses do now, the trains will share the curb lanes with cars, both turns and through traffic. . . . And the signals will be operated as they are on Capitol and Rusk today: trains will find the lights are sometimes green and sometimes red, and they will stop or go accordingly. There is no doubt that this will slow trains down and throw off schedules: for example, a line of stopped cars in the left lane on one block would force the train to hold in the previous block until the cars moved. It might also be a safety issue, but that’s not as clear.
The new lines will intersect with the Main St. line at a new Downtown Crossing station, which will likely require passengers to do plenty of street-crossing themselves:
there are 4 platforms — north- and southbound Main Street and east- and westbound East End/ Southeast — that can share one station name, making the system easy to understand. But the east-west platforms are a block away from Main Street, so some transfers will still involve a three block walk, with 3 pedestrian lights, from the center of one platform to the center of another.
After the jump: The end of the line!
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Read more about: 77002, 77003, Downtown, East Downtown, Light-Rail, Metro, Proposed Developments, Streets, Transportation
Metro hasn’t sent out an overview of its updated light-rail plans recently . . . but blogger Christof Spieler of the Citizens’ Transportation Coalition, who follows Metro’s plans carefully, has put together his own revised map showing the latest changes to the complete Houston-area “fixed guideway” transit map expected to be in place by 2012.
What’s new? Spieler notes plenty of adjustments. East of Downtown, the track carrying the East End and Southeast lines
swings around the future soccer stadium on Texas, then squiggles onto Capitol (the westbound track) and Rusk (the eastbound track), passing Discover Green, Minute Maid Park, and the Convention Center. At Main Street, a new station on the Main Street line allows for fairly easy transfers between the lines (unlike the old plan). At the same location, connection tracks allow East End Line trains to swing north onto the Main Street track, serving Preston and UH Downtown before terminating at the Intermodal Center. Southeast Line trains don’t make this turn; they continue on to the Theater District.
Also, changes to planned station locations:
there’s a new station on the Uptown Line north of Memorial Drive, but no Memorial Park station; there’s a station added in the Uptown area; there are new stations on the University Line in Gulfton and at Eastside; and the North Line has two more stations . . .
More detail — including the new express bus service from Downtown to IAH — in Spieler’s report.
Read more about: Light-Rail, Metro, Proposed Developments, Transportation
From Ziegler Cooper Architects’ website: Renderings of a 20-story office tower the firm designed back in the early 1990s.
As we reported in February, the Novati Group plans to build the 500,000-square-foot spec tower, along with an 8-level parking garage, at 1600 West Loop South — next to Post Oak Motor Cars, on land purchased from Landry’s. The only changes from the original design will be adjustments so the building can qualify for LEED Silver certification.
So what if the design is old? Worrying that your brand new building already looks dated is so . . . last decade!
After the jump: the marble in the lobby will be old, too!
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Read more about: 77027, Development Strategy, Galleria, Green Design, Highrises, Houston Architects, New Construction, Office Buildings, Office Space, Proposed Developments, Uptown
April 18, 2008 – 10:32 am
Where’s that giant climbing wall in the atrium?
Rice University’s new recreation and wellness center will have
2 indoor basketball courts, 4 racquetball courts, 2 squash courts, cardio, weights, dance studio, a 50 meter outdoor competition pool, an outdoor recreation pool, and 2 outdoor lighted basketball courts.
That sounds just a bit smaller than UH’s giant 264,000-sq.-ft. Wellness Center on the other side of town. Groundbreaking for Rice’s new building, designed by Lake/Flato Architects with F&S Partners, is scheduled for next week.
After the jump: More muddy images of the complex!
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Read more about: 77005, Institutional Buildings, Proposed Developments, Recreation, Rice-University
April 17, 2008 – 11:19 pm
Swamplot reader Buildergeek sends pictures from the demolition of the former Martha Turner Properties building at the corner of Westheimer and Hazard.
Whatever’s happening to the site, it sure doesn’t sound like what Nancy Sarnoff reported a year and a half ago in the Chronicle:
The old headquarters of Martha Turner Properties near River Oaks has been sold for the third time in as many years to a florist who plans to gut the property, add a floral showroom and lease out space to other businesses.
The owners of Plants ’n’ Petals, a 25-year-old flower shop located near Highland Village, purchased the former real estate office at 1902 Westheimer for an undisclosed amount. . . .
The renovations will include installing windows on the Westheimer-facing facade, gutting the interior and adding a mezzanine for offices.
The building will have about 12,000 square feet of space when it’s finished by the end of 2008.
After the jump: Clearly, the building was too close to the street!
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Read more about: 77098, Commercial Real Estate, Demolitions, Hazards, Proposed Developments, Streets, Westheimer, Winlow Place
The State Grille, the restaurant at the corner of Weslayan and W. Alabama, will be shutting down a little earlier than expected. Cleverley’s Blog and Jennifer Dawson of the Houston Business Journal report that the restaurant will serve its last meal on May 31st.
Restaurant owners Frankie Mandola and Joe Butera sold the property to Giorgio Borlenghi’s Interfin Cos. in October 2006. The HBJ reported at the time that the restaurant had a lease agreement lasting until the end of 2008. Whatever happened to those last 6 months, Mandola doesn’t sound too happy about it now:
Mandola says he asked “a bunch of times,” but Interfin would not extend the State Grille lease scheduled to expire in July.
Interfin won’t say what the company’s plans for the property are, but . . .
According to Mandola, Interfin plans to tear down the building as soon as the restaurant clears out and construct a 27-story building of an undetermined type.
After the jump: There’s more to the property!
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Read more about: 77027, Highland Village, Highrises, Openings and Closings, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment, Restaurants
A reader writes in wanting to find out what is planned for the “gigantic” and newly cleared block at the northwest corner of the 59 South feeder road and Richmond, just west of Midtown. The block surrounded by Richmond, Colquitt, Garrott, and Jack is the planned site of The Courtyard on Richmond, a midrise apartment complex by Post Properties that’s just a short walk away from the Wheeler light-rail station.
Back in October, the Chronicle’s Betty Martin reported on the project: a 5-story, 200-unit structure with two courtyards, sandwiching a parking garage. The story included this comment:
It would be similar to “that property in Midtown that everybody likes - Midtown Square - that has a restaurant on the ground floor, brick sidewalks,” [Post Properties developer Bart] French said.
Post Properties built Midtown Square, so you might expect the new project will be similar . . . well, except for that part about restaurants on the ground floor. The plans we’ve seen don’t show any retail, except for a leasing office at the corner of Richmond and Milam. And a Planning Department document dating from January refers to the Courtyard on Richmond as a 252-unit residential-only project.
After the jump: those plans!
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Read more about: 77006, Apartments, First Montrose Commons, Light-Rail, Midtown, Neartown, Proposed Developments
The brand new YMCA planned for the corner of Griggs Rd. and Martin Luther King Blvd. will be the first ever named after a professional sports team: The Houston Texans. Construction is expected to begin later this year. The new Third Ward facility is meant to be a permanent replacement for the old South Central YMCA between UH and TSU at 3531 Wheeler, which was abandoned for temporary digs in a storefront on Scott St. several years ago.
At a press conference yesterday, officials from the YMCA and the Texans described the new complex as just part of a larger partnership between the two organizations.
Hey, isn’t Palm Center the planned location for the start of the Southeast Metrorail line? So the Y will mark the beginning of athletic training for a lot of kids . . . plus the start of train riding for a larger group. Cute.
After the jump: A tiny picture of the new facility, plus . . . that light rail map!
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Read more about: 77021, Houston-Texans, Light-Rail, Palm Center, Proposed Developments, Southeast Houston, Third Ward, Transportation
March 24, 2008 – 11:25 pm
A reader directs our attention to this proposed 16-story office building facing the south side of the Katy Freeway, just outside the Loop — on the current site of a Houston’s First Baptist Church parking lot.
Hines plans to build the office building and an 11-level, 1,500-car parking garage on the lot, which the developer would lease from the church. The congregation has already voted to authorize church representatives to finalize and sign a 99-year ground lease for the property.
The garage would help solve the church’s chronic parking problems: According to the HFBC website, 300 cars currently park off-site on weekends. With the Hines development, the church would lose the 480 spaces in the lot now available during the week, but gain 1,500 spaces for church use on weekends and after office hours.
Below the fold, lots more images of the proposed office building and garage on HFBC property.
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Read more about: 77024, Bayou Woods, Churches, Commercial Real Estate, Ground Leases, Houston Architects, Katy Freeway, Memorial, Office Buildings, Parking, Parking-Garages, Proposed Developments
This landscape plan from the Boymelgreen website is our first glimpse of the two condo towers the company is planning for 5.5 acres on the southwest corner of the intersection of San Felipe and a short segment of Woodway — just west of Voss, on the Right Bank of Buffalo Bayou. And this morning the Houston Business Journal has more to report:
New York City-based Boymelgreen Developers is developing the project for landowner Azorim, a publicly traded company in Israel of which Boymelgreen owns 64 percent. . . . The unnamed project will consist of two buildings with 28 residential floors each and an 18,000-square-foot fitness center and spa. The project will have a total of 237 condos starting at $1 million each. Units will be an average size of 2,500 square feet.
The architect is Ziegler Cooper. Boymelgreen’s website refers to the project as the San Felipe Condominiums. (And it reports a building that’s 14 condos smaller.)
Jennifer Dawson’s report in the HBJ says that sales won’t start until the fall, after a sales center — which will later “be converted into a spa, restaurant or office building” — is built on the site of the former Dolce & Freddo next door.
Below the fold: That 1960s office-and-shopping center on the site won’t go quietly!
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Read more about: 77063, Condos, Construction Materials, Demolitions, Green Development, Highrises, Houston Architects, Landscape, Luxury Highrises, Memorial, Piney-Point-Village, Proposed Developments, Recycling, Shopping Centers
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Read more about Condos, Construction Materials, Demolitions, Green Design and Development, Highrises, Houston Architects, Landscape, Neighborhoods: Memorial, Proposed Developments, Real Estate Marketing, Shopping Centers
Today comes news that the developers of the Ashby Highrise won’t wait any longer to strike a deal with the city — and are proceeding with permit applications for their original 23-story apartment and condo tower next to Southampton. Writing in the Chronicle, Mike Snyder reports that Buckhead Investment Partners had submitted a proposal for a slightly smaller tower to the city three weeks ago but had received no response.
The proposed smaller 22-story tower, which didn’t get much support from neighborhood groups, would have featured a narrower tower with 130 condo units and four detached townhouses along Ashby, two floors of underground parking and two more above grade, plus a small park on one corner. Buckhead principals Matthew Morgan and Kevin Kirton told Snyder the reduced number of units would “eliminate any possibility the project would cause unacceptable traffic congestion.”
A document outlining the proposal, however, shows the offer is contingent on significant financial concessions by the city: An immediate refund of about $500,000 for new sewer lines the developers installed to serve the project, along with a payment to the developers of up to $2.15 million, over as long as 10 years, from revenue generated by increased tax values on the site.
Meanwhile, Buckhead’s fancy new website now features a far more complete collection of presentation drawings of what appears to be the original 23-story tower. There doesn’t seem to be any mention on the site of the 22-story all-condo tower proposal.
After the jump, lots of tower drawings from the new website — including . . . kids hugging puppies!
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Read more about: 77005, Apartments, Boulevard-Oaks, Condos, Highrises, Neighborhood Disputes, Proposed Developments, Retail, Southampton, Townhomes
Armed with only a camera and a healthy sense of curiosity, Swamplot reader and longtime Memorial Heights Apartments resident Michael W. Jones pokes around his apartment complex and unearths evidence of Archstone-Smith’s redevelopment plans. His conclusions:
- Buildings 7, 8, and 9, in the southwest quadrant of the complex facing S. Heights Blvd, will be the first to come down. All tenants have been out of these buildings since March 1. The first of six new four-story apartment buildings will be built here.
- The dingbat-Modern-style office building at 225 S. Heights Blvd. outside the complex will likely be torn down:
The fact that the building is not on the tax roll leads me to believe that 225 is actually owned by Archstone-Smith, and will be brought down as part of the redevelopment. The current state does give sign that there may have been some interior demolition already done, and it’s waiting for the wrecking crew to come in to finish the job.
- Though tenants have been hit with some large rent increases in the last two years, Archstone-Smith isn’t going out of its way to let them know what’s happening to their homes:
To date, other than the tennants in the buildings affected by the pending demolition, the rest of the complex has not been made aware of the pending changes. It is only through research and infomation from other sources have I been able to piece the information you see here together.
After the jump, photos — and a few more details — from Jones’s report.
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Read more about: 77007, Apartments, Demolitions, Memorial Heights, Mixed Use, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment, Washington Corridor
This Methadone Clinic graphic was posted today on the Medusa Properties website, and conveys in slightly different fashion the same news we received in our email from a Heights-area reader:
The oh-so-neighborly Mr. Jared Meadors did *not* receive the variance he requested for the Baylor St subdivision.
Photo of 2601 Baylor St. and Methadone Clinic Graphic: Medusa Properties
Read more about: 77009, Development Restrictions, Development Strategy, Neighborhood Disputes, Planning Commission, Prevailing Lot Size, Proposed Developments, Renovations, Sunset Heights, Variances
March 14, 2008 – 10:10 am
Nope, no condos in the planned Houstonian Medical Center hotel — but there will be 100 apartments. Medistar consultant Doug Williams gave a few more details about the planned 40-story Main St. tower at the edge of Southgate in yesterday’s Planning Commission hearing:
- Parking-structure base will be 12 stories, with a green space on top, and contain 14,000 sq. ft. of meeting and ballroom space.
- Building will have 303 guest rooms, plus 100 apartments for longer-term stays, 70 of them furnished.
- This is a Redstone project.
- The developers are also buying the Baylor Clinic building next door, which Baylor rents from St. Luke’s.
- The plans include a new skybridge that will connect the new tower to the Baylor Clinic next door, so hotel guests can use the existing Baylor Clinic skybridge to cross Main St. Representatives of Rice have expressed interest in connecting the university’s new Collaborative Research Center one block to the north to the new building by skybridge as well.
The commission approved a revised version of the variance request but attached several conditions having to do with landscaping and parking spaces.
After the jump, the view from Southgate!
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Read more about: 77030, Highrises, Hotels, Neighborhood Disputes, Planning Commission, Proposed Developments, Southgate, Texas Medical Center, Variances
Here’s just one paragraph from a nine-page variance request application submitted for consideration at today’s Planning Commission hearing:
So what message does this whole process send to people like me who are willing to go out and spend their time and their hard earned money and take risks in order to improve the city and improve our neighborhoods? The message is: Only the guys with deep pockets and deep connections—the Perry Homes, the Tricons, the Fingers, the Olmsteads, the Levits, the Weingartens—only those guys get to win at this game. Those guys can build what they want when they want. Everybody else loses. Everybody else gets bad advice and the run around. Everybody else should just stay home and sit quietly on their couches and watch TV.
There’s more to like in Jared Meadors’s request to subdivide the 49-by-120-ft. property he owns at 2601 Baylor St. in Sunset Heights into three separate lots — including an accounting of his annual net adjusted income over the last three years, two HAR.com screen shots, and some occasional heavy leaning on the CAPS LOCK key. But it’s nothing, really, compared to his more wide-ranging complaints about his difficulties with his neighbors and the Prevailing Lot Size ordinance that he has posted on the website of his company, Medusa Properties. It begins:
NEW CONSTRUCTION! SUNSET HEIGHTS - MODERN CRAFTSMAN STYLE - AVAIL SPRING 2008
*** UPDATE *** THE BLUE HAIRED LAWN NAZIS OF EAST SUNSET HEIGHTS STRIKE AGAIN!
More name-calling, after the jump!
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Read more about: 77009, Development Restrictions, Neighborhood Disputes, Planning Commission, Prevailing Lot Size, Proposed Developments, Renovations, Sunset Heights, Variances
