Results tagged “lisagray”

The article sums up the history of the house and its ownership - how Bob Cohen built his dream home, moved from the home after forty years because of declining health, the subsequent buy out (and saga) from lawyer John O'Quinn, then its demise at the hands of Marvin Granit. Granit did provide some comments for the article, which is more than the usual builder/developer schtick of having the PR department come up with a vague and stale one-liner for the public. He expressed his shock at how commonfolk would care what he did with his newly purchased property and threw in a dig relating it to socialism. According to the article, the home would have been exempt from a flood regulation if renovated:

...because the house sits in a floodplain, city regulations would have required the structure to be elevated, a costly and difficult procedure. Only listed historic properties are exempt from this regulation, but Granit refused to seek landmark designation for the house and went ahead with demolition.

He would have been eligible for tax breaks from the city as well. So Granit contemptuously bought a one of a kind house that was definitely a candidate for landmark designation in a quotidien neighborhood, but keep an eye on the empty corner lot - it will be interesting to see what Granit's own dream home looks like in the next year or so.

Meyerland's Carousel House came crashing down today - the property's new owner Marvin Granit decided to hurry up and get it over with, just a day before Thanksgiving. The house has been an interesting architectural fixture in Houston since it was built by Robert Cohen in 1964, and has had a resurgence of attention since the previous owner John O'Quinn put it on the market. We featured the endangered home in late August, the Chronicle's...

Houstonist noticed about a month ago that something was missing near the corner of Bissonnet and Mt. Vernon streets, just west of Montrose Blvd. The house didn't seem to fit in, but it sure caught our eye - unfortunately it was recently demolished by the current owners. The house was located at 1 Waverly Court and was designed by Glassman Shoemake Maldonado Architects and built in 1999 to replace a beaten-up 1950s contemporary home by...

In her column today, the Chronicle's Lisa Gray proposes a new idea to get the attention of Weingarten Realty Investors, the company that's planning to demolish the historic River Oaks Shopping Center, and of Barnes & Noble, which Weingarten is trying to lure into abandoning its Bookstop store in the Alabama Theater building in favor of a new megastore in the redeveloped River Oaks. The idea: Let's put our money where our mouths are. This...

Now that everyone has had time to marvel at the thought of the River Oaks Shopping Center/theater (a couple of the few remaining art deco structures in this city) on the dark side of the wrecking ball, let Houstonist shift your attention several blocks away to the Alabama Theater. When Weingarten Realty and Pete Kaldis Realty teamed up in the early to mid-'80s to buy the property and adaptively re-use it, the theater, which was turned into a Bookstop, was refurbished so that it could serve as a store now with the capability of being converted back to a theater at a later point in time.

Even though the support continues to grow for the preservation of the River Oaks Shopping Center and Theater, many questions remained unanswered, and Weingarten has continued to keep their reticence. Rumors and some evidence throw a mix of names into the equation: Hermes Architects for the northwestern curved section, Wallace Garcia Wilson Architects for the highrise, and Barnes and Noble for an anchor. While concerned patrons, shareholders, and members of the community continue to...