Tag: Riverside-Terrace

Montrose
06/08/10 4:15pm

Swamplot Street Sleuths: Something About Mary’s, Design Stalkers

by
Nightlife, Photography, Riverside Terrace, Uncategorized
51 Comments

Got an answer to either of these reader questions? Or just want to be a sleuth for Swamplot? Here’s your chance! Add your report in a comment, or send a note to our tipline.

  • Montrose: A reader wants to know if anyone has heard of any plans for the site of Mary’s Lounge at the corner of Westheimer and Yoakum — as well as the parking lot between it and Burger King. The famous Montrose club shut down last year.
  • Riverside Terrace and beyond: When strangers just love your style!

    My partner and I are renovating our house in Riverside Terrace, and the other day a well-mannered gentleman rang our doorbell requesting our permission to photograph our house. While we’d like to presume that his request was a compliment that our hard work is paying off, we didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of a stranger snapping photos of our house. Not knowing his true intentions, we politely declined.

    Otherwise who knows where your stuff would show up?! So . . . what’s the question?

    However, I know that applications such as Google Street View capture images from the public domain and make them readily available via the internet. Are there any restrictions to what we can or cannot photograph in Houston?

Photo of 1022 Westheimer Rd.: Swamplot inbox

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Attractions
06/04/10 12:45pm

Swamplot Street Sleuths: Electric Horse Mystery Tour

by
Critters, Home Design, Renovations, Riverside Terrace, Taxes, Willow Meadows, Willowbend
1 Comment

Got a question about something going on in your neighborhood you’d like Swamplot to answer? Sorry, we can’t help you. But if you ask real nice and include a photo or 2 with your request, maybe the Swamplot Street Sleuths can! Who are they? Other readers, just like you, ready to demonstrate their mad skillz in hunting down stuff like this:

Some answers to your questions!

  • Riverside Terrace: Homeowner and eternal contractor Charlie Fondow told the Houston Press back in 2001 that his continually expanding house on Wichita St. just east of 288, where he’s lived since 1980, “is the love of my life. I don’t know how to live in a house that’s finished.” Clair de Lune comments on his towering and turreted Queen Anne show:

    I wonder how Charlie is doing these days, and (since the story doesnt mention a family) what will happen to the house after he’s gone. I also wonder if the interior is as interesting as the exterior? It might be time for a follow-up.

    Hey, all you local journalist types who use Swamplot as a tip sheet: How about it?

  • Willowbend: Commenter Sihaya explains that the horses gently grazing under the high-voltage power lines in the easement west of Stella Link below the South Loop are the animal benefactors of agricultural-use leases set up by Houston’s power company in order to lower its property taxes:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Critters
06/01/10 9:27am

Swamplot Street Sleuths: Power Horses, Wichita Mystery House

by
Home Design, Riverside Terrace, Willow Meadows, Willowbend
13 Comments

Got an answer to either of these reader questions? Or just want to be a sleuth for Swamplot? Here’s your chance! Add your report in a comment, or send a note to our tipline.

  • Willowbend: Reader Robert Kimberly has been trying to find out what the story is behind the horses grazing under the power lines west of Stella Link below the South Loop:

    This vast green area is home to a collection of horses, as well as stables and maybe a riding paddock. But the fences on the north end (W. Bellfort) and south end (Willowbend) are unlabeled and no amount of Google-Fu gets me any closer to the answer.

  • Riverside Terrace: A number of readers have been asking about this well-watched house on Wichita St. between 288 and Dowling — usually in phrases like:

    What’s going on here???

Looks like a little of this:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Homes for Sale
05/24/10 2:25pm

Swamplot Price Adjuster: Riverside Terrace Nice, or Just Nicey Nice?

by
Interiors, Price Adjuster, Riverside Terrace
27 Comments

The Swamplot Price Adjuster runs on your nominations! Found a property you think is poorly priced? Send an email to Swamplot, and be sure to include a link to the listing or photos. Tell us about the property, and explain why you think it deserves a price adjustment. Then tell us what you think a better price would be. Unless requested otherwise, all submissions to the Swamplot Price Adjuster will be kept anonymous.

Location: 2412 Wichita St., Riverside Terrace
Details: 3-4 bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths; 3,400 sq. ft. on a 10,200-sq.-ft. lot
Price: $729,000
History: On the market for almost 8 months. Price cut $21K at the beginning of May

A reader who lives in the “crazy quilt of a neighborhood” of this Riverside Terrace listing thinks this recently remodeled home dating from 1946 is worth considerably less than it’s going for:

Priced, as you can see, at just under 3/4 of a million (!) in a neighborhood where homes sell for around 200K on average. What? I mean it looks nicey nice and all, but not THAT nice.

Or is it? “It looks great in person,” admits our correspondent, after a quick drive-by. Did you catch those front doors, “replicas of those at the Chinese Embassy”? Or . . . what’s behind them?

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Home Design
01/25/10 12:58pm

When You Need To Go, But Just Can’t Bear To Part

by
Homes for Sale, Real Estate Marketing, Riverside Terrace
7 Comments

“Dual toilets in the Masterbath…very unique,” reads the caption on this photo in a listing for a Riverside Terrace home on Parkwood Dr.

But haven’t we seen something like this somewhere before?

Oh, yes.

But that just means this home, built in 1965, was way ahead of its time:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Environmental
08/05/09 1:39pm

More Excitement at that Chemical Waste Disposal Plant in the Back Yard

by
Hazards, MacGregor Terrace, Riverside Terrace
No Comments

Good news for the residents of Grace Ln. who back up to that Griggs Rd. waste treatment and disposal facility run by CES Environmental Services! It’ll probably be a while before another thermal oxidizer ruptures and sends four-foot-wide metal pieces flying over their back fences again:

“I mean, this was metal that could have decapitated people,” [Grace Ln. resident and salon owner Kimberly Sadberry] said. “It was sharp. We had to put it on a dolly to take it back, it was that heavy.”

CES assured residents nothing like that would ever happen again, but less than two weeks later, another explosion occurred, she said.

Why the grace period now? Responding to complaints about intermittent explosions and noxious smells emanating from the plant — as well as the fiery death last month of a CES employee as he attempted to clean a tanker truck — police officers and federal agents raided the facility yesterday morning. And figuring out what’s really going on there might take a while:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Lower Westheimer
03/24/09 6:02pm

Openings and Closings: Bars and Barbecue

by
Montrose, Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Retail, Rice Village, Riverside Terrace, Sugar Land
4 Comments

An update on recent comings and goings:

  • Now Open: “A small group of cocktail freaks,” including former Beavers bartender Bobby Heugel, have at last opened the doors of Anvil Bar & Refuge on the Westheimer Curve. The location was originally a Bridgestone-Firestone tire shop, but was known more recently as the home of the Daiquiri Factory and Sliders.
  • Closed: In advance of that new 25,000-sq.-ft. Spec’s opening up in the former Linens ’N Things in Weslayan Plaza, owner Christopher Massie decided to shut down Cepage Noir, his considerably smaller wine shop on Times Blvd. in the Rice Village.

More twists and turns:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Buying and Selling
03/03/09 6:14pm

Freeway Townhouse: New Owner Is Much More Flexible

by
Homes for Sale, Price Trends, Riverside Terrace, Townhomes
3 Comments



The last time the peachy little townhouse-by-the-freeway at 2232 Riverside Dr. was available for sale — in the good ol’ boom-boom days of May 2007 — the owner refused to make any repairs on the property, which was listed for sale at just under $500K. What’s up with it now?

A good year after it was sold (for a much lower price, about half[!?] of what someone paid for the next-door unit just a few months later), the 2003 townhouse with the front-row view of 288 went back on the market! And it’s still there.

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Riverside Terrace
01/30/09 12:25pm

“Out of the Blue”: A Gentle Introduction to Greater Riverside Terrace

by
Southland Terrace
6 Comments

A Swamplot reader asks for some help with a recent discovery:

Accidentally came across a neighborhood with some rather large lot sizes and homes off of Scott south of U.H. east of 288…seemed “out of the blue” considering some of the nearby neighborhoods. Think one of the streets was “bowling green”. Please let me know what neighborhood/area this is as it looked nothing like Houston!

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Environmental
12/11/08 1:23pm

Waste Processing: Smells and Explosions in MacGregor Terrace

by
Hazards, MacGregor Terrace, Riverside Terrace
No Comments

Neighbors of a permitted, non-hazardous waste treatment and disposal plant less than a mile south of Riverside Terrace have been upset by the stench that regularly rises from the new facility. And last weekend there was a bit of an eruption at the CES Environmental Services plant at 4904 Griggs Rd.:

No one was injured in Saturday’s explosion, but it was the latest in a series of incidents involving the treatment facility, which is permitted to handle non-hazardous industrial waste, such as used oil.

The city has received more than 135 complaints about the plant this year, mostly related to the odors.

So what exactly landed in the yards along Grace Lane in McGregor Terrace? Exploded waste?

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Homes for Sale
07/30/08 11:51am

Riverside Terrace Survivor: I Will Shine!

by
Real Estate Marketing, Renovations, Riverside Terrace
6 Comments

2213 Wichita St., Third Ward, Houston

You are, no doubt, entirely accustomed to finding perfectly pleasant homes listed for sale on HAR . . . as teardowns. Usually, a listing broker won’t even pretend to show off the virtues of a targeted house, limiting photos to exterior shots and including such enticing wording as “sold for lot value only,” “as is,” and the always alluring “do not disturb tenants.”

Which is why John Whiteside, who writes the By the Bayou blog, is especially appreciative of the “chirpy optimism” expressed in the listing for 2213 Wichita St., a home dating from 1930 and perched by the side of 288 in Riverside Terrace, on the market since the end of March. Next to this quaint photo of what looks like a well-roasted garage apartment are these encouraging words:

Owner started renovations on the large house with garage apartment off the freeway. Lot almost 10,000 sq. ft. Pick up this gem, dust it off, add polish and it will shine.

Sadly, you’re a little late to see this house shining its absolute brightest.

Below: More photos from the listing — including interior shots . . . and outdoor furniture!

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Art
06/23/08 10:36am

The Modigliani: Gated, and Very Close to the Med Center

by
Proposed Developments, Real Estate Marketing, Riverside Terrace, Texas Medical Center, Townhomes
12 Comments

The Modigliani, Townhouses on South MacGregor Way, Houston

Nancy Sarnoff reports that construction is about to begin on a new gated 52-townhouse development on South MacGregor, east of 288. The developer, Joseph Casimir of Cypresswood Capital, reports on the project’s website that the development

bears three distinctive yet integrated architectural flavors: Florentine, Venetian, and Romanesque, affording you a lifestyle of unparalleled comfort and understated sophistication.

The townhouse development is called The Modigliani, after an Italian artist who spent most of his adult life in Paris, and who died of TB at the age of 35, aggravated by persistent alcoholism and drug abuse.

The 4.3-acre site at 3028 S. MacGregor Way is next door to the University of Texas Harris County Psychiatric Center and across the street from Brays Bayou. Casimir bought it in 2006 for $4.6 million, then demolished the 1936 Wright Morrow estate on the property. The previous owner, the UT Health Science Center at Houston, had intended to build a mental health outpatient facility on the site, but put it up for sale after encountering vocal opposition from neighborhood residents and State Rep. Al Edwards.

Below: Elevations and a site plan!

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Home Decor
06/04/08 10:22am

Riverside Terrace Extra: Toilet Fish Included

by
Homes for Sale, Riverside Terrace, University Oaks
1 Comment

Bathroom with Toilet Fish Tank, 3838 Southmore Blvd., University Woods, Houston

“Fish tank in face bowl” is the actual caption to this photo in the listing for 3838 Southmore, in University Woods, by Riverside Terrace.

Face bowl?

The house has 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths. Clearly, though, this one ought to count for more than just a half. The home is listed at $224,999 — bathroom aquarium included.

After the jump: How to get your own very private fish tank . . . without having to buy the whole house!

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Land Sales
03/26/08 5:50pm

UH Southeastern Expansion: More Rail Frontage

by
Parks, Riverside Terrace
2 Comments

Rendering of Proposed Southeast Metrorail Line on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Between Griggs Rd. and Old Spanish Trail

Just a few blocks north of the site of the new Houston Texans YMCA, the University of Houston has bought 43 acres immediately southeast of its main campus.

The new UH land looks like it’s part of MacGregor Park, but whether it is — or was — was a matter of intense . . . legal interest. The property was originally part of a larger 110-acre parcel that was donated by the MacGregor family to the City of Houston in 1930. More recently, the donors’ heirs sued the city for violating the terms of that gift, which required that the city turn the land into a park. By 2002, the MacGregor heirs had won back rights to the wooded 41 acres between MLK and Spur 5, on the north side of Old Spanish Trail.

The MacGregor heirs’ sale of the property to UH for $25 million closed in February, according to a report by Jennifer Dawson in the Houston Business Journal. The new UH property is south of the gigantic Wellness Center, across Buffalo Brays Bayou.

The land gives UH a possible new entrance on Martin Luther King Blvd., but it’s also likely to give the campus a fifth light-rail station: a MacGregor Park stop will be the second station on the Southeast line, which begins at the new transit center planned for Palm Center.

Rendering of planned Southeast light-rail line on MLK, south of UH: Metro

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Buying and Selling
11/20/07 11:06am

Beneath Roseneath: A Rising Tide Trims Sales

by
Flooding, Homes for Sale, Land Sales, Riverside Terrace, Streets
No Comments

4608 Roseneath Dr., Houston

Why has this property in Riverside Terrace been floating aimlessly on the market for almost five months? Sure, it’s being sold “as is” — and the “is” apparently doesn’t merit an interior photo. But the home has four bedrooms, contains 2,875 square feet of living space, and is apparently salvageable. Plus it sits on a 11,100-square-foot lot on a “lovely, tree-lined street” in a part of town that’s been pretty hot recently, no?

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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