fwki

I believe this thing constiutes an Attention-Getting Device for a business, all of which are banned in Houston. However, regulation is in the eye of the regulator, and maybe he was wearing a nice, new pair of Costa Del Mar sunglasses.

It's the costumes they wear that make it difficult, and then when they group-up and all dress in the same costume, it's hard to drive over the laughter. These guys make the Shriners look like IBM salesmen.

I hope they keep the jumbo-loan prices on the condos....go cougar hunting at Someburger.

IMO, regularly feeding your family restaurant food is a rather expensive, unhealthy suburban practice that is the result of 2 working parents or single parents that cannot regulary home-cook meals for their children. Also higher income families that can regularly afford retail meals are new to this area, so the market is still nascent. I take my family of five to dinner for special occasions and that limited activity will not support a diverse family-oriented market. When we first moved here in 1992 (sans children) we were amazed as well. At that time we had 11th Street Cafe and some taquerias. With the T-Rex appetites of teenage boys in the house, I don't even notice it as a problem anymore.

I believe there is a $5,000 fee to register your site with the DCRP which is deductible against assessment costs. I would think coring is mandatory to asses perc contamination since perc tends to head for the water table instead of leach to surface.

It's only expensive if you have to pay for it. The DCRP provides up to $5mm from the state to dig your foundation, er, I mean remediate your site.....not that a developer would take undue advantage of free money or anything. In any case, from the looks of it we don't have to worry about perc anymore, or that nasty lot.

The site had to be assessed at a minimum and remediated pending results prior to construction...it's actually number 6 on the priority list of 100+ sites. http://www.tceq.texas.gov/assets/public/remediation/dry_cleaners/priorlist_current.pdf

IMO, that's why they selected Vita Nuova as the front man for this Project; remediation of complex sites is their speciality. Check it out. http://www.vitanuova.net/index.php

Maybe the perc contamination from the former dry cleaner is really bad. The site was listed in the top 5 priority of Texas contamination sites, and the remediation effort is underway. To quote cleantechnica.com " TCE and perc contamination is notoriously difficult to remediate. Unlike oil, which floats, TCE and perc are more dense than water. In an aquifer, they sink to the bottom. Further complicating the problem is their solubility, of which they have very little. Instead of diluting evenly through an area, they form plumes that contain a relatively small core of concentrated contaminants. The core is often difficult if not impossible to find, and it can continue to leach contaminants into the aquifer, polluting the fresh water that enters for an indefinite period of time. "

I see the similarities in the published profiles to "economically rehabilitate environmentally distraught land". The CT company looks like the parent which provides services to remediate, handle stakeholder engagement and market on behalf of owners of tainted properties. The plan here may be to remediate the dry cleaner contamination and handle the NIMBY's to a point where the property can be flipped for a profit or developed by the client.

Wow! I completely missed that stat. Dallas is almost as bad as Detroit with the bottom not yet in sight. I'm guessing the Heights will remain "quaint" for a while. That is unless half-done, abandoned real estate projects begin to pile up.

Thanks for the info skamper. For commercial real estate developers, 2009 is going to be a tough year...far tougher than any neighborhood association. See this commercial real estate outlook... http://www.realtor.org/wps/wcm/connect/cc9...3bab778e322d571 . Houston's been above the fray nationally, but the oil price chickens are coming home to roost. It may a good time for recent UT real estate grads to study up on the 1980's... http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/oilprice1869.gif .

I have 3 boys at St. Anne. If you want to get a feel for the St. Anne community, head over the the school's annual Fiesta on Sunday 10/19 for a good dose of family fun. You'll also get a good look at the beautiful campus. My eighth grader graduates this year with a class of about 50 students, and I have a fifth grader and a first year student in PK3.

The sale of the Burroughs property I referred to above has closed, according to a friend who discussed the transaction with Alice Burroughs. I checked the County Clerk's Office and it looks like the transaction took place on July 28th under a warranty deed. The Grantee is an entity called "DC Heights LP". For more details and to determine the exact lots, one would have to visit the Clerk's office on Caroline St. or have access to an associated database.

Additional details: The Burroughs property is under contract until expiry sometime this July without positive action, e.g. extension, etc. The seller understands that the buyer is having issues with the city on the southern parcel which encompasses "the ditch", and that is holding up the deal. It's not clear what those issues are (wetlands?). As an aside, 6-7 years ago I witnessed some U of H students clearing and excavating the west side of "the ditch" over a period of several weeks (across from Jimmies). They came up with what looked like cement steps leading down to a mooring area. I spoke with one student and she said that they were investigating the site which was used to bring supplies and ice to the area, and naturally it became a social gathering place. Apparently "the ditch" was once navigable when White Oak Bayou was controlled at a higher level than today.

First post..I came across this thread while trying to confirm a story I heard this week about a planned development on White Oak, and I thought this was it. However I realized that this group is discussing development to the west of OC and what I heard from a White Oak business owner was very specific about a similar development to the east of OC. More specifically, the lady that owns the strip center east of Charlies Liquor (White Oak Bakery etc), the Camphouse BBQ property, and the adjacent commercial building (with the black iron fence) along with the empty lot across the street next to the ditch...has signed a contract to sell it all to a single developer. Additionally, the developer has plans similar to the Rizk project on the west (mixed use high rise) but that the empty lot on the south side of White Oak is planned to be a parking garage. The business owner I talked to spoke directly to the seller, so this is all third-hand information. I'll ask for more specifics, but in the meantime, I suggest we get independent corroboration before the hand-wringing starts.