COMMENT OF THE DAY: 77019 FIXER UPPERS “I have a property in the 77019 area. I am undecided on what to do with it. I expect the property value is in the land rather then house in this instance above. $525K sounds about the going rate in that area for the house above. For the land alone my house sits on I could easily take half a million for it. It raises real questions, since anything I did to the property would not add to its value, if that makes sense. Just recently for instance I noticed that Croix are building on a lot which previously had a fabulous little bungalow on, which was in excellent condition and well restored, sadly Croix demolished it because the value was in the land itself. Sadly also the seller looks to have let it go for less than the land was worth. The house value becomes confusing in the whole value thing. I’ve noticed that builders even the ‘build on your own lot’ people are reluctant to help, give any advice, or take on the work – they want the land, it’s as simple as that. Rather than give it to those people I will probably end up restoring the property and living in it, but whatever is spent on it, it will not add anything to the value of the property which is a sad thing.” [David, commenting on Redo, Rinse, Repeat: Brun Bungalow, Makeover Magnet]
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Tag: Land Sales
TEAS NURSERY: NOT FOR HOMEBUILDERS A private Bellaire foundation run by two brothers has snapped up the remaining 5 acres of Teas Nursery at 4400 Bellaire Blvd. Jerry and Maury (“Boâ€) Rubenstein haven’t announced their plans yet, but a press release reports they are hoping the property “could be retained for the benefit of all Bellaire residents.” The Teas family will continue to occupy the site until the middle of February. [Swamplot inbox; previously on Swamplot]
FIRST THEY’LL NEED TO CLEAR OUT ALL THAT VEGETATION THAT’S IN THE WAY Nancy Sarnoff hears word that the owners of the 100-year-old Teas Nursery at 4400 Bellaire Blvd. near Newcastle are hoping to sell off the property for single-family homes: “The Bellaire business will be relocated, sold or liquidated, according to Tom Teas, president and manager of the landscaping division. Plans are for the nursery company to redevelop the five acres of land itself and then sell lots to builders. The project will start in January.” [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WILSHIRE VILLAGE LOGIC “I am really amazed at this debate. The principle is very simple. The land is too valuable for the revenue generating capacity of existing structures. You can’t rent those spaces for enough money, no matter how you remodel. This is definately a high density project and could be high-rise site in a better market, where are you going to find north of 7 acres in an area like this? The Fiesta across the street is in the Cohen family, so that could be in play. The Cohen family is surrounded by real estate guys. The real shame here, is that you have complicated personalities that probably prevented any new construction during a time in which it would have been viable, so now they are trying to market a property in a climate that almost no one can get financing that would make a deal work. A new project would have provided comfortable living space in a convenient and desirable location, with maybe even a mixed use component. You tear down 40+ year old properties, that have a great deal of deferred maintanence, for marketing purposes, and now they can showcase those beautiful magnolia trees, which I hope they can preserve as many as possible, but it has to make economic sense. I am sure that if someone will make a fair market value offer, and they are a credible buyer, they would sell. Death to rumors. The dirt could be as much as $100 a foot, if you turned back the clock 2 years. It is special so may still demand it.” [Alexander, commenting on All Cleaned Up and Ready for Sale: What Can We Get for Wilshire Village?]
Judging from its debut in this morning’s demolition report, it’s looking like the end of the line for the classic 1960 steel-and-glass home at 6040 Glencove St., near Bayou Bend and Memorial Park.
What’s going away?
The house had the kind of wide-open spaces that modernists love, and its floors were marble Рcool, [original owner Andr̩] Crispin says, under bare feet in the summer.
At 4,600 square feet, the house was large for its era, plenty big enough for the Crispins’ four children and their grand-scale entertaining. When Crispin and his wife hosted musical events, 200 to 300 guests thronged their dramatic living room. There, those guests could admire the wall of glass 14 feet tall. It offered a view of the untamed back yard, a rolling ravine filled with sassafras trees, rabbits and armadillos.
The home was designed by Houston architect Talbott Wilson, 2 years before his firm created the Astrodome. Its current owner, David Mincberg, was appointed by Mayor White earlier this week to serve on the board of commissioners of the Houston Housing Authority. Mincberg bought the property last spring from an owner-broker who employed an innovative marketing plan: the Midcentury Modern came free with purchase of the dramatic 1.35-acre homesite.
What did Mincberg end up paying?
Hidden upstairs in that new double-decker strip center on the south side of 59 between the Kirby CVS and the feeder-road Chick-Fil-A, nestled between a hair salon and a spa, is a brand-new recital hall, outfitted with a 7-foot-5 Hamburg Steinway Model C grand piano and room for up to 100 fans of fine classical music. Leave the curtains on the back wall open, and performers can appreciate a sweeping view of the freeway traffic as they play.
The hall is inside the brand-new Dowling Music, a gifts-and-sheet-music store run by concert pianist Richard Dowling, who recently returned to his hometown and bought the Houston branch of Pender’s Music (which Pender’s had bought from the local Wadler-Kaplan Music Shop in 2000).
The strip center and its neighbors were built on the former Kirby Dr. site of Westheimer Transfer & Storage, which former Rockets star Hakeem Olajuwon bought in 2002. Olajuwon demolished the building and flipped the land, parceling it out in pieces to suburban-style developers.
Dowling, who performs about 60 concerts a year around the world, can’t have expected much walk-in business from visitors patronizing other establishments in the strip center. Downstairs from his store is the Methodist Breast Imaging Center; an Israeli martial arts studio, a weight-loss clinic, a GolfTEC indoor golf clinic, and the Pasha Snoring & Sinus Center round out the second floor. But Dowling tells the West University Examiner‘s Steve Mark that traffic has doubled since he moved the store from its Portwest Dr. location:
A California real estate agent who relocated to The Woodlands 5 years ago has plans to build a “Texas”-themed theme park on a foreclosed and forested site in Tomball currently zoned as a subdivision. The 100-acre attraction, which developer and EZ Realty broker Monty Galland envisions as “a combination of an adventure park, museum, retail center and agricultural classroom,” will strive to encompass and celebrate “all that is Texas, Texas History and the Old West.” Yesterday he showed abc13 reporter Sonia Azad a few rough sketches from his architect, out of the back of his SUV.
Grand Texas is Galland’s brainchild. “Met with the architect today,” Galland — or maybe somebody updating the project’s Facebook page for him — wrote on June 25th:
Project is moving along NICELY! We got to see the first of several sketches. It’s kind of like seeing your baby’s first ultrasound picture!
Galland tells the Tomball Potpourri he plans to open the first phase of the park at 11598 Holderrieth Rd., between the railroad tracks and FM 2978, by next April. This would include an indoor entertainment center with rock climbing and a mechanical bull, a play area with pony rides and petting zoos, and a “family-friendly” paintball facility. Planned for the following year:
Wild Texas Frontier, an island filled with activities for all ages, including high ropes courses that traverse a river, canoeing, catch & release fishing, and a giant maze; and The Mansion, a reception hall reminiscent of the Texas State Governors Mansion, which can be used for a wedding reception of up to 400 guests or more intimate business functions.
Where’s all the financing going to come from? Best of all: You can invest!
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SPECULATIVE DEMOLITION FOR FUN AND PROFIT “I don’t see how scraping an income-producing property to make it look better for potential buyers makes economic sense, either. Can’t buyers just imagine what the property would look like without the apartments there?” [RWB, commenting on Cleaning Up After the Westheimer Park Apartments]
AUGUSTA DEMO AND STORAGE The new owner of a small Galleria-area office building directly across the street from the parking garage for San Felipe Plaza plans to tear down the 2-story 1977 structure, which suffered a roof collapse and $2.7 million worth of damage from Hurricane Ike. “[Seller Robert] Clay is under the impression that a self-storage facility will be built there. In fact, four parties interested in buying the site wanted to build development storage units there, he says. [Hasad Development’s Sam] Amber, the buyer, has developed several ProGuard Self Storage locations around town. However, a company spokesman in Houston would not comment on future plans for the nearly one-acre site. Based on buyer interest, Clay concludes that, ‘This location is a perfect private mini-storage location.’” [Houston Business Journal]
The reader who provided this “tip” wouldn’t or couldn’t tell us where the information came from, so there’s no particular reason to take it seriously. But it raises a few interesting questions about the future of the 8-acre property at W. Alabama and Dunlavy that’s apparently soon to be the former site of the Wilshire Village apartments.
. . . So here it is:
The buzz in the air over the demolition of Wilshire Village is Mr. Dilick plans to try to sell the property soon after the demolition, word is he hasn’t the funding to develop this tract.
- Wilshire Village coverage [Swamplot]
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Here — minus mysteriously absent lots 5, 7, 9, 11, 17, 19, 21, and 23 — are the outlines of the 19 homesites carved from the 10-acre wooded property that Holy Name Retreat Center sold off last year in Bunker Hill Village. Black Diamond Companies, the purveyors of two elsewhere-themed, other-worldly developments — the Cáceres Andelusion in Rice Military and vaguely Francophile Bammel Lane Park Homes on . . . uh, Bammel Lane — so far appears to be soft-pedaling the existence of any foreign entanglement in this latest development.
Last month, a Sonoma sales rep told the West U Examiner that the project had secured financing — which turned out to be condo-sales-speak for “Maybe if people think we’re definitely going ahead we can still sell units and somehow find a way out of this mess.” Now Nancy Sarnoff reports in the Chronicle that the developer of the condos-and-retail complex slated for what used to be Bolsover St. in the Rice Village has told her that the project “is being put on hold ‘for the short term.’” This appears to be developer-speak for “We’re toast.”
Was the problem just “economic uncertainties and tumultuous credit markets”? After developer Lamesa Corp. and partner Randall Davis pulled their switcheroo, deciding to start with the project’s second phase because they couldn’t get the more grandiose first phase financed,
they went back to the market and were negotiating for a $70 million loan with 40 percent equity to build the smaller second phase of 85 units.
At that point they had nearly 70 buyers who had put down deposits. More than half were interested in the second building.
Translation: Almost half their buyers bailed.
There’s good news for the trashed 2-block section of the Village Sonoma leaves behind, though:
GO-AHEADS FOR SONOMA Randall Davis’s Sonoma development couldn’t get financing for its first phase, but the condos-and-retail project’s sales team is now saying it has financing for its second phase, planned for the south side of Bolsover St. And requirements for taking over the block of Bolsover between the two projects have been fulfilled: “In an e-mail sent Saturday, sales team member Keith Kaposta said groundbreaking at the Rice Village site was still expected in February following the expiration of Walgreens’ lease on the property at 5313 Kelvin St. In another development, the city of Houston said Tuesday that developer Randall Davis property owner La Mesa Corp. had successfully completed all work that was required by the extended deadline of Oct. 27. . . . [Public Works Department spokesman Alvin] Wright said even if the work covered under the letters of credit was not completed by the deadlines, the city would not get the property back. [West University Examiner; previously]
The West U Examiner‘s Michael Reed points out that Randall Davis has a looming deadline to complete some work on the block of Bolsover St. in Rice Village that was purchased from the city:
A condition, passed by the Houston City Council at the time of the sale, specified that some changes to the site of the high-end condo over retail project must be completed within one year.
The block was sold in August of last year so that Davis could use it as part of his Sonoma mixed-use development. Since then, Davis has run into problems finding financing, and the project has changed considerably. He now wants to build the smaller second phase — on the south side of the street — first. But the Walgreens currently on that site has a lease that won’t be up until January.
What needs to get done by the end of October?
The plugging and abandonment of the 8-inch water line within the street, and the relocation of the existing storm sewer inlets to Bolsover and Morningside.
The developer is “required to eliminate the appearance of the public street†at the intersections of Bolsover and both Kelvin and Morningside.
- Bolsover deadline at hand [West University Examiner]
- Previously in Swamplot: Sonoma: Bolsover Bulldozer, Sonoma Holdup: We Need Some Money, Council Bowls Over, So No More Street
The 10-story brick YMCA on Louisiana St., which has been taking up valuable space Downtown for more than 65 years, will at last be torn down, reports Nancy Sarnoff in today’s Chronicle. The Y will move to a new glass-and-brick building now being designed by Kirksey — apparently intended for the nearby block bounded by Travis, Milam, Pease, and Jefferson.
The best part of the story? The Y is being very polite about the whole thing. Having determined that its own building is not worth the $25 million a report determined would be necessary for repairs, the organization will go out of its way to demolish the structure itself, so no future buyer will have to be burdened with similar defensive and wasteful studies — or cleanup. And that future buyer has already been determined: Chevron, which already owns the former Enron building next door, says it has no current plans for the new 85,000-sq.-ft. vacant lot it is purchasing.
At 100,000 square feet, the new YMCA building will be less than half the size of the current facility, but will come with 250 parking spaces. And it will be rated LEED-Silver, which means its construction and operation will conserve energy and resources, unlike the wasteful current building, which was designed by architect Kenneth Franzheim in 1941.
In addition to continuing its mentoring, educational and other life-skill programs, the new facility will include a teen center, child watch area and women’s wellness center, as well as racquetball courts, a basketball gym, swimming pool, state-of-the-art fitness equipment, a chapel, meeting space and a food vendor.
Not included in the new structure: replacements for the 132 “short-term” residential units in the current building.
Below: A photo that illustrates the story!
