COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: FROM THE INNER LOOP REAL ESTATE LEXICON “Remember, ‘Craftsman style’ doesn’t refer to what a structure is going to look like. It’s a magical incantation that developers recite to make Heights residents feel calm.” [John (another one), commenting on Assisting the Living in the Heights]
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Tag: Real Estate Marketing
‘C’MON. KNOCK IT DOWN. I DARE YOU’ 
Writing in the New York Times, sportswriter Jeré Longman tries to raise Houston’s burgeoning “are we really gonna demolish it?” moment to a level of national concern: “. . . it was despairing to hear that the vacant Astrodome might be torn down and its site paved over as Houston prepares to host the 2017 Super Bowl. Demolition would be a failure of civic imagination, a betrayal of Houston’s greatness as a city of swaggering ambition, of dreamers who dispensed with zoning laws and any restraint on possibility.” [New York Times; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Allyn West
This map from what a reader says is a “recent” Cushman & Wakefield flyer shows a couple of interesting things that might be in store for Southside Place: Not only is the land underneath the smallest of the 3 buildings of the vacated Shell Bellaire Tech Center described as “under contract for future bank,” the 5.5 acres next to it, underneath the company’s original 1936 geoprocessing center at 3737 Bellaire Blvd., appears to be the subject of residential or retail development.
Here’s the third of 4 houses designed by not-so-famous Houston architect Allen R. Williams in the 1940s and fifties, dubbed “Century Built” homes. If the name was intended to indicate how long the concrete-block homes were all supposed to last, the record isn’t so stellar: The one off Campbell Rd. was torn down some time ago. But the others are doing fine: One in Idylwood was snatched up by an architect a few years ago, and another in Country Club Place has served as a showcase for the renovation work of its current owner, architect Ben Koush.
But this unrenovated Century Built home at 851 W. 43rd St., in the middle of Garden Oaks, didn’t last so long, either: Real estate agent Robert Searcy tells Swamplot he had it locked up in a contract very quickly earlier this week, after he made a few phone calls. Not to a builder — the sellers didn’t want the place to be torn down — but reportedly to a serial renovator interested in Midcentury modern design.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: ISN’T EAST OF 59 AND 288 INSIDE THE LOOP TOO? “. . . I tell people all the time, I live inside the loop, a few miles from DT. Everyone is all ‘oh, where do you live? in Montrose, the Heights, on Washington, museum district?’ I’m all like ‘um, no, over by UH’ then they’re all like ‘oh, UHD, so like Last Concert, that’s edgy!!!’ then I’m like, sigh ‘no, the real UH, there’s a fleet of taco trucks by my house, and that soccer stadium thingy.’ Then they just start running away.” [toasty, commenting on Houston: The Divided City]
There’ll be a — um — slight delay in the move-in date for the purchasers of the brand-new Madison Park townhomes at 111 and 107 E. 2nd St., just south of White Oak Bayou. Yes, it appears that the 2 stick-framed structures backing up to Heights Blvd. that toppled violently Saturday night — an hour or so after a not-exactly-fierce storm passed through the area — were in fact among the 4 that developer Keystone Classic Homes had been claiming on its website and in a construction-fence-mounted banner were already sold. Their listing in MLS provides perhaps a more conservative assessment: A bank of 4 townhomes — including 111 and 107 — were listed as “pending,” usually an indicator that a contract has been accepted by the seller but that no closing has yet taken place.
If you happen to be the lucky buyer on hook for one of these addresses — presuming you still want in — how much time will the weekend’s rack-and-rumble set you back?
- 13614 Shelton Grove Dr. [HAR]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: REAL ESTATE LISTING PHOTOS WITH THAT LITTLE EXTRA SOMETHING “I know exactly how this house must smell. And I love it.” [Miz Brooke Smith, commenting on A Woodsy, Bayou-Side Meadowbrook Home]
Set back behind the trees along I-10 and Memorial Dr. and beside the trails of Terry Hershey Park, the ExxonMobil Chemical Company Headquarters have gone up for sale. Marketing firm HHF says that the sale of the 35-acre Energy Corridor property was precipitated by the company’s impending consolidation northwest of here at the under-construction 385-acre campus behind other trees in Spring. Standing now on the property at 13501 Katy Fwy. are a 5-story, 576,968-sq.-ft. office building and a 20,463-sq.-ft. conference center.
COMMENT OF THE DAY SECOND RUNNER-UP: THE NEW SUBURBAN CODES “Developers should ditch the random bucolic-word generators for alpha-numeric names like the luxury car makers already have. Grandma drove her DeVille home to Valley Ranch. I want to drive my LX-450 home to FPF-120 (Former Pine Forest # 120).” [CV, commenting on Grand Parkway Progression a Part of Master-Planned Valley Ranch Master Plan]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT TO CALL THE GREATER WEST END “Forgive me if this has been discussed before, but am I the only one who thinks that the Wash Ave area needs one, unifying neighborhood name? I live in Magnolia Grove, but no one knows what that is, so I have to just say “Off Wash Ave†(though that implies that I moved there to be close to Wash Ave bars, which is NOT the case) or say that I’m in between Montrose and the Heights (which is a stretch). Rice Military stops at Durham/Shepherd so that isn’t accurate. The neighborhoods can continue to retain their individual neighborhood names, but the entire area [PDF] can have one unifying name so that folks know what you’re talking about (e.g., Montrose is the larger neighborhood that contains Hyde Park). I would think realtors and retailers would both jump at the chance to not have to describe the area by referring to street names. Part of the area is called the West End (I think the area between Shepherd, Wash Ave, Heights, and Katy Freeway), and I think that would be a cool name to describe the whole area (particularly given the fact that the area used to be the end of town). I’m sure there are other cool names too, but any name should not contain ‘Heights’ in the title, as the area is decidedly not the Heights and the feel/look is incredibly different. The area’s former name, ‘Smokeytown,’ should also be out for obvious reasons.” [Eric, commenting on New Shepherd Dr. Little Woodrow’s To Serve Pub Fare, Too]
This relatively gritty Warehouse District warehouse appears to be the subject of some real estate speculation, reports Hair Balls’ Richard Connelly: A website for the Houston Studios building — home to a 10,000-sq.-ft. soundstage with a 30-ft. ceiling for video shoots, rehearsals, and other creative expressions — features renderings that show it as a cleaned-up commercial complex:
