06/24/13 12:30pm

More urban dominion: The unwanted vegetation has been ripped out and the foundations poured for the 8-pack of townhouses going by Rosewood Estates, developed by McCollum City Homes and Urban Living. These are just south of Wheeler and west of Almeda in Museum Park on a lot cornered by Rosewood and Jackson. And they appear to stick with that if-it-ain’t-broke 3-bedroom, 4-story design that might by now seem pretty darn familiar. Prices here, anyway, range from $489,000 for a 2,224-sq.-ft. one that faces Rosewood St. to $499,000 for the 2,286-sq.-ft. one that overlooks the shared drivepath and Jackson St.

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06/18/13 11:00am

First things first: Here’s the new location of Morningside Thai. Hoping to open June 22, says owner Ying Roberts, the no-longer-on-Morningside, no-longer-eponymous restaurant can be found at 2473 S. Braeswood Blvd., inside the Kirby Glen Retail Center, north of OST, right where the South Main neighborhood bumps into University Place. Got that? Of course, the Braeswood address might be a tad misleading in this case, since the restaurant actually faces Kirby Dr.

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06/14/13 11:05am

It looks like the 10.53 acres behind this sign where the Spring Branch RoomStore stands have been fosoldale, and the buyer has said it plans to build some rental townhomes. Broker David Littwitz says that the RoomStore here at 1009 Brittmoore Rd. facing the Katy Fwy. closed about a year ago, after the Richmond, Virginia, company filed for bankruptcy near the end of 2011. Real Estate Bisnow’s Catie Dixon reports that the buyer, a joint venture called Houston Texas Properties, intends to tear down the showroom to develop what they’re dubbing Arabella, desribed by Dixon as a “240-unit, upscale rental townhome community.” And they’re not wasting time: Dixon adds that the RoomStore should be coming down within the next few weeks.

Photo: Real Estate Bisnow

06/13/13 2:00pm

THE WOODLAND PARK THINNING STORY THICKENS The backlash to the clearing of Woodland Park vegetation behind the 7 townhomes he’s building on Wrightwood St. seems to have encouraged first-time developer Bill Workman to make hardhat-in-hand rounds this week with local media: He’s given similar statements regretting the snafu to Hair Balls, KUHF, Click2Houston, and abc13. But more details are coming out that complicate a situation that Workman maintains resulted from a miscommunication with a subcontractor hired, he says, only to grade the site: Debris from what’s been reported to be 3/4 of an acre of parkland has been pushed down to the banks of Little White Oak Bayou, presenting a possible drainage problem — which, of course, the grading was undertaken in the first place to solve. And the claim that only invasive species had been removed doesn’t seem to be the case, either, reports the Houston Chronicle: “The Parks Department reported that the cleared property included some healthy trees,” write Erin Mulvaney and Mike Norris. (As many as 100, estimates abc13.) “Reforestation and replanting will be necessary, and erosion control and possible regrading of the site may be required, officials said. A debris pile will also need to be removed. Workman said a large amount of bamboo and an undergrowth of vines were removed in the clearing.” [Houston Chronicle ($); previously on Swamplot] Photo: Andrea Greer

06/12/13 4:30pm

According to developer Bill Workman, the clearing of parkland behind his Woodland Heights townhomes stems from a miscommunication: “I never intended for this to happen.” A subcontractor, he says, was hired last week only to grade the land as dictated by a city plat for drainage purposes. In fact, Workman — a first-time developer — was out of town when the so-called “egregious clear-cutting” went down. Returning to the site on Wrightwood St. on Sunday, he saw the missing vegetation, he says, and was “devastated.”

That might be because one of these townhomes Workman is building for himself, and he bought the property in 2011 because of its views of and proximity to the park. Coincidentally, he says that he’s a member of Friends of Woodland Park — the organization tasked with protecting the very land that was — well, overzealously groomed. And he claims that he never said he was trying to improve the townhomes’ view — as blogger Andrea Greer reports that she was told by a neighbor.

Since the weekend, Workman and his general contractors have been meeting with the parks department and flood control management to begin resolving the situation; he says he intends to follow their recommendations.

Photo: Andrea Greer

06/12/13 10:00am

Note: Read more on this story here.

Some neighbors seem pretty darn upset with the developer of these Woodland Heights townhomes for “egregious clear-cutting” of about an acre of vegetation from nearby Woodland Park, reports the blog Nonsequiteuse. The report, posted yesterday, claims that the developer acted in order to improve the townhomes’ view of Little White Oak Bayou. Bill Workman, the owner of the property and developer of these City Homes of Woodland Park, wasn’t immediately available to give a different side of the story that the photos taken at the site suggest.

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06/10/13 10:05am

H-E-B Montrose Market architects (and International Coffee Company Building renovators) Lake Flato designed these 4-bedroom, 3.5-bath Nagle St. townhouses that are going up in East Downtown. They’re coming in at 2 sizes: 3,375 sq. ft. for the endcaps with screened-in terraces and 3,664 sq. ft. for the ones scrunched in the middle. Developed by Lovett Homes, the townhouses face the 700 block of Nagle between Capitol and Rusk, just east of BBVA Compass Stadium. One of the larger townhouses, listed at $549,000, has already gone pending.

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05/09/13 3:45pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: HERE COME THE GOOF-Y TOWNHOUSES “The revisions to Chapter 42 mean that the fringes of Oak Forest, Garden Oaks and Spring Branch can be built up with lots of townhomes and other inner loop-esque density. Given that you now have to shell out $500-$800k to live in OF, GO or many parts of Spring Branch, I would bet that, all things constant, this listing would be seen as a steal in five to ten years . . .” [Old School, commenting on Houston Home Listing Photo of the Day: Number 1, Fan]

05/03/13 10:00am

A new stick frame began going up Wednesday on the corner of Heights Blvd. and E. 2nd St., on a concrete slab cleared of the heap of wood studs, trusses, shear walls, and framed staircases that had landed there with a crash last Saturday night. All remnants of the 2 toppled Keystone Classic Homes 4-story townhouses in the Madison Park development just south of White Oak Bayou have been swept away. The site, pictured above in a photo taken by a Swamplot reader this morning, now looks rather different from the way it appeared last Sunday:

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05/01/13 3:35pm

A Swamplot reader writes in with some identifying info about the Katy homebuilder whose Heights Blvd. townhouse construction collapsed into a pile of sticks over the weekend. The collapse of two 4-story structures under construction shortly after the end of Saturday night’s storm didn’t end up injuring anyone, but it did set back construction and marketing efforts for the Madison Park development just south of White Oak Bayou.

The builder of the toppled properties at 103-117 E. 2nd St., in a corral of townhomes built earlier by another developer, is Keystone Classic Homes, an LLC managed by Michael D. Surface. That appears to be the same Mike Surface who found himself in local headlines a couple of years ago, before and after he admitted to a judge that he intended to influence his longtime friend, Harris County Commissioner Jerry Eversole, with approximately $100,000 in cash and gifts. As part of a plea deal, Surface ended up pleading guilty to filing a false income tax return and making false statements to federal officials in connection with that bribery case, which centered around county contracts; in November 2011 he received a sentence of 2 years’ probation, along with a restriction barring him from being able to do any business with federal, county, or city governments for 5 years.

And then there was Surface’s job on the Astrodome.

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04/30/13 2:45pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE NEW TALLER TOWNHOMES THAT FELL OVER NEXT DOOR “Just to add a little clarification here. I live in one of the already existing structures there. They have been there since 2008 and have fared quite well during storms since being constructed. The ones that collapsed had started being built about 5 or 6 weeks ago. They were being built by completely different builders. There were two frames up. Each were four stories tall. The crazy thing was how tall they were. The second story on the new construction was taller than the third story of the ones that had already been there. They were however a completely different design than the already existing ones. In any event the weather wasn’t that bad. I was awake when they collapsed and actually saw the second one fall after the first hit it. Scary. Regardless of wind sheathing, that should not have happened. Someone could have been seriously injured or worse.” [Mike, commenting on The Heights Blvd. Townhomes That Collapsed Overnight]

04/30/13 1:45pm

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?

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04/29/13 1:30pm

Note: Story updated here.

Some big bad wolf huffed and puffed and blew down a couple of 4-story stick-framed townhomes under construction at the corner of Heights Blvd. and 2nd St. around midnight Saturday night. Several readers have written in with accounts and photos, and a source close to the action reports that no one was hurt. A few neighboring garage doors on completed (and occupied) townhomes were damaged by wayward wall parts, however, and the driveway shared by new owners in the Madison Park complex was blocked by a Three Little Pigs–worthy pile of studs, which was cleared out of the way the following day by the builder, Keystone Classic Homes.

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