COMMENT OF THE DAY: ZIP ON THIS SIDE “I live in the 77092 portion of Oak Forest. Luckily, our brick ranch houses have been spared the wrecking balls hitting on the little bungalows across the bayou.” [marcy, commenting on Daily Demolition Report: Airline Farming]
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Tag: Demolitions
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Making an opening on McDuffie — and other home improvements.
“There are at least 3-4 dozers making fast work of the demo” of the abandoned Park Memorial Condos on Memorial Dr. at Detering, reports Swamplot reader and real-estate agent David Hille, who lives nearby and snapped these photos of the onsite action this morning. The sale of the festering, overgrown property — which required the willing or resigned participation of 108 locked-out condo owners — was completed last month, and demo permits for 4 of the structures were granted yesterday.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SHORT-TERM APARTMENTS “Wait. When this place was built it was out of place because it was a brand spanking new apartment complex in the Washington Corridor which (with a few exceptions) was a dead area / no man’s land of heavy industrial uses and crumbling residential shacks. Now these well maintained, 20 year old garden apartments are woefully obsolete and cry out for demolition because they aren’t dense enough, hip enough, or mixed use enough for surrounding neighborhood. How can you not love this city?” [Bernard, commenting on Archstone Memorial Heights Clearing Out Residents Again for Bigger Buildings, 4 Years After First Attempt]
The long-delayed piece-by-piece redevelopment of the 28-acre Archstone Memorial Heights compound at the corner of Studemont and Washington Ave. into a denser style of apartment complex appears to be back on track. Residents of the 3 existing 3-story “garden-style” buildings in the southwest corner facing Heights Blvd. have received notice that they will need to vacate their apartments by August 1st. (“I was trying to figure out why rent prices went up $300 in 5 months,” a resident quips to Swamplot: “Now I know why.”) Did those letters from management sound familiar? Residents of the same buildings were cleared out in March 2008 in anticipation of a similar redevelopment. A letter sent to Memorial Heights tenants refers only to a new 4-story apartment building planned for the site of those structures: Buildings 7, 8, and 9.
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
For every building, there is a time. And a place. And some dust.
Do you miss the old Galerie Mado Chalvet building at 1706 Westheimer? And, um . . . another question: Do you need a backpack? Designer Julia Gabriel has just the thing for you, then: Your very own handmade 1706 Westheimer Rd. backpack, modeled after photos she took of the hulking duplex-turned-antique-store after it burned last July. It’s since been torn down — along with the neighboring structures on the corner of Dunlavy and Westheimer — for a new development. The HSPVA grad watched the building’s demolition from across the street at Domy Books, but she’d already decided to memorialize the building as a backpack. Yeah, she does that sort of thing: “My backpacks are what I imagine these abandoned buildings were like in their prime: fresh and new with a dash of color,” she writes. “They include a stitched map that shows the buildings original location so it can always find its way home.”
