02/21/08 4:48pm

Penthouse View, Randall Davis’s Proposed Titan Condo Highrise, Post Oak Blvd., Uptown Houston

All the condos in Randall Davis’s new Titan condo tower on Post Oak will be named after . . . industry titans! Get it? On the 18th floor, for example, you’ll have units named after J. Paul Getty, Coco Chanel, Pablo Picasso, and . . . Bill Gates! Now that’s a party. Floor 14? More people of brilliance, though a few of them might not actually get along so well with each other: Frank Sinatra, Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, Rudolph Valentino, Steven Spielberg. Isn’t that clever?

It gets better: The Brin/Page is . . . a two-bedroom! Strangely, the Buffet has a Kitchen and Dining Room that are separated from the rest of the unit’s living space. And the three-bedroom penthouse named after Mies van der Rohe — whose neighbors are of course Rupert Murdoch and Neil Armstrong — has a Great Room with a curved wall in it, and is connected to the Entry Foyer by a long hallway.

One unit on floors 23 and 24 is simply named The Titan. But there’s no reason for Randall Davis to be so bashful — he really ought to go ahead and name it after himself. Is there anyone else in Houston who even comes close to his stature in the themed-condo market?

The Titan is a break from Davis’s earlier projects, though — because it seems to have so many different themes! Put all those architects, movie stars, musicians, Silicon Valley insiders, oilmen, and suicidal novelists together in a tower styled vaguely like a comic-book rocketship, add in Michelangelo’s sculpture of David as the naked brochure-and-website coverboy, and you’ve got the Titan’s winning marketing formula! A bit confused? Sure. But if anyone can mix all this stuff up and make it work, it’s Randall Davis.

After the jump, floorplans that prove what we all know already: Designing a great building is just like planning a great dinner party that includes a few famous dead people!

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02/21/08 10:34am

View of Proposed New Galleria Whole Foods at Blvd Place at Former Eatzi’s Site

It may not count as confirmation exactly, but we now at least have repetition — from two separate sources — that the new Whole Foods Market our readers have been worrying about will in fact be coming to the Galleria area.

The first source is the Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff, who — after interviewing Boulevard Place developer Ed Wulfe — states that a new Whole Foods will be the anchor of Wulfe & Co.’s new mixed-use development on Post Oak Blvd. . . . though it won’t open until 2010.

The second source is . . . a little unusual. We’ll tell you about it in our next an upcoming post.

Update, 2/26/08: That second source.

Boulevard Place Whole Foods image: DMJM H&N

02/19/08 9:37am

Hoa Binh Center at 2830 Travis, Midtown, Houston

Wielding a copy of Stephen Fox’s Houston Architectural Guide, transit buff Christof Spieler writes in to report that the vacant and graffiti-laden Hoa Binh Center in Midtown — targeted by Camden Property Trust for a new apartment complex — has an important story behind it. He quotes from Fox’s writeup of the shopping center, which was built in 1923:

What distinguishes this building is that it was the prototype of the 20th century American suburban shopping center: it introduced the concept of off-street parking, toward which the grocery store itself was oriented.

Spieler adds:

In other words, Camden may be about to tear down the world’s first strip mall. Now that’s a historic building.

And it’s certainly worth at least a nice plaque somewhere on those new apartments going up on the site!

But before all you preservationist types get up in arms about the impending demolition of the mother of all strip malls, keep in mind that an equally important part of this structure’s history and legacy will almost certainly be preserved, cherished, and celebrated. Sure, the building will probably end up in a pile of rubble off Loop 610. But all those historic off-street parking spaces? They’ll be moved into a nice new garage at the Camden Travis, where residents of the new apartments and their guests will be able to enjoy them for generations to come.

After the jump: Spieler spills more Hoa Binh history!

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02/18/08 5:05pm

Townhouses at Ashby, 1717 Bissonnet, Ashby Highrise, Houston

How do you reduce development in . . . uh, sensitive Houston neighborhoods — without imposing new regulations?

It can be done! A free market provides its own land-use controls.

Matthew Morgan and Kevin Kirton of Buckhead Investment Partners, developers of the proposed 23-story residential highrise at the corner of Ashby and Bissonnet, show how it can work:

In the Feb. 5 meeting, Morgan and Kirton offered to reduce the size of their building to 19 stories or to build a six-story project while accepting a $2.65 million payment to recoup their investment.

Street-level view of proposed Ashby Townhomes, 1717 Bissonnet: Buckhead Investment Partners

02/18/08 8:48am

Hoa Binh Center, Travis and Tuam, Houston

For years, Camden Property Trust has been talking about a giant mixed-use project the company is planning for the “superblock” bounded by Main, Anita, McGowen, and Travis in Midtown. And the Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff reported this weekend that Camden is ready to go ahead with its Midtown development.

Except the new Camden project isn’t on the vacant superblock. And it won’t be mixed use. It’s a four-story, 253-unit, $45 million apartment complex called the Camden Travis, planned for the site of the former Hoa Binh supermarket building, the dilapidated and heavily tagged vaguely-moderne-looking shopping center one block to the west, at 2830 Travis.

02/13/08 11:27am

View of Proposed New Galleria Whole Foods at Blvd Place at Former Eatzi’s Site

Uptown residents have had a lot of fun speculating about just how enormous and feature-filled the new Galleria Whole Foods flagship store on Post Oak Blvd. will be. The Whole Foods website lists it at a massive 78,000 sq. ft. — though the page it’s on hasn’t been updated since last October.

But now from our mailbox comes this gushing report:

Rumors have been circulating for the last week that Whole Foods has pulled out of Ed Wulfe’s BLVD Place development on Post Oak Blvd. The owners of a prominent jewelry store across Post Oak Blvd. have been telling people that the deal fell through.

Is this just shopping-center trash talk? Or has something changed? Our informant provides more Boulevard Place and Whole Foods FUD:

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02/12/08 9:40pm

Memorial Heights Apartments, 201 S. Heights Blvd., Houston

Archstone is planning to redevelop the 28-acre Memorial Heights Apartments complex fronting Studemont, Washington Ave., and Heights Blvd.:

The current plan to be realized over a 5-year period features mid-rise mixed-use at the Washington/Studemont corner, and a series of six mid-rise residential nodes with incorporated garages on a new internal central Paseo that will parallel Washington Avenue mid-way through the complex. Archstone suggests visiting their nearly completed Esplanade project on Hermann Drive west of Almeda for a representation of product quality.

Hey, that’s a pretty short life for the apartments. They were built in 1996.

02/12/08 12:50pm

Elevation of Proposed Belgravia Condos at 4026 Bellefontaine, Houston

Nineteenth-century British architect John Nash is apparently staging some sort of comeback in Gramercy Park. Here’s some of the marketing copy for the Belgravia, a 44-unit midrise condo building planned for Bellefontaine St., just west of Stella Link:

Following the traditions of neo-classical design, by one of Englands greatest architects John Nash, The Belgravia takes us to one of the most exciting times of British innovation where the most remarkable landmarks were sought, built, and admired.

The planning commission recently approved Sunhill Development’s replat of the property, over some vocal neighborhood opposition.

After the jump, more pics of the former British Empire’s Braeswood Place outpost!

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02/07/08 4:54pm

Drawing of Discovery Tower, Downtown HoustonHere’s a small discovery from today’s permit report: Work on the site and foundation of Discovery Tower — a 30-story office tower developed by Trammell Crow and designed by Gensler — has been approved by the city. The tower is planned for a block next to Discovery Green downtown, at 1501 McKinney St.

The tower will have retail space at street level and will reportedly tie into the tunnel system . . . by skybridge. A new parking garage will go up one block north.

The tiny image above shows the view from Discovery Green. Discovery Tower is at the far right. (The hazy image in the background to the left is the Finger Companies’ One Park Place, which is now under construction.)

Got any better images of Discovery Tower you’d like to share? Send them in!

Photo: CBRE, via HAIF user lockmat

02/05/08 1:02pm

How poetic is it that the lone holdout in a 2-acre plot on West Alabama that Gables Residential wants to tear down so it can build up to 150 more apartments — and maybe some street-level shops — is called . . . Distinctive Details?

Little Woodrow’s will be shutting down March 2nd, but Distinctive Details, which rents linens and party supplies, wants the Atlanta REIT to triple its $150K lease buyout offer.

02/04/08 5:35pm

Fly High Little Bunny, 3120 S. Shepherd, Houston

A short item in the Houston Business Journal is encouraging rumors of a new highrise on Shepherd, one block south of the Alabama Theater Bookstop.

That’s the current location of jewelry store Fly High Little Bunny, along with the Jamail Real Estate office shown in this photo sent in by a Swamplot reader. The property includes two houses in back.

But the new development could stretch all the way to W. Alabama. A poster on HAIF claims the same buyer is also purchasing the shopping center on the north side of the block, which contains Ruchi’s Taqueria and Roeders Pub, and is planning highrise apartments and a parking garage, with retail space on the ground floor.

01/30/08 3:14pm

Legacy at Memorial 25-Story Apartment Tower in HoustonThis is the best image we’ve been able to find online of the 25-story apartment tower about to go up at the site of the former Ed Sacks Waste Paper Co. at 440 Studemont, just north of Memorial Dr.

And it makes you wonder: Do these out-of-town developers really know what they’re doing here? First they give the project a name — “Legacy at Memorial” — that makes it sound like a funeral home, in a town where death is already a major industry. Then . . . they think Houston residents will stand for 15 percent of the units in the combination highrise-lowrise development being marketed as “affordable housing.” But weirdest of all . . . it looks like they forgot to give their building a theme!

Memo to Legacy Partners and your California retiree funders: Your tower is going up against some aggressively themed competition. When renters can go next door and feel like they’re in Italy, or go down the street to get a little stucco taste of New Orleans, or cross Allen Parkway for a full-fledged Beaux-Arts Alamo resort revival, just who do you expect is going to want to want to live in an apartment that looks like . . . a building in Houston, Texas?

More on the tower that forgot to put on its clothes and makeup . . . after the jump.

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01/28/08 1:45pm

Rendering of Proposed Heights Esplanade I at 1801 Ashland St., Houston

The Magnolia Lofts, planned for the site of the former Ashland Tea House, has a new sales trailer at 1801 W. 18th St. in the Heights and a new, less ironic name. The project is now called Heights Esplanade I — though the development’s website throws in an odd extra apostrophe for good measure. Best news: The same website declares that “At the Esplanade, urban loft living will take on a new meaning.” The building will be four stories high, contain forty condos, and sit on a two-story “partially submerged” garage.

A HAIF reader who stopped by the sales office reports that Conroe-area builders Garrett Austen are planning two additional phases, with 80 and 120 more condos respectively.

After the jump: floor plans for Unit 403, on sale now for $261,118.

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01/24/08 7:39pm

Stalls at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo

For four years, the fate of the Astrodome has been chained to the proposals of a single company. Those proposals at first went in all sorts of different directions but lately have seemed to be going nowhere. And now, finally, the stewards of the Astrodome’s future have declared that Astrodome Redevelopment’s exclusive right to redevelop the Houston landmark will be coming to an end.

That’s great news, because all that exclusivity and secrecy and incompetence has overshadowed one of the best ideas ever suggested for reusing the Dome — which today can finally be revealed: Let’s turn the Astrodome into . . . horse stables!

Astroturf and tiered stadium seats would give way to more than 1,000 horse stalls and an arena with a capacity of at least 6,000. The vast open area where former Astros stars Jimmy Wynn and Jeff Bagwell hit towering drives would be turned into a three-story exhibition and stalling space, Shafer said.

Isn’t doing time as a livestock storage center the hallmark of a historically significant building? And it will make the next renovation so much more dramatic: “Can you believe it? Before they restored it, they used this thing for horse stables!”

After the jump, some reasons why this plan might have legs.

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01/24/08 8:11am

A reader writes in with a question about the movie theater that appeared in Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report earlier this week:

Do we happen to know the reason for the demolition of the Tinseltown Westchase location? If I can remember right, this theater has only been here for not even 10 years yet.

Actually, the Cinemark Tinseltown USA Westchase movie theater had reached the ripe old age of 12. According to the Houston Business Journal, Simmons Vedder Partners is tearing it down to build twin 6-story spec office buildings with a parking garage between them and a “signature water feature” fronting the Beltway — all designed by Ambrose, McEnany and House Architects. It’ll be called Westchase Park.

After the jump, a few fond memories of the theater in its “Hey!” day.

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