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San Felipe Place: Office Building At 2229 San Felipe St.


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It's hard to tell from the record, but it appears that service by certified mail was permitted for Gilbane Building Company in the lawsuit related to this building. Gilbane was only just served on June 30, 2014. I would expect that some movement in the lawsuit would occur soon, if the Plaintiffs want to pursue a temporary injunction (the likelihood of success for such I find much less likely than it might have been a few months ago).

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Another lawsuit has been filed on this site. Sand v. 2229 San Felipe, LLC, et al, cause no. 2014-40441 in the 165th Judicial District Court of Harris County, Texas. This new suit does not seek an injunction against construction, however. It merely seeks damages relating to lost property value.

 

Copy of the Petition has been attached.Sand v 2229 San Felipe.PDF

Edited by houstontexasjack
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  • 2 weeks later...
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No trial date has been set on either of the cases affecting this property yet. I will keep monitoring to see what additional filings become available. I am curious as to whether Hines would prefer to have this case decided prior to a decision on the "Ashby" appeal currently in the Fourteenth Court of Appeals. The first of the two cases has been assigned to the expedited ready docket, so it would appear that is currently Hines' plan.

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Hines may have a lot of stroke, but generally judges don't let the parties dictate their dockets.  It's part of that whole "you've come to me to sort this out because you can't do so on your own, so why on earth should I let you tell me how to run this" thing.  

 

Injunction cases are entitled to jump ahead in line, but on our district clerk's website showing up on the "ready docket" just means that the case is active.

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Mollusk, normally defendants have an incentive to delay the outcomes of cases as much as possible. The "ready docket" and "expedited ready docket" statuses are two separate statuses on the district clerk's site. I seldom see "expedited ready docket" and the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure do provide for an expedited docket in certain cases (I have yet to have a case using the expedited procedure, so the status is somewhat unusual for me to see). Hines could certainly fight and seek a trial date as late as possible, and judges can be amenable to allowing some extensions for time for discovery. 

 

I should clarify that my above point was meant to indicate that I have not seen filings indicating Hines is seeking to draw out discovery as long as possible. A hearing on a temporary injunction can be held far before trial and the party seeking such injunction must show a likelihood of success on the merits. Trial for a permanent injunction could then proceed at the normal pace if a temporary injunction were granted. I have yet to see a hearing date for a temporary injunction in the first of the two cases, and Hines has been very good about getting the structure put up--changing the "status quo" that a TI is meant to preserve. 

 

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htj, I was intentionally not speaking lawyer.  

 

An injunction case by definition wouldn't be handled as an expedited action under new Rule 169 because it's not seeking only money damages of less than $100K.  However, as I'm sure you know, an order granting a temporary injunction must include a trial setting; since one was denied here I imagine that the plaintiffs were pretty adamant about putting this on a fast track in order to have a prayer of getting anything other than money damages.  For what it's worth, defendants often do have some motivation or another to resolve things sooner rather than later for their own business reasons.  As another consideration, if the Ashby case takes as long to wind through the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court as often happens, the San Felipe project will be built and occupied long before Ashby is final, which as you point out would render any injunctive relief moot.  For example, the Supremes just ruled last week on the fight between the Port of Houston and its GC over the Bayport wharf project - an argument that began almost ten years ago.  Disclaimer:  I haven't looked through the San Felipe court file.

 

Hines may swing a pretty big crane; however, based on their location I'd submit that The Aggrieved Parties also have a decent amount of influence - likely enough to pretty much zero it out.

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Whats the massive hill in the background on the left side? Or am I hallucinating?

 

Not hallucinating. It's a trash mound, no joke.

 

Ah, we may be looking too far south for what I think it is.

Edited by Triton
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I looked it up on google maps, and it looks like there's this weird elevated piece of land, maybe a train yard.

 


 

The closest I could get to it on street view:

 

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I believe it used to be a sulfur mound of sorts. I remember it used to be a yellowish color.

 

I've been told the same thing, with the addition that it was originally going to be some sort of stockpile.  That apparently didn't pan out.  Anyway, the grassy part appears to be a sod cap that's been put in place to keep it from blowing all over creation.

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