There’ll be a — um — slight delay in the move-in date for the purchasers of the brand-new Madison Park townhomes at 111 and 107 E. 2nd St., just south of White Oak Bayou. Yes, it appears that the 2 stick-framed structures backing up to Heights Blvd. that toppled violently Saturday night — an hour or so after a not-exactly-fierce storm passed through the area — were in fact among the 4 that developer Keystone Classic Homes had been claiming on its website and in a construction-fence-mounted banner were already sold. Their listing in MLS provides perhaps a more conservative assessment: A bank of 4 townhomes — including 111 and 107 — were listed as “pending,” usually an indicator that a contract has been accepted by the seller but that no closing has yet taken place.
If you happen to be the lucky buyer on hook for one of these addresses — presuming you still want in — how much time will the weekend’s rack-and-rumble set you back?
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Only 1 or 2 weeks, Keystone’s Steve Reichardt tells KHOU’s Brad Woodard. A couple of construction photos included in the MLS listing for 111 show how far framing had come by April 16th:
By April 27th, the date of the structures’ spectacular belly flops, 2 more stories had been added. That townhome and the other one that collapsed were the only ones in the bank of 8 that had risen above the slab, and they were not adjacent; construction had yet to begin on number 109, an also-pending townhome between them.
Reichardt tells Woodard that the structures had windstrapping in place before they collapsed.
- Weekend storm destroys townhomes under construction in the Heights [KHOU]
- Previously on Swamplot: The Heights Blvd. Townhomes That Collapsed Overnight
Images: Keystone Classic Homes (construction photos, site plan, and rendering); Swamplot inbox (all others)
Shinanigans
Keystone Kontractors like Keystone Kops??
Yep, we’ve officially moved into the ‘saving face’ portion of the story whereby the builder attempts to distance themselves from all the shortcuts they’ve turned a blind eye to. I hope the buyers explore safer alternatives to this unsafe builder.
Proof that OSB is garbage!
If there as ugly as the homes behind it they should fire their developer.
@Zeus, firstly OSB IS garbage when exposed to water, but how is this proof of that? The OSB sheathing was not installed yet, and the OSB that you can see in the pictures is actually the only thing that held together.
Re; Zeus
What do you think a substantial % of new construction uses for sheathing?
Its engineered, less expensive than plywood, thus passing the savings onto the buyers.
OSB when dry, is durable and engineer designed for sheathing to be nailed on thec edges and in the field by engineered specs.
This OSB was wet bc of the phase of construction it was in. Once it would have passed its windstorm inspection it would have been covered in a moisture barrier, more than likely Tyvek, labeled as one of the best moisture barriers on the market today.