Sources have indicated to Swamplot that all 102 separately owned units of a townhome development behind the Park Towers office complex on the West Loop have been sold. The 5.3969-acre site currently occupied by the Post Oak Park Townhomes (shown in the photo above) had been marketed for sale by CBRE. One source tells Swamplot the buyer of the condo development is a “foreign investor,” and that unspecified highrise buildings are reportedly planned for the property.
The Winhall Townhomes complex at 1525 Garrettson Ln. — tucked behind Willie G’s on Post Oak Blvd. — appears to be vacant, notes a reader who snapped the above photo of an empty (and chained shut) parking garage on one side of the Galleria-area residence. That’s notable because — unlike various other complexes around town that have been given the all clear in recent months — the Winhall consists of more than 30 independently owned condos. But sure enough, a for-sale listing has been posted online for the almost-2-acre site, which includes 285 ft. of frontage on Garrettson.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE STRANGE ALLURE OF THE SHINY SHINY NEW NEW HOME 
“Houston is a strange place for real estate, where a surprisingly large number of people want ‘new’ homes, not ‘new’ as in less than 10 years old, but ‘new’ as in ‘never lived in, built just for me, uncontaminated by someone else’s use.’ I don’t understand this freakish (to me) thinking, but I’ve heard people express that thought, and it shows in the pricing of ‘slightly used’ houses. To me, a used house is one where the initial and inevitable builder snafus will have been fixed by a previous owner, and there might even be some mature trees.â€Â [GoogleMaster, commenting on A Modern Colquitt Townhome’s Gently Lowering Price Tag] Illustration: Lulu
HOW TO DO RIVERSIDE TERRACE ON $647.32 A DAY 
This 1930 brick and half-timbered 4-bedroom home on Riverside Dr. in Riverside Terrace sold for $205,000 on January 14th. With no apparent updates, the unrenovated property, which sits on a 12,560-sq.-ft. lot, sold again at the end of August — for $350,000. [HAR]
BUYERS WILL RESTORE WEINGARTEN MANSION, EXPAND KITCHEN, CALL IT HOME 
The owner of a offshore-drilling-rig fabricating company in Baytown and his wife, a real estate agent, have bought the former Weingarten mansion at 4000 S. MacGregor Way in Riverside Terrace —Â and they’re announcing plans to restore the property with the help of architect David Bucek, whose firm was responsible for the redo of the Menil house. Darryl and Lori Schroeder tell Nancy Sarnoff they plan to live in the 1935 home and “keep as much original as we can” — but that apparently doesn’t mean holding the kitchen to its current size. Darryl Schroeder tells Sarnoff they bid full asking price, or $2.25 million, for the decaying estate designed by Joseph Finger for grocery-store magnate Joseph Weingarten. MLS records appear to show he’s being a bit modest, however: They record a sales price of $2.75 million, or $500,000 over the asking price. (The discrepancy might otherwise be explained by the Schroeders’ additional $500,000 purchase of the 1.58-acre property next door at 3932 S. MacGregor Way, though that property was listed separately.) Readers hoping the 4.73-acre property might one day find its way into the hands of the neighboring University of Houston, possibly as a house for a future president, take note: The 68-year-old president of Lone Star Energy Fabricating is a UH alumnus. [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot] Photo: HAR
A little more than a year after settling into the new location it rehabbed from the former Phillips Paper Company warehouse at 1100 Elder St. in the First Ward, Ecclesia Church appears ready to begin another renovation project and move — this time to East Downtown. The church, which began its life 15 years ago as part of the Taft St. Coffee House complex in Montrose, signed a contract last Friday to purchase the 50,000-sq.-ft. former Meridian nightclub building at 1503 Chartres St. for $3.75 million, pastor and church founder Chris Seay announced during his sermon over the weekend.
The church plans to continue its serial-renovation, just-add-coffee-house growth strategy in the new space. (Taft St. Coffee House’s successor cafe in the First Ward is Paper Co., built into the church’s space there.) The Meridian building, where the nightclub closed in 2010, lies south of the George R. Brown Convention Center and the Toyota Center on the east side of the 59 overpass. The church had originally made several attempts to purchase the building back in 2009, Seay said. But a new chance arose recently, after a bankruptcy sale:
“Beware the manipulative investment buyer,” warns a reader from Sunset Heights who has an interesting home-selling tale to share from the late-summer market: “Yes, I fell for it. The listing went up and 20 minutes later, a dream offer. Over list price. As is. Wants to add on, not tear down. Closing quickly, with two weeks free leaseback. I began looking for homes in my new area. Fell in love with one and put an offer on it.”
What could possibly go wrong?
SIGNS OF A PLANNED MIDRISE AT D’AMICO AND DUNLAVY 
There’s a sign up in front of the former dentist’s office and bridal shop structure at 3327 and 3331 D’Amico St., tucked into the northern edge of the Villas at River Oaks (formerly Rincon) apartments on Dunlavy St. just south of Allen Pkwy. Sugar Land homebuilder Christopher Sims bought the properties in April; a logo for his Sims Luxury Builders, along with one for the probable architect, the Mirador Group, appear on a sign that went up on the 20,192-sq.-ft. lot last week, advertising a new midrise building named Riva at the Park. A website for the new development greets mailing-list signups with breezy copy touting the development’s location and appliances, but no description or rendering of what’s planned. Photo: Swamplot inbox
THE TAKARA-SO APARTMENTS WON’T BE GOING AWAY JUST YET 
Inner Loop property watchers: As other Montrose apartment complexes are knocked down and redeveloped left and right, do your thoughts turn occasionally to the Takara-So? If so, you are not alone: The 77-unit 2-story apartments at 1919 W. Main St., occupying the entire 1.22-acre block also bounded by McDuffie, Hazard, and Colquitt, was sold back in May in an off-market transaction. The complex that once belonged in the portfolio of swindler Allen Stanford is now the property of a group headed by Southern California firm Apartment Income Investors. A cached version of a memo for the investment posted online in advance of the sale envisioned renting out and holding the property for 3 to 5 years before selling it to investors or a developer, and identifies the price as $5.51 million. Photo: Takara-So Apartments
The vacant 2-story building at 2107 Milam St. in Midtown, which long ago was home to a President Health Club — but is likely better remembered as a blank-faced, boarded-up building with a for-sale sign on its corner — is being smashed to bits this morning. A reader sends in this view of the scene at Milam and West Gray St. taken from the Metro HQ building at 1900 Main St. The 14,975-sq.-ft. soon-to-be empty lot is next door to Central Square Plaza (at left in the photo), which is currently undergoing renovations. County records show a company called Hobby Place LLC purchased the smaller property in April.
Photo: Swamplot inbox
The city of Pasadena is likely to go ahead with the sale of the Corrigan Center at Shaw Ave. and Pasadena Blvd., which includes the once-grand Capitan Theater, to a New Jersey oil-industry inspection and lab-test company called Camin Cargo Control. Under the $4.6 million deal, already approved by city council once earlier this month in a 6-3 vote, the city would lease back the 31,982 sq. ft. of the property — the parts currently occupied by fire department administrative offices and the city’s municipal court. The lease-back wouldn’t include the long-vacant 1,500-seat art deco theater.
But a reader tells Swamplot that decorative pieces from the front of the 1949 theater — which after an exterior renovation looked pretty spiffy until recently (see photo at right from last year) — have already been removed. “The marquee boards, neon, and the whole vertical metal section that said “Pasadena” are gone, leaving just brick behind it,” Spence Gaskin writes. “The marquee stuff had been gone a few weeks at the least, but I just noticed the Pasadena sign removal.”
The new owner of 3 adjacent 2-story apartment complexes at the western edge of Winlow Place in Montrose have politely asked all tenants to leave by the end of August. The fifties-and-sixties-era courtyard complexes, at 1920 W. Alabama St. (above), 2810 McDuffie, and 1924 Marshall, were sold by Prestige Holdings at the end of April to a company called City Centre at Midtown, which appears to be connected to apartment developer Dolce Living. The adjacent complexes together include 73 apartments; the 1.58 acres of land they sit on has frontage on West Alabama St. (between Hazard and Huldy, pictured above) and McDuffie St., which dead-ends into a parking lot shared by the McDuffie and Marshall St. properties. According to a tipster, a notice for the abandonment of that dead-end portion of McDuffie St. was posted in February. Admiral Linen’s 3-building complex (behind the Randalls grocery store) at 2030 Kipling St. is immediately adjacent to the properties.
Yesterday afternoon’s news came couched in pillowy fluff: Houston’s largest news-gathering organization will be moving to an exciting new state-of-the-art facility in the Galleria area! No, the Houston Chronicle isn’t leaving the heart of the city it covers: Key reporters will remain downtown!
But here’s a rougher-edged reading of the newspaper’s apparent retreat: The Hearst Corporation is getting ready to sell off one of its most valuable Houston assets — a block and a half of prime Downtown real estate — so it’s telling Chron editorial staffers to find room for themselves somewhere in or around the austere 440,000-sq.-ft. concrete fort where the company’s distribution, circulation, local sales, and press operations have been camping out, on 21 acres in the lower right armpit formed by the intersection of Hwy. 59 and Loop 610.
The former Houston Post compound at 4747 Southwest Fwy. (above), designed by Wilson, Morris, Crain & Anderson in 1970 as a stark Brutalist follow-up to their work on the Astrodome, was part of the booty obtained by the Chronicle when it bought out its rival paper in 1995. The announcement calls the complex its “future campus,” but the extent of renovations or any new construction planned on the site is unclear.
What about that downtown foothold the paper is promising?
Street Lights Residential completed its purchase of a strip of land on the east side of the Chelsea Market shopping center (behind the buildings shown at left) on Chelsea Blvd. east of Montrose Blvd. just last month; the 3 small retail buildings there, which used to house the Blue Mambo hair salon, Nolan-Rankin Galleries, the ELS language center, and Just Wax It, were themselves waxed off the site in April. Chelsea Market owner David K. Gibbs sold the property, which extends from Chelsea Blvd. to the edge of the Southwest Fwy., to allow a larger footprint for the development of the 20-story Chelsea Montrose highrise planned next door at 4 Chelsea Blvd. (pictured at top).
The resulting parking shortage at Chelsea Market is to blame for Main Street Theater’s exit from the space in the shopping center it had rented since 1996, according to the theater’s managers and its landlord. The theater group, which was renting 4617 Montrose Blvd. on a month-to-month basis for its Theater for Youth program, had also hoped to use it to stage 3 productions next season during the renovation of its Rice Village location on Times Blvd., which is scheduled to begin in November.
The team at Braun Enterprises has bought up a series of properties wedged between the Metropolitan Multi-Services Center on West Gray St. and the electrical substation at the corner of Peden St. and Dunlavy, including the 2 retail buildings pictured above. Braun bought up a total of 5 separate parcels in 4 transactions this year, including the offices of Miner-Dederick Construction at 1532 Peden, and retail spaces at 1515, 1705, and 1707 West Gray. That’s a bit shy of an acre in total. Real Estate Bisnow’s Catie Dixon reports Braun is considering selling, leasing, redeveloping, or building something for a future tenant on the property. Here’s a rendering from Braun showing what a renovation of might look like:
