Texaco Building (now The Star) At 1111 Rusk Street

[cspwal]

19 minutes ago, j_cuevas713 said:

Is that in the shape of Indiana?

Perhaps Salvador Dali's persistence of Indiana

[Specwriter]

9 hours ago, j_cuevas713 said:

Is that in the shape of Indiana?

It looks more like Venezuela to me but I couldn't tell  you why it is that shape.

[rechlin]

They are putting the finishing touches on the rooftop patio now:

 

http://i.imgur.com/dsWpGhK.jpg

[bobruss]

This photo clusters three of our newest and soon to be newest apartment and condo towers.

Both Texaco and Southwest Life,  repurposed, and the other Catalyst, designed by  local  architects Ziegler Cooper.

I remember when I first started following this site there were always cries of dismay at yet another important structure biting the dust for a new parking garage 

or office building. In the last five years we have seen a complete turn around in the developers mindset. An amazing number of downtown structures have been repurposed into

hotels, office buildings, restaurants and city services.

Obviously a major seed change that I think we need to recognize and appreciate, while continuing to fight for more.

 

[Houstonacl]

Looking for some advice from this community as a resident of The Star Apartments (Texaco Building). Within the past few weeks The Star has started renting out apartments (40 units currently) for short term rentals essentially turning our home into a hotel. This has deeply upset many of the residents and impacts our safety among many other items that I will not bother getting into here. The property management company is Lincoln Property Company and the owner is Provident Realty Advisors. A national third party company specializing in short term rentals, Stay Alfred, is managing all aspects of the short term rentals. The rooms are available via many normal booking sites (hotels.com, expedia, AirBnB, etc) at an extremely low rate attracting a unique clientele. 

 

Questions:

• Does this community have any insight into if any of the parties involved are violating any rules or regulations by offering short term rentals in this space? 
• Building registered for long term rentals vs short term rentals?
• Owners loan type being incorrectly used?
• Historic building codes?

The residents would like to see this building kept as a long term apartment and not a mixed apartment/hotel. 

 

Thank you for your time.

 

 

Edited July 12, 2018 by Houstonacl

[BeerNut]

23 minutes ago, Houstonacl said:

Looking for some advice from this community as a resident of The Star Apartments (Texaco Building). Within the past few weeks The Star has started renting out apartments (40 units currently) for short term rentals essentially turning our home into a hotel. This has deeply upset many of the residents and impacts our safety among many other items that I will not bother getting into here. The property management company is Lincoln Property Company and the owner is Provident Realty Advisors. A national third party company specializing in short term rentals, Stay Alfred, is managing all aspects of the short term rentals. The rooms are available via many normal booking sites (hotels.com, expedia, AirBnB, etc) at an extremely low rate attracting a unique clientele. 

 

Questions:

• Does this community have any insight into if any of the parties involved are violating any rules or regulations by offering short term rentals in this space? 
• Building registered for long term rentals vs short term rentals?
• Owners loan type being incorrectly used?
• Historic building codes?

The residents would like to see this building kept as a long term apartment and not a mixed apartment/hotel. 

 

Thank you for your time.

 

 

I doubt you have any legal recourse.   I would get as many residents possible to leave detailed reviews on yelp and apartments.com.  Maybe even make a post on reddit or send something to swamplot.   There is the possibility they could terminate or not renew your lease if they feel you're not worth having a resident because of your complaints.   At this point the only thing they will probably respond to is bad press and loss of profits. 

 

AirBnb listing  https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/25844374

Stay Alfred  https://www.stayalfred.com/houston-vacation-rentals
 

[UtterlyUrban]

1 hour ago, Houstonacl said:

Looking for some advice from this community as a resident of The Star Apartments (Texaco Building). Within the past few weeks The Star has started renting out apartments (40 units currently) for short term rentals essentially turning our home into a hotel. This has deeply upset many of the residents and impacts our safety among many other items that I will not bother getting into here. The property management company is Lincoln Property Company and the owner is Provident Realty Advisors. A national third party company specializing in short term rentals, Stay Alfred, is managing all aspects of the short term rentals. The rooms are available via many normal booking sites (hotels.com, expedia, AirBnB, etc) at an extremely low rate attracting a unique clientele. 

 

Questions:

• Does this community have any insight into if any of the parties involved are violating any rules or regulations by offering short term rentals in this space? 
• Building registered for long term rentals vs short term rentals?
• Owners loan type being incorrectly used?
• Historic building codes?

The residents would like to see this building kept as a long term apartment and not a mixed apartment/hotel. 

 

Thank you for your time.

 

 

I am saddened to hear this news.  

 

 

[Texasota]

So, for what's it worth, I checked Stay Alfred's website and it looks like they're charging $168.67 per night. 

 

I'm genuinely curious - what exactly is the concern here? Is there any reason to believe this is a long-term strategy, or is this just a way for the property owner to make a little more money while the building is filling up? Even if this is intended to be long-term, what negative repercussions are anticipated?

 

 

[Houstonacl]

Thanks for the info!

 

This is a long term strategy. They have signed a 12 month contact with Stay Alfred. They are "testing" with 40 units.

 

They have increased the rate by about $80 over the past week. This is still low considering comparable hotels in the downtown area. Price is irrelevant though. 

 

I see major concerns. First and foremost is safety. We live in an urban environment but the second we walk into this building we have felt safe with the staff and safety features. This isn't the case now. All residents of the building undergo a full background check during the application process. This isn't the case for hotel guests that can book a hotel room as quickly as tomorrow night and have access to the building without hours. I could have a convicted felon or sex offender in the room next to ours while I'm out on travel and my wife is here alone. Sure, a long term renter could have a guest over that is a concern but the likelihood is much less. The building turning into a hotel makes our front door a revolving door with zero screening of hotel occupants a frequent occurrence. Odds just go up of something happening.

 

Many of the other concerns include abuse to amenities, noise, damage to common areas, etc. These concerns have become reality already within a few weeks of this conversion. At the end of the day living in an apartment is different than a hotel. 

 

Again, thanks for the responses.

[Nate99]

If I were a resident, I imagine this would feel like a bait and switch. I guess that's the risk you run with a new property like this, but renting a unit in a hotel is a totally different basket of issues.  Hopefully it is short term, they are competing against about a zillion hotel rooms downtown now. 

[phillip_white]

I assume your landlord has rules against short-term sublease, but what's the difference between this and other residents in the building offering their units up for rental on airbnb? I've stayed in short-term rental properties similar to this all over the world and actually prefer it to a hotel. While it might be annoying, I doubt there is a legitimate safety concern. Most people on airbnb, vrbo, etc. have to submit a drivers license and other info in order to set up a profile. If there is any issue on site, they would know who is there vs a guest of a tenant who can just leave without being identified.

 

I would ask the landlord if they plan to rent out specific floors in the future, with restricted access to long-term tenant floors. That would seems much better for them than units mixed throughout the building. 

 

 

[H-Town Man]

I wonder if this is on the floors facing the garages, which may be harder to lease.

 

[UtterlyUrban]

Have the landlords continued this practice of renting rooms like a hotel?

 

[Mab]

 

Mendocino Farms will be in this building

http://edge-re.com/Properties/Houston/~RuskStFanninSt-Lease/RuskStFanninSt-Lease.pdf

 

https://www.mendocinofarms.com/

[LBC2HTX]

Mendocino Farms is awesome. Such an exciting addition to Downtown. I’m happy that Houston is the first city for expansion outside of California. Looks like we’ll get at least two locations with Rice Village and Downtown. 

[LBC2HTX]

Yep, I knew that. 

[EllenOlenska]

[UtterlyUrban]

I just googled reviews on this property.  It seems that some reviews by tenants were very negative on the “Stay Alfred” room rental.  It also appears that “a week ago” management responded to several reviews and indicated that they sent a letter around to all tenants explaining that “Stay Alfred (is)vacating our community.”   Hopefully the Star is filling up with tenants so that they don’t have to pretend to be a hotel..  Frankly, I think it was a really bad idea to begin with.  Had I been looking for an apartment, and knew about that “hotel” practice, I would not have leased there.

 

is the B&B Butcher restaraunt under construction?

[Nate99]

1 hour ago, UtterlyUrban said:

I just googled reviews on this property.  It seems that some reviews by tenants were very negative on the “Stay Alfred” room rental.  It also appears that “a week ago” management responded to several reviews and indicated that they sent a letter around to all tenants explaining that “Stay Alfred (is)vacating our community.”   Hopefully the Star is filling up with tenants so that they don’t have to pretend to be a hotel..  Frankly, I think it was a really bad idea to begin with.  Had I been looking for an apartment, and knew about that “hotel” practice, I would not have leased there.

 

is the B&B Butcher restaraunt under construction?

 

Hopefully they are filling with tenants. One of the major drawbacks of having to live in an apartment is the neighbor noise. People that have no long term incentive to get along with people on the other side of a wall are going to be even less considerate. 

[downtownian]

Sounds like the restaurant from the owner of B&B Butchers is still on - just delayed because of historic redevelopment permitting:

 

”Benjamin, which requested construction permits in late December, has faced delays as it worked through the redevelopment constraints. It was originally scheduled to open in 2018 but is now slated to open later this year.”

Read more at: https://www.bisnow.com/houston/news/mixed-use/peeling-back-the-onion-an-exposed-process-of-renovating-a-pre-war-building-into-mixed-use-in-downtown-houston-96271#ath?utm_source=CopyShare&utm_medium=Browser

 

Other interesting trivia in the article like there was a plan for balconies in some units but they were cost prohibitive. 

 

 

[UtterlyUrban]

There appears to be nothing about this entire rehab for this building that went even remotely on time.  Glad to see that they building and it’s ground floor amenities are coming together.

[Luminare]

2 hours ago, UtterlyUrban said:

There appears to be nothing about this entire rehab for this building that went even remotely on time.  Glad to see that they building and it’s ground floor amenities are coming together.

 

This is becoming standard in this city at this point. There is only one genuine permitting location for anyone building in the city of Houston. With all the construction thats taking place you can imagine how stuffed they probably are at this point. We really need to decentralize the permitting authority. The city is just too big and spread out to rely on one significantly understaffed entity. Until that happens, the wait times for permits are only going to get longer and longer. Now imagine if we did have zoning! Non-zoning can be a blessing or a curse, but we would not see the rapid amount of construction here if it were like other zoned cities. Think about the delay this guy got and multiply x2.

 

EDIT: As an addendum, expanding on my point of decentralization, I'm advocating that each district be given permitting authority. Have the City of Houston provide an umbrella of permitting guidelines and then let each district add on top of that. This city is simply not robust enough infrastructurally to handle the entire city. We function more like smaller towns that make up a bigger whole anyway. Better to give these districts or place more autonomy and say to allow them to be more flexible and agile.

Edited January 4, 2019 by Luminare

[mollusk]

Two things have the permitting office a bit hamstrung:  We're still dealing with Harvey reconstruction, and budgetary concerns brought on by people who believe in The Money Fairy.  Going from one office location to four (or however many) won't really make any difference unless it results in an increase in staffing - which could just as easily work with a central location.

[rechlin]

I wonder if they are still planning to do the second phase, with the condo tower on top of the garage, or if that is postponed indefinitely.  Considering how quickly the other new condos downtown have sold (Marlowe), I wouldn't be surprised if there is a good market for it.  Perhaps they will start on that once the restaurant buildout is complete?

[UtterlyUrban]

20 hours ago, rechlin said:

I wonder if they are still planning to do the second phase, with the condo tower on top of the garage, or if that is postponed indefinitely.  Considering how quickly the other new condos downtown have sold (Marlowe), I wouldn't be surprised if there is a good market for it.  Perhaps they will start on that once the restaurant buildout is complete?

I am unaware that they built the foundation of the parking garage to support this.   There was much talk of this when the garage was being built.  Not sure if they actually put that foundation in or not.

[H-Town Man]

On ‎10‎/‎19‎/‎2018 at 8:00 AM, Nate99 said:

 

Hopefully they are filling with tenants. One of the major drawbacks of having to live in an apartment is the neighbor noise. People that have no long term incentive to get along with people on the other side of a wall are going to be even less considerate. 

 

They are at 70% occupancy by my source. Lease-up seems to have stalled a little last quarter, perhaps due to Harvey-related move-outs.

 

[Nate99]

The garage looks reasonably full of cars now too. 

[mattyt36]

On 1/5/2019 at 10:32 AM, mollusk said:

Two things have the permitting office a bit hamstrung:  We're still dealing with Harvey reconstruction, and budgetary concerns brought on by people who believe in The Money Fairy.  Going from one office location to four (or however many) won't really make any difference unless it results in an increase in staffing - which could just as easily work with a central location.

 

Yes if workload is the apparent issue, decentralization would only make it worse.

[Luminare]

42 minutes ago, mattyt36 said:

 

Yes if workload is the apparent issue, decentralization would only make it worse.

 

Simple question: Are you quicker and more agile when you are small or when you are big?

[mattyt36]

2 minutes ago, Luminare said:

 

Simple question: Are you quicker and more agile when you are small or when you are big?

 

Great platitude that demonstrates no consideration of the specific work being done in this situation.

 

We're talking about relatively rote, "check-the-box" processing of permit applications in accordance with City regulations.  I'd say it's a safe bet that processing capacity is pretty close to a linear function of the number of staff.