WHERE THERE’S SMOKE That fire in the atrium office building at 9343 North Loop East almost 2 years ago still heats up the Houston real estate scene: “An insurance company with a potential $25 million liability from a 2007 Houston office fire is claiming smoke that killed three people was ‘pollution’ and surviving families shouldn’t be compensated for their losses since the deaths were not caused directly by the actual flames. Great American Insurance Company is arguing in a Houston federal court that the section of the insurance policy that excludes payments for pollution — like discharges or seepage that require cleanup — would also exclude payouts for damages, including deaths, caused by smoke, or pollution, that results from a fire.†[Houston Chronicle]
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Tag: Hazards
Neighbors of a permitted, non-hazardous waste treatment and disposal plant less than a mile south of Riverside Terrace have been upset by the stench that regularly rises from the new facility. And last weekend there was a bit of an eruption at the CES Environmental Services plant at 4904 Griggs Rd.:
No one was injured in Saturday’s explosion, but it was the latest in a series of incidents involving the treatment facility, which is permitted to handle non-hazardous industrial waste, such as used oil.
The city has received more than 135 complaints about the plant this year, mostly related to the odors.
So what exactly landed in the yards along Grace Lane in McGregor Terrace? Exploded waste?
An awful stench has been wafting through the homes of Golden Glade Estates, just west of Hobby Airport and south of Sims Bayou. There’s also been backyard flooding after every rain, a constant din from trucks, and generator-powered lighting beaming into local Living Rooms during the night. The cause? Huge piles of wood debris, brought into the southeast Houston neighborhood after Hurricane Ike:
Their problems started when Federal Emergency Management Agency contractors began trucking in hundreds of semi truckloads of pungent smelling, steaming mulch. Local 2 Investigates cameras and Sky 2 helicopter footage show some mounds stacked taller than nearby homes, covering acres of land less than 100 yards from some homes.
Conspicuously absent from the MLS listing for 834 W. 24th St. in the Heights: any mention (or photos) of the Scar Room, a small chamber of sculptures and small wood panels on which house owner and artist Dolan Smith and sympathetic visitors graphically documented their physical and psychological afflictions. Sample Scar Room decor: “a submerged doll with a piece of rubber hose wrapped around its neck, representing the umbilical cord that nearly strangled Smith at birth.”
But it isn’t too hard to find exacting descriptions of the home online. The Houston Press, for example, featured this bit of color as it celebrated the home’s come-from-behind win of the paper’s “Best Shrine to the Abnormal” award back in 2002:
Donations of every imaginable variety show up weekly: horns, doll heads, a film canister of Tommy Lee Jones’s spit, balls of Saran Wrap, clumps of hair, an appendix, color photos of fallopian tubes and contemporary art of a disquieting nature. Artist/nutball Dolan Smith has turned his Heights bungalow into a mecca for all things weird. . . .
Smith is supplementing his empire of the bizarre with a two-thirds-complete pet cemetery. Last year, Tropical Storm Allison took its toll on the nascent final resting place for pets. Rising floodwaters filled the jars of 32 dead rats, inadvertently creating biological pipe bombs.
Sure, you’re thinking . . . Who’s gonna buy this place?
No problem. Realtor Weldon Rigby, himself no stranger to homes graced by an occasional mannequin, has already done himself proud. After just a month and a half on the market, the home — listed for $150,000 — went “option pending” on November 14th.
A 3-story section of The Collection, the Morgan Group’s 528-unit apartment complex under construction behind the new Costco on Weslayan and Richmond apparently collapsed early Sunday. A Swamplot reader sends in these photos of the scene following the accident, along with a few sharp comments:
The 4 story “stick built” apartment facility known as “The Collection” (www.collectionliving.com) became a “collection of sticks” early Sunday morning. It seems as if the contractors and the Morgan Group were in a Thanksgiving hurry to get home for turkey and giblets and forgot to “tie in” to the adjoining 3 and 4 story section of the main building.
Good thing it was a Sunday as Monday morning will bring back a tribe of contractors to push to get this facility on the Harris County Tax Roll by Summer 2009….Someone could have been seriously hurt if not killed. The Morgan Group should be “thankful” this Thanksgiving that it was not the case – and that they can “rush” to completion.
VISTA BONITA APARTMENTS: STILL OPEN FOR THE HOLIDAYS! Where’s everybody going? Sure, the gas is turned off, but really, what’s the rush? “Most residents have moved, but those from about 20 apartments remain in the 144-unit complex near the Gulf Freeway and Airport Boulevard, [Vista Bonita Apartments owner Nanik] Bhagia said. Many of those who remain are close to finding apartments, but are embittered that Bhagia has given them such short notice. . . . Bhagia on Tuesday said residents don’t have to move out immediately — if they need more time, they can have it. State law generally affords tenants — depending on their lease — more time than a few days to move out. Bhagia’s notice to vacate is not a formal eviction process. But he could seek to evict tenants who don’t leave.” [Houston Chronicle; previously]
VISTA BONITA APARTMENTS CLOSING MONDAY The owner of a rundown apartment compound on the edge of South Houston where a boy drowned late last month has decided to shut down the entire 144-unit complex rather than correct unsafe conditions identified by the city: “In a brief phone interview Tuesday, [owner Nanik] Bhagia repeated his pledge to refund November rent and security deposits. He said he also would pay residents’ application fees at new complexes, but ended the call when pressed for specifics. Some tenants have said the office often is closed, and they were not sure Tuesday how to take advantage of his offer. Bhagia later e-mailed the Chronicle to say that tenants ‘will be paid when they turn in the keys and do not take away any of our appliances. We are not running away.’ The child’s death prompted more scrutiny from city inspectors, who descended again on the property and issued dozens of new citations. Residents say Bhagia blamed conditions on Hurricane Ike, but the city has been issuing tickets for years.” [Houston Chronicle; previously]
If any of those holdouts at Park Memorial are still trying to camp out in their condos, it had to have become a whole lot tougher for them after Saturday. That’s when the city cut off power to the complex and chained the gates.
Among the Park Memorial Forever crowd, a source tells Swamplot, is a family that went to court seeking an injunction against the city — on grounds city officials had no legal right to evict them for safety reasons because the safety issues applied to a different building on the same property. That request has been one of the obstacles holding up the sale of the entire complex, to a so-far-secret buyer.
The attorney for Lakes of Avalon Village developer Robert A. Hudson is now saying that economic conditions make it “unlikely” that Lennar Homes and J. Patrick Homes will build on homesites in the path of a new proposed route for Segment F2 of the Grand Parkway in Spring.
But there’s no need to give up hope entirely: Lennar and J. Patrick apparently encountered few difficulties building and selling 60 homes sitting on the new highway’s earlier proposed route, in a different portion of the same subdivision. The developer’s stated reluctance to repeat the trick means the homebuilding market must be pretty tough now.
The new route would swing around the homes that have already been built and into not-yet-developed areas of Lakes of Avalon Village and neighboring Willow Trace.
All the residents have moved out, the court battle’s been lost, and the homeowners of the Park Memorial condo complex on Memorial Dr. at Detering are just waiting for a “secret” buyer, KPRC’s Ryan Korsgard reports:
The homeowners continue to pay mortgages, property taxes and association dues, plus pay for a new place to live. The city first posted notices over the summer for structural problems. Owners protested and went to court, but a judge sided with the city.
“The ruling by the courts basically reaffirmed the position the city had in regards to the safety and well-being of the tenants of this townhome,” Houston Public Works Department spokesman Alvin Wright said.
The city said it is illegal to stay without power or water.
- Lights Out At Condo Complex [Click2Houston, via Houstonist]
- Condos Condemned: Park Memorial To Become Parking Garage Memorial [Swamplot]
Photos of Park Memorial Condominiums: HAR
What’s a failed homebuilder to do when it hurriedly goes belly-up . . . but still has a huge chunk of inventory on hand?
Welcome to the Royce Builders Already-Gone-Out-of-Business Home Sale!
How’s it work? Well, if you’re a lucky real-estate agent, you receive a mysterious message with a couple of attachments listing the more than 300 homes in the Greater Houston area the . . . uh, former company still has available! In 49 different neighborhoods around town! And all at discount prices!
Included with the list: a map of the neighborhoods Royce graced (shown above), demonstrating the company’s vast exurban spread.
Of course, the email message doesn’t come from Royce Builders, because Royce is . . . no longer with us. (And, to judge from the comments coming into Swamplot from recent Royce buyers, employees, and vendors, it is sorely missed!) The list comes instead from an email address on the h-smith.com domain. That hyphen, of course, stands for “ammer.” Didn’t Hammersmith Financial, Royce’s sister mortgage company, also go out of business?
But the property list is so much more fun than a collection of random way-far-out addresses:
Late last night city officials were able to get an emergency court order allowing a trustee to take over the La Casita Apartments at 313 Sunnyside near Northline. And MGC Mortgage, the company left holding onto the foreclosed property, has “transferred oversight” of the 600-unit complex behind Gallery Furniture to a new management company. The agreements, along with other interventions by the city, mean the more than 1,000 residents of the all-bills-paid apartments will not be evicted, have their water or electricity shut off, or lose credit for the monthly rent they just paid:
Residents of the La Casita Apartments already felt neglected by managers who let buildings run down, even before Hurricane Ike broke windows and tore patches off roofs. But instead of starting on repairs to make the apartments livable after the storm, management skipped town, keeping the rent money and leaving the bills unpaid.
The apparent owner of La Casita is an Indiana company named Briarwood Houston LP. The complex failed a Houston Housing Authority inspection last month. Police officials are investigating the management company’s handling of the payments.
- City helps halt evictions [Houston Chronicle]
- Residents Of Foreclosed Apartments Keep Homes [Click2Houston]
- Previously in Swamplot: Foreclosure Hits Northline Renters
FORECLOSURE HITS NORTHLINE RENTERS Residents of the La Casita Apartments are worried that they may be kicked out of their homes or have their water turned off. The all-bills-paid complex is being foreclosed on. Representatives from the city are planning a meeting this evening at Northline Elementary to discuss the situation with the more than 150 1,000 people who live in the complex, which sits behind Gallery Furniture just east of the North Freeway. Officers carrying assault rifles arrived at La Casita yesterday after apartment manager Ed Thomas called the police. After a notice was posted on the property informing the renters that they would be forced to move out immediately, upset residents had blocked Thomas’s car, complaining that he wasn’t giving them acceptable answers about their situation. [abc13]
JUST ANOTHER DAY IN ALIEF “I live in a piece of **** Apartment. It always has and will probably always be a grand royale of common apartment miseries. Drunken neighbors stomping around at all hours including 4am, another neighbor who likes to play his Tejano music really loud, stray dogs, animal abuse, street traffic. To name a few. . . . I persist on staying thinking it’ll get better but it doesn’t. This morning at around 4am, as usual, a steady stream of water came pouring out of our bathroom ceiling onto everything down below. A great way to start a Thursday. I think to myself this is nothing, just a little upset, there a people out there dealing with real issues in the middle of the morning, but what’s really going on is growing unseen to my tired eyes. It’s black, moldy, and by all means making me sick.” [Working On It]
HURRICANES: THE DEVIL GALVESTON WILL KNOW IN ADVANCE The brand spanking new Galveston National Laboratory, which will be home to the world’s nastiest bacteria and most infectious viruses, officially opens next week. “Yes, at first blush it seems daft to build a nearly $200 million facility with the world’s deadliest biologicals in hurricane country. But the reality strikes me quite differently. In fact, there’s an advantage that comes from being able to know a couple days in advance of a hurricane’s threat. This offers time to lock down the lab, which simply wouldn’t be possible in an area threatened by tornadoes or earthquakes.” [SciGuy]