Tag: Houston Landmarks

05/25/12 9:07pm

Comment of the Day: The Astrodome Honeypot Plan, Cheaper Than Demolition

Comments, Financing, Houston Landmarks, Public Buildings, Quicklink, Redevelopment, Reliant Park

12 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE ASTRODOME HONEYPOT PLAN, CHEAPER THAN DEMOLITION “If someone just gave me $50 million, Iâ€™d structure a perpetuity yielding no less than a 1.2% return (which shouldnâ€™t be at all difficult when 30-year T-bonds yield a 2.85% return) and maintain the Dome FOREVER. I say this because I recall a Chronicle article citing a cost of $600,000 per year to maintain it in mothballs. Thatâ€™s just not very much money. Unless thereâ€™s a pressing need to spend $140 per square foot to reclaim the land (which would be idiotic given that Astroworld sold its land for $17 PSF and that the Reliant Arena is also on the chopping block and would yield more land), then the only thing that could possibly make sense is to do nothing. Simply wait. Then . . . the first private concern that can pony up the cash to do something appropriate with the venue that will generate hotel and/or sales tax revenue gets to capture the $600k per year for themselves. I suspect that it wouldnâ€™t take particularly long. And then the taxpayers come out AHEAD as compared to demolishing it and the politicians get to take well-deserved credit.” [TheNiche]

77054, Astrodome, Attractions, Comments, Demolitions, Financing, Houston Landmarks, Public Buildings, Redevelopment, Reliant Park

Houston Landmarks

05/25/12 2:04pm

Weingarten: We’re Saving the Alabama Letters

Quicklink, Renovations, Shopping Centers, Signage, Upper Kirby

8 Comments

WEINGARTEN: WE’RE SAVING THE ALABAMA LETTERS Weingarten Realty is preparing reporters for a photo op in front of the Alabama Theater at 2922 S. Shepherd Dr. now being outfitted for a Trader Joe’s. The letters spelling “Alabama” that the company had removed earlier this week from the original tall totem sign in front of the 1939 Art Deco theater that the company recently gutted and leveled will soon be returned intact and unscrambled, a spokesperson promises. The letters are being painted and the neon lighting hidden inside them is being replaced. Expected homecoming date for the letters: sometime between June 13th and June 16th. [Previously on Swamplot] Photo: Jay Rascoe

77098, Alabama Theater, Historic Preservation, Houston Landmarks, Renovations, Shopping Centers, Signage, Upper Kirby

Houston Landmarks

05/22/12 12:44pm

Taking Down the Letters on the Alabama Theater Sign

Retail, Signage, Upper Kirby

16 Comments

Going on now: “The owner of the company taking down the Alabama theater sign letters says ‘the plan’ is to restore them and put them back,” tweets the Chron‘s Nancy Sarnoff, who was no doubt sent several urgent messages from passers-by wondering what was happening to the totem on Shepherd Dr. just north of West Alabama today. And an email property owner Weingarten Realty sent to Preservation Houston says that’s legit: â€œWe are replacing the neon and painting the Alabama letters. In order to paint the letters we are removing them and will re install them.â€

77098, Alabama Theater, Houston Landmarks, Retail, Signage, Upper Kirby

Houston Landmarks

05/10/12 4:43pm

The Messy End of Vargo’s Restaurant

Land for Sale, Openings and Closings, Piney Point Village, Restaurants

19 Comments

It’s not just the Hunington Properties sign posted in front of Vargo’s announcing a new mixed-use development on the 8.71-acre property, or the more plaintive and direct Land for Sale notice put up more recently. (Asking price: $9 million.) Now there’s another, more compelling harbinger of doom for the 47-year-old lakeside restaurant and event venue at Fondren and Woodway festooned with azaleas and peacocks: A trustee appointed to manage the restaurant’s bankruptcy (which was filed last October but converted to Chapter 7 last month) has ordered Vargo’s shut down for failure to pay rent.

77063, Houston Landmarks, Land for Sale, Openings and Closings, Piney-Point-Village, Restaurants

Comments

04/05/12 11:15pm

Comment of the Day: To Kill a Giant Cockroach

Houston Landmarks, Quicklink, Signs

No Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: TO KILL A GIANT COCKROACH “Itâ€™s not really dead. While weâ€™re asleep it will emerge from the scrap heap and continue to wander under the cover of night. Somewhere a husband will find it and attempt another violent execution, only to have the wife frantically call him home when it crawls back out the next day.” [mek ju, commenting on Giant Neon Cockroach That Haunted Southwest Freeway, Eradicated at Last]

Comments, Houston Landmarks, Signs

Critters

04/05/12 3:20pm

Giant Neon Cockroach That Haunted Southwest Freeway, Eradicated at Last

Houston Landmarks, Quicklink, Signs

10 Comments

GIANT NEON COCKROACH THAT HAUNTED SOUTHWEST FREEWAY, ERADICATED AT LAST Bubba, the cockroach enshrined in an enormous neon sign for Holder’s Pest Control, which stood guard for years along Westpark next to the Southwest Freeway, will not return to the Houston skyline, the company reports. The 8-ft.-by-16-ft. sign was taken down in 2004, after Holder’s relocated. But after almost 8 years of residence in a company warehouse, the sign was “cut up and hauled off for recycling” earlier this year, reports Travis Alford. That menacing, old-fashioned cockroach is no longer a part of the brand identity of the company now known as Holder’s Pest Solutions, and it won’t be coming back. Holder’s just-unveiled new logo instead features a gentle curve at its top that references instead a much more modern feature of Houston: the Astrodome. [Houston Chronicle] Photo: Holder’s Pest Control

77057, Critters, Houston Landmarks, Signs

04/04/12 9:52pm

Brave Explorers Enter Houston’s Forbidden Sports Tomb

Historic Preservation, Houston Landmarks, Reliant Park

5 Comments

Houston’s 13th annual “What Shall We Do with the Astrodome?” media season kicked off yesterday with a tour of the shuttered facility open to local reporters and photographers willing to sweat a little in the no-longer-air-conditioned space, sign a release, and hold their noses. What was that offending scent? Teevee news reporters politely referred to it in their reports as “mildew” or a “musty” odor, but Swamplot photographer Candace Garcia calls it as she sniffed it: “The smell of mold was overwhelming,” she reports.

77054, Astrodome, Attractions, Historic Preservation, Houston Landmarks, Reliant Park

Downtown

04/04/12 3:43pm

ExxonMobil’s Humble Gift to the City?

Houston Landmarks, Office Buildings, Quicklink

30 Comments

EXXONMOBIL’S HUMBLE GIFT TO THE CITY? What will happen to its well-shaded 44-story downtown headquarters building at 800 Bell St., once ExxonMobil decamps for the new campus the oil giant is building at Houston’s northern reaches? The company “has not announced what will happen to its downtown building,” writes longtime real estate reporter Ralph Bivins about the iconic 1963 tower that houses at its top the storied Petroleum Club. “One of the most interesting rumors weâ€™ve heard about it is that Exxon Mobil will donate the building to the City of Houston for municipal offices. You know, we canâ€™t sell it, so letâ€™s just give it to Annise Parker instead.” [Culturemap] Photo: Flickr user lc_db

77002, Downtown, ExxonMobil, Houston Landmarks, Office Buildings

Comments

03/30/12 11:44pm

Comment of the Day: The Best Ideas for Reinventing the Astrodome Will Come After It’s Demolished

Historic Preservation, Houston Landmarks, Quicklink, Reliant Park

13 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE BEST IDEAS FOR REINVENTING THE ASTRODOME WILL COME AFTER IT’S DEMOLISHED “. . . Yes, itâ€™s hard to find a profitable idea for it now, but if we tear it down, we could spend hundreds of years saying ‘Oh, why didnâ€™t we just think to do this?’ Most buildings that we think of now as grand and historic went through a long time when people thought they were worthless. They came close to tearing down Notre Dame cathedral and Grand Central Station . . . and they actually did tear down Penn Station and the Abbey of Cluny. And looking back you say, ‘How was it possible?’ But almost all great buildings go through phases where itâ€™s not obvious why it should remain standing. Better to hold off on the trigger finger.” [Mike, commenting on How Harris County Has Been Letting the Astrodome Rot]

77054, Astrodome, Comments, Historic Preservation, Houston Landmarks, Reliant Park

03/30/12 12:15pm

How Harris County Has Been Letting the Astrodome Rot

Historic Preservation, Houston Landmarks, Maintenance, Reliant Park

25 Comments

Teevee reporter Courtney Zubowski follows up on questions raised by some recent photos published on Swamplot: Just how badly trashed is the Astrodome? The county claims to be spending $2 to $3 million a year to maintain the vacant structure, but apparently that amount isn’t enough to keep the place presentable. A burst 8th-floor pipe has drenched the Astroturf, seats are caked with dust, pipe insulation is frayed, and hung ceilings have collapsed on office space:

77054, Astrodome, Attractions, Harris County Government, Historic Preservation, Houston Landmarks, Maintenance, Reliant Park

Clear Lake

03/28/12 12:23pm

Hakeem Olajuwon’s Dream for the Jim West Mansion: Flagship Clothing and Furniture Store?

Historic Preservation, Houston History, Houston Landmarks, Proposed Developments, Renovations, Retail

23 Comments

Update: Olajuwon’s DR34M store is now open.

Hakeem Olajuwon hasn’t officially announced what he plans to do with Clear Lake’s landmarked Jim West Mansion, which he bought along with the surrounding 41-acre property at 3303 NASA Pkwy. in 2006. But a teaser website suggests that the former Houston Rockets center intends to transform the oil and cattle baron’s former estate — which served for a time as NASA’s Lunar Science Institute — into a flagship store for DR34M, the clothing line he introduced before a New Year’s Eve Rockets game in 2010, but that hasn’t drawn much attention since.

“The DR34M Spring 2012 Collection will launch online and in our new Houston flagship store,” announces the website at Dr34m.com. It’s illustrated with a photo of the 17,000-sq.-ft. Italianate mansion, which was designed by Houston city hall architect Joseph Finger and completed in 1930 not far from the current site of Houston’s Johnson Space Center. “We are busy designing a new line of clothing, collaborating on a collection of leather bags and accessories and sourcing modern furniture,” reads the brief copy, which is accompanied by Olajuwon’s signature.

77058, Clear Lake, Hakeem Olajuwon, Historic Preservation, Houston History, Houston Landmarks, Proposed Developments, Renovations, Retail

01/19/12 10:58am

Wichita St. Mystery House Now in Foreclosure

Buying and Selling, Foreclosures, Houston Landmarks, Real Estate Marketing, Renovations, Riverside Terrace

6 Comments

The late Charles Fondow’s castle-like construction at 2309 Wichita St. in Riverside Terrace has fallen into foreclosure, a source tells Swamplot. The neighborhood landmark was listed for sale at a price of $325,000 last May. That listing expired in November, but the home’s condition and an included stipulation that only all-cash offers would be accepted may have doomed it. Fondow’s legendary 31-year renovation and expansion project remained unfinished after his death last year; the former daycare center’s top-heavy rack of decks, gables, and turrets have long attracted attention from neighbors and passers-by.

Previously on Swamplot: Everything But the Turrets: The Riverside Terrace Estate Sale Youâ€™ve Sorta Been Waiting For, Wichita St. Mystery House Goes on the Market Today: Your First Peek Inside, Charles Fondow Leaves His Wichita St. Mystery House Unfinished

Photo: HAR

77004, Attractions, Buying and Selling, Foreclosures, Houston Landmarks, Real Estate Marketing, Remodeling, Renovations, Riverside-Terrace

Adaptive Reuse

11/11/11 5:59pm

Weingarten Decommissions the Alabama Theater: Is Trader Joe’s Out of the Picture?

Development Strategies, Historic Preservation, Houston Landmarks, Interiors, Leasing, Retail, Upper Kirby

14 Comments

In a late-Friday afternoon press release that doesn’t mention Trader Joe’s at all, Alabama Theater owner Weingarten Realty is announcing that the company has begun construction on the landmarked 1939 Art Deco building at 2922 S. Shepherd to “create a more desirable space for future retail tenants.” What does that mean? Apparently, removing the few elements of the interior that made the building suitable as a movie theater: The entire screen wall along with the murals flanking both sides of the screen, and the auditorium’s sloped floor.

77098, Adaptive Reuse, Alabama Theater, Development Strategies, Historic Preservation, Houston Landmarks, Interiors, Leasing, Renovations, Retail, Upper Kirby, Weingarten Realty

Adaptive Reuse

10/11/11 8:57am

Architect Tells Texas Historical Commission Alabama Theater Entrance Terrazzo Will Probably Stay Put

Historic Preservation, Houston Landmarks, Renovations, Retail, Uncategorized, Upper Kirby

8 Comments

According to the Greater Houston Planning Alliance, which heard the news from the Texas Historical Commission — which heard the news from the project’s architect in Dallas — current plans for turning the former Alabama Theater into a Trader Joe’s now call for the terrazzo flooring at the theater’s Shepherd Dr. entrance to be left in place. Building owner Weingarten Realty apparently still has plans to move the front doors 7 or 8 ft. further toward the street, though; according to the GHPA, an accessibility consultant has advised project architect Don Sopranzi that there is no problem with the existing floor’s slope. Weingarten received approval from the city last month to scrape up the swirly patterned flooring outside the entrance and replace it with concrete.