A big apartment project may jump-start economic activity along decrepit Washington Avenue, which generations ago was a major corridor of commerce in Houston, but has fallen on hard times.
For decades, Washington Avenue has been used by Houstonians to travel from downtown to the city’s oldest neighborhoods: the Sixth Ward and Houston Heights. But many of the buildings and businesses that lined Washington Avenue are gone. Today, passers-by see used-car lots, secondhand stores and boarded-up buildings.
An 836-unit apartment project, the largest planned for Houston in years, will break a long construction drought on Washington Avenue and offer hope to area business people. The project will be built by a deep-pocketed real estate investment trust called Security Capital Pacific Trust.
“If this apartment complex is successful, this could be a turning point,” said Carl Detering Jr. of Detering Co., a Washington Avenue building materials firm founded in 1926.
“I really like Washington Avenue,” said Detering, whose ancestors started a grocery store on the avenue in the 1880s. “There are a lot of business people interested in seeing it become a viable business address.”
The apartments will cover about 40 acres on the south side of Washington, stretching from Heights Boulevard to Studewood, a huge parcel of land considering its close proximity to downtown.
By the end of this year, the developer hopes to rent the first of the project’s apartments. The pace of the project’s completion will be determined by how fast the first 360 units are leased, said Scot Sellers, managing director of Security Capital.
“We think it’s an excellent opportunity to provide good quality housing for the people who work downtown,” Sellers said.
Executives with the company, which is based in Santa Fe, N.M., have not established the rents for the complex, Sellers said. But the company wants it to be a bit less expensive than many complexes that have been built in close- in areas in the 1990s, he said.
One-bedroom units may be priced in the $600 per month range. The typical renter at the project, which has been named Memorial Oaks, will probably earn between $20,000 and $34,000 annually.
Even though the apartment complex will be big, it won’t be big enough, some say.
Even when it’s fully occupied, the complex won’t add enough consumers to the neighborhood to support a big discounter or department store, said Tom Estus, a retail center broker with Shelby/Estus Realty Group.
But for the few retailers remaining on Washington, the apartment project should make the cash registers ring more regularly.
“If you’re already there, you’re tickled pink,” Estus said.
“We have talked about it. We’re hoping for a positive impact, not just for us but for the entire neighborhood,” said Gary Duckworth, manager of a neighborhood Star Pizza restaurant.
Tenants will live in a neighborhood that is more rough and tumble than pristine suburbia.
“They will have to be urban pioneers-people that want to be living close to downtown and be in a nice project,” said Pat O’Connor, realty consultant with O’Connor & Associates.
Loft apartments in converted warehouses near downtown have been highly successful leasing to other urban pioneers, O’Connor said.
“The location is fantastic. It’s four minutes from downtown,” said Sanford Criner, a Washington Avenue property owner who believes redevelopment will revitalize the area.
“In addition, it’s right between the Heights and Montrose-the two areas that have enjoyed the most gentrification in the city.”
On the other hand, not much development has occurred since Criner turned the 1925-vintage Heights State Bank building into Rockefeller’s nightclub, which is across the street from the apartment site.
“I’ve been involved with the property for over 20 years. And over the 20 years, the changes have not been significant,” Criner said.
A shortage of large, vacant parcels is an obstacle to new development along Washington Avenue, said J.B. Cirincione, a realty agent who assembled the apartment site by quietly buying parcels over eight years.
A key parcel for the future is the 39-acre American Rice facility at Washington and Studewood, just across the street from the apartment site.
Realty broker Doug Nicholson of Grubb & Ellis, which is handling the rice company’s land, said the company is taking a wait-and-see attitude. The rice company will watch what happens to the new apartments before stepping up efforts to sell the land or deciding what kind of development may be best, he said.
A group of University of Houston architecture students who studied the American Rice property in depth determined that residential development was appropriate, said Mike Wilson, the Wilson & Farmer realty broker who worked with the students on plans for the area.
