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Wyndham Hotel & Residential High-Rise


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From the Galveston County Daily news:

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Developer and Houston attorney Andy Vickery has acquired the Medical Arts Building, 302 21st St. in Galveston’s downtown, with plans to develop 84 luxury apartments in what he said would be a secure, modernized, hurricane-resistant, historic building.

http://galvestondail...m/story/319850/

Awesome news! Two of the taller, vacant buildings in Galveston are to be renovated! I had noticed the work and progress at the Jean Lafitte hotel but wasn't sure what the story was there. Now if we can just get some news on the Martini Theater... With the cruise industry booming in Galveston I would have thought at least one of those towers would have made a nice boutique hotel

My wife loves Galveston so we actually bought a historic (weekend) home last year and now I love it, too. I'm biased but it seems like things are getting better

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It wasn't that long ago that the Moody family literally gave the building away. There have been several attempts by interested parties to remodel this structure. I hope this one sticks.

The Moody family, which means American National Insurance Co., had held the entire block for years, as a site for potential expansion. Lately the company has been moving employees off the island to it's corporate site at South Shore Harbour in League City. So maybe, if the Medical Arts Building does take off, they could develop the rest of the block with something other than a surface parking lot.

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This is great news. I go to Galveston fairly often, both for work and for getaways. It's a great example of a workable urbanism in Texas. I always hold out hope that some of my favorite abandoned buildings will find a new life.

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  • 1 year later...

A banner is now up, says will be available summer 2014 - 83 luxury apartments, plus some retail space available.  I think it must have been put up in just the last few weeks or I would have noticed it.  No large-scale work going on that I can see, but I'll take this as a positive sign

 

Also saw some headlines where a Dallas developer had the old Falstaff brewery under contract.  I'd honestly never really driven around there but checked it out today and can't imagine what they would do with it.  Looks like you could convert it into some cool lofts or something but it didn't seem like a good area / location IMO

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The Falstaff Brewery building is in really bad shape. There are actually two sections, the older Magnolia Brewing building (early1900's) is on the north side of the property and the later and taller structure on the south end was built by Falstaff in the early 1960's. Magnolia brewed Southern Select beer until it was sold to Falstaff.

 

I was inside the property with a friend of the owner about 7-8 years ago. It was pretty crapped out inside. Salvagers had taken about everything they could. 

The hospitality room on the roof was all open to the elements, but still had the flagstone terrace and planter boxes intact. (We drank a beer up there).

My guide found a ledger that had hand written notes apparently from the last few weeks of brewing by the brew master, still opened to the last entry in one of the control rooms. Other stuff strewn around in the employee area indicated that things had shut down pretty unexpectedly. Falstaff had been taken over by a Mitt Romney type of investor in the late 70's and by the early 80's the assets were all gone.

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Unfortunately, this one is not happening. The "Available Summer 2014" sign gone; for sale sign up.

Really?  They've opened up the back of the 6 floor addition.   I work nearby and I'll have to walk by later and see what it looks like is going on.

Last I heard it was going to be time shares.  83 of them.  So that averages out to around 700 sq ft per unit (roughly) as the Building is 80,000 sq ft - minus the 6,000 sq ft retail on the ground floor and assuming around 10,000 sq ft of the building is circulation space+mechanical?

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http://www.galvnews.com/business/buzz/article_d59b212a-6b85-54e0-a0bb-594e2375c735.html

 



Hammer time? If all goes as planned, crews in June will begin long-awaited work on a six-story parking garage and an apartment complex in a development that will save what remains of the historic Medical Arts Building and ease parking woes in the island’s downtown.

 

Negotiations and planning for the development have been long and complicated with "many moving parts," officials with Port Arthur-based development firm The ITEX Group said last week. The ITEX Group caused much buzz in September 2016 when it confirmed plans to build a 232-unit apartment complex at the site of the Medical Arts Building, 302 21st St. The ITEX Group earlier that year had finalized acquisition of the long-vacant building. The firm also confirmed at the time it was partnering with American National Insurance Co. to build the six-story parking garage.

Last week, Bobken Simonians, senior vice president of The ITEX Group, said the company was negotiating with equity investors to secure a loan. When that's finalized, construction could begin in June, he said.

 

The project will have three components — restoration of the historic building, new residential construction and parking. The historic building will contain 72 units. The remaining units will be in a newly constructed addition adjacent to the historical building.

 

Crews will begin work on the 72 units and the $10 million parking garage before moving on to the new apartment construction, Simonians said. The ITEX Group will build the parking garage with financing from American National, Simonians said. When construction is complete, The ITEX Group will turn the parking garage over to American National, Simonians said.

American National, which employs hundreds of people in its downtown tower, has long sought to increase parking options for employees, officials have said. The ITEX Group will enter into an agreement with American National to lease 100 spaces for apartment residents, Simonians said. The ITEX Group likely will lease more spaces when the new apartment construction is complete, he said.

 

The Medical Arts Building, designed by architect Andrew Fraser, was an annex to the American National Insurance Co. building of 1913, which was demolished in 1972 after the company moved into its 20-story downtown tower in 1971. The building later housed medical offices, hence the name.

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  • 11 months later...

I've always thought if the Buccaneer Hotel hadn't been demolished in the late 90s, it would have been a prime candidate for the boutique hotel/luxury apartments-in-historic-building trend of this century. A great location with a great view and great architecture as well. I've never mourned the Flagship, even though I don't go on the pleasure pier because it's overpriced and cheesy, I think it's an asset to Galveston, and the Flagship was an eyesore, but I do lament the loss of the Buccaneer.

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It is a shame the Buccaneer was demolished!  Had it survived another ~10 years it may have ended up being salvaged into a hotel/condo as you say Reefmonkey.

 

I have long thought that Galveston could support a few of these type of projects, but it’d take a George Mitchell, or similar type of person - someone with deep pockets and a vision.

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  • 2 months later...

Latest plan calls for Medical Arts to become Wyndham Hotel & Resorts, with a new 14-story high-rise next to it.

 

https://www.virtualbx.com/construction-preview/galveston-anicos-quest-for-dry-feet-continues/

 

Blair Korndorffer, owner of Diamond Development, explained it to the Planning Commission during a May session this way:



 

“We’re doing the 302 Moody building for Wyndham (Hotels & Resorts), and we have plans still to develop that building into a residential piece. Right now, we’re looking at potentially putting a 14-story residential tower next to it.”

 

The 302 Moody building Korndorffer referred to is an 11-story, 80,088-square-foot Art Deco building constructed in 1960 that has been vacant for years. It stands at the corner of Moody Avenue and Mechanic Street on the far end of the block across 20th Street from One Moody Plaza.

 

Kordorffer said he is hoping to restore 302 Moody and construct the 14-story residential tower at the same time. But those future residents will need parking.

 

“That’s where ANICO became very important. They needed parking, we needed parking. Building a large garage seemed a good solution.”

 

Initially, the solution offered to avoid the street flooding was to build a sky bridge from the proposed six-level parking garage to the One Moody Plaza skyscraper. But the ANICO Board of Directors rejected that, Korndorffer said.

 

AnicoDD-aerial-800x521.png

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  • 11 months later...
2 hours ago, Tumbleweed_Tx said:

I used to work at the strip club across the street. the late owner RJ and i used to watch the crackheads steal all the copper out of the Medical Arts building

 

Wispers?! Man that is one unpleasant place lol

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  • 5 months later...
  • The title was changed to Wyndham Hotel & 14-Story Residential High-Rise
  • 1 year later...
  • 1 year later...
  • The title was changed to Wyndham Hotel & Residential High-Rise

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