Leader0528 b

This week’s section highlights a big change coming to a major thoroughfare in our area.

The Do Over 1B · MexyCreole finds brick and mortar home 2B • More change coming to corner of 34th and Ella 1B Saturday, May 28, 2016 • Page 1B

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Contributed photo A Timbergrove family loved their 1950 ranch style home so much that they decided to remodel and double the home’s square footage, an ambitious project to be sure, but one that has netted the family everything they hoped for.

Open HOuse Saturday, May 28

A lenghty reno makes lifestyle a huge priority the

By Cynthia Lescalleet For The Leader They could have just moved from their Timbergrove Manor 1950 rancher home.

Or razed it and rebuilt on the lot. In fact, they considered both options.

But the house, perched on a tree-filled knoll to catch the breeze, was their home and their neighborhood, which the homeowners say is “getting younger.” So David and Skye Mansfield Templeton opted to

more than double the original home’s size to just under 3,000 sq. ft. to better accommodate family life with two young sons.

They also wanted to keep the home’s original front elevation. And the trees.

Friends and family thought they were “crazy,” she recalls. Then the bones of the new space appeared, and they could see what she did: space to live, grow, and entertain -- inside and outdoors. Neighbors tell them they’re glad the big trees have stayed and that the back property line has remained open.

The project became a “Go big or go home” exercise, quips David Templeton. It all began with a few ideas, a piece of paper and some refreshments on a lazy Sunday afternoon 18 months ago.

Construction is wrapping up after seven months. (Make that seven months in a 900sq.-ft. apartment with two children asking, “Is the new house ready?” since about the first week of the project, he adds.)

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SCOPE IT OUT “We remodeled for how we live, not just for how it looks,” Skye Templeton says of the project’s scope and details. A fan of HG-TV’s house flipper shows, she knew that “you really have to use your imagination and ‘picture’ your vision. The shows gave me confidence that our project was doable.”

The couple’s must-haves included a home office and outdoor kitchen for him and a bathroom for her so she didn’t have to share with the boys, ages 5 and 7. And storage space. Lots of storage space.

Weighing in at about 1,750-sq.-ft., the two-story addition’s new rooms are in proportion to the scale of the re-worked originals. The space adds volume toward the back of the home.

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By Betsy Denson betsy@theleadernews.com Is 34th Street shaping up to be the next big thing in commercial real estate? First there was Bryan Danna’s announcement in November to The Leader of a 2.5 acre retail development on the southwest corner of 34th Street and Ella. Then last week, Chris Hotze with Crescere Capital Management unveiled plans to Swamplot about 33 1/3 @ Thirtyfourth, their equally sized development on the southeast corner of 34th and Ella which will be designed by Gensler architects Peter Merwin and Ted Rubenstein.

The two enhancements

1/3 @ Thirtyfourth – 33 1/3 is the revolutions per minute of a vinyl record and the name of the southern boundary street on the map – shows a retail building over the current site of El Rey and another new building over the Century Marking storefront. There is a parking lot between those two buildings and two more retail buildings on the south side of the development. The buildings facing West 34th abut the street.

In a recent Facebook post about vibrant communities, Gensler quoted urban activist Jane Jacobs who said, “Streets and their sidewalks, the main public spaces of a city, are its vital organs.” It will be inter-

See Do Over P. 2B

A dispute over long-term leases has led to the loss of a local beloved diner. Customers hoping to grab some breakfast at Triple A Restaurant on Airline Drive were disappointed to see the restaurant’s doors closed. Permanently, no less.

“To our friends and loyal customers, we are sad to say we must close AAA due to lease negotiations,” a note on the door reads. “Thanks for

your many years of loyalty.”

After serving food to customers across Northwest Houston since the 1940s, Janet and Cecil Schmidt decided to shut the doors of their diner after prolonged negotiations for a long-term lease with the building’s leaseholder. Cecil Schmidt said they had been going back and forth and said he wanted to put more money and new equipment into the restaurant but it would not have been feasible.

“It was extremely difficult and extremely stressful,” Ce-

cil Schmidt said about the closure. “We’ve been on a shortterm lease in the past but that was before we were going to put more money into it. It wouldn’t be beneficial to put so much money into it yearto-year if we didn’t know we were going to be there in the long term.”

Janet Schmidt says she and her husband will be working together in real estate with Berkshire Hathaway, where Janet currently works. Employees at the restaurant have been left without work, but

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esting to see how the architects try to achieve any kind of urban walkability in the new space.

The plans call for a “neighborhood center with hip, ‘aspirational’ retail . . . a place where parents, children, and neighbors connect withtheir community on a daily basis.”

When The Leader last talked to Chris Hotze in September, he said that there has been significant interest in the former That Pizza Place from several large convenience store/gas station combinations and that he also had several fast food restaurants and automobile

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Triple A Restaurant on Airline closes doors, space now vacant

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Big plans coming to 34th and Ella will not only bring more restaurants and retail to an area hungry for them, but also spur more development along the corridor.

As of September, Crescere Garden Oaks, LP owned the following properties on or near 34th: the Texas Bus Sales lot, the Century Marking storefront, El Rey Taqueria, the cleared lot of the former That Pizza Place and 1621 W. 34th St. which is a private home.

HCAD now reports Crescere as the owner of two additional properties on W. 34th Street – 1522 W. 34th Street which is a vacant lot and 1602 W. 34th St. which is a home – both across from Texas Bus Sales.

The Gensler site map of 33

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the Schmidts say they would have given a more solid word about their jobs if they had known 15 months earlier how the leasing situation would have ended up.

The Schmidts are currently donating items to the Star of Hope Mission and will be spending time trying to get the rest of the building squared away.

“Everyone has had a saddened response,” Janet Schmidt said. “We developed a lot of close friendships over the years.”

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Page 2B • Saturday, May 28, 2016

Do Over from P. 1B

Photo by Betsy Denson The newest announcement by Chris Hotze about a 2.5 acre retail development on the southeast corner of 34th and Ella has spurred interest about the future growth of 34th Street.

Ella from P. 1B service companies that were very interested.

“It was never going to be a gas station,” a local developer said. “The land is too expensive.”

Hotze also developed The Shops at Oak Forest on 43rd so that may be a clue to the kinds of tenants he is seeking.

He told Swamplot that he “has reached out to the neighborhood to find out what they are looking for.” A poster on the OFHA Facebook page said that when Crescere was planning The Shops at Oak Forest, they rented out Saint Arnold’s brewery and invited residents to a meeting.

While Hotze said in September that they hoped to continue to have a long term relationship with El Rey as a tenant, there is no official word from El Rey about their status, but employees are telling customers they are moving.

What remains unknown are Hotze’s future plans for the rest of the land he owns on 34th. He told The Leader that there are no current developments planned beyond the corner 2.5 acres. The Texas Bus Sales property he owns

is about 96,000 square feet of land, while the two properties across the street are a combined 35,000 square feet of land.

On the south side of 34th, Hotze does not own contiguous buildings past Century Marking. The Oak Manor Apartments at 1705 West 34th are still owned by another entity as is Café Mart at 1629 W 34th St. Café Mart owner Joe Presswood previously told The Leader that they’ve had a lot of interest from people wanting to buy the property where he operates an live auction house business, but there were no plans to sell.

If the retail renaissance makes it down his way, he now says they might redevelop as [commercial] retail, and/or lease to someone else.

“We’ll wait and see what happens,” Presswood said.

Could another grocery store be in the cards? A source recently told The Leader that Sprouts was looking in the Garden Oaks/Oak Forest area.

According to Spouts communications specialist Allison Jordan, Sprouts opens about 35 new stores a year and that

no additional Houston stores are on the horizon.

According to their website, Sprouts looks for build-to-suit or existing buildings in freestanding or shopping center locations that are approximately 30,000 square feet and have a minimum of 140 parking spaces.

With those requirements it doesn’t look like Sprouts is coming to Hotze’s corner development, but time will tell if they find a home elsewhere on 34th.

One wildcard is the warehouse property at 3306-3310 Ella Boulevard adjacent to Hotze’s holdings. Walter Menuet with Collier International said that the property is not currently under contact and that the owners are leaning towards upgrading the property and then leasing it with a different tenant mix.

In the meantime, locals are excited about Bryan Danna’s first signed tenant for the southwest corner – the Surfhouse is going to stay at that location in a new building.

“It’s big news for us and important to the community,” said Danna.

Fast food truck finds home along Antoine

By Jonathan Garris jgarris@theleadernews.com For many, retirement is a time to kick back and enjoy some well-deserved time with family, hobbies and travel.

David and his wife Emma Broussard had a different idea, setting up the popular MexyCreole Food Truck which has carved a path all over the Houston area. Now, the Broussards have brought their concept to a brick and mortar location at 6600 Antoine Dr., right here in The Leader area.

David Broussard said MexyCreole has only been in its current space for the past few months. After being in the food truck business for a little over a year, the pair decided they needed a commercial kitchen to bolster their mobile food operation.

“My wife and I share a passion for cooking and I had always wanted a food truck,” David Broussard said. “I

learned to cook from my dad and he cooked from his mom and dad. The Creole community is a large community and there are always a lot of cookouts.”

The food truck felt like a natural fit for their concept, and now with a physical location they have a chance to continue to dish out specials like catfish and grits, Creole sandwiches (complete with fried chicken breast, pepper jack cheese, smoked sausage, piled with onions, tomatoes and pickles), shrimp baskets and hand-crafted burgers.

“Our customer base has helped dictate some of the things we’ve taken off and others that we’ve kept,” Emma Broussard said. “We tried to get a balance of Mexican dishes and Creole.”

Their new location also borders Claude’s Pharmacy and a health and fitness center that is coming soon, headed by Ronald Richardson. For now, spreading the word about

their brick and mortar kitchen is the order of the day for the Broussards.

“We not only have a passion for cooking and food, but we have passion for serving our customers and helping the community,” David Broussard said.

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ily room. Sets of glass panel doors access a large outdoor kitchen. The doorframes incorporate screens that roll out like pocket doors. The bedroom wing, which runs front to back, added a master bedroom at the back of the home, converted the previous one into a master bathroom and laundry room, and rebooted the front bedroom.

The second floor gained two bedrooms, a bathroom and a bonus room. The latter sits at the top of a turned staircase that enables a mom to keep an ear out.

Meanwhile, the project scope also included repurposing the former living room, with its picture window facing the street, into a dining room, with built-in serving and display features; converting the former dining room, previously an open space near the front hallway, into a paneled office, with doors (and walls); and bringing all wiring and plumbing up to code.

Skye Templeton says she has been making a daily pass to the property to check on progress and “to make a lot

more decisions than I ever could have imagined.”

As if out of a scene in “The Money Pit,” she recalls, “the first time they came to the house and there were stairs, I ran up and down them saying, ‘We have stairs!

We have stairs!’”

Templeton says the carpenter deftly interpreted the Pinterest postings she had placed on boards in every room “to put my ideas into his head; he’d improve them.”

She is impressed with how every available space has been cleverly captured for storage, such as the appliance garage angled into the little-used corner of the kitchen counter, the sliding spice rack, outlets in cabinets to reduce cord clutter; and a pantry tucked into the stairwell. Another spacesaving element is the use of pocket doors in areas with multiple doors so they don’t bang into each other when they swing.

TRY THIS AT HOME For others considering a similar topping of their ranch-style home, the couple

has a few suggestions.

First, “Document everything you want in the plans,” she says. Don’t assume that something called for in one room, such as special lighting or trim, will automatically duplicate in other rooms.

Second, before the wallboard goes in, make sure you have anticipated everything you might ever want to add down the line. There’s no point in adding a gas line for the porch lights, for example, if it means cutting through freshly installed walls.

And third, choose an architect and builder carefully.

They can really improve your ideas. This project’s team included builder Kelly Bennett of K. Bennett Builders, carpenter and contractor Benny De la Garza of Benny’s Creative Carpentry, and architect Jason Webb of Turning Leaf Designs.

“We’ve gotten everything we hoped for,” she says.

To share your renovation survival story in The Do-Over, contact cynthia.lescalleet@ gmail.com

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The sports.

Saturday, May 28, 2016 • Page 3B

Baseball: St. Thomas defeated at semifinals The St. Thomas High School baseball team got only their second loss of the season against Plano Prestonwood Christian Academy Tuesday at the TAPPS 5A state semifinals.

According to the STH website, a late game rally by the Eagles came up one run short, resulting in their second loss across 33 games in what has been called a “historic season.” The Eagles trailed into the top of the seventh when second basemen Alex Carnegie scored a single, with the Eagles following up with two more runs on consecutive errors.

However, the comeback could not be completed as a final strike was called with a tying run at third base and a go-ahead run at second, according to the school’s website. The Eagles lost 5-4.

According to the website, the Eagles were undefeated through their first 28 games with 18 consecutive wins and began the state tournament in sixth place in the MaxPreps poll and number 11 in the MaxPreps Xcellent 50 ranking of both public and private schools across the nation.

“A half dozen Eagles will continue their baseball careers at the collegiate level including Moore and Nolan Lundholm ‘16 at Catholic University, and premium starter Cameron Cash ‘16 at Claremont McKenna College,” The website says.

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Contributed Photo The Center for the Sciences and Media at St. Pius X high school is steadily nearing completion according to officials.

27

Construction moving steadily at St. Pius X science building The construction of the $9.1 million, 27,000-squarefoot Center for the Sciences and Media at St. Pius X is about 80 percent complete and is estimated to be finished by mid-July, ahead of schedule, according to Facility Director Curt Wissmiller.

The center will have six lab and lecture classrooms and one multi-purpose classroom, a roof-top garden, a Media and Resource Center, meeting spaces and enhanced plaza seating for

outdoor learning and community gathering.

“The space has a clean, industrial look,” said Wissmiller, who noted that the second story has 30 foot ceilings as well as wall to floor windows.

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