Swamplot: Houston's Real Estate Landscape

A South Blvd. Teardown, If You Need More Headroom

Gus — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:20:04 +0000

“Beautiful corner lot, gorgeous oak trees. House has been added onto and has 8 ft ceilings,” begins the terse listing for this 80-year-old property with a $1.6-million asking price on live-oak-lined South Blvd. It’s part of the newly declared historic district portion of Boulevard Oaks.

A 4,270-sq.-ft. home with lowish ceilings — is that a problem? Nothing you can’t make up for by taking your interior shots from atop a stepstool:

* * *

Ah, but maybe a new owner would want something with a little more headroom?

This would make a great building site. Seller to have salvage rights if house is torn down.

1744 South Blvd. [HAR]

Comment of the Day: The Sound of Liquor Sales

Gus — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:30:21 +0000

“There’s been much incidental info over 50 yrs or so (and specific studies since the 80’s) showing that increasing noise in drinking establishments predicts higher rates of consumption. I’m sure that’s in every every bar-owner’s bag of tricks now. In fact, there’s a point in the evening when the lights are perceptably dimmed and the background music gets louder.” [movocelot, commenting on How Does a Nice Meal at Discovery Green Sound?]

Slipping a Hotel Under the Slipcover: Plans from the New Owner of 806 Main

Gus — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:21:42 +0000

The Houston Business Journal’s Jennifer Dawson is reporting that a hotel developer out of Fort Worth is purchasing the 22-story office building at 806 Main St. Downtown with plans to gut it, renovate it, and reopen it as a hotel. The building is approximately 100 years old, but its top 10 floors were added in the 1920s. The stone, terra cotta, and brick structure was dressed in a marble-and-glass slipcover about 60 years later. Directly across Rusk St. from the tower is the construction site of Hines’s MainPlace development.

The city has designated 806 Main as a landmark. It’s connected to the Downtown tunnel system, but has remained mostly empty in recent years. The last of 40 recent tenants is scheduled to move out this week. Building manager Betty Brown tells Dawson that only the Christian Science Reading Room and Domino’s Pizza on the ground floor will be left — their leases run out in 9 to 12 months.

With the exception of the Embassy Suites in downtown Fort Worth featured prominently on its website, Pearl Real Estate has built or redeveloped mostly suburban-style hotels. The 10-year-old company typically operates its own properties and serves as its own general contractor.

What kind of hotel is Pearl planning underneath this slipcover?

* * *

Writes Dawson:

Pearl President Pritesh Patel wishes to remain under the radar, saying it’s premature to reveal plans for the historic building.

Original downtown office skyscraper converting to hotel [Houston Business Journal]
Portfolio [Pearl Real Estate]

Photos of 806 Main St.: Candace Garcia

Taniguchi’s Asia Society Texas Center Gets Into the Ground

Gus — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:04:57 +0000

A reader sends in photos from the mudfest last week on the large block at Southmore and Caroline in the Museum District, where construction has at last begun on the new Texas Center headquarters building for the Asia Society. An elaborate groundbreaking ceremony for the 2-story, 38,000-sq.-ft. building featuring dancers, drummers, and noted local restaurateur Yao Ming took place more than 20 months ago. Meanwhile, architect Yoshio Taniguchi continued tinkering with the design, and the organization continued its fundraising efforts.

More muddy views of what’s going on, plus a look at the latest model:

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Previously on Swamplot: More Images of the Asia Society Headquarters Design, Still Tinkering: Yoshio Taniguchi at the Asia Society

Photos: Swamplot inbox; model: Asia Society

Metro’s Free Ride

Gus — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:05:42 +0000

Suggesting that the transportation agency is “too concerned with the bottom line” — and not focused enough on the riders who depend on it to get around town — Mayor Parker proposes lowering fares on all Metro bus and rail rides. Or (why not?) dropping them altogether: “While acknowledging that Metro would have to cope with the loss of fare revenues — $66 million in 2009, about 20 percent of its expenses — she said it is a discussion the agency needs to have. . . . Metro says its operating ratio — the share of its costs covered by fare collections — has increased from 17 percent in 2005 to an estimated 21 percent this year, still well below the national average of 33 percent. Eliminating fares, of course, would make cost-benefit analysis meaningless, since every route would be fully subsidized. But allowing passengers to ride for free might attract enough riders to reduce congestion for drivers and produce other benefits, Parker said. ‘I don’t really care so much what they collect at the fare box,’ the mayor said. ‘I’m not going to tell them to do this, but I am personally interested in exploring — unless we’re leveraging those dollars in some ways for other kinds of matches — dropping the fares to get more people on board.’” [Houston Chronicle]

Daily Demolition Report: Landmark Demo

Gus — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:01:16 +0000

Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.

And away we go! Or, at least, these things do:

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Commercial Structures

AAA Lawnmowers and Repair, 1928 Campbell Rd. 77080 (storage shed)
Landmark Industries, 6141 South Loop East 77087

Residences

4511 Nolda St. 77007 (Menefee; 2 structures)
13437 Force St. 77015
7128 Peachtree St. 77028 (carport)
2401 Wordsworth St. 77030

Comment of the Day: Living with a Hoard

Gus — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:14:27 +0000

“. . . Children of hoarders are often very well dressed and high achievers - but they never invite friends over to their house because they are so ashamed. . . . My sister and I were honor-roll kids with impressive resumes. Yet we lived without heat or water for months at a time because my mom was too embarrassed by her hoard to call the repairman. We lived with 5-foot high stacks of moldy newspapers. But we were lucky - my mom never got so bad that she hoarded animals, or food waste. When she died, it took us 3 months to clean out the place. We found her missing diamond wedding ring in her old desk, among rotting rubber bands and rusty paper clips.

The person with this apartment is obviously very ill. . . .

Hoarding is notoriously tough to treat. Hoarders don’t respond to many of the drugs that are usually used to treat OCD. I wish that there WERE a magic pill I could pop to help me with my hoarding tendencies (for example, like a person with ADHD has problems focusing on schoolwork, I have problems categorizing objects and assigning them their actual value. That is why severe hoarders think that food wrappers and cigarette butts are somehow valuable and shouldn’t be thrown out).

Riluzole, which is a medication used to treat Lou Gehrig’s disease, is one of the few medications that may show some promise. I just happened to find out about this because my mom died of Lou Gehrig’s. In the last months of her life while she was taking the Riluzole, she allowed us to throw away ten years of newspaper stacks without a whisper of protest, which stunned us. . . .” [Ruthie, commenting on Inside the Messiest Apartment in Houston. Ever.]

Calling McCollum Park’s Bluff

Gus — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:42:17 +0000

McCollum Park in Beach City, closed since Hurricane Ike, should reopen this summer, after Chambers County officials get a little work done: “The park sits on a bluff overlooking the bay and the edge of that bluff now sits about 20 feet farther back than it did before Ike. Wallace demonstrated that the damaged bluff is actually in worse shape than it looks at a casual glance. ‘Look up under there,’ he said, pointing out the problem. ‘It didn’t break off clean … the waves undercut the bluff. Somebody could stand there close to the edge and think it is safe and then the ground could just drop right out from under them. That’s the main reason we had to close the park,’ [County Commissioner Bill] Wallace said.” [Baytown Sun]

Dynamo Stadium: What Difference Does the Location Make?

Gus — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:18:05 +0000

“Talk to Houston Dynamo CEO Oliver Luck, and you get a much different view of the depth of Bellaire-area stadium proposal by the Midway Companies that’s taken on a life of its own in the past week, largely due to the buzz phrase, ‘privately funded.’ ‘We have not been presented a plan by the Midway Companies,’ Luck said. ‘I can’t say whether there’s “no public money” involved. ‘We (the Dynamo) won’t talk to the city or county about this deal — we have pushed that responsibility to Midway. We know what our conditions are, and basically, it’s replicating the financial structure of the downtown deal. That’s sort of a threshhold question. If they can do that, we’ll go ahead. If they can’t, it won’t happen.’ Under the East Downtown (a district now known as EaDo) deal, the Dynamo would pay about $60 million with the city of Houston and Harris County each guaranteeing about $10 million through a special tax reinvestment district.” [West University Examiner; previously on Swamplot]

Inside the Harris County Jail

Gus — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:50:17 +0000

The Chronicle’s Chris Moran finds inmates on the move at 1200 Baker St.:

They were working, waiting in line for the dentist, moving to other floors to appointments (medical, dietician, counseling, therapy) getting processed for release or shuffling off to a court appearance. In fact, my guess is I saw fewer inmates inside cells than on the move.

As a result, it seemed as though nearly as many uniformed detention officers, sheriff’s deputies and mental health and medical professionals were moving and monitoring as well.

The concrete halls amplify and echo sound, so any time someone raised his voice it startled me a bit. And the rattling of leg irons always sounded as if it were coming from just a few feet behind me even if the inmates were far away.

* * *

Most of what is on the walls consists of stern, institutional messages, such “Keep Your Feet Off of the Wall.” But in the dental clinic, there are at least a dozen depictions of Elvis, including a classic velvet painting.

An insider’s tour [Houston Politics]
The 1200 Jail [Harris County Sheriff's Office]

Photos: Manhattan Construction Group (top); Harris County (bottom)

Daily Demolition Report: Snagging Snappy Snacks

Gus — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:38:10 +0000

The lights at this Palace Inn go black . . . again. Say goodbye to all of these special structures:

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Commercial Structures

Snappy Snack Vending Co., 601 Nagle St. 77003
Palace Inn, 3322 Scott St. 77004
Motor Lease Corp., 2801 Capitol St. 77003
Moore Supply Co., 2911 Rusk St. 77003
3024 Holman St. 77004 (Levy Leon; 3 structures)
Skippers Lounge III, 7410 Navigation Blvd. 77011
6900 Stella Link Rd. 77025

Residences

2303 Milby St. 77004
3519 Simmons St. 77004
3719 Purdue St. 77005 (Sunset Terrace)
1215 Bay Oaks Rd. 77008 (Timbergrove Manor)

Photo of Palace Inn, 3322 Scott St.: Citysearch

Neighborhood Guessing Game Over: House of Yorkshire

Gus — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 01:04:34 +0000

MariaO was the first to name the Yorkshire in this week’s Neighborhood Guessing Game. Which means she’s our . . . runner-up! First prize goes to DavidW and his exhaustive descriptions of this west-side home. Congratulations to you both!

Wanna see more details?

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Location: 662 West Forest Dr., Yorkshire
Details: 5 bedrooms, 3 full and 2 half baths; 3,396 sq. ft. on a 10,800-sq.-ft. lot
Price: $629,000
The Scoop: Brick 2-story home with colonial-style front dating from 1966, 2 doors down from Memorial Dr. in Yorkshire. Den has painted beams and cabinets, fireplace, view of pool and large paved patio. Downstairs Master Suite; detached 2-car garage. Listed just 1 week ago.

Did you have fun with this round? We’ll have a prize to give away for next week’s game, on Tuesday. Are you game?

Neighborhood Guessing Game: Loveseat Convention [Swamplot]