A reader tells us that the Harold Farb Apartment Homes sign at the Broadway Square Apartments hasn’t been taken down yet, but it has been hooded — with a new temporary fabric covering identifying the apartments and new property manager Pinnacle.
Photo: David Beebe
Read more about: 77061, Apartments, Buying and Selling, Park Place, Signs
From our email: Photographic confirmation that the 90-ft.-tall billboard in the front yard of the house at 4743 Banning has indeed been removed.
After the jump, the billboard that Afton Oaks ate!
Read more about: 77027, Afton Oaks, Billboards, Lawn Care, Neighborhood Disputes, Retail, Signs
Here’s one advantage if you’re one of the not-so-large number of retail centers in Houston that doesn’t have a parking lot in front: If business ain’t so hot, you can always sell the highly visible adspace on your facade!
A reader sends in this photo of an ad for Red Bull’s Art of Can competition on the streetfront of a retail center on Elgin, across from the Calais apartments in Midtown. The Maple Leaf Pub is two doors down.
Is this the future of retail real estate? Sure, we’ve all seen ads painted onto the sides of old buildings and the giant window stickers on David’s Bridal storefronts, but doesn’t this go a bit . . . beyond that? Think of the possibilities: Stores . . . with ads covering their entire fronts, advertising . . . other stores. Or anything.
Forget billboards, graffiti, and wheatpaste posters. When this new market really kicks in, we’ll see Houston for its revenue-generating possibilities: We’ve got acres and acres of exploitable advertising space.
Tyvek Housewrap was only the beginning.
What comes after Tuscan-themed shopping centers? Billboard-themed shopping centers!
After the jump: a second photo, so you can get your Red Bull straight.
Read more about: 77006, Advertising, Art, Billboards, Commercial Real Estate, Midtown, Retail, Shopping Centers, Signs, Storefronts
No photo this time — just imagine a 90-ft.-tall billboard . . . that isn’t there!
That’s right: The billboard placed in the front yard of the house at 4743 Banning St. near the West Loop has apparently been removed. Says our tipster:
I drove by the Afton Oaks billboard house yesterday and the billboard is now GONE!!! I wonder what happened? Maybe the guy who told me they were making the billboard larger was just pulling my chain?
Read more about: 77027, Afton Oaks, Billboards, Neighborhood Disputes, Signs
When last we left the house at 4743 Banning Dr., a giant billboard had been planted in the front yard and the enterprising owners had successfully converted the front porch into a driveway. In this installment, our correspondent gleefully returns to the scene and finds even more exciting transformations, plus hints of a lot more fun in store for Afton Oaks. Here’s the report:
OH BOY!!!! Do I have some scoop for you.
So I went by the house on Banning and it has been swallowed up like a snake eats a rat. . . . It’s been completely usurped by Sign-A-Rama…now looks like one structure.
After the jump: it’s not just one billboard . . . there’s so much more!
Read more about: 77027, Afton Oaks, Billboards, Neighborhood Disputes, Retail, Signs
With their Afton Oaks neighbors up in arms over their enterprising 90-foot-tall front-yard billboard, the owners of the home at the corner of Banning and Vossdale have apparently decided there won’t be much need to hang out on the front porch anymore. A Swamplot reader drove by the site Friday and sends in photos and comments:
Yes, the driveway is now where the front porch once was. Also, every shade on the house was drawn. I wonder if they have gotten threats from this? Oh wait, this is Afton Oaks. Of course they have.
The reader, who asked to be called “Buildergeek,” also reports on the yard improvements described in the Afton Oaks eNews:
As for landscaping, if you call not mowing a tuft of grass and leaving a mud track where your old sidewalk used to be landscaping, they did a really good job.
Below the fold: Buildergeek’s view from the front.
Read more about: 77027, Afton Oaks, Billboards, Neighborhood Disputes, Signs
Yes, that’s a mighty big sign in the front yard of the house at 4743 Banning Dr. in Afton Oaks. And it’s not listing the house for sale.
A reader sends in photos and says they’re from a couple of months back. He adds, “What good is having a home at the edge of the West Loop if you can’t put up a 90 foot tall billboard in your front yard?”
Remember that hiccup in the city’s sign ordinance, back in October? Well, look how resourceful some people are! The Afton Oaks January eNews reports that the billboard is still there, but that there’s now . . . landscaping around the base!
Court date: postponed until the second week of February. After the jump: a few more pics from our tardy tipster.
Read more about: 77027, Afton Oaks, Billboards, Neighborhood Disputes, Signs
Attention billboard hobbyists: The City of Houston has temporarily lost control of its sign ordinance.
Jim Moriarty, the attorney handling the case for the city, called the current situation a “disaster.”
“Somebody could take a 200-foot banner and run it across I-10,” he said. “It could say ‘Fred’s Cleaners,’ or ‘Out of Iraq Now,’ or whatever.”
The city’s motion suggested that people already are taking advantage of the injunction. Inspectors have noticed banner signs strung casually on roadside poles and electronic signs blinking and scrolling “at a rapid pace,” according to an affidavit by Susan Luycx, division manager of sign administration.
Under the ordinance, electronic messages can only change once every five minutes, to prevent driver distraction.
“We believe the court has made an error,” Moriarty said. “That doesn’t mean that Houston should become the Wild West in regards to signs.”
Sellers of real estate (especially those of you in the ten-gallon hats): You know what to do. Now is your chance.
After the jump, another bandit sign spotted only hours ago near IAH—on wheels!
Read more about: Buying and Selling, Real Estate Marketing, Signs
