Swamplot Archives by Tag: Texas Medical Center

Thursday, November 15, 2007

CSI YouTube: The Sliding Door, the Elusive Shadow, the Last-Minute Runner, and Other Clues from the Crowne Plaza Demo

Sliding Door Closeup from Crowne Plaza Hotel Demolition, Texas Medical Center, Houston

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!

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Remaking Blow-Up, or Was Everybody Out When the Crowne Went Down?

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

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 Towerthe same vantage point as the YouTube video above.

So is the video above the same one the police are studying?

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Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Why It Might Be a While Before Houston Implodes Another Building

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.

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Monday, November 12, 2007

Crowne Plaza Demolition Party Report: All Your Pics and Videos

Crowne Plaza Hotel Demolition, Texas Medical Center, Houston

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.

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Monday, November 5, 2007

Make Your Reservations Now for the Crowne Plaza Implosion

Crowne Plaza Hotel in the 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?

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Monday, October 29, 2007

The Belle Meade: Apartments Step Onto the Podium

Belle Meade at River Oaks Elevation Drawing

Belle Meade at River Oaks on Westheimer

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.

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Thursday, October 25, 2007

The Strip Center Apartments on O.S.T.

Kirby Old Spanish Trail Apartments

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.

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Friday, October 5, 2007

St. Luke’s: We’re Selling So We Can Renovate and Demolish

The O’Quinn Medical Tower at St. Luke’sWhy 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.

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Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Building Tissue Donated for New Organ Donation Facility

New Headquarters Building for LifeGift, Viewed from Lantern Pt. Drive

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.

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Monday, July 16, 2007

The $9.7 Million Corner Lot

Corner of Braeswood and Main

Buried at the end of a Houston Business Journal report on a new Hilton Garden Inn that’s going to replace the Droubi’s boxcar at 7807 Kirby, between South Main and OST, is this gem:

Moody National had been on the hunt for more property in the area, and was especially interested in finding more land next to the Hilton site to create a larger footprint for the project. . . .

A 1.2-acre vacant lot on the northeast corner of Main and Braeswood, across from Moody National’s Residence Inn, also caught the developer’s eye, but the price was too high there as well. Moody says an offer of $140 per square foot was rejected by the owner, who said he would entertain an offer of $185 per square foot.

“The land has been extremely hard to come by,” Moody says.

Sure, that’s expensive, but there’s a premium for waterfront property.

Photo: Bradley Broom

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Monday, May 14, 2007

The Instant Med Center Highrise

The great southern Med Center land grab continues: Moody National Companies has bought a one-and-a-quarter acre site at the corner of Woodbury and Cambridge—about a quarter-mile southwest of the Spires. What for? How about . . . a new 200-unit apartment tower? Globe St. reports:

The fact the parcel is situated within 100 feet of the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Baylor College of Medicine’s proposed 2.7 million sf [new campus] is underwriting the project’s potential as are the proposed rents. “We’ve projected rents at around $1.65 per sf, with an average unit measuring somewhere around 950 sf,” Moody tells GlobeSt.com. “We want to offer a lot of variety from smaller studio units to larger luxury units.” He adds that Moody will manage and lease the tower.

No architect yet. No general contractor. Early-2009 opening.

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