The formerly bedding-starved heart of Montrose can now rest easy: Mattress Firm has arrived. The nation’s largest mattress retailer has snagged a new location in the former Blockbuster Video spot at 1002 Westheimer Rd. in the Westmont Shopping Center — right at the prominent corner of Montrose and Westheimer. With a mere 98 locations in the greater Houston area, and only 14 in the Inner Loop, Mattress Firm was certainly fortunate to be able to find this prominent spot. Now customers in the dead center of Montrose daunted by the long journey necessary to reach the company’s other outlets — at the corner of West Gray and Montrose (three-quarters of a mile to the north), at the corner of Westheimer and Shepherd (1.2 miles west), or at 2625 Louisiana St. (a mile to the east) will have a place they can travel to more easily — and, of course, rest a bit when they get there.
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Give the store a little time to open, though. The signs are now up but the mattresses aren’t yet in.
- Previously on Swamplot: Sorry, No Mattress Store Can Sneak into Highland Village Without Somebody Noticing; Apartments and Retail for Westheimer and Montrose Corner? Not Until Half Price Books and Spec’s Scoot; Strip Center at the Corner of Westheimer and Montrose: Sold; Big Block on the Corner of Westheimer and Montrose Goes Up for Sale
Photos: Swamplot inbox
Nothing screams taste and class like Mattress Firm , except maybe a payday loan joint…
Sweet baby Jeebus on a toasted cheese cracker! Why are there so many mattress stores?
Look at those pictures! The cityscape in Houston is so beautiful that I sometimes want to cry. I love the setbacks, the crumbling streets, the large signs, the little bit of grass, and oh man oh man those two lonely palm trees. This is the part the Houston that I want to show off to my friends. After a nice dinner at Uchi, I love to take everyone on a stroll around my beautiful city!
This has to be a joke right? I swear mattress stores are the cockaroaches of Montrose Real Estate.
You’ve got to be kidding me. All this time vacant and it finally gets filled with a mattress store? Ugh. Honestly, that whole strip center ought to be torn down (as well as the Burger King, Valero, and Smoothie King) and replaced with zero-setback retail.
A little Katyville for our friends in Montrose. Enjoy!
We can’t get enough Mattress Firm, can we? >_<
Yes!
Can someone please explain this business to me?
I’d read earlier stories about this entire block being eyed for a new highrise. Guess that not happening now…
Whoa there, partner, April Fool’s is not for another 33 days! Clever photoshopping, though.
Oh for fucks sakes. You can literally walk to the next closest one off Gray. Who are these people buying so many mattresses?
Someone posted on the Hyde Park board that Mattress Firm was going in there, but I didn’t believe it.
Good grief.
That shopping center has never done well because it has major access problems. You can only get to it easily going SB on Montrose or EB on Westheimer. Until they fix that, the center will never really thrive. I wonder how long that Mattress Firm will last. There are so many MFs now, I refuse to buy a mattress from them. I hear their salesmen are worse than a used-car lot.
Profit margins are very high, and the mattress business is said to be ‘internet proof’.
Seems they are taking a page out of the starbucks business model handbook.
I wonder how long their lease is for. Maybe this is a short term something. Didn’t the new owners buy this property THEN realized Half Price Books and another tenant had leases they couldn’t work around? Anyone remember that?
The deal with these places is that they reel you in for an expensive mattress that costs you several thousand dollars and then they offer you zero percent interest to finance the purchase. They are counting on you to skip a payment or be late a few times because then they will soak you for retroactive 27% interest on your over priced mattress. They are plenty of people who can’t afford the interest rate and they will be paying for that mattress the rest of their lives. These places are a cancer on the landscape and are bad for consumers who get trapped by their predatory interest rates.
There was a video recently about why there are so many Sleepy’s (local mattress store) in NYC…the same explanations (unfortunately) apply to Mattress Firm here. Reasons include: storefront marketing, mattresses are very high margin, mattress stores only pay for inventory when a mattress is sold to a customer, people prefer to buy mattresses from a store (not online), etc. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-02-17/why-are-there-so-many-sleepy-s-mattress-stores-
I’ve been so surprised that this corner hasn’t been redeveloped. It seems like it would be a natural for a mix of retail and apartments. A developer with vision could renovate the retail sections and put them back in their original 1940s look and add some residential and other amenities.
That used to be the absolute best Blockbuster in Houston. They had a John Waters shelf, complete with uncut versions of all of his films. Corporate would have busted them for that back in the day.
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I just noticed last week that there’s a Mattress Firm in Meyerland Plaza now. If you sit in the parking lot of James Coney Island it is directly to the west. If you turn 180 degrees you will see another Mattress Firm on the other side of 610 in the parking lot of Lowe’s. Both are somehow profitable enough to stay open.
IIRC, this plot of land had been bought over a year ago by developers who wanted to build a midrise luxury (because they’re all luxury) apartment complex. Yet the Spec’s and Half Price Books both had long term leases the new owners were too cheap to buy out, so they thought they would wait them out. Of course, they waited out the booming economy, so it looks like they’re signing new retail leases now.
This went up 3 days ago and I could only laugh thinking about how Swamplot would explode.
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@NativeHoustonian, you didn’t finish the article above that mentions the current tenants long term leases that prevent it being bulldozed.
Are they asking such an ungodly amount for this property that no one wants to bother with it?
I mean for god’s sake they dismantled a 15 story building a block away to erect a 30 story tower. Two bulldozers and a dump truck could level this center in 3 days.
I’d rather see it deteriorate and sit empty rather than slap some paint on it and put in another mattress store. At least then we could still hope for something worthwhile to go in this space.
The retail center will be redeveloped, but it won’t happen over night. Several of the Tenants in the shopping center have long term leases, and the ownership has to let these leases run their course. Otherwise, the ownership will have to negotiate lease terminations which the existing Tenants are probably oppose given the difficulty in finding retail alternatives in this area. I think this mattress deal is a stop gap deal or a way to generate some income until the retail center is redeveloped. It’s a pretty low TI cost deal as opposed to a restaurant or any other use that potentially could be torn down in the coming years.
From the idea of a W Hotel or Kimpton property to this.
Hey people, come on, at least they did not cut the beautiful palm trees.
out of curiosity anyone know on here what the mark-up is for mattress is? I’m thinking with these stores popping up everywhere this has to be big business
Mattress stores are like hand-carwash and self-storage places; they thrive on cheap short-term leases while the property owner waits for something better to come along.
Thankfully Pizaros will be along shortly. However, they should make an agreement with MF for the latter to dim their interior lights after closing. The worst thing about the store on Gray is the garish glow at night…
I saw it with my own eyes this morning. Ugh. I’m hoping during the next real estate boom, they tear the shopping center down and build a boutique hotel (and that the Half-Price Books finds a good location nearby). Montrose could really use a hotel.
I think this is a smart move by the owners. They’ll generate some cash for a bit and also know that the hate aimed at the mattress store will have people begging for this historic circa 1935ish Moderne center’s destruction instead of protesting it when the time finally comes for that.
Saw this while picking up dinner from 3 6 9 earlier this week. I don’t really mind the West Gray mattress store because I take comfort in the fact that the original building was saved and restored nicely. By contrast, this shopping center, stripped of its art deco charm and now sporting its gray “big box” makeover, is practically begging for death.
Car batteries: http://www.chron.com/business/article/Texas-loves-its-automotive-shops-according-to-6105671.php#photo-6574547
Mattress mark ups are astronomical in comparison with other home furnishings. Consumers can’t really compare pricing between retailers because Mattress Firm, Gallery and Macy’s can have the EXACT same mattress only with a different cover/ticking exclusive to each retailer and their own factory model number. Mattress Firm is opening every mile or so in targeted areas to keep people from driving to Gallery and the other big box stores that carry mattresses. Let’s face it, people don’t go into a mattress store to browse and kill time–they go because they need a mattress and they want to hook you before you can make the long drive out I-45. That said, I’m just as sick of them as anyone else–though I love the mattress I bought there…………………
Well, there goes the neighborhood! If Gallery Furniture moves in… OMG!
What a waste of space.
@ rental me not: did you have the crispy spicy asparagus? That sign always cracks me up.
To those calling for redevelopment, that is the plan. The entire center was purchased in 2012 by PMRG with plans for a multilevel mixed use development: first floor (and possibly second floor) retail with a few levels of multifamily on top. A mixed public/private garage was rumored.
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They’ve let every lease expire that has come up, but hit a snag: hold outs. I was told that Half-Price Books, and to a lesser extent Spec’s, have pushed back in buyout negotiations, although PMRG hasn’t publicly stated who the hold-outs are. Last spring/summer the rumor was that an agreement was close, but it never materialized.
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Since then, ownership decided to put a little money back into the property and start generating income again at least until the holdout tenants expire.
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With financing tightening up for multifamily in Houston, along with some caution from private equity, I’m wondering the if the landscape will be ripe for redev by the time they can bring in the bulldozers.
people need to start sleeping on the floor and put these parasites out of business.
I hope a third Mattress Firm opens up in the Meyerland area within eyesight of the other two. Then we can invite Lewis Black back to comment on this latest Houston-based “End of the Universe.”
If this is a short term lease as the landowners wanted, then this would be the only good reason not to renew the lease with Half-Price Books.
there is now a Matress Firm at the intersection of West Gray and Montrose and at Westheimer and Montrose. Is that even half a mile between them? Let’s not forget the one at Westheimer and Shepherd. WTH?
They don’t need to tear this down. They need to remove the crappy stucco and let us see the 1930s-1940s architecture underneath.
Several months ago, one of the chain mattress companies ran a TV commercial urging us to replace our mattresses every eight years due to contamination by dust mites, sloughed-off skin and other disgusting stuff. If we all believe this, every Mattress Firm store will have no problem attracting a steady stream of customers.
Montrose is officially over.
Montrose is OVER but no one needs a hotel on Westheimer with the traffic it already has. Why would anyone need a hotel to stay at there …Courtney… Don’t tell us you are from Austin and were trying to build on before. That was some silly idea and yes its different in Montrose today. But don’t be foolish. One of the resale shops just closed but no one needs your over priced Ross linens.
You know, if you people wanted to open a Playskool market-analysis coffee-klatch, then you could have saved all your pennies together and rented *this* place.
Too bad, innit?
OK! What gives? How many mattress stores can even a city the size of Houston support? Every time I go by one, and that is often, the parking lots are empty and there is no one in the store.
There is a Mattress Firm in Meyerland and a Mattress 1 in Meyerpark which is at most 1.5 miles away Houston need to limit these stores. 3/4 of these stores will be closed in 4 yrs max because they over saturated the market.
I’m surprised they found a way to make that strip center even more of an eyesore.
I have to say I am surprise. I had heard everything was going and this corner was going to be redeveloped.
You do have to wonder if this corner is not being redeveloped now, then will it ever be?
Mattress Firm. Just…Mattress Firm. Wow.
In addition to the Mattress Firm that’s at the corner of Westheimer and S. Shepherd, there’s also a Mattress1 across S. Shepherd from it, just south of Westheimer, and another Mattress1 on S. Shepherd at W. Alabama. Also, there’s a Mattress Overstock on S. Shepherd at Richmond.
i tried to buy a cheap imitation Tempurpedic from Costco, but the damn thing was hell on my back. Eventually I gave in and bought a real one for $3,000 and now I look forward to going to be every night.
I think I’m going to open a mattress franchise a it seems very cheap and very easy to open a store up and you can be in and out of your lease once business drops. sounds like a great business plan
I’d say “hey, at least it’s a local company” (HQ in Houston), but at 1600 stores and counting across the country, maybe not so much.
Damn, I wish I would have caught this one in time.
“I swear mattress stores are the cockaroaches of Montrose Real Estate.”
I thought it was all the new people moving in that were the cocroaches of Montrose. You may all now call me a hater.
I thought it was just us in the west side of The Heights who had an over abundance of mattress stores.
the trose been dead since 1990.
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any weirder. I noticed the Mattress Pro sign a week or so ago, but it was only on the freestanding signpost and not yet on the side of the building.
http://blog.chron.com/primeproperty/2015/03/mattress-store-doubletake-side-by-side-stores-planned-on-montrose-corner/
Who is buying all those mattresses? Now mattress stores are everywhere. It must be huge profit.