Tag: Condos

Condos
12/23/13 10:15am

Scenes from the Scaffolding Collapse at Randall Davis’s Chateau Ten Condos, San Felipe Edition

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Construction Problems, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Vermont Commons
8 Comments

Scaffolding Collapse, Chateau Ten, Spann and Welch Streets, Vermont Commons, Houston

A reader who happened to be on the scene Saturday morning when scaffolding collapsed on the side of the Chateau Ten condo building going up at the corner of Spann and Welch streets just south of River Oaks sent Swamplot these photos and a report shortly after the incident. The Randall Davis development is under construction behind the empty lot on San Felipe on which Hines is planning to build a 17-story office tower:

“I did not see the collapse, but I heard it . . . It sounded like an explosion — power went out immediately.” The correspondent reports running out to find scaffolding for the 6-story building down, “completely covering a house (and Mercedes) and scaffolding bits were dangling from power lines. I called 911. I don’t think anyone is hurt.”

What could have caused this construction accident?

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Stucco, Interrupted
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Bayous and Waterways
09/26/13 10:00am

What a Hotel, Conference Center, and Condos Might Look Like in Uptown

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Condos, Hotels, Land Development, Proposed Developments, Uptown
23 Comments

Here’s a concept that HKS came up with for a site just behind the Hotel Granduca, Montebello, and Villa d’Este towers in Uptown Park. The concept shows how it might go if you wanted to build a conference center and a combo hotel-condo tower on 14 green acres between Tilbury and N. Wynden off S. Post Oak, just west of the Loop. This rendering shows the boxy exterior of what appears to be the conference center flanking a linear park shooting off from the banks of Buffalo Bayou.

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Apartments
07/25/13 10:45am

Dogging the Morrison Heights Midrise with Doggerel

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Condos, Houston Heights, Signage, Woodland Heights
61 Comments

Across town from the new “Stop the San Felipe Skyscraper” signs popping up in River Oaks and Vermont Commons to oppose the proposed 17-story Hines office building, another crop of anti-development placards is objecting in free verse to the Morrison Heights complex of apartments and condos that’s currently under construction near Houston Ave. and White Oak. Eschewing both the bold imperative of the San Felipe signage and the cartoon menace of the Ashby Highrise hatred, these seem to prefer the rhetorical oomph of puns and wordplay and rhyme. And what, exactly, is the development that has received this poetic ire?

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Art
06/20/13 2:00pm

Randy Twaddle’s Decorative Thievery at the Mirabeau B.

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Condos, Green Design and Development, Hyde Park, Interiors, Montrose
21 Comments

The Mirabeau B. condos apartments in Hyde Park take a lot from the city: The sales center, for example, comprised a pair of recycled shipping containers that were powered by the sun. And now atop the building at 2410 Waugh a photovoltaic canopy is hoarding juice for each of the 14 units; cisterns are stealing rainwater that’s then used on the landscaping and rooftop greenery. Even the development’s moniker has been plagiarized. And so it makes a lot of sense that one of the building’s interior features is inspired by something just as local: a transformer box and a snarl of wires. Houston artist Randy Twaddle, for whom power lines have become something of a muse, installed 65 of these gypsum cement tiles in a 7 ft. by 25 ft. wall at the building’s entrance inside its parking garage. Each 40-pound tile, fabricated by Dallas firm Topocast at a lab at UT Arlington, features a 3D reproduction of one of the particularly twisted scenes that Twaddle can’t seem to help noticing.

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Boulevard Oaks
06/17/13 11:15am

Chateau Ten, Part Deux: The Ashby Midrise

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Condos, Condos for Sale, Land Development, Proposed Developments, Southampton
12 Comments

Just down the block from that recent fence-related mishap at the all-cleared Ashby Highrise site is the proposed site of the . . . Ashby Midrise? Well, the official moniker of this 5-story condo box at Ashby and Sunset is Chateau Ten. And if that name (or the purple-hued rendering pictured on the sign) seems familiar, it’s because an identical building from the Randall Davis Company is already going up on Spann and Welch on the lot adjacent to where Hines might or might not be building that 17-story office tower off San Felipe.

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Bayous and Waterways
04/05/13 2:00pm

That Naked Spot on White Oak Bayou

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Condos, Houston Heights, Landscape
17 Comments

A reader sends this stitched-together panorama of the Heights bike trail spanning White Oak Bayou and wonders what’s going on with all the denuding: “This is kitty corner from where the proposed Emes Place condos will go. Mother nature swamped their work in the bayou with the recent rains. They appear to be taking revenge by bulldozing the nearby clump of forest. This is a larger piece of bird/homeless person sanctuary than the tract Emes Place is to be on, so I wonder what the story is. Harris County Flood Control comes by the site all the time, but I can’t find any mention of it on their website, or anywhere.”

Photo: Swamplot inbox

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Condos
01/17/13 11:15am

New Galveston Marina Restaurant Almost Ready, Condos Coming

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Galveston, Interiors, Land Development, Mixed Use, New Construction, Proposed Developments, Restaurants
1 Comment

Pelicans are symbols of self-sacrifice, said to pierce their own breast with their own beak to feed their young their blood. But the birds also have real big gullets — fitting, then, as the name of this 4,000-sq.-ft. restaurant under construction at 7819 Broadway in Galveston.

But the restaurant is just one part of the Pelican Rest Marina project developed by Harry Schulz. Across Offatts Bayou from Moody Gardens, the marina’s already operating as a fuel dock and weigh station. And construction is expected to begin soon on seaside condos:

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Comments
11/27/12 5:40pm

Comment of the Day: Too Dull To Be Haunted

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Condos, Quicklink, Rice Military
1 Comment

COMMENT OF THE DAY: TOO DULL TO BE HAUNTED “As a former owner of a condo in Park Memorial (just a few feet south of the slab where the bones were found), I hate to break it to you hopeful readers, but there was not even remotely anything spooky or creepy that occurred on the grounds during the 5 years I lived there. There simply wasn’t anything going on . . . paranormal or otherwise. Sorry.” [Dave, commenting on Park Memorial Condos, New Apartments Built on Top of Old Rice Military Cemetery]

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Apartments
11/21/12 2:30pm

Park Memorial Condos, New Apartments Built on Top of Old Rice Military Cemetery

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Condos, Demolitions, Houston History, Redevelopment, Rice Military
12 Comments

Spooked former residents looking for some sort of larger, more mystical explanation for the disastrous end of the Park Memorial Condos at 5292 Memorial Dr. now have confirmation of a first-class backstory to hang their storytelling hats on. A little late for Halloween, a medical examiner has determined that the human remains discovered this summer during the condos’ demolition — and the preparation of the site for its replacement, the Park Memorial Apartments — belong to bodies interred at a cemetery that once graced the site. That would be the Crooms Cemetery, Preservation Houston’s David Bush tells teevee reporter Deborah Wrigley. The African-American burial ground was named after Felix Crooms (who scored nearby Crooms St. as well), was in operation from approximately 1917 to 1937, and also served as the final resting place for members of St. Luke’s Missionary Baptist Church.

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Condos
11/06/12 3:46pm

An End-Around at Emes Place

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Development Regulations, Freeland Historic District, Neighborhood Disputes, Proposed Developments
15 Comments

The Canadian developers behind an on-again-off-again 84-unit condo project planned for a 1.4-acre wooded property at the end of E. 5th St. adjacent to the Heights hike-and-bike trail have withdrawn their variance request to build a private street for a new Emes Place subdivision. But neighborhood opponents of the project, called Viewpoint at the Heights, may like Group LSR’s newest plans less than the ones they had been fighting against. The Planning Department’s Suzy Hartgrove tells the Leader’s Charlotte Aguilar that the developers of the Serento and Piedmont at River Oaks now plan to construct a public street over a bridge and build their own cul de sac. The latest plans make no mention of the size of condo the company is proposing. And if the new design meets city standards, the city’s planning commission wouldn’t have an opportunity to require any site changes on the project when it comes up for approval this Thursday.

Photos: Swamplot inbox (site and trail); Charlotte Aguilar/The Leader (variance sign)

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Condos
10/29/12 6:32pm

Union Kitchen Expanding to 1111 Studewood Place

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Houston Heights, Mixed Use, New Construction, Restaurants
45 Comments

A ground-floor restaurant spot in the almost-complete 6-story brick condo building at 1111 Studewood St. will be taken by the third location of the Union Kitchen, the Leader‘s Charlotte Aguilar reports. A sign in a window facing north onto E. 11th 1/2 St. indicates a TABC application for that space is currently under review. A broker from Personette Properties says a model unit for one of the building’s 20 residences should be ready for visits by December 1st — and move-ins by the first of the year. 1111 Studewood Place is also working to sign up a fitness facility and a medical office for the building’s office space, the broker says. The building has its own garage; all the condo units are on the top 3 floors.

Photos: Candace Garcia

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Condos
10/22/12 4:26pm

A Local Election Campaign That’s Only Out To Destroy the Opposition

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Demolitions, Westwood
9 Comments

Here’s the kind of campaign true fans of demolition can get behind: That’s Houston’s Mayor Annise Parker in the driver’s seat, about to trash a balcony at the Winfield I Condominiums at 10110 Forum West Dr., near the intersection of the Southwest Fwy. and Beltway 8. In taking the ceremonial first whack at a derelict complex, the city’s honorary demolisher-in-chief is campaigning in favor of a city bond issue on the November ballot that would generate $15 million to remove “blighted properties” like the Winfield. Though Proposition E is listed as a measure for housing bonds, the mayor’s office notes, the funds would “all go toward demolishing dangerous and abandoned buildings to make way for future affordable housing.”

Photo: Jessica Michan

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