Tag: Upper Kirby

Condos
09/16/09 4:15pm

Condo Spies in the Night: Investigating Sales at 2727 Kirby

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Condos for Sale, Highrises, New Construction: Residential, Real Estate Marketing, Upper Kirby
33 Comments

Sure, we all want to know how well the condos at the newly completed 30-story 2727 Kirby tower have been selling. But a couple of dedicated readers decided to investigate on their own:

[We] have been musing that 2727 Kirby looks awfully dark for a building for which the Chronicle proffers “all but 18 units have been sold”

Well, we put on our trench coats and went parking garage climbing to find out exactly how many souls live in that wraithlike monument to a bygone era.

These scary night pictures were taken on a Tuesday evening at around 8 pm. This was a prime time for at least a sampling of residents to be at home among their new Imported Stone Flooring and European Cabinetry. The night photos were taken from atop the parking garage on West Alabama that is the home of Fleming’s and from the Parking lot on Westheimer that serves Taco Milagro/Downing Street.

And they show . . . ?

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CityCentre
09/04/09 11:24am

Openings and Closings: Restaurant Revamp Edition

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Galleria, Houston Heights, Memorial, Openings and Closings, Restaurants, The Woodlands, Upper Kirby
No Comments

What’s new to eat?

  • Opening Soon: Lola, a diner-ish spot serving “American comfort foods” — in the restored and refashioned former Eckerd Drug across from the Heights Post Office on Yale and 11th. This’ll be the third Heights restaurant venture from Ken Bridge, who also runs Dragon Bowl and Pink’s Pizza.
  • Opened This Week: From famed New York, Las Vegas, and Dallas chef John Tesar, Tesar’s Modern Steak and Seafood, directly across from the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in The Woodlands. You’ll certainly want to eat everything on your plate when you visit: “Tesar’s entire menu will be one hundred percent sustainable created with a zero-waste food ethics in mind,” declares the restaurant website. Whole fish will be a specialty. Outside: a burger bar.
  • Closed: The Texadelphia in the fast-food-friendly strip center on Memorial Dr. and Asbury, across from Otto’s — reportedly on account of the parking lot being too darn clogged. No worries: You can still get your cheesesteak fix at 3 other Houston locations, and it’s now a bit easier to find a spot in front of the Kolache Factory.

More food fun:

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Commercial Real Estate
08/17/09 11:07am

Alabama Bookstop Theater: The Balcony Is Closed for This Performance

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Historic Preservation, Openings and Closings, Retail, Shopping Centers, Strip Centers, Upper Kirby
6 Comments

You were maybe planning to stop by the Bookstop in the old Alabama Theater on Shepherd for one last browse before the store closes on September 15th? Do a little clearance-sale shopping, grab a coffee up on the balcony and look out over that live-on-stage magazine stand?

It may be a little too late for that now. On the Houston Press Twitter feed this weekend, Katharine Shilcutt reported that the upper levels of the store are already cleared and closed . . . for good.

Photo: Houston Press

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Galleria
08/11/09 9:01pm

Small, Stylish, and Already Sold: Design-y Inner Loop Home Bargains You Missed

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Greenbriar, Home Decor, Homes for Sale, Interiors, Montrose, Southampton, Staging, Upper Kirby, West University
22 Comments

“I do always seem to be showing you houses that few of us can really afford,” Houston interior-design blogger Joni Webb admits to her readers:

But the secret truth is, nothing gets me more excited than seeing a house which is NOT expensive yet looks like it was designed by a professional! Nothing is better because it affirms what I fully believe, style is not about money.

So Webb sets out to find a few inside-the-Loop homes dressed to meet her style standards — and priced between $300K and $500K. How long does it take her? Two days, poring through “hundreds, if not thousands” of HAR listings.

What does she find?

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Comments
07/17/09 3:07pm

Comment of the Day: Freeway Traffic Backups Bring the Customers

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Freeways and Toll Roads, Quicklink, Retail, Signage, Strip Centers, Traffic, Upper Kirby
No Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: FREEWAY TRAFFIC BACKUPS BRING THE CUSTOMERS “I visited the store the first weekend it was open, and overheard the general manager talking about how much more foot traffic the store is getting. He stated the obvious, which I’m surprised no one has commented on yet–think of the hundreds of thousands of people who are stuck in traffic every day on the elevated portion of 59 across from the store. The store’s sign is eye-level to those commuters (whereas it’s actually harder to see the stores on ground level), and you gotta think at least some of them are going to be interested in the store’s wares. Compare that to a low-profile location on Portwest that probably gets 1/10000th the traffic of 59. This is a rare case where being on the second floor of a strip center actually helps a company in Houston.” [Triprotic, commenting on The Finest Strip-Center Recital Hall in Houston]

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Condos
07/13/09 8:12pm

Studying Those Sales Reports for 2727 Kirby

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Condos for Sale, Upper Kirby
12 Comments

Sales have been “a little slow” at that 2727 Kirby condo tower, the developer tells the Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff. The 30-story tower across from West Ave near Westheimer should be complete by mid-September. Only 8 out of 78 units have closed so far.

Jerry Brown of MDA Holdings tells Sarnoff that “all but 18 units in the building have been sold” — but that “just a few units have fallen out of contract.” The wording makes it a little difficult to determine how many more than those 18 units have no deposits on them.

Photo of 2727 Kirby: Ziegler Cooper

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Attractions
07/13/09 11:29am

The Finest Strip-Center Recital Hall in Houston

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Commercial Real Estate, Retail, Sprawl, Strip Centers, Upper Kirby
8 Comments

Hidden upstairs in that new double-decker strip center on the south side of 59 between the Kirby CVS and the feeder-road Chick-Fil-A, nestled between a hair salon and a spa, is a brand-new recital hall, outfitted with a 7-foot-5 Hamburg Steinway Model C grand piano and room for up to 100 fans of fine classical music. Leave the curtains on the back wall open, and performers can appreciate a sweeping view of the freeway traffic as they play.

The hall is inside the brand-new Dowling Music, a gifts-and-sheet-music store run by concert pianist Richard Dowling, who recently returned to his hometown and bought the Houston branch of Pender’s Music (which Pender’s had bought from the local Wadler-Kaplan Music Shop in 2000).

The strip center and its neighbors were built on the former Kirby Dr. site of Westheimer Transfer & Storage, which former Rockets star Hakeem Olajuwon bought in 2002. Olajuwon demolished the building and flipped the land, parceling it out in pieces to suburban-style developers.

Dowling, who performs about 60 concerts a year around the world, can’t have expected much walk-in business from visitors patronizing other establishments in the strip center. Downstairs from his store is the Methodist Breast Imaging Center; an Israeli martial arts studio, a weight-loss clinic, a GolfTEC indoor golf clinic, and the Pasha Snoring & Sinus Center round out the second floor. But Dowling tells the West University Examiner‘s Steve Mark that traffic has doubled since he moved the store from its Portwest Dr. location:

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Openings and Closings
06/15/09 4:58pm

Signs of Retail Life at the Corner of Kirby and Richmond

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Restaurants, Retail, Shopping Centers, Strip Centers, Upper Kirby
21 Comments

A reader sends in a pic of the action at the renovated but long-suffering strip center at the southwest corner of Kirby and Richmond, which looked to be getting awfully lonely again after the departure of its lone tenant, Hue Vietnamese restaurant, in March.

But Hue is back as Kata Robata Sushi and Grill, and that white banner on the opposite leg indicates that the Dessert Gallery has moved in. Off camera, to the right, signs announce that the endcap is slated for a Texas Community Bank, but our reader reports seeing no sign of any money inside.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

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Art
06/04/09 12:58pm

Seen on the Street: How Hot Is It Out There, Really?

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Critters, Houston Heights, Museum District, Public Art, Streetscapes, Upper Kirby
6 Comments

Too hot for the squirrels, apparently.

This latest edition of Seen on the Street sticks close to the pavement. First up: Artist David Cook snaps this hot photo of . . . no, that’s not an egg frying on Kirby. Just a street button with . . . culinary aspirations?

What’s more to see around town when you keep your head down?

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Demolitions
05/28/09 11:28am

The New Levy Office Park

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Parks, Quicklink, Upper Kirby
3 Comments

THE NEW LEVY OFFICE PARK An office building next to the doomed Wakeforest Apartments will soon find itself in a new, almost park-like setting: “Bulldozers razed two old office buildings on Richmond at Wakeforest this week and will tackle apartments nearby later this year. Nothing is planned at this point for what amounts to about 4 acres that were purchased within the past six months by the Upper Kirby Redevelopment Authority’s TIRZ 19, said its chairman, Buddy Bailey. ‘We didn’t want empty structures,’ he said of the razing. The property, meanwhile, is ‘more than we could have hoped for.’ Immediate plans are to level and sod the estimated 1.2- and 2.8-acre lots, which are adjacent to the five-acre Levy Park. . . . Purchased for a total of $9.7 million, the office and apartment properties are not contiguous. A small office building separates them and remains.” [West University Examiner; previously on Swamplot]

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Bankruptcies
04/28/09 10:32am

Tracking the Disappearance of Antique Properties

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Crime, Fraud, Furniture, Galleria, Redevelopment, Retail, Upper Kirby
8 Comments

Jerry and Wynonne Hart are scheduled to be sentenced today for “misapplication of fiduciary property” in the operation of their auction business at the Hart Galleries. In return for the couple’s guilty plea, prosecutors dropped charges of theft and money laundering.

11 News reporter Dave Fehling spoke to several former Hart Galleries customers:

The auction house thrived for years. The Harts enjoyed a sterling reputation among the rich and not so rich who all trusted the Harts to sell their valuables. But around 2003, something strange began happening . . .

. . . the Harts auctioned furniture and antiques for John Zielinski and his wife.

They were expecting to get $20,000.

“And I said, ‘where’s our money?’ And they said, ‘we’re having difficulty collecting some of the checks,’” said Zielinski.

The next thing Harts’ customers learned was that the couple was bankrupt.

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Apartments
03/19/09 12:39pm

West Ave School of Loud but Muffled Knocks

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Mixed Use, New Construction, Proposed Developments, Retail, Upper Kirby
22 Comments

The River Oaks Examiner‘s Cynthia Lescalleet says her recent tour of West Ave at the corner of Kirby and Westheimer “felt a bit like a campus visit for a really, really, ritzy college.” But wait, there’s more:

Rising seven-stories, West Ave. is hard to miss. The project by Gables Urban is massive and ambitious, and that’s only the first phase. The two-acre lot behind it, now used as a construction staging area, will be Phase II. Some day. It may spend the interim as overflow parking.

Further details about that Upper Kirby campus:

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Openings and Closings
03/17/09 12:16pm

Hue Gone Away

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Restaurants, Retail, Shopping Centers, Strip Centers, Upper Kirby
16 Comments

A couple of readers have written in to let us know that Hue Vietnamese Restaurant — otherwise known as the first but hopeful occupant of the revamped but still extremely lonely strip center at the southwest corner of Richmond and Kirby — has closed. One writes:

I have a feeling it was a casualty of a low occupancy building with additional damage inflicted by continual Kirby Ave roadwork. It’s a shame, the food and drink were mighty tasty and the building itself has some nifty lighting. Better looking than most new builds.

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Commercial Real Estate
01/26/09 11:44am

West Ave: Going South?

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Mixed Use, Office Space, Proposed Developments, Upper Kirby
11 Comments

Is Gables Residential’s West Ave development doing so well already that plans are already in place to build the mixed-use development’s second phase? Or are the cause and credit markets so hopeless that architects of a once-hoped-for follow-on project decided they might as well post images of their design, since that’s the most exposure their work will likely ever get?

Ziegler Cooper Architects, designers of the 2727 Kirby highrise going up across the street, now have posted this image of a building on the company’s website. It’s identified it as West Ave Phase II.

And there’s this description:

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