05/31/16 2:15pm

2200 Yale St., Heights, Houston, 77008

The latest addition to the street-fronting retail strip planned for the former Alabama Furniture Store site at 2200 Yale St. appears to be a pair of Texas Children’s urgent and less-urgent care facilities. The medical groups are named as tenants in a pair of Braun Enterprises leasing documents filed with the county (which include the 90-degrees-off siteplan above). That’s the planned 3rd non-mobile location of Bernie’s Burger Bus shown on the far right, at the south end of the strip; the other 2 children-themed businesses are shown taking up the remaining 13,112 sq.ft. of leasable space in the center.

A 68-spot parking lot is depicted behind the Yale-facing center, which runs between W. 22nd and W. 23rd streets; the former sites of Fashion Touch Cleaners and Midtown Floors were permitted for destruction about the same time as the now-departed furniture store.

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

Assigning Seats on Yale St.
05/31/16 10:45am

Construction, Demo, and High Turnover rate map, Harris County, TX

The land between the Grand Parkway and Hwy.-6-FM-1960 contained more than 37 percent of the construction sites in Harris County over the last decade, according to the Houston in Flux report and interactive maps released by the Kinder Institute for Urban Research last week. The maps above highlight regions where demolition and construction permits were issued at above-county-average rates between 2005 and 2015. Red shows areas with high demolition rates, blue shows high construction rates, and purple shows spots where both stats beat the average — areas authors Kelsey Walker and Kyle Shelton refer to as high-turnover (mostly concentrated in the Inner Loop and to the northwest).

Each subsection of the walkthrough embedded above contains a “learn more” link that provides access to (and a quick explanation of) various data types that can be displayed. A section on census-tract-level trends (including building, demo, and turnover, as shown up top) is followed by a section allowing a detailed property-by-property browsing of the data, as shown below:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

Drawing It Out
05/26/16 11:00am

Options for Police and Courts building, Design Options for Bellaire Town Square Renovations, Bellaire, TX 77401

Evidently none of these facades will appear on the Jessamine St. entrance of the new police and municipal court building planned for Bellaire’s Town Square. The latest design, as presented at last week’s town hall meeting, appears to be a blend of several of the choices above. Architect PGAL put together a set of possibilities earlier this spring for both a new police building and a planned city hall redo; a committee spent the last few months choosing the parts they liked.

The approximate sites of the police station and the new city hall appear in gold on the conceptual site plan below, showing the S. Rice Ave. land bounded by Jessamine, 5th St., and the houses south of Linden St.:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

Reshaping Town Square
05/24/16 12:30pm

9000 Main St., Reliant, Houston, 77025

That’s 5 stories of sticks now stacked up at 9000 Main St., the triangular former site of the Medical Inn & Suites complex that met its unmaker late last year. The property was bought in 2013 by an entity named Shree Shriji LLC, which shares an address with the Days Inn & Suites near Hobby Airport at 9114 Airport Blvd. The land sits a half block north of Broadmead Dr., directly across Main from Superbowl-prepping NRG Park’s parking lot (the one spanning between Murworth Dr. and McNee Rd.).

The land wasn’t empty for long following deconstructive operations — but another reader did manage to snap a view of the property back in January, when the freshly emptied spot provided a clear view all the way to the since-sold land 2 parcels north, where Regency Car Wash holds soapy court:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

More Rooms on Main St.
05/19/16 11:30am

Lovett Homes site at Buffalo Spdwy. and Main St., South Main, Houston, 77025

Lovett Homes site at Buffalo Spdwy. and Main St., South Main, Houston, 77025A mid-day shot from the Starbucks at the intersection of S. Main St. and Buffalo Spdwy. shows the new fencing now up around the 4-and-a-half-ish acres boxing in the coffee drive-thru. The snapping reader says the lot was cleared out and fenced off last week, a little more than a year after the America’s Best Value Inn and its abandoned grocery-and-nightclub strip center friend were demolished in the name of Lovett. Here’s a peek through the chain link at the palm-lined lot:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

S. Main
05/17/16 5:00pm

Eado Edge subdivision, Clinton Dr. at Jensen Dr., Fifth Ward, 77020

A reader sends fresh snaps from north of Buffalo Bayou in Fifth Ward, where Urban Living’s long-time cornerside “coming soon” sign at the intersection of Clinton and Jensen has been joined by a more specific banner advertising the planned Eado Edge subdivision. A 2014 replatting created 80 new lots out of the former Standco Industries warehouse complex at 2701 Clinton Dr., which Colliers sold following the oil equipment company’s bankruptcy proceedings a few years prior. The not-yet-townhomes sit across Clinton from the former KBR site bought by Cathexis back in 2012; the currently empty land is also just west of InTown Homes’s Regent Park subdivision.

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

EaDo Creeping North
05/17/16 10:30am

Renderings of Heights Central Station shopping center, Yale at 11th St., Houston Heights, Houston, 77008

MFT Interests appears interested in tenants for its Heights Central Station project, slated for the site of the increasingly well-loved former post office on 11th St. between Yale St. and Heights Blvd.  The development’s leasing website now includes the first rendering of what those mixed-use lowrises might look like (see above), as well as a site plan.

Although the logo for the center implies a possible train station theme to go along with the name,  the site plan shows that most of the property will be devoted to automobile parking — an 86-car street-facing parking lot separates the storefronts from 11th and Yale streets, though the Heights Blvd. side of the eastern building is much closer to the street:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

Heights Central Station
05/16/16 12:30pm

Renderings of townhomes at 815 W. 24th St., Houston Heights, Houston, 77008

Above is a rendered
view of the Skyline on 24th townhomes at 815 and 819 W. 24th St., a couple of which burned down on Friday evening after a nearby dumpster fire reportedly spread. The Skyline site backs up directly to part of the Shady Acres location of C&D Scrap Metal Recyclers, which last month announced plans to close its Heights branch on May 12th; C&D owner and $2-bill enthusiast Dennis Laviage pointed out to KPRC that the fire was hot enough to melt the steel frames of the townhomes, and that the incident could have been way worse if some of the diesel stored on the C&D property had gotten involved in the action.

Builder La Casa International‘s in-progress pre-fire plans for the 2 lots included 8 units; a rendering of the complex’s driveway viewed from W. 24th shows stone pavers partitioned off by strips of fake grass:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

Smoke over the Skyline
05/04/16 10:30am

Plan for Ivy District, Pearland, TX, 77583

Ralph Bivins tells Swamplot that lots of dirt is being shoved around on the foreclosed former site of the WaterLights District project, west of 288 and just south of the Beltway where all those heads of former heads of state used to hang out. Pearland’s Ivy District is now being planted on the site instead: plans for the $300-million development include a multifamily complex, condos, a senior living community, townhomes, office buildings, and room for retail.

Part of the project’s funding will come from the EB-5 visa program, which allows wealthy foreigners and their immediate families to immigrate to the US in exchange for a necessary investment expected to create at least 10 jobs. Sueba USA and Beijing-owned American Modern Green are developing the site; American Modern’s parent company Modern Land of China has worked on projects in China (including Steve Holl’s twisty Linked Hybrid in Beijing) and Vancouver, but the Ivy District is its first US venture.

American Modern Green bought the land straddling the Harris-Brazoria county line back in late 2012 following the 2010 foreclosure. Here’s the breakdown of what will go where, per the current plans on the Ivy District’s website:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

Planting in Pearland
04/26/16 10:30am

Former Houston Chronicle Building, 801 Texas Ave., Downtown, Houston, 77002

The company developing the block across Prairie St. from the Houston Chronicle‘s downtown ex-headquarters filed a lawsuit last week over the impending demolition of the paper’s former haunt at 801 Texas Ave. Theater Square, an entity connected to Linbeck, claimed in a Wednesday night filing that the upcoming demo interferes with its plans to build a tunnel through the former newspaper building’s basement to connect its across-the-street property into the broader downtown tunnel network.

The ex-Chronicle building (actually a collection of buildings later wrapped together behind a single facade) currently sits above a tunnel segment connecting the 717 Texas Ave. building (the office building formerly known as Calpine Center) sharing a block with the Lancaster Hotel and its new parking lots) to the Chase tower (south across Texas Ave., between Milam and Travis). Theater Square’s filing alleges that news corporation Hearst agreed back in 2007 to give the company permanent access to some underground easements for the purpose of building a new tunnel segment leading to the property across Prairie (currently a surface parking lot previously slated for the International Tower project). Theater Square also claims that the easement access agreements transferred to the next owner when Hines bought up the property last year.

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

Downtown Tunnel Tussle
04/22/16 4:45pm

Aldi Grocery Store at 6751 Bissonnet St., Robindell, 77074

New parking lot has been spread out around the under-construction Aldi grocery store in Robindell, as seen in this fresh dispatch from behind the Baskin Robbins on the corner of Bissonnet and Beechnut streets. The Germany-rooted grocery store, which is replacing the 1956 strip of shops previously arrayed from 6711 to 6755 Bissonnet St., has settled on 6751 for its new street number, according to county records. Signage is now up on the newly constructed structure itself, though the old marquee along Beechnut St. (far right) still lists the full roster of the departed.

Photo: Angela Spieldenner

Firming Up in Robindell
04/12/16 11:15am

Shepherd Commons, 2015 Shepherd Dr., River Oaks, Houston, 77019

Shepherd Commons, 2015 Shepherd Dr., River Oaks, Houston, 77019The first 2 waves of decorative railing are now stretching north off the edge of the new building at 2015 S. Shepherd Dr., the first half of the Shepherd Commons shopping center planned for the site. Per the renderings released back in 2013 , the 3rd and 4th waves should follow after the Hot Bagel Shop and River Oaks Nails jump ship from the original single-story strip center immediately to the north at 2009 S. Shepherd; after that, the old structure is slated for demolition to make way for part 2 of the new one.

Back in 2014, both businesses had plans to move into the space at 2015 S. Shepherd when it’s ready. (We Buy Gold, which wasn’t going to join in on the trip, has already been replaced in the old center by Cell Phone reStore).  Hot Bagel says it’s still planning to move in next door as soon as it can; a reader also spotted notice of an application submitted late last fall to sell food and drinks, including beer and wine, behind one of the site’s still-tape-dotted windows. The name on that application belongs to a corporate entity sharing an address with Fu Fu Restaurant in Dun Huang Plaza along Bellaire Blvd. at Beltway 8.

Visible in the background just south of the new building is kickboxing studio 9Round, followed by the Chipotle facing the corner of Shepherd with Indiana St. Here’s another look at what the center could look like after round 2 of construction gets knocked out:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

Bagels Rolling South
04/11/16 1:00pm

Stump in front of Au Petit Paris, 2048 Colquitt St,, Dearborn Place, Houston, 77098

The last fading rays of setting sun cast a dusty glow over the oak stump in front of 2048 Colquitt St. just east of Shepherd Dr., captured by a reader over the weekend. An employee of Au Petit Paris tells the photographer that the restaurant isn’t behind the removal of the tree, which shaded the French bistro’s front patio; the arboreal departure occurred during the still-ongoing move-in of 2 townhomes across the street at 2051 and 2053 Colquitt (the latter of which is visible above on the left, behind construction fencing). Construction on those structures started last summer after building permits were issued to 2201 Custom Homes in June.

Here’s a close-up of the stump, accompanied by a sprinkling of springtime sprouts:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

Bidding Adieu in Dearborn Place
04/06/16 12:15pm

Proposed Blossom Hotel on Lehall St. at Bertner Ave., Cecil Street Courts, Houston, 77030

Here’s a preview of the 9-story hotel planned for the stretch of now-mostly-cleared land along Lehall St. at Bertner Ave. south of the Texas Medical Center. The land slated to hold the Blossom Hotel Houston is right across Bertner from where the TMC wants to build a double helix park and collaborative campus; Zhejiang Blossom Tourism Group has been buying up lots on the east and northeast of the block, which have held a mixture of homes, a commercial building, and nothing over the last few decades.

Not shown in the rendering:  the lone house still standing right on at the corner of Lehall St. and Bertner Ave.:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

Last One Standing
04/06/16 10:45am

Yale St. Bridge over White Oak Bayou, Houston Heights, Houston, 77007

Yale St. Bridge over White Oak Bayou, Houston Heights, Houston, 77007 An orange and black construction marquee is now advertising the upcoming closure of the Yale St. bridge over White Oak Bayou just south of I-10, starting the Monday after next and running until the New Year’s Eve after next. The 1931 bridge, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is slated for replacement after years of asking crossers to please watch their weight (with 10,000 pounds per axle being the most recent upper limit). The per-axle limit was at 8,000 pounds prior to a 2012 drop to 3,000 (which disqualified some SUVs and minivans). The addition of carbon strips to the structure caused TxDOT’s weight limit to yo-yo back up to 10,000.

The plans for the new bridge floated by TxDOT in 2014 included wider outside vehicle lanes and slightly narrower sidewalks (down to 5 feet from 6). But summary and followup notes from the public meeting held at the end of July 2014 say the design has been updated to include 8-foot-wide shared bike and pedestrian pathways on either side of the bridge, in response to the public comments on the project.

The TxDOT meeting summary notes also documents the agency’s attempt to sell the bridge in the Houston Chronicle:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

Coming Back a New Bridge