10/15/07 10:00am

The wisdom of King Solomon lives on! The promised grand compromise on the Kirby Dr. street trees has been officially unveiled: Many of the oaks lining the busy street will get to keep most of their roots! The street surface will be expanded

to a standard of 73 feet, widening to 74 feet for left-turn lanes without signals and 77 feet at intersections with stoplights. Kirby is currently 66 feet wide.

That means up to five-and-a-half feet of trimming.

In order to protect trees during construction, a process called “water sawing” will be used to trim roots away from the construction area.

It won’t hurt a bit!

09/26/07 9:52am

Le Maison on Revere Apartments

Worried that there still aren’t going to be enough places to live near the corner of Westheimer and Kirby after all the construction is done? Relax. The Texas division of Orlando, Florida’s ZOM Development just got a slew of construction permits approved yesterday for their next fancy apartment complex just a few blocks to the east of that busy intersection, at the corner of Revere and Cameron, at 2701 Revere St. (Cleverly, the address on the permits is listed as 2727 Revere. Why would they give it that number?)

Going up: Le Maison on Revere, 431 rental units on a just-under-six-acre site, a five-story mix of “flats and high-end loft units.”

But it looks like there’s more to it. Not satisfied with the Beaux-Arts-meets-the-Alamo stylings of the Bel Air Apartments they recently developed and filled up not too far away on Allen Parkway, the sleek modern look of the 2727 Kirby tower now going up across the street from their new development, or the apparent Superman-in-Gotham City theme of West Ave on the other side of Kirby, ZOM has apparently decided that their new complex will, at last, point out the absurdities of the area’s stylistic hodgepodge.

How? By theming the building with a higher, more symbolic purpose in mind.

That’s right: The Le Maison on Revere apartments will be marketed and dressed up to look like “New Orleans garden style apartments,” and thereby perform the public service of reminding residents of the former glory of their neighboring city and the dangers of living at low elevations in a high-water town.

Expect the top floors to fill up first.

09/11/07 9:37am

Green Ribbons on Kirby Dr. Trees

The oaks along Kirby Dr. between Richmond and Westheimer have spoken, and they appear to be against being removed so that traffic lanes can be widened by twenty inches.

Since FEMA is providing funding to install massive 72-inch culverts under Kirby from 59 to San Felipe anyway, folks at the Upper Kirby TIRZ figured, why not go all the way and make the street safer for buses and fat-ass trucks? And while we’re at it, why not pave those intersections with giant stars? Sure, that might mean less space for trees and sidewalks, but we’ll be able to squeeze some new ones in.

None of this is making Trees for Houston, the organization that planted many of those trees umpteen years ago, very happy. But maybe they’re just not being appreciative enough of the new 14-foot-wide median they’ll be able to drop their tiny saplings into. Got it? On Kirby everything gets rebuilt.

05/21/07 9:57am

View Down West Ave

The teaser website for the apartments-and-retail complex slated for that large, recently scraped site at the southwest corner of Kirby and Westheimer is up! What will you find there? For starters, a trance soundtrack you’ll have a tough time figuring out how to turn off, plus slick rendered views and a whizzy video of a dark and urban-looking streetscape where pedestrians wield shopping bags and hover precariously on balconies.

This is the former site of the River Oaks Tennis Center. The development is named West Ave, and to prove it they’re putting in a new street by the same name just west of Kirby, extending from Kipling to Westheimer. Of course the big news is the two floors of retail space facing Kirby, West Avenue, and Westheimer. On top of that: five stories of apartments, managed by Gables Residential. The parking garage is tucked in back.

After the jump: The plan and more images.

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