12/11/15 3:30pm

Ivy Lofts Rendering, Leeland at Live Oak, East Downtown, Houston
In keeping with the project’s general theme of creative use of space, designs for the Ivy Lofts highrise put all of the building’s exterior crannies and levels to work.  Renderings show at least 9 variously-sized and -sheltered rooftops and outdoor spaces incorporated into the plan for the proposed tower, whose teensy condo floorplans will start at 300 sq. ft.

Developers are already setting up a sales room in a former grocery store warehouse on the site (located on the block between Live Oak, Leeland, Nagle, and a discontinuous stretch of Pease), not far from coffin-factory-turned-craft-store Texas Art Asylum. Novel Creative Development hopes to sell all of the tiny condo units before contractors break ground in June on the tower (pictured from the south below):

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East Downtown
12/08/15 3:30pm

Ivy Lofts Rendering, Leeland at Live Oak, East Downtown, Houston

“Some buzz” has made its way back to the Ivy Lofts developers since news of the plans for Houston’s tiniest condos began to spread — so much buzz, in fact, that Novel Creative Development is responding to the pushback with a change in sales tactics. The group announced in an email that Ivy Lofts buyers will have the option to lump 2 adjacent units together and customize the floorplan, giving residents more space if needed.

The promotion team is also working hard to rebrand the proposed floorplans with the names of famously dense cities, instead of describing the units by their size.  “It’s not fair to label these spaces by square footages,” says marketing director Brandon Vos in a RE/MAX press release. “We had to come up with new names since so many rooms double in usage.”

The newly internationalized units include The Tokyo, the project’s itsy-bitsiest floor plan, which measures in at 300 sq. ft. and will be priced starting at $119,000.

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Doubling Up at Ivy Lofts
12/03/15 3:30pm

DOWNTOWN ACREAGE SECURED FOR AUSTIN’S TALLEST AND WEIRDEST TOWER Meanwhile, in Austin: Land has been purchased for the construction of the proposed 58-story Independent highrise, also nicknamed “the Jenga Tower” for its unsettling offsets and angles.  The Independent is planned to be the the tallest residential building in Austin, not to mention west of the Mississippi. You can take an animated tour through the structure’s floorplans and amenities in a dizzying video released by the developers. [Austin-American Statesman; Independent Austin]

12/02/15 9:00am

Ivy Lofts Showcase Warehouse, Leeland at Live Oak, East Downtown, Houston

Ivy Lofts Showcase Warehouse, Leeland at Live Oak, East Downtown, HoustonThe muffled whir of power tools could be heard last week through the razorwire-topped fence and metal siding of the former Leeland Wholesale Grocery, south of Leeland St. between Live Oak and Nagle. The 10,000-sq.-ft. warehouse is being converted into a sales center and showroom for the Ivy Lofts micro-unit condominium highrise, which will eventually spring up on the same city block. The warehouse will be outfitted with several full-scale models of the project’s adorably tiny floorplans, which start at a dorm-room-reminiscent 300 sq.ft. An Ivy Lofts marketing representative for the project assured Paul Takahashi of the HBJ that the lack of wasted space in the units “will change the way Houstonians live.”

Developer Novel Creative Development anticipates opening the sales center in April and selling all of the planned tower’s units before demolishing the warehouse as contractors break ground on the highrise itself in June. Plans for the tower (shown below from the south) include 7 floors of parking, ground-level retail space, and various recreational nooks:

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Ivy Lofts Sales Center
07/08/15 12:15pm

Sign Advertising 3003 Louisiana, 3003 Louisiana St., Midtown, Houston

Here’s the sign that went up at the southwest corner of Anita and Milam in Midtown late last month — at the northern end of the block where the empty hull of Van Loc still sits, reminding you of bún gone by. It’s advertising a 16-story office tower on the full block, with 3 separate retail spaces on the ground floor and a 6-level parking garage above. Senterra Real Estate Group’s website for 3003 Louisiana first appeared online last October — just as the Midtown Vietnamese restaurant was closing up shop. The view shown in the rendering is taken from Anita St., to show off the north-facing Downtown views available from the structure’s 9 office floors.

Photo: Marco Hernandez

3003 Louisiana
06/23/15 1:45pm

REVEALING THE FULL PLAN FOR SKANSKA’S DOWNTOWN BLOCK WILL TAKE SOME TIME Construction of Temporary Parking Garage, Houston Club Building, 811 Rusk St., Downtown HoustonThe Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff does her level best to decipher and explain the strange sequence of events at Skanska’s ongoing demolition-construction-demolition-construction project across the street from Pennzoil Place: “The developer planning Capitol Tower, the 35-story office building slated for downtown’s former Houston Club building site, is planning to pour the foundation for the structure next month, but as of now, there are no plans to construct the tower portion of the project. So what’s with all the construction on the property? The Houston Club building was imploded last year, but the garage on the site was to remain because of an existing parking contract. During the implosion, however, the garage was damaged and had to be demolished. Project developer Skanska USA Commercial Development is now building a new garage on the southern half of the block. ‘We’re still executing our project plans,’ said Michael Mair, executive vice president and regional manager for Skanska USA in Houston.” Left out of the explanation: The multi-story steel parking structure and ramps Skanska built for the garage before it was demolished — pictured here under construction in front of the then-still-standing Houston Club Building last March. The downtown block, surrounded by Rusk, Travis, Milam, and Capitol streets, is now empty. [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplot inbox

06/17/15 3:45pm

SHAKING AT THE TOP OF A HOUSTON SKYSCRAPER IN THE MIDDLE OF A HURRICANE Wells Fargo Plaza, Downtown HoustonHoustonians who were around for Hurricane Alicia in 1983 might remember that the Wells Fargo Plaza tower downtown — then known as the brand-new Allied Bank Plaza — ended up losing more than 3,000 glass panels in the storm. But did you know that the building that night became the site of one of the few live wiggling-skyscrapers-in-a-storm experiments ever conducted? Engineers Robert Halvorson and Michael Fletcher spent the night of the hurricane in the 71-story tower’s unfinished top floor, just to see how much the building would sway; more than 30 years later, they described their experiences to Washington Post reporter Emily Badger. The peak acceleration of 43 milli-g’s they recorded — enough back-and-forth and twisting to make it impossible for them to walk upright — turned out to be “give or take, exactly the same thing that had been predicted by the wind tunnel” before the structure was built. [Gizmodo] Photo of Wells Fargo Plaza: Jackson Myers

06/17/15 1:15pm

Sign for Arabella, 4521 San Felipe St., Highland Village, Houston

Sign for Arabella, 4521 San Felipe St., Highland Village, HoustonIt was introduced in April as the Arábella, but all you Randall Davis fans who’ve been trying hard since then to affect the correct pronunciation can relax your eyebrows. A reader sends in this closeup of the sign up on San Felipe, next to the driveway for the neighboring Target, advertising the 34-story condo tower the foreign-language-reference aficionado is planning to plant right in front of the just-about-complete SkyHouse River Oaks and across from Ashley Furniture on San Felipe, just inside the Loop. And behold! The accent is gone. Or rather, painted over, the reader reports.

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Acute Name
05/18/15 1:30pm

Treviso at Waterway Square,  Waterway Square Pl., The Woodlands, Texas

This is what “European sensibility” means in The Woodlands — at least to the Woodlands Development Company people marketing Treviso at Waterway Square, a 23-story condo tower planned across Waterway Square Pl. from the Woodlands Waterway itself, right behind the construction site of the 302-room Westin hotel now going up along the waterfront. The view down the waterway above shows the new tower at center, in front of an existing multi-story parking garage (whose cheese and bicycle shops at the base face Lake Robbins Dr.), and just east of the 24 Waterway Ave. office building and its ground-floor restaurantage. The completed Westin is at right center.

In the language of the development firm, this setting is “not unlike a European village.” So the name? “Treviso is a medieval Italian town near Venice that shares its combination of peaceful canals and iconic Piazzas but on a smaller scale, and just slightly off the beaten path,” declares a marketing brochure.

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23 Stories
04/29/15 4:15pm

THE SHOCKING REASON WHY SUPERMAN, BATMAN, AND THE FLASH WERE WASHING WINDOWS AT THE HOTEL DEREK TODAY No movie to promote. No pay squabble to publicize. No pediatric cancer patients to visit. Just: ’cuz. After a SkyEye HD copter spotted superheroes on the roof around lunchtime today, abc13 investigators called the Hotel Derek on Westheimer at the West Loop to get the marketing message. But none was available: “A hotel spokesperson says a standard window cleaning was scheduled, and guests and passersby just got a little something extra, courtesy of the window washers, who apparently took it upon themselves to show up for work in costume.” [abc13]

04/21/15 5:15pm

Rendering of Arábella Condo Tower, 4521 San Felipe St., Highland Village, Houston

The folks at BuzzBuzzHome pass on this hot-off-the-email rendering of the 34-story condo tower Randall Davis is planning for a piece of the former Westcreek Apartments site along San Felipe just inside the West Loop. Dubbed the Arábella, the 116-unit building is meant to sit at 4521 San Felipe St., directly across the street from Ashley Furniture. The proposed highrise’s immediate neighbors — including Target and the almost-complete 25-story SkyHouse River Oaks apartment tower immediately in back of the property — are artfully represented in the rendering by a small forest.

Rendering: Randall Davis Company/Argali Partners

Highland Village Highrise
04/09/15 3:45pm

SKYHOUSE MANAGEMENT: THAT’S FUNNY, NOBODY SAID ANYTHING ABOUT OUR PICTURE WINDOW TOILETS BEFORE Entrance and Toilets, SkyHouse Houston, 1625 Main St., Downtown HoustonSure, the SkyHouse Houston features from-the-street views of window-side toilets on the second and third floors of the new Downtown highrise. But a spokesperson for the management company in charge of the 24-story tower and 2 other largely identical SkyHouses still under construction in Houston tells the Chronicle‘s Craig Hlavaty that the prominent display of bathrooms was not part of any marketing strategy. Simpson Property Group’s Thornton Kennedy says he wasn’t aware that anybody had even noticed the toilet views before Swamplot readers began writing about them: “We have nearly 10 [SkyHouses] completed from Florida to the Carolinas and over to Texas and we’ve never gotten a call about this,” he says. “But we get it.” Kennedy’s explanation for the Pease St. display involves a reference to window coverings in the photo (above) published earlier this week on Swamplot. “Those units that were photographed are not yet occupied, and therefore those blinds are open all the time,” he explains. [Houston Chronicle] Photo: Swamplot inbox

04/07/15 11:45am

Entrance and Toilets, SkyHouse Houston, 1625 Main St., Downtown Houston

SkyHouse Houston, 1625 Main St., Downtown Houston“Not sure if you can see from this picture,” writes the Swamplot correspondent who sent the image at the top of this story, looking into a few of the units in the new 24-story apartment tower at 1625 Main St. from Pease St., “but it appears the ‘view’ from the bathrooms at the new SkyHouse will be excellent.” Of course you already knew that.

Bonus: The design of the SkyHouse Main going up across the street will be identical.

Photos: Swamplot inbox (view); Simpson Property Group (tower)

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