March 19, 2009 – 12:39 pm
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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Read more about: 77098, Apartments, Mixed Use, New Construction, Proposed Developments, Retail, Upper Kirby, West Ave
February 16, 2009 – 11:41 am
Annie Sitton documents Ligne Roset’s surprise weekend move from that fancy strip mall on Kirby to . . . the River Oaks Shopping Center? Uh . . . wasn’t the mod French furniture store supposed to be moving this April . . . to West Ave?
And what does this move mean for Design Source, West Ave’s prize showroom of showrooms, that Ligne Roset was supposed to headline?
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Read more about: 77005, 77019, Furniture, Leasing, Openings and Closings, Retail, River Oaks, West Ave
January 26, 2009 – 11:44 am
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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Read more about: 77098, Commercial Real Estate, Mixed Use, Office Space, Proposed Developments, Upper Kirby, West Ave
January 23, 2009 – 11:39 am
Bruce Wolfe, who owns Houston’s Ligne Roset furniture showroom — and is about to open one in Austin — tells Houston Business Journal reporter Allison Wollam that business at the sleek and modern 3,500-sq.-ft. store in the strip center just north of the Rice Village at 5600 Kirby Dr. was better this holiday season than last, despite problems in the economy that have hurt other home-furnishings retailers:
“It’s not unusual for one of our clients to come in and show us their floor plan and hand us a $40,000 check to furnish their entire home,” he says. “When it comes to furniture, if you pay with peanuts, you’re going to get a monkey. And you can’t pay for a Pontiac and expect to drive away with a Mercedes.”
The Houston Ligne Roset store was one of the few in the chain to carry the entire catalog in Spanish, which Wolfe says that also helped attract new clients.
Wollam goes on to report that Ligne Roset will be expanding and moving up Kirby in April, to the new West Ave development — where the store will be 1 of 5 showrooms Wolfe will operate under the name Design Source:
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Read more about: 77098, Leasing, New Construction, Retail, Upper Kirby, West Ave
More imports for West Ave! A tidbit from the Chronicle:
Rome, a resort-style day spa and salon, plans to open at West Ave. in the summer of 2009. Conceived by Las Vegas-based spa operators, Resources & Development, the spa will encompass more than 10,000 square feet in the mixed-use development at Kirby and Westheimer.
West Ave rendering: Urban Partners
Read more about: 77098, New Construction, Retail, River Oaks, Theming, Upper Kirby, West Ave
Houston restaurant reporter Cleverley Stone has names and details of four new restaurants and a bar slated to open at West Ave, the multistory mixed-use development now under construction on the corner of Westheimer and Kirby. All are culinary imports from Dallas, San Antonio, or California, though one has already moved nearby:
- Cru, a wine bar with food, was founded in Dallas but already has a location open in The Woodlands.
With the ambience of a European café, indoor and alfresco options will be available with dining areas separated by a wall of French doors. The décor will incorporate custom built wine racks and handpainted fresco wine labels on canvas. The menu will offer a contemporary collection of French-Continental, Asian Fusion and Wine Country
- The Social House, a gastropub that will actually call itself a gastropub. Presumably this will be much like the Syn Group’s Social House in Dallas, although here it will be in West Ave, not in West Village.
- Pie Bar, a 1,500-square-foot gourmet pizza place — also from the Syn Group — that’s also a bar and will stay open until 2 a.m. On the second floor.
- Swig, a cigar-and-martini bar with locations in San Antonio and Memphis.
- Wildfish Seafood Grille, an upscale seafood and steak house, already has locations in San Antonio and Scottsdale but was founded in Newport Beach by the owners of Eddie V’s and the Roaring Fork.
Though a number of the 390 luxury apartments upstairs are scheduled to become available this August, the restaurants and stores below them in West Ave’s first phase won’t open until August 2009.
After the jump, two more newish images of West Ave from the architect’s website.
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Read more about: 77098, Apartments, Bars, Mixed Use, New Construction, Restaurants, Retail, River Oaks, Upper Kirby, 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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Read more about: 77098, Apartments, Mixed Use, New Construction, New-Streets, Proposed Developments, Retail, River Oaks, Shopping, Upper Kirby, West Ave
