- Developer of Suburban Shopping Centers Wins Bid for 21-Acre Tarkett Tile Site, Between Target and Kroger East of Studewood [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- Black Forest Ventures Hires Stream Realty Partners To Handle Leasing of 5050 Westheimer [Prime Property]
- Friendswood Development Co. Acquires 200-Acre Parcel To Expand Tomball Community Wildwood at NorthPointe [Prime Property]
- CBRE Predicts Increased Competition Will Cause a Flattening of Rents and Some Concessions in Houston [Houston Business Journal]
- Houston Is ‘Moderately Unaffordable,’ According to 2015 Demographia Housing Affordability Study [Prime Property]
- Houston’s Suburban Past Meets Its Urban Future Inside the Loop [Governing]
- Opening of Krispy Kreme Location at 5611 Hwy. 6 North Pushed Back Until the Spring [Eater Houston]
- The Ginger Mule Tonics & Meals Taking Over Former Cappriotti’s Spot in Sugar Land Town Square [Eater Houston]
- City of Houston Patches Approximately 50,000 Potholes per Year, at $200-$400 a Pop [Click2Houston]
- Public Meetings Today on How Houston Should Spend $279M of Prop. 1 Money on Highway Improvements [The Highwayman]
- For the Best U.S. Architecture per Square Mile, Head to Dallas [CityLab]
Photo of Rice University: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Hear that woosh? That’s the sound of the same people who fought against the Heights Walmart flocking to the new generic retail and chain restaurants that will surely be placed on either side of Kroger very shortly.
Katyville gets bigger and bigger.
RE: Suburban past meeting Ubran Future, I’m not sure what this guy is rambling about. I thought it was going to be an article about how former suburbs are becoming urban as major commercial developments move out to the beltway and beyond. Instead it seems to be about shoving a denser city center down people’s throats. I’m not opposed to density, but let the market work it out. If people buy out one high rise, another will be built, and so on. The author seems to value density in of itself when it should be valued as being an option that people have. And, he seems to imply the suburbs are going away. That’s pretty crazy. The article was so short and it clearly didn’t have much thought put into it with no real conclusion to be had. It was just a rambling mess in a publication with a national audience. Why can’t people who write about Houston actually know what makes the city work?
The Katyville retail sprawl continues. 21 acres soon to become another boring strip-mall on steroids surrounded by a massive parking lot. I’d rather not be negative but it seems highly unlikely this spot will have anything remotely interesting or creative developed on it now.
@Potholes… Exactly why we don’t need more cars and buses clogging and tearing up roads over dedicated biking lanes. At that price, it would probably be more economical to build some shaded and dedicated bike lanes in existing ROW’s.
Now that they own the Tarkett site as well, I bet Gulf Coast Commercial wishes they had a do-over on the Kroger site.
Those hoping for high-density mixed use between these two big-box developments should prepare themselves for disappointment.
If you want to hear a “whoosh” in the Heights, stand by Ainbinder’s strip centers as people whiz by on their way to Liberty Kitchen, Down House, Revival Market, Good Dog, Coltivare etc. Those restaurants are packed every day of the week. The places in Ainbinder’s strip center are half empty all the time and feel like they were placed in some far flung new subdivision in Katy before all the homes were completed.
It is a shame that the Tarkett property sold when it did. If it went on the market a year ago, Midway or some other big mixed use developer would have jumped on it. But the temporary break in Houston’s boom means that this development will go to the strip mallers. Then, ten years later, we will all be kicking ourselves when rent for one beds in Houston hits $2,000 and run of the mill town houses go for $750k.
Whoa, slow down friends, no one is battling this potential big box retail just yet, we need to wait and see what the major anchor will be first.
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Will it be a place like Target and Petsmart (which is cool and not something to battle against), or WalMart (which is the devil, and worth fighting over at all costs), or maybe it will be like sprouts (Never did I hear a peep from anyone about how that was going to ruin the neighborhood like WalMart).
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Point is, let’s not put the cart before the horse, yes, it will be exactly the same type of big box strip as walmart, but unless it is as detestable as walmart, there may be no need to find completely irrelevant arguments against it.
That’s right, the Roman Empire never fell. It just suffered a temporary break in its boom.
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How “interesting or creative” was that tile factory?
@Old School, huh? My sarcasm meter is still on the fritz. Rent for one BR is already at or over $2000, and run of the mill townhouses are going up for “priced from the $900’s” (presumably K) on my block.
Katyville is already like the Noah’s Ark of the franchise and big box anchor store industry…there’s already two of each species there now. What’s left to go in on the Tarkett site?
Oh wait, a Home Depot!
How is anyone going to get to the Tarkett property?
Your choices are the clogged intersection of Summer Street off Studewood to the west that already has a light a half block up at Kroger, or the janky railroad crossing on Oliver off Washington to the south. I can’t see how you could safely add an ingress off the I-10 frontage road to the north but I guess TXDOT isn’t that concerned about safety based on the way they designed that part. To the east Spring Street ends in the Target parking lot and doesn’t look too expandable. They could try to put Summer Street through from the east but that is pretty much a driveway for Target as well. Maybe everyone will just have to walk down the railroad tracks……….