There are an estimated 3,600 homeless veterans in the Houston area, and only 250 available beds. “Eight veterans already have moved into their new quarters in the previously vacant apartment complex in the 7300 block of Fannin. Applications to fill up the 14 units still are being accepted.” [Houston Chronicle]
Read more about: 77030, Homelessness, Temporary Housing, Texas Medical Center
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!
Read more about: 77021, Art, Proposed Developments, Real Estate Marketing, Riverside-Terrace, Texas Medical Center, Townhomes
It sure looks like there’s been a dramatic twist in the plans for the new Dan & Jan Duncan Neurological Research Institute that Texas Children’s Hospital is building in the heart of the Med Center Campus, right behind the waterfall parking garage on Moursund St. Renderings of the building looked a little different at the groundbreaking ceremony last December. A construction permit for the superstructure of the 14-story, 370,000-sq.-ft. tower was approved yesterday.
Texas Children’s doesn’t seem to be putting out a huge amount of detail about the new structure on its website, which is probably understandable for a building that will be housing hundreds of thousands of lab mice. Any knowledgeable readers want to share a little more about the plans . . . and that new twisting corner?
Read more about: Institutional Buildings, Medical Buildings, New Construction, Texas Medical Center
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:
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!
Read more about: 77030, Highrises, Hotels, Neighborhood Disputes, Planning Commission, Proposed Developments, Southgate, Texas Medical Center, Variances
From fuzzy video stills to washed-out photocopies: In the agenda handout for today’s Planning Commission hearing are hazy images that provide even more details about the new 40-story hotel and condo tower Medistar wants to build on Main St. in the Medical Center, at the eastern boundary of Southgate.
The drawing labels identify the hotel as the Houstonian Texas Medical Center, or Houstonian TMC for short. The architect is the Hill Glazier Studio of HKS, out of California. And a section drawing gives an actual height for the tower.
After the jump: It’s very tall!
Read more about: 77030, Condos, Highrises, Hotels, Neighborhood Associations, Neighborhood Disputes, Planning Commission, Proposed Developments, Southgate, Texas Medical Center, Variances
Thanks to some intrepid reporting lazy online-video scanning over here at Swamplot, we now have more information about Medistar’s 40-story hotel and condominium tower planned for the corner of Dryden and Main St. in the Medical Center.
Yesterday, the Planning Commission voted to defer any consideration of Medistar’s request for a lot-line variance along Main St. But the president of the Southgate Civic Club voiced his objections to the variance — and other aspects of the project — anyway.
After the jump, more stills from the civic-club president’s presentation to the Planning Commission, plus a few bits of armchair analysis from our crack crew of expert TV watchers.
Read more about: 77030, Condos, Highrises, Hotels, Neighborhood Associations, Neighborhood Disputes, Planning Commission, Proposed Developments, Southgate, Texas Medical Center, Variances
Here’s what we know so far about the new 40-story hotel-and-condo tower Medistar Corporation is planning for the corner of Main St. and Dryden, between Rice’s new Collaborative Research Center and the Baylor Clinic on the west side of Main: not a whole lot.
But at 40 stories, the new building would likely be the tallest tower in the Texas Medical Center. (The new Memorial Hermann Medical Plaza is only 31.) That’s taller than those twin hypodermics, too.
A lot-line variance for the project is item number 111 before the Planning Commission this afternoon. And the request provides a few clues. Medistar wants the same 10-foot setback along Main St. that the Baylor Clinic has, so the new building can have a similar passenger dropoff and a “pedestrian friendly” entry on that side. The building’s longer axis will be perpendicular to Main. The arguments imply Medistar intends to have “ornamental decorations and balconies” on the Main St. side, and that the tower will be linked by skybridge to the Medical Center main campus across the street.
According to the Southgate Neighborhood Newsletter, the tower will include a 1200-car parking facility.
This isn’t the only new building type Medistar is planning to stir into the Medical Center mix. A block down the street, just south of the company’s Best Western Hotel at 6700 Main St., Medistar is planning a 600,000-sq.-ft. medical mall. The Houston Business Journal reported on that project late last month:
The high-rise would house offices and showrooms for companies that sell equipment, supplies and pharmaceuticals to Texas Medical Center institutions. Tenants could also include organizations working to develop new medical technologies and treatments.
Read more about: 77030, Condos, Highrises, Hotels, Malls, Proposed Developments, Southgate, Texas Medical Center
So professional and amateur detectives have huddled over the Crowne Plaza demolition videos and what have they come up with? Here are the rumors . . . er, clues!
First, mysterious Flickr member txrice123 writes:
the police are investigating a report that there may have been someone inside the structure on the fifth floor in the middle. a video taken from the face of your side (from St. Luke’s) apparently shows this person run to the edge, then run back. if you have any shots from before, you may like to look closely and send them to hpd.
The photo txrice123 is commenting on was taken from the west side of the building, and St. Luke’s is to the north, so the comment is a little confusing, no? And, uh . . . which fifth floor? The hotel had a podium.
Next, KPRC-TV keeps talking about a “shadow,” but isn’t shedding any light on the subject:
The home video showed a shadow inside the building moments before it was destroyed on Sunday.
Who knows what lurked in there?
And of course there’s the mysterious sliding door, shown enlarged above from the video in Swamplot’s earlier post. ABC13 hypes this part of the video, but neglects to point out that several gust-inducing dynamite blasts have taken place and the building has already started to rumble by the time the door starts “sliding.” Hey, isn’t a fire door supposed to close in a case like this?
After the jump, the door slides shut!
Read more about: 77030, Attractions, Crime, Demolitions, Implosions, Texas Medical Center
Watch this video very closely. Do you see someone entering the building before the demolition begins? Maybe on the left side of the screen?
No? Well, keep looking. How about enlarging the video — or breaking it down frame by frame — so you can examine it more carefully?
Apparently someone who shot a video of the same event from the same angle saw something in it so disturbing that he brought the footage to the attention of the Houston Police Department. And officers found the evidence credible enough that they spent the greater part of Wednesday searching through rubble to see if maybe someone got into the Crowne Plaza Hotel in the Texas Medical Center shortly before it was imploded Sunday morning.
KHOU-TV reports that police are focusing their search on the Fannin side of the building, which would be the street on the left. The station also says that the video used as evidence was in fact taken from the St. Luke’s Medical Tower — the same vantage point as the YouTube video above.
So is the video above the same one the police are studying?
Read more about: 77030, Attractions, Crime, Demolitions, Hazards, Hotels, Implosions, Texas Medical Center
Here’s an awful thought: Was someone inside the Crowne Plaza Hotel when it was imploded Sunday morning? Channel 11 News is reporting that police received a tip earlier today “about a possible death on the site during the implosion.”
According to the tip, there may be video showing the person inside the building when it went down. It was unclear who had the video.
Police have yet to determine if the tip is legitimate.
Read more about: 77030, Attractions, Demolitions, Hotels, Implosions, Texas Medical Center
Looks like Sunday morning’s Crowne Plaza Hotel implosion at the Medical Center was a real party! We have reader reports and pics, plus a roundup of video and images from around the web — all after the jump.
Read more about: 77030, Attractions, Demolitions, Hotels, Texas Medical Center
Update: Demo pics, videos, and more are now here.
Who says real estate isn’t a spectator sport? There’s nothing that brings out crowds of dedicated fans early in the morning like a good ol’ fashioned Houston building implosion.
This weekend, you’ll be able to combine your demolition obsession with a romantic weekend getaway at the Medical Center Holiday Inn — where, from the comfort of your own room (if you can reserve one facing north), you’ll be able to start your Sunday morning with a bang.
At 7:10 on November 11th, the Crowne Plaza Hotel across the street at 6701 Main will come down in a cloud of dust, to the cheers of onlookers able to sneak into prime viewing areas — such as the south side of the soon-to-be-the-former John O’Quinn Medical Tower. If you’re an explosives fan but don’t have that kind of access to medical-office space, you can try the view from Southgate, east of Travis.
Fannin and Main Streets will be closed from Dryden to Holcombe starting at 6:30 a.m.
What’s the best spot for viewing the Cherry Demolition job?
Read more about: 77030, Attractions, Demolitions, Hotels, Texas Medical Center
A permit was issued late last week. And so sitework begins for the 119-unit, 168,398-square-foot Belle Meade at River Oaks, on Westheimer between Ferndale and Sackett, developed by Grayco Partners:
The project is a 6-story epicore (light steel) construction on top of a 2-story podium garage. The boutique building will resemble the look of turn of the century, old New York hotels in brick with cast stone details, while spacious interiors will include such amenities as hardwood floors, 10-foot ceilings, granite countertops, stainless steel appliances and individual wine chillers. Community amenities will include conditioned interior corridors, heated pool, fitness facility, business center and a resident recreation room.
Grayco is also developing Museum Place, at Fannin and Oakdale in Midtown—a “contemporary design” also on a two-story podium. And Braeswood Place, on North Braeswood just east of Stella Link: the more usual four-story stick apartments hugging a parking garage, but it’ll also include 21 townhouses. It’s meant to look like Rice. All three properties will be managed by Camden Property Trust.
Read more about: 77004, 77025, Apartments, Midtown, Museum-District, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Parking, River Oaks, Texas Medical Center, Townhomes
Isn’t mixed use great? On Old Spanish Trail at Kirby, where Target and Garden Ridge used to be, Simmons Vedder is ready to go with this exciting version of a retail-and-residences mix. They company is leasing the land back from the Texas General Land Office.
Yes, that’s three stories of apartments above a brand new strip center facing O.S.T. No need for fake towers at the corners on this one!
Residents won’t have far to travel for shopping: just walk to your car in the seven-level garage, then pull out and park in front!
Not pictured: the drug store with drive-thru next door. See the full site plan after the jump.
Read more about: 77054, Apartments, Commercial Real Estate, Leasebacks, Mixed Use, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Parking, Retail, Strip Centers, Texas Medical Center
Why did St. Luke’s decide to sell the Texas Medical Center’s most recognizable building?
Once the tower sale goes through, St. Luke’s — which plans to lease back its current space on floors nine through 12 for continued hospital operations — plans to extensively renovate and update the 27-story patient tower, which opened in 1971. The original seven-story hospital building, built in 1954 and now used for administrative functions, will be torn down, and new facilities will be built on that space as well as possibly on other nearby undeveloped land owned by St. Luke’s, according to [St. Luke’s senior vice president David] Koontz.
“That is the ‘why’ behind the move to sell this medical building,” he says.
For sale: The Madonna tower. Designed by Cesar Pelli. Officially named only a couple of years ago for donor and breast-implant litigator John O’Quinn.
After the jump, a picture-postcard-perfect view of the original 1954 St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital building, not long for this world.
Read more about: 77030, Demolitions, Highrises, Leasebacks, Medical Buildings, Office Buildings, Office Space, Renovations, Texas Medical Center
How fitting: The former St. Catherine’s Montessori School across from a Reliant Stadium parking lot is gone, but its spirit will live on. The school itself now has a new location on the other side of the South Loop, but the concrete bones of the “castle-like” building it left behind at 2510 Westridge will be . . . reused!
That’s right, organ-donation organization LifeGift will be spending $7 million to graft new space onto the existing structure, which will be renovated and kept alive presumably with an infusion of stucco. The completed building will be the organization’s 26,000-square-foot headquarters. A new blue-glass prosthesis will connect it to a parking lot along Lantern Point Dr. and serve as the front entrance. Among the features inside: LifeGift offices, an organ-donation education center, and operating rooms for onsite tissue extraction and organ recovery.
Let’s hope the transplant is successful. But really, this is nothing new for the patient: Before it became a school, the building was a firearms museum.
After the jump, more views of the bionic building from m Architects and Burwell Architects.
Read more about: 77054, Astrodome, Building-Reuse, Development Strategy, Institutional Buildings, Medical Buildings, reliant-park, Renovations, Texas Medical Center
