WAZ

The catch is that if there were good schools around Bonhomme Rd, and no slum apartments - the house might not be there. Someone would have bought the place, torn it down, and thrown up a McMansion. It's perverse to see it this way, but the awful schools and bad apartments have done more to preserve this area's Mods than any law or preservation group. (No offense intended to the guys in Memorial Bend or the Houston Mod).

Here's another from our area: 9007 Bonhomme Rd. in Bonham Acres http://search.har.com/engine/dispSearch.cf...mp;backButton=Y Gorgeous inside. Not quite as great as the N. Braeswood house on the outside. If you had the outside of that house and the inside of this, you'd have something world class. The previous owners of 9007 couldn't resist pastiche, but they did the right thing. They built a cheesy victorian looking guest house. They didn't bastardize the Mod. Amen to that.

Great to see another Mod fan in the Robindell area. I am west of there, in a subdivision called Larkwood - same Super Neighborhood. Gorgeous Mods abound around here, and the cool part is that the area has yet to be discovered by the McMansion set. The mods are all intact, or at least standing, and they're cheap. You don't have to be a millionaire to have a house designed by William Floyd, or Harwood Taylor, or William Jenkins. Anyway it's good to see you here, and let me second your call to have someone like us move into the house on N. Braeswood!

In my book, that sort of garbage is almost as distasteful as the slum apartments near my Mod in SW Houston. It's a horrible shame that a Mod is about to fall to a "French" monstrosity.

I still wish someone would buy the house and turn it into a 'house of green.' Leave the space the way it was, but change all the formica finishes to green finishes. Of course make it LEED. The cool thing is that it could be marketers of green products, and the Houston design Center that covers the cost. I guess you could call it adaptive preservation. Sort of like the dream I had a while back for Saarinen's TWA Terminal at JFK airport. I thought they should restore it back to the original, and then use it as a Supersonic terminal (for Concorde flights). It'd mimick the use the building originally had, when airports only saw a few well-heeled travelers. (And could you imagine how sexy a Concorde would look parked outside that building.) But then they axed the Concorde, and bastardized Saarinen's building. God I hope that doesn't happen to the House of Formica.

I agree it's pricey. But it's in Piney Point Village. I was actually surprised to see a sub $1 million price tag on a nice house in that area. You could find similar houses for half the price - but they'll be around my part of town, near Brays Bayou in Southwest Houston. You won't get something like that, much cheaper in Memorial.

Thanks for the insight! I never thought anything big would happen soon at the Sharpstown Mall. It's going to deteriorate for another few years at least before something big happens. Alas.

Woah there. I'm not saying Stewart Cadillac should shut down altogether. And for me it has nothing to do with a green agenda or Smart Cars. I was looking at it from a purely urban-design standpoint. Stewart Cadillac's buildings are run down. Not shabby chic mind you, they're just run down. And they have a lot of land that they're under-utilizing it by storing cars on it. Initially, I thought that maybe Stewart Cadillac should be relocated. The more I think about it, the more I think renovation could do the trick. They could sell some of their land to drum up funds, and renovate their facilities on the rest. I'm thinking something like what Momentum Volkswagen did near Greenway Plaza. Stewart Motor Cars did it, too, over on Old Katy Road. They built a multi-story parking garage for their cars. Instead of spreading out, they built up. It's a model that I think is fully appropriate for Midtown. Of course, in today's economy and with GM bearing the brunt of it, I don't see anything like this happening in the near future. So, really, it's kind of moot.

I agree. I used to work right around the corner from there. Stewart Cadillac is increasingly inappropriate in that Midtown neighborhood. Before they knock down Stewart Cadillac, though, I hope they do something about the Career and Recovery Resources buildings nearby. They've got drunks urinating in a doorway and then plunking down and going to sleep in their own urine. Heroin addicts shooting up right on the sidewalk in plain view of everyone. Crack heads walking into businesses and asking for jobs while casing the place. It's scary. I know I'll take flak for what I just wrote. Everyone talks about how great it is to provide services for the homeless, and rehabilitate drug addicts. Certainly it's a noble cause. But nobody ever thinks about the impact those facilities can have on neighborhoods. Midtown is a perfect example of why they should start.

I wish I hadn't written that. It is what I want to believe. I want to think that by Sharpstown's location, the surrounding location will come back if something big is done (like fixing the Sharpstown Mall). But I'm really not convinced that it will work out that way. It may take some intervention into the apartments to get the commercial portion of Sharpstown turned around. I will add, though - it is unrealistic to expect all the apartments in Sharpstown to be demolished. Nor is it needed. Only a small portion of the apartments in Sharpstown are so bad they need to be demolished. Another portion is marginal, and could be OK if they were put under new ownership and management.

You're right. People think "Sharpstown" and they immediately think "apartments and criminals and bad schools, Oh My!" it blinds them to all the good things about Sharpstown. HBU is in Sharpstown. It's a university with an $80 million endowment, a new President, and big plans for the future. Memorial Herman Southwest is in Sharpstown - a major hospital with a Level III trauma center that could well go to Level II in the near future. There are three golf courses with easy access to Sharpstown - one public course and two private country clubs. Most of all, though, is Sharpstown's location and price. If you look for houses in other places with that short a commute (Memorial, Bellaire), you're looking at $300,000 lot-value-only fixer uppers. You can buy something perfectly livable in Sharpstown for $100,000. But to get back to the Sharpstown Mall. My experience is that people who live in houses in and around Sharpstown, don't shop at the Sharpstown Mall. I live just outside Sharpstown myself, and I drive by the Sharpstown Mall every day. But when I want to shop, I go to Meyerland Plaza. That was the impetus for my dream.

The poor, the criminal, and the illegal already are ruining other neighborhoods. There was a cop who lost his life off West Tidwell in Northwest Houston. Alief is terribe. West Bellfort is horrible. Highway 6 near the Westpark Tollway and Beechnut is starting to go downhill in a big way. So is the FM1960 area. Cities are dynamic things, and it is never one neighborhood's "destiny to accept the city's poor, criminal, and illegal."

I believe that. I've seen it first hand. On a grand scale, the only answer to the apartment problem is to stop subsidizing new low-cost apartments. Instead use those subsidies to renovate or demolish problem apartments and replace those demolished with mixed use developments and parks. But I digress.

There is a retractable-roof mall in Dubai. There is a proposal for a retractable-roof mall in Phoenix AZ. The Sharpstown Mall was Houston's first indoor, air conditioned shopping mall. It would be fitting to renovate it into Houston's first mall with a retractable roof. Not that I think a developer would be willing to put up that kind of money in Sharpstown. At least, not just yet. It's sad. Sharpstown is in a great location, but its reputation still scares investors away.

You said "grills" and I had to Google TV Johnny. I thought maybe TV Johnny cooked up some mean cheeseburgers on his grills. But you meant "grillz." That's the dichotomy of Sharpstown. There's the Sharpstown Mall and the apartments near it - where people have grillz in their mouths. And then there are the single family neighborhoods of Sharpstown - where people like to cook on grills. :-) (or should it be :-( )

There was just another shooting at the Sharpstown Mall. It raises the question: should the Sharpstown Mall be torn down? Lots of people think it should. But being an architect I can't help but dream big. In the vane of what I wrote in the "How Would you Change - West Loop/ Galleria/ Uptown" thread, here's my pipe dream for the Sharpstown Mall. 1: Shut down the Sharpstown Mall as we know it, and do a gut renovation along the lines of what they did at the Memorial City Mall. A cool gimmick could be to give it a retractable roof. 2: Demolish part of the property and turn it into a park. 3: Build a train that runs express from the Sharpstown Mall to the Galleria and Uptown. (In my dream it stops at that Uptown Transit Center I was talking about in my West Loop/ Galleria/ Uptown post). 4: Gut and re-skin the Jewelry Exchange building and turn it into first-class office space. 5: Build new high rise condos, luxury apartments, and offices in the air rights over part of the mall parking lot. Connect them to the mall and through there to the new Uptown train/BRT. Market them at prices between 75% and 85% of similar offices/apartments/condos in Uptown. I'm of the view that surrounding areas will come back if the Sharpstown Mall can be addressed. I would let those work themselves out. OK, I'll end my pipe dream here. Reality is that I guess the Sharpstown Mall should be torn down - but as an architect I am a dreamer.