SOUTHMEADOW’S $315 FORECLOSURE FIGHT Why does the West Airport Homeowners Association take up a half page of its newsletter each month with lists of fees for various legal costs associated with policing deed restriction and other violations? Because fee collection and enforcement appears to be a major focus of the organization. An attorney for Southmeadow resident William Castellon claims the HOA — which is operated by a company called Randall Management — has run up $75,000 in legal fees fighting lawsuits over a $315 annual maintenance fee it claims Castellon failed to pay, though Castellon says he did. (A second check sent by Castellon for the same payment was returned.) The HOA filed suit against Castellon, seeking to foreclose on his home near West Airport and South Gessner. Last fall, after Castellon sued back, a jury ruled in his favor and awarded him more than $40,000. But the HOA is now attempting to reverse the decision. Fox 26 reporter Randy Wallace’s calls to the HOA’s law firm, Gammon & Associates, were not returned. [MyFox Houston]
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Tag: Lawsuits
“Can’t wait to find a buyer for this condo!” writes real-estate agent Veso Kossev. “Too bad I can’t take [anyone] to see it…..” Huh? Oh, yeah . . . it’s unit E5 at the Park Memorial Condominiums, otherwise known as the 4.85-acre land of limbo just north of Memorial Dr. at Detering. As of a few days ago, you can pick up this 2-bedroom, 2-bath, only partially smashed condo for the low, low price of just $47,000. But you won’t be able to have it inspected — or see it yourself — because the entire complex has been condemned by the city. Where’d these lovely interior photos in the listing come from, then?
There’s a whole lot more drama to the Highland Village Tootsies shutdown battle than just that little overnight lockout, jackhammered walkway, and side-door goodbye sale customers got to enjoy late last week: The Chron‘s Purva Patel reports Tootsies sought a restraining order against the Highland Village Shopping Center, claiming the center was “interfering with its business.” Oh, but that was only after the landlord began eviction proceedings against the women’s clothing boutique on January 4th, a full 5 days after the long-term lease on its only Houston store expired.
The store paid rent of $159,834 at December’s end, but Highland Village plans to return the money, according to court records. The store plans to send it again.
Swamplot photographer Candace Garcia has pics of the scene in front the store at 4045 Westheimer from Saturday morning, just as workers were beginning to scrape off what sure looks like a fresh coat of black paint from the store’s windows. Oh, but that’s not all the trouble Highland Village CEO Haidar Barbouti‘s merry band of graffiti artists caused for its extended tenant. Painted over, and possibly beyond recovery: those “Tootsies Parking” signs on the curb in front!
Update, 1/4: Reverse! Books-A-Million is gonna stay put.
Southeastern U.S. chain Books-A-Million has decided to close its Downtown Houston store on January 15th. The decision has left management of Houston Pavilions feeling rather put-out: Managers at the downtown mall reportedly had lowered the bookstore’s rent on the 2-story, approximately 23,000-sq.-ft. space facing the light rail line at 1201 Main St. to just $3,000 a month — in hopes the concession would prevent it from shutting down. A source insists the store “wasn’t a huge flop,” but says that the Katy Mills Mall Books-A-Million typically brought in more than 5 times the sales of the Downtown store — even though the 2 locations are about the same size.
Another factor that may have played a role in Books-A-Million’s decision to close: A pending lawsuit filed against the company after the location’s former manager reportedly kicked a man and his wheelchair-riding, apparently mentally disabled son out of the store. “At some point [the son] soiled himself and the [manager] took this as a vagrance and kicked them out. Needless to say the boy’s family were outraged,” a source tells Swamplot. The manager is no longer with the company, though reportedly for “unrelated” reasons.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WE’RE UNDER YOUR BEACH HOUSE, GRILLIN’ YOUR BURGERZ “It may appear that the homeowner ‘won’ this case, but read the law again. Texas law allows anyone to place a blanket on the beach, right up to the vegetation line, even if it’s an intrusion on the privacy of a seaside home. Basically, you can have a cookout under the house, park your car, spread out, whatever, and the homeowner has zero ability to do anything about it, as the home is within the vegetation boundary.” [mikeyyc, commenting on Texas Supreme Court: Private Properties Can Erode Public Beaches]
TEXAS SUPREME COURT: PRIVATE PROPERTIES CAN ERODE PUBLIC BEACHES The state’s high court ruled today in favor of Californian Carol Severance, whose rent house on Kennedy Dr. in West Galveston found itself in front of the vegetation line after Hurricane Rita hit in 2006. The Texas Supreme Court ruled that the state can’t claim an easement on her property — but if the same topography had resulted over a longer period of time, the easement would be okay: “Texas law allows anyone to place a blanket on the beach, right up to the vegetation line, even if it’s an intrusion on the privacy of a seaside home. But in a split decision, the court found that the state’s policy of ‘rolling easements’ — the ever-shifting border between public and private land — does not apply when it’s moved by a storm. At the same time, the court held that policy is justifiable in cases of erosion, which is gradual.” [Houston Chronicle; decision; previously on Swamplot]
Welcome home to Park Memorial! More than 2 years after city officials ordered the entire Memorial Dr. complex evacuated, the coast may now be clear for owners of the Park Memorial Condominiums to move back into their homes! Except, umm . . . some of those sheet-rock, copper-wiring, and AC-unit removal operations that have been going on in the meantime on the locked and officially empty grounds might make moving back in a little rough. 11 News’s Gabe Gutierrez reports that a Harris County district judge has ruled that the city’s order to vacate the property violated the state’s due process rules because there was no prior notice or hearing, and that there was “no evidence that there was any emergency or immediate danger that justified” requiring the residents to leave without one. The city plans to appeal the ruling.
THE PARTY WILL GO ON AT HANS’ BIER HAUS The little bar in the long shadow of the 2520 Robinhood at Kirby Condominiums can keep its alcohol license, a TABC hearing judge ruled today. Residents of the Rice Village condo building contested the license renewal of Hans’ Bier Haus after earlier efforts to silence nosy patrons — with beer cans, lasers, water hoses, and video surveillance — failed. “In his decision, Donovan noted that although police had been called to the bar more than 20 times for noise, they never were cited. . . . The feud continues to be litigated in civil court.” [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
MAKING THE TITLE INSURANCE PAY A Harris County district court has ordered Stewart Title Guaranty to pay $2.8 million to a Sugar Land developer after the title company failed to pay out on a title policy. Back in 2007, Ponderosa Land Development was hoping to build a Chase Bank branch at the corner of Settlers Way and Highway 6. AmeriPoint Title, the title company for the transaction, had obtained title insurance from Stewart Title to cover its work. But AmeriPoint’s title search failed to uncover a deed restriction on the property that specifically prohibited banks from being built on that site: “Stewart Title only offered to pay $200,000 of the $1.83 million title policy, arguing that the land was not worth that much. [Ponderosa’s James] Chang says the purchase price was dictated by the value of the property with the ground lease to JP Morgan and planned sale of the bank to an investor upon completion. Ponderosa is now free to sell the vacant property. Houston Suds has had a contract to buy the site for $953,000 since November 2008, but could not close the transaction and build a car wash until the legal matter was resolved.” [Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot]
Thought Judge Hancock’s January restraining order had quieted the ongoing feud between residents of the 2520 Robinhood at Kirby condo tower and the little Rice Village bar next door, Hans’ Bier Haus? Well, maybe a little. But both sides pulled out their best complaints for yesterday’s hearing at commissioners’ court, where Robinhood residents are protesting the renewal of the partly open-air bar’s beer and wine license. While January’s court order appears to have quelled the beer-can throwing, the band-dousing, and the collar-grabbing, lawyers for the bar claim that condo residents have been intimidating bar patrons by putting them under surveillance: “They installed high tech videotape and audiotape recording and surveillance microphones and cameras and filmed virtually everything that occurred on the premises of Hans Bier Haus,” bar piano player and attorney Ken Ward complained to the court. Sure, but how else are they gonna have highlights to show in court? The hearing will continue on Thursday.
- Liquor license hearing turns into brouhaha [abc13]
- Feud between bar, condos in Rice Village area goes to court [Houston Chronicle]
- Previously on Swamplot: 2520 Robinhood Alerts Its Residents: Watch Out for the Owners of That Bar We’ve Been Attacking, Spilling It to the Judge: 2520 Robinhood and Hans’ Bier Haus Get Their Day in Court, 2520 Robinhood Vs. the Merry Men of Hans’ Bier Haus: It’s Come to This, 2520 Robinhood Torments the Beer Drinkers Next Door
Got a question about something going on in your neighborhood you’d like Swamplot to answer? Sorry, we can’t help you. But if you ask real nice and include a photo or 2 with your request, maybe the Swamplot Street Sleuths can! Who are they? Other readers, just like you, ready to demonstrate their mad skillz in hunting down stuff like this:
Answers — of a sort — to your questions:
- Montrose: Alas, none of our readers were able to identify concrete plans for the uh, seminal Montrose nightclub at the corner of Westheimer and Yoakum, which closed last year. But some of you were happy to pass on rumors about Mary’s: “Last I heard it was being purchased/leased again and will become a new Montrose hangout paying homage to the original, but that was about two months after it closed,” reports kjb434. LandGuy points out that the next-door parking lot between Mary’s and Burger King is owned by someone else; however HCAD records indicate the owners of Mary’s still also own the lot directly behind the former club, facing California St.
- Riverside Terrace and beyond: Can anyone snap photos of your home? “If you are in a public space, you can photograph anything you like. There may be restrictions around military installations or FBI buildings, though,” declares roving pic-snapper RWB. But watch out for overzealous security guards and cops, he warns. RWB has some experience in that department; but not so much as Downtown electric shuttle entrepreneur Erik Ibarra — who, sadly, did not weigh in to this discussion. (Ibarra founded REV Eco-Shuttle in 2008, shortly after he and his brother received a $1.7 million lawsuit settlement from the city. Six years earlier, sheriff’s deputies had entered their home near Park Place, seized their film, and arrested them after Ibarra’s brother took photos — from his own and public property — of a drug search being conducted at their next-door neighbor’s home.)
Lauren
offered a link to this handy guide to photographers’ rights. But a couple readers were certain the would-be design stalker was casing, not admiring: Says montrose: “They were just seeing if anyone was home before they robbed the joint. Nobody wants to take a picture of your house.”
We’ll post the next set of reader questions next Tuesday. Send us what you’ve got before then!
Photo of 1022 Westheimer Rd.: Swamplot inbox
The price Missouri City is paying to purchase the former Quail Valley Country Club from golf-course speculator Mark Voltmann’s Renaissance Golf Group was adjusted from $3.1 million up to $7.4 million last week — 2 years after the city acquired the 390-acre property by eminent domain, and one day before a dispute over the price was set to go to trial. Renaissance claimed the property was worth about $14 million, but at the time of the sale it was listed for $6.59 million by the appraisal district.
Renaissance’s plans to rezone a 17.5-acre portion of the site to allow for a development of 54 Ryland Homes homesites were rejected by the city’s planning and zoning commission in 2006.
WHEN ALL THOSE CORNERS WERE ITCHING FOR BANKS Coming soon to a courthouse near you: Ponderosa Land Development Co. and the bank corner that got away: “Ponderosa bought nearly an acre in Sugar Land three years ago from Gateway Financial for a price of $1.8 million. The land at the corner of State Highway 6 and Settlers Way was purchased for development of a JP Morgan Chase Bank branch. Over the past five years, Ponderosa has built about 50 bank branches in Texas for Chase Bank. [Ponderosa’s James] Chang says Ponderosa had already secured a long-term ground lease with the bank, and an investor was lined up to buy the property once the building was complete. Shortly after the land acquisition closed in April 2007, Ponderosa demolished a gas station that was operating on the site to prepare for construction of the bank branch. In the process, Ponderosa learned that the Sugar Land site carries a deed restriction prohibiting construction of a financial institution. The alleged oversight on the part of AmeriPoint [Title] in conducting a title search put the brakes on development. ‘Missing the restriction was kind of an important miss,’ says Chang. Stewart Title wrote a title insurance policy based on AmeriPoint’s work. . . . Ponderosa filed suit in July 2008 to recover the $1.8 million land purchase price. The firm is also seeking $1.6 million for three years of lost profits. Ponderosa tried to collect on the firm’s $1.8 million title insurance policy, but Chang says Stewart Title claims the diminished value of the land is $200,000.” [Houston Business Journal]
ASHBY HIGHRISE DEVELOPERS DROP NAMES, MOVE TO DISTRICT COURT 
What do the Fairmont Museum District, La Maison on Revere, Millennium Greenway, and 2121 Mid Lane apartments, the Medical Clinic of Houston, and the trigger-happy Sonoma development in the Rice Village have in common? They all make cameo appearances in the latest version of Buckhead Investment Partners’ lawsuit against the city of Houston. The claim: that none of those projects were subjected to the same traffic restrictions as Buckhead’s proposed 23-story tower on the corner of Bissonnet and Ashby, next to Southampton: “The Ashby high-rise developers re-filed their lawsuit April 7 in state district court, where it will focus more heavily on claims the project was denied permits for its original design because it was subjected to ‘capricious and unreasonable’ standards.
Court documents submitted by attorneys for the Buckhead Development Partners, show the suit against Houston continues to center on the city’s application of the driveway ordinance as a basis to refuse a final building permit.
The city has said it is correct in its application of the ordinance and the inclusion of ‘trip-count’ standards to guarantee safety and ensure streets in the neighborhood remain passable.” [River Oaks Examiner; previously on Swamplot] Rendering: Buckhead Investment Partners
Remember that fun feud between a few residents of the 2520 Robinhood at Kirby condominiums and the tiny bar directly to its west? Well, now it looks like there’s a brand new bar getting ready to open directly to the tower’s east!
When last we left the 16-story Rice Village condo tower, residents had been placed under a court order prohibiting them from “running or pouring water or any other liquid” and “throwing any object whatsoever” onto Hans’ Bier Haus — after the bar’s owners complained to district court judge Patricia Hancock about an ongoing liquid and projectile campaign mounted against their partly open-air establishment by its eastern neighbors. (For good measure, the judge similarly prohibited the proprietors of the courtyard bar from trespassing on or “interfering with [residents’] peaceable use and enjoyment” of the condo building next door.)
But just as the legal and dousing action on the tower’s west side appears to have subsided comes the prospect for more neighborly interaction on the tower’s east: From Swamplot’s tip line we find these photos of another small building directly adjacent to the tower. What’s that new sign posted on the front window?
