RICHMOND FROM LUCKY BURGER TO THE HARP, READY FOR SOMETHING 
New owners of a 50,000-sq.-ft. site at the southwest corner of Richmond and Mandell in Montrose, which includes Lucky Burger, The Harp Irish Pub, Maria Selma’s Mexican Restaurant, and Orange Bar: a partnership controlled by Braun Enterprises — the same group that bought the former Harold’s in the Heights clothing store last month. Space in the retail buildings totals more than 11,000 sq. ft. Braun tells reporter Katherine Feser his group plans to hold onto the property for now but imagines some new retail development could take place next. Leases for all 4 properties expire in 2014. [Houston Chronicle] Photo: Braun Enterprises
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Tag: Buying and Selling
Here’s a shot of the now-vacant corner of Weslayan and West Alabama, where PM Realty Group has announced it’ll be constructing a 35-story apartment building and parking garage — with a restaurant and “service retail” — beginning next year. The 2.6-acre site is the former location of the Confederate House at 2925 Weslayan, later known as the State Grille, which was torn down in 2008. PM Realty bought the site from Giorgio Borlenghi’s Interfin Cos. last month. No renderings from PM Realty’s architects, RTKL, have been passed around yet.
- Luxury high-rise apartments planned inside the Loop [Houston Business Journal]
- Tower to rise on former Confederate House site [Prime Property]
- PM Realty Group Unveils Plans for New High-Rise Multifamily Project [PMRG]
- Previously on Swamplot: State Grille Demolition: Just for the Hell of It, State Grille Closing Down; 27-Story Tower Going Up?
Photo: Candace Garcia
The new owners of the Heights building at the corner of 19th St. and Ashland that for 61 years housed the Harold’s in the Heights men’s clothing store have wasted no time in advertising the modern structure for lease or “redevelopment.” The Chronicle‘s David Kaplan reports that a partnership led by local development firm Braun Enterprises bought the property from the family of Harold Wiesenthal last week; a flyer for the 13,600-sq.-ft. property, which comes with a parking lot in back, hawks restaurant or retail space in chunks as small as 1,750 sq. ft. The glass-front building includes a 3,000-sq.-ft. second-story office space. Harold’s closed its doors for good in August.
- Harold’s, “modern landmark†on 19th Street, finds buyer [Prime Property]
- Harolds in the Heights [Braun Enterprises]
- Previously on Swamplot: Harold’s in the Heights Is Closing Down
Photo: Braun Enterprises
SKANSKA HELPING HOUSTON CLUB TO EARLY EXIT
A year after Downtown’s Houston Club Building fell into foreclosure, the U.S. division of Swedish construction firm Skanksa has at last bought the 63-year-old building at 811 Rusk. But the new owner isn’t saying yet whether it plans to tear down the 18-story property. A company representative tells Nancy Sarnoff, though, that it will be “very difficult†to update and repair the structure. In any case, Skanska is letting tenants’ leases expire, and is helping the Houston Club itself relocate to “another downtown building†in February 2013, 2 years before its lease is up. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo : Silberman Properties
THE COMING LOCAL HP IMPLOSION 
Two former Hewlett-Packard office buildings from the original Compaq World Headquarters campus at the corner of Hwy. 249 and Louetta will be demolished in a “controlled demolition” on September 18th. The 2 buildings, a 1,200-car parking garage, and a central chiller plant were purchased for $12.6 million by the Lone Star College System last year, as an extension to the 8 buildings the former North Harris Montgomery Community College System bought a year earlier to create its new University Park campus. But it’s clear the college was mostly interested in the parking spaces that came with the latest purchase. According to the terms of the sale, HP itself will manage the implosion of the 2 buildings, before turning over the resulting “usable green space” to the school. LSCS facilities guy Jimmy Martin explains the reasoning: “The cost to properly maintain the buildings in a ‘mothball’ state until they might have been needed in the future is $1.25 million annually. It was more cost-effective to have the contractor tear the buildings down as part of the purchase agreement.” [Champions Sun; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Geoff Sloan [license]
MORE RIDES TO GYM 
The Westbury Christian School is buying the Westland Family YMCA at 10402 Fondren, south of South Braeswood, with plans to turn the building, its pool, and large playing field into a remote athletic campus. The 31-year-old Y is a little more than a mile west of the K-12 school’s main campus at 10402 Hillcroft. The property wasn’t up for sale, but “declining membership and increasing operating costs” convinced the organization to shut the facility. Members will be transferred automatically to the Y at 5801 W. Orem Dr. when the Westland location closes at the end of the month. [Hair Balls; previously on Swamplot] Photo: YMCA of Greater Houston
Only a few days after it sold, the 1961 Tanglewood home and bomb shelter on Brown Saddle St. featured on Swamplot back in January has been put back on the market. Only this time, the listing doesn’t mention the shelter or the abandoned pipeline slicing through a portion of the property — or really anything about the building itself. No more interior pics, either. The low-slung modern structure is now tagged as “not liveable” and won’t be shown — though the agent does fess up to having a key. The asking price? Only $550K more than what the property sold for earlier in the week, when the home and its interior were touted as sales features. At 38,263 sq. ft. (that’s actually been marked down a few thousand sq. ft. from the earlier sale), the lot is advertised as the biggest in Tanglewood.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SALVAGE VALUE “I am not attached to the nice appliances, wood floors, etc. . . . but they have a very large and easily accessible resale market . . . its not being sentimental it is just not wasting money on something that can easily be resold. A mod house like this has a very small market. Only a select few like this style of house, and even fewer are willing to pay for them.” [Marksmu, commenting on Battle Over Swank Sugar Land Supermod Won By Komatsu Excavator]
Yes, it looks like demo equipment has already arrived in the driveway of the MacKie and Kamrath house in Sugar Creek featured a little less than a year ago on Swamplot. The home was originally built in 1975 for Astrodome builder H.A. Lott, in the Houston architects’ famed signature Frank-Lloyd-Wright-without-the-cape style. The photo above was sent in by a reader, who passes on a rumor from neighbors — that the 4,426-sq.-ft. home’s new owners plan on tearing down the structure and putting up a 2-story something in its place. After an extensive renovation, the the 4-bedroom on a 36,041-sq.-ft. waterfront lot was listed for north of $1 million last August. It sold in April for around $800K. A few pics of what now appears to be headed for the landfill:
Looking for a safe place to keep its voting machines after the previous storehouse on Canino Rd. was destroyed in a mysterious fire last year, county officials have at last found the perfect uh, match: a 1980-vintage tilt-wall car-storage facility owned by the estate of a billionaire plaintiff’s attorney who died in a car crash. No harm came to the $250 million worth of cars John M. O’Quinn kept in this warehouse at 11525 Todd Rd. after he was killed in an accident on Allen Parkway 2 years ago, but the building was available. One of 3 suites in the 123,930-sq.-ft. structure near the Hempstead Highway and 34th St. currently serves as the black-box home of the Houston Academy of Dramatic Arts. The county is paying O’Quinn’s estate $4.35 million for the facility, with some of that money coming from the fire-insurance claim. Also moving into the building, after a $2 million renovation: county tax assessor-collector Don Summers and his collection of old license plates and tax records.
- County voting machines find a home [Houston Chronicle]
- Warehouse blaze still a mystery and Police: O’Quinn driving nearly twice the speed limit [Houston Chronicle]
- Voting machine fire not arson [Houston Politics]
Photo: LoopNet
WALMART BUYS BACK ITS BIGGEST BOXES 
Walmart’s ridiculously humungous Cedar Crossing distribution center near Baytown now belongs to . . . Walmart. Last month the company bought the facility back from its landlord, Texas’s Permanent School Fund, for $104.5 million, or just $4.5 million more than the government entity paid Walmart for it in 2005. The complex consists of 2 separate 2-million-sq.-ft. buildings — encompassing more floor space than 9 Astrodomes — on a 473-acre tract. Under the 30-year lease for the property the company signed with the school fund after the original leaseback, the facility had been exempt from property taxes. [Houston Business Journal; background; awards] Photo: Force Engineering & Testing
A local engineering firm is buying the original 1967 model of AstroWorld listed for sale recently on Craigslist — and plans to donate it to the Houston Public Library’s Metropolitan Research Center, so that it can be put on display in the newly expanded Julia Ideson Building. I.A. Naman + Associates president and “very regular” Swamplot reader Thomas G. Barrow says he learned about the model from our post yesterday: “My accountant happened to be walking by my office and I asked if I could have some money. He looked at the piece and said ‘That’s cool!’ and a few minutes later we did the deal.” Barrow says he’s already spoken with library officials about the installation, and that they’ve already begun looking for an interim home for the model before it goes on display to the public. Naman was the mechanical and electrical design engineer for AstroWorld, the Astrodome, and several related facilities.
- About Us [IAN+A]
- Domed Stadium Air-Conditioning Design (PDF) [IAN+A]
- Previously on Swamplot: Now on Craigslist: Original AstroWorld Model, For Sale: Early Model AstroWorld
Photos: Bill Davenport
Why is the original scale model of AstroWorld listed for sale on Craigslist? Curator Bill Davenport spent a lot of time dusting the giant model before exhibiting it at his Norhill gallery last fall. He says he’s going to need to move the “irreplaceable (if awkwardly large) bit of Houston history” out of Optical Project on 11th St. soon — “and I really don’t want to dis-assemble it and put it back in Mr. Henderson’s garage, where it will get dirty again.” Ed Henderson built the model in 1967; it was returned to him when the park was dismantled 6 years ago — after long stints in Judge Hofheinz’s 9th-level suite at the Astrodome, and in a Foley’s display case downtown before that. For the Craigslist appearance, Davenport jacked up the asking price to $5,500, but says Henderson would accept $3,000 “from somebody who planned to keep the model in Houston, or donate it to the Houston Public Library’s Metropolitan Research Center.” Library representatives have told Davenport they’d like to put the model on display in the newly expanded Julia Ideson building downtown, but don’t have the money to pay for it.
- Original model of Astroworld – $5500 [Craigslist]
- AstroWorld 1968 [Optical Project]
- Previously on Swamplot: For Sale: Early Model AstroWorld
Photos: Bill Davenport
Planned for the Midtown block surrounded by Main, Travis, Francis, and Holman streets: a new 90,000-sq.-ft. multi-tenant performing arts center that might look something like this. And after a city-hall vote this week, it seems more likely to be built: Council approved the sale of the property at 3400 Main St., currently a surface parking lot for the soon-to-be-former city permit office one block to the north, for $2.5 million.
The buyer and developer of the new building is the Independent Arts Collaborative, a consortium of local arts organizations — including Fotofest, Diverseworks, the Houston Arts Alliance, Musiqa, Suchu Dance, Opera Vista, Catastrophic Theater, Nameless Sound, the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, and Main St. Theater. Also part of the deal: Another one of those 380 revenue-sharing agreements: This one will allow the developer to receive up to $6 million in reimbursements from increases in tax revenue resulting from the project.
Details of the building — as well as plans for several projects proposed nearby — were included in a study produced last year for the Houston-Galveston Area Council:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT HAPPENED AT 301 STUDEWOOD 
“Tried to get Parks Board to purchase for years but they wouldnt go above $200k. They upped their offer to $600k in September of 2010, while property was under contract with restaurant group out of Austin which has 12 operating establishments in Texas.
Up against about the 8th round of foreclosure with a hard money lender who wasnt satisfied with his usurious rates of 21%+ per annum over three years and under pressure, lender ended up taking the property — taking a parks board offer and walking away with another $60k+ on top. Restaurant group pissed, owner still picking up pieces/dealing with lawsuits that should have been avoided. Restaurant group needed 30 more days, Parks would have taken 60. Lender would give no more time for either.
Should have filed for bankruptcy to stall the foreclosure and let deal transact but family was on last leg….after paying about $60-75k over 9 months to avoid repeated postings for foreclosure, as well as the ridiculous interest rates over the previous two years.
Lender also decided against paying the commission he promised for bringing the Parks Board deal. Real swell guy.
My apologies for the eyesore signs, maybe I will go reface them and at least get free advertising out of the deal.
Parks Board has no plans yet but turned down two offers in January from a Developer with backing out of the Mayors office. Demonstration housing. First offer they turned down was $800k, not sure about second offer but I can confirm it was turned down as well.
In regards to Parks, I had made some traction with GHORBA for an off-road bike park like they have in Austin, The topography, etc. would be rather perfect for that. Not sure where everyone is on the deal but I dont believe it is Parks highest priority at the moment. I will check in with everyone and let you know.” [JE, commenting on This is Woods. Park Is Not Available Right Now. May I Help You?] Photo: LoopNet
