Tag: Variances

Mixed Use
05/22/08 9:38am

Regent Square Developers: Parking Garages Scared Us Straight

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Montrose, North Montrose, Parking, Proposed Developments, Streets
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Axonometric of Proposed Regent Square Development, North Montrose, Houston

Those of you still wondering why Regent Square’s quaint crooked street was axed from the project’s most recent plan — along with a few lush-looking inner courtyards — will be interested to read this explanation unearthed from a variance request submitted to the Planning Commission for today’s hearing:

After careful value engineering, it was determined to eliminate the below grade parking and replace that parking in additional structured garage parking. In addition, the diagonal private street that bi-sected the site has been modified and now runs perpendicular to Dunlavy. This also provided for a more efficient design of the structured parking garages.

After the jump: The new plan. When . . . and what?

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Development Restrictions
03/14/08 4:00pm

Sunset Heights: Will Not Subdivide

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Development Strategy, Neighborhood Disputes, Proposed Developments, Renovations, Sunset Heights
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Former Post Office at 2601 Baylor St., Sunset Heights, Houston

East Sunset Heights Methadone Clinic Ad

This Methadone Clinic graphic was posted today on the Medusa Properties website, and conveys in slightly different fashion the same news we received in our email from a Heights-area reader:

The oh-so-neighborly Mr. Jared Meadors did *not* receive the variance he requested for the Baylor St subdivision.

Photo of 2601 Baylor St. and Methadone Clinic Graphic: Medusa Properties

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Apartments
03/14/08 10:10am

Med Center Houstonian: No Condo

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Highrises, Hotels, Neighborhood Disputes, Proposed Developments, Southgate, Texas Medical Center
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Screen Shot from Planning Commission Meeting Showing Proposed Houstonian Hotel in Texas Medical Center from Main St.

Nope, no condos in the planned Houstonian Medical Center hotel — but there will be 100 apartments. Medistar consultant Doug Williams gave a few more details about the planned 40-story Main St. tower at the edge of Southgate in yesterday’s Planning Commission hearing:

  • Parking-structure base will be 12 stories, with a green space on top, and contain 14,000 sq. ft. of meeting and ballroom space.
  • Building will have 303 guest rooms, plus 100 apartments for longer-term stays, 70 of them furnished.
  • This is a Redstone project.
  • The developers are also buying the Baylor Clinic building next door, which Baylor rents from St. Luke’s.
  • The plans include a new skybridge that will connect the new tower to the Baylor Clinic next door, so hotel guests can use the existing Baylor Clinic skybridge to cross Main St. Representatives of Rice have expressed interest in connecting the university’s new Collaborative Research Center one block to the north to the new building by skybridge as well.

The commission approved a revised version of the variance request but attached several conditions having to do with landscaping and parking spaces.

After the jump, the view from Southgate!

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Development Restrictions
03/13/08 6:23pm

A Sunset Heights Lot Size Turf War

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Neighborhood Disputes, Proposed Developments, Renovations, Sunset Heights
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Former Post Office at 2601 Baylor St., Sunset Heights, Houston

Here’s just one paragraph from a nine-page variance request application submitted for consideration at today’s Planning Commission hearing:

So what message does this whole process send to people like me who are willing to go out and spend their time and their hard earned money and take risks in order to improve the city and improve our neighborhoods? The message is: Only the guys with deep pockets and deep connections—the Perry Homes, the Tricons, the Fingers, the Olmsteads, the Levits, the Weingartens—only those guys get to win at this game. Those guys can build what they want when they want. Everybody else loses. Everybody else gets bad advice and the run around. Everybody else should just stay home and sit quietly on their couches and watch TV.

There’s more to like in Jared Meadors’s request to subdivide the 49-by-120-ft. property he owns at 2601 Baylor St. in Sunset Heights into three separate lots — including an accounting of his annual net adjusted income over the last three years, two HAR.com screen shots, and some occasional heavy leaning on the CAPS LOCK key. But it’s nothing, really, compared to his more wide-ranging complaints about his difficulties with his neighbors and the Prevailing Lot Size ordinance that he has posted on the website of his company, Medusa Properties. It begins:

NEW CONSTRUCTION! SUNSET HEIGHTS – MODERN CRAFTSMAN STYLE – AVAIL SPRING 2008
*** UPDATE *** THE BLUE HAIRED LAWN NAZIS OF EAST SUNSET HEIGHTS STRIKE AGAIN!

More name-calling, after the jump!

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Commercial Real Estate
03/13/08 10:23am

Houstonian Texas Medical Center: Slow Multimedia Reveal

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Condos, Highrises, Hotels, Neighborhood Associations, Neighborhood Disputes, Proposed Developments, Southgate, Texas Medical Center
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View from Main St. of New Houstonian Hotel and Condominiums, Texas Medical Center, Houston

From fuzzy video stills to washed-out photocopies: In the agenda handout for today’s Planning Commission hearing are hazy images that provide even more details about the new 40-story hotel and condo tower Medistar wants to build on Main St. in the Medical Center, at the eastern boundary of Southgate.

The drawing labels identify the hotel as the Houstonian Texas Medical Center, or Houstonian TMC for short. The architect is the Hill Glazier Studio of HKS, out of California. And a section drawing gives an actual height for the tower.

After the jump: It’s very tall!

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Condos
02/29/08 3:30pm

Live on TV: New Med Center Hotel-Condo Tower

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Highrises, Hotels, Neighborhood Associations, Neighborhood Disputes, Proposed Developments, Southgate, Texas Medical Center
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Screen Capture of Planning Commission Discussion of New Medistar 40-Story Condo and Hotel Tower at Dryden and Main St., near Southgate, Texas Medical Center, Houston

Thanks to some intrepid reporting lazy online-video scanning over here at Swamplot, we now have more information about Medistar’s 40-story hotel and condominium tower planned for the corner of Dryden and Main St. in the Medical Center.

Yesterday, the Planning Commission voted to defer any consideration of Medistar’s request for a lot-line variance along Main St. But the president of the Southgate Civic Club voiced his objections to the variance — and other aspects of the project — anyway.

After the jump, more stills from the civic-club president’s presentation to the Planning Commission, plus a few bits of armchair analysis from our crack crew of expert TV watchers.

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