- 1916 Rosewood St. [HAR]
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Tag: New Construction
From reader David Hollas come these pics showing portions of the 2 apartment complexes Martin Fein Interests is building at the southeast corner of West Alabama and Las Palmas Dr., 2 blocks south of the Highland Village Shopping Center. The building at left, stretching its wings to get ready for its facade finale, is the 325-unit Aria at Willowick Park. Facing off across the central ellipse will be the slightly more Modern-looking Olympia, which will include 189 units, but they’ll be larger:
Highland Village Apartments
What’s this new construction being framed in wood and steel on the site of 2 former bungalows at 828 and 832 Yale St. in the Heights? A single 23,000-sq.-ft. residence that will also serve as the offices of homebuilder Fisher Homes, a source tells Swamplot. The builder is perhaps best known for the Morrison Heights 5-story condo building near Houston Ave. and White Oak; it is also planning a Studemont Mid-Rise at Studemont and Center St., just north of Washington Ave.
Fisher Homes
Alliance Residential hasn’t even finished construction on the 203-unit Broadstone apartment complex at 3800 Main, on the southwest corner of Main St. and Alabama in Midtown — but already equipment crews are tearing up a neighboring 1.03-acre lot across Travis St. for a second phase of the development. Last week a Swamplot reader sent in this photo of the scene, looking east from Milam St. south of Alabama, showing earthwork on the vacant lot, for a Broadstone Midtown Phase II. The 3800 Main building is under construction in the background; the Spur is directly behind the camera.
- Broadstone Midtown — Apartment building at 3800 Main Street (Main and Alabama) [HAIF]
- 3800 Main – A Broadstone Community [Facebook]
- Previously on Swamplot: A Midrise Coming Soon to Alabama and Main St.
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Broadstone Midtown Part Deux
Having matched the $20 million it decided it needed before beginning building its full-block Main St. arts complex, the organizers behind MATCH (the strikingly nicknamed Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston) have decided to kick off construction work after an on-site event next Wednesday. The $25 million shared facility for more than a dozen independent arts groups (it was originally called the Independent Arts Collaborative) will go up on the 3400 block of Main St., also known as the former parking lot for the city’s former code enforcement building on the next block toward Downtown. The new rendering above of the design by San Antonio’s Lake Flato and Houston’s Studio RED shows the view from Main St. and Holman, looking north.
Here’s a fly-through in and around the main breezeway corridor of the 59,000-sq.-ft. collection of theaters and galleries and plazas and office spaces, starting from the same corner:
Could Use $5 Million More
The 3.5-acre field at the corner of S. Rice Ave. and Westpark shown here, where the Wald Relocation Services complex stood until 6 years ago, will be the site of the new Micro Center store later this year. The site plan for the Uptown Crossing shopping center intended for this location shows a big-box store set way back in the right distance, at the end of a new curvy street-drive thing cut through to it from S. Rice, across from Sam’s Club. That’s the most likely spot for the 32,000-sq.-ft. building Micro Center is planning. Micro Center sold off its larger 47,759-sq.-ft. West Loop location to Amegy Bank earlier this year. Here’s a rendering of the new, terrifically brown-and-boxy big box Micro Center:
Big Computer Box in Field
Exxonmobil began moving the first workers into its new campus south of The Woodlands last Friday, a source tells Swamplot. Among the first to make the trek to the former pine forest (pictured at left, with workers in formation, during construction last year) near the intersections of I-45, the Hardy Toll Road, and the latest segment of the Grand Parkway: employees of the ExxonMobil Development Company, who’ve been working in Greenspoint for more than a dozen years.
- ExxonMobil coverage [Swamplot]
Photo: ExxonMobil
It’s Moving Month!
A groundbreaking ceremony today is marking the construction start of the new $335 million Marriott Marquis hotel on Walker St. and Crawford next to the George R. Brown Convention Center downtown, which will face the existing Hilton Americas hotel across Discovery Green. The newly updated rendering shown below confirms that the hotel will be the first institution anywhere to sport an island shaped like Texas in one of its lower rooftop pools:
On Discovery Green
There’s what looks to be a moving truck parked in front of the home at 2244 Welch St. today, right next door to the building site at 2229 San Felipe St., where a giant crane is already in the process of constructing a 17-story Hines office building across the street from River Oaks. UH professor Richard Armstrong, who with his family rented the home, had complained to the media last month that the continual noise and diesel fumes and earth-moving going on next door was making it difficult to live there. A couple weeks later, Armstrong announced that financial assistance from Hines would help him move to a new home in Pearland. “This individual story may have ended,” a neighbor notes to Swamplot, “but there are many more neighbors left to deal with the ongoing noise and construction paraphernalia.”
- Previously on Swamplot: With Help from Hines, Family Living Next Door to Highrise Construction Site Exits to Pearland; Neighbor Has a Few Problems with That 17-Story Office Building Going Up Over the Side Fence; Lawsuit Won’t Stop Construction of Hines’s San Felipe Tower — At This Time; The Scene on San Felipe: Hines’s Friendly Neighborhood Skyscraper Is Going Up Now; Dear Hines: We’d Settle for a Residential Midrise, Please; Hines Not Stopping San Felipe Skyscraper; Hines Develops Website To Explain 17-Story San Felipe Development; “Stop†Signs Oppose 17-Story Hines Office Building on San Felipe; A Look Around San Felipe at the Randall Davis Condos and Planned Hines Office Building Site; Hines Plans a Shiny New 18-Story Office Building Across San Felipe from River Oaks
Photos: Swamplot inbox
River Oaks Neighbors
WHAT A PLACE AT THE SOVEREIGN WILL COST YOU 
A couple of readers have written in noting their own sticker shock at the pricing announced for the 290 apartments at the still-under-construction 21-story Sovereign at Regent Square tower. One bedrooms will start at $2070 a month, two bedrooms at $3070, and studios at $1615. A temporary leasing office run by Boston-based Windsor Communities will open in a couple of weeks; the first units at 3233 West Dallas St. should be ready for occupancy by July 15th, the company says. [Swamplot inbox; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Alonso Ortega
The UH professor whose experiences living next door to the vacant-lot-turned-highrise-construction-site across the southern border of River Oaks made for a colorful teevee news report and an EPA complaint has called an end to his protests of the rumbling, diesel fumes, and building and patio cracks caused by the giant crane that showed up next door (pictured above). With an unspecified amount of financial assistance from Hines, the developers of the 17-story office tower going up at 2229 San Felipe, Richard Armstrong and his family will be moving from 2244 Welch St. to a new home in Pearland early next month.
His media appearances “got the attention of Hines and Gilbane Construction,” Armstrong reports in a letter posted to an online news group focusing on the tower’s construction. “Fundamentally, there isn’t much that can be done,” he writes, “given the pace and scale of this construction. . . . We have loved this house and the neighborhood — up until December. This is a wonderful pocket for people who want access to everything the inner loop has to offer. Unfortunately, other people are discovering our secret. So we’ll just have to roll with the changes.”
It appears that Armstrong’s “roll” will be bankrolled — at least in part — by Hines.
Neighbors Helping Neighbors — To Move Away
Opposite the pedestrian-friendly Winlow Westheimer shopping center at the corner of Westheimer and Hazard St. that includes the recently de-Firkinized Phoenix bar, a new Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers fast-food joint is about to go up — on a 35,000-sq.-ft. lot that’s been vacant since the 2-story pushed-to-the-street building once home to Martha Turner Properties was torn down on the site almost 6 years ago. The reader who sent in the photo above reports that a construction supervisor on site claimed the new chicken joint will be alive and kicking within 3 or 4 months.
Montrose Drive-Thru
Reader Debnil Chowdhury sends in these pics, taken yesterday, of the steel-framed structure that’s appeared over the last month just north of the new Studemont Kroger gas station in the formerly industrial district just south of I-10 that Swamplot readers have dubbed ‘Katyville’ — in honor of the suburban-style developments rapidly going in there, a mere 2 miles northwest of Downtown. And these latest additions do appear to be pad-site-alicious: Directly north of the McDonald’s going up at 1510 Studemont St. (and pictured here), there’s a sign announcing a new Capital One Bank. There’s no indication yet whether the bank building will have a drive-thru as well, but the signs look good.
The Drive-Thrus of Katyville
Construction work has begun on the exciting new Sam’s Club #6867, which will face onto the Grand Pkwy. just north of Bellaire Blvd. in Richmond, as this reader photo taken from Parkway Lakes Ln. attests. The 136,454-sq.-ft. store will be surrounded by a sea of 529 parking spaces and 13 cart corrals on a 15-acre site just south of the Westpark Tollway:
@ Westpark Toll Rd.
What more quintessential closeup image of Houston is there — the kind you really aren’t likely to come across too many other places — than the one that shows a 17-story office tower under construction right next door to a single-family home? So when you hear of a Montrose resident complaining that the huge and noisy construction crane planted just a few feet beyond his fence to construct the “boutique” building at 2229 San Felipe is causing cracks in the concrete patio and the interior walls of his home, that the smell of diesel is overwhelming whether he’s in the back yard or inside on the ground floor, and that the fumes and noise from the regular Saturday concrete pours cause regular headaches for family members — well, it kinda does make you sit up and pay attention, if not simply to marvel at the unique properties of Houston development regulations and practices that allow such remarkable juxtapositions in our midst.
Still, the owner of the home at 2244 Welch St. might be forgiven if he doesn’t get so philosophical about the wondrous scene arrayed before him. “No representative of Hines has EVER come to us to express any concern about what they are doing,” he wrote over the weekend to an online newsgroup. “Even the construction workers admit they are not comfortable with the position of this crane. So everyone else got paid off, just not us I guess.”
This past Saturday, he filed a report about the situation with the EPA. What happened next?
Next Door to 2229 San Felipe
