What more suitable spot could there be in Houston for a showroom, warehouse, and designer-education center focused around Silestone and the other kitchen-and-bath-slabs lines of a Spanish manufacturer to land than in a brand-new complex of tilt-up buildings aligned along the southbound Beltway 8 feeder of the Sam Houston Tollway across from Spring Branch? Not long after the concrete slabs went up at 1315 W. Sam Houston Pkwy. North (north of Westview Dr.), the slabs of ground quartz, marble, recycled materials, and precious stones went in. The multi-warehouse complex opened late last year; The Houston Cosentino Center at Suite 150 opened last week.
So what if the vast concrete expanse of the feeder-road-side parking lot in the middle of the U-shaped tilt-wall complex looks kinda bleak? The inside is set up to be sleek:
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There’s 27,000 sq. ft. of warehouse and distribution space in there, plus a slick showroom that shows off Cosentino’s slick manufactured surfaces set against a vintage poster of tanned and shirtless Spanish workers wielding mallets at a marble quarry:
There’s more inside, including a coffee bar, classrooms, and a few fully functional kitchens. The privately owned business has had its its North American headquarters in the Houston area since 1996 (it moved from Stafford to Sugar Land last year), but the new design center is the 25th in a series of similar centers set up since 2010 in U.S. cities, modeled after the company’s facilities in Europe.
- About Cosentino Center [Cosentino]
Photos: Cosentino
“What more suitable spot could there be in Houston”
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Can’t tell if serious or …
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On the one hand, it’s catering to some higher end tastes in the middle of a bleak strip center near the edge of a 1930s earthen dam which has been weakened over time and de-rated because it can’t hold as much water as originally designed. On the other hand, everyone needs to put in granite and marble after they buy their $700,000 house in the Spring Branch/Memorial area which hasn’t been upgraded since 1952. Perfect location for them.
It looks like the tilt-up freeway warehouse version of the old River Oaks shopping center. In fact, since Weingarten butchered it, it kind of looks better than the River Oaks shopping center.
I never understood why people buy Silestone and other compressed aggregate countertops when real granite and marble is cheaper. The only reason it’s expensive is because Cosentino holds a patent and a tightly controlled distribution chain.
@commonsense Interesting. I’m not involved in building/rehab so was unaware of the costs, I always thought the reason people bought Silestone is because of the cost advantages over marble & granite. Good to know.
@Brandon, the only half-valid reason to go with Silestone is if you have an ultra contemporary kitchen design and you absolutely need a blood red or neon green countertop, they sure have some wild colors available.
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They also claim that Quartz aggregate is stronger than marble and you can get an OPTIONAL anti-bacterial ingredient in the slab. Unless you’re ax chopping raw chickens on your countertop on regular basis, it’s utterly useless. Plus the anit-bacterial craze is winding down since it’s been found those substances cause long term problems.
@commonsense, as you pointed out, Grainite/Marble countertops don’t always fit the style of kitchen you’re going for. I’m personally really sick of granite, even as a geologist I find it really really boring because everyone has it!
Our new home will have a uni-color quartz countertop and it looks great with the style of the kitchen. Granite always looks way too busy for me.
merp: That’s why I like either absolute black, or ‘honed’ (?) where it has a flat look, or “Kashmir White”. The one drawback is I believe mining and shipping the granite is a very ‘dirty’ and energy intensive process. We used to use granite countertops in our apts but have stopped. I don’t use them in nice homes either.
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I’m not trying to be a hippie about these things but I try to go for other options. Either granite tiles (which are less impactful), or laminate, or concrete, bamboo, recycled plastics, etc.
Engineered stone is less porous so you can keep it cleaner (germ and stain wise). Leave a rusty shaving cream can on your marble bathroom countertop and you’ll see what I mean.
Did somebody say something about marble? No, no, no, no. Marble is a terrible choice for countertops. It reacts too easily to acids and can oxidize and turn yellow with age. Striations can also occur in either marble or granite that provide an axis along which fracture can easily occur during installation or as a result of impact — although in my experience its much worse with marble. And marble is softer, so it can scratch more easily. If there are any advantages to having marble countertops over any other commonly available material, I am not aware of them.
@ merp: Yeah, I get sick of granite countertops, too, and I became especially sick of it after I had shopped around and figured out what was available and the price of it, and then had some installed in a property that I was prepping for sale. I never looked at anybody’s granite the same way again. I was cognizant of it, and of what they paid; and granite is always in your face, so I thought about it too often. I like the idea of alternatives such as concrete, but…well if you’re a hurry and you need to ensure resale value, then you use the most common, most reasonably-priced material from a reputable vendor and that can be benchmarked to any of your sale comps. That’s a situation that calls for granite.