Uptown Park to Alter area's Skyline
The owner of the Uptown Park shopping complex, where pricey spas, dessert shops and luxury boutiques occupy a series of Italianesque buildings surrounded by parking lots, wants to transform the highly visible center along the West Loop into a pedestrian-friendly enclave that could dramatically alter the skyline in the Galleria area.
Houston-based AmREIT, which has owned the 17-acre property for almost a decade, has designed a $1.2 billion project that would replace many of the low-slung buildings with high-rise towers filled with upscale housing, hotel rooms, offices and additional retail space. Parking would be built underground or within the new structures.
The spaces between the buildings would offer shade and landscaping in a setting conducive to pedestrian activity.
"We want to bring Uptown alive," AmREIT's chairman and CEO H. Kerr Taylor said of the property, off the West Loop at Post Oak Boulevard.
Taylor, whose development preferences have long been influenced by a post-college trip to Italy, envisions the project as having "almost a Florentine feel," where residents, workers and visitors will linger after walking to restaurants and shops.
The changes are expected to come over the next decade and could begin late this year with the first building tentatively scheduled to break ground.
AmREIT is in negotiations with a national developer to build a luxury residential tower at the site of perhaps 30 stories with 20,000 square feet of retail space at ground level. It would be developed where the stores Baker, Pelucha Decor and Bella Rinova are now.
The deal would be structured as a 99-year ground lease to the residential developer, but AmREIT would own the retail space and underground parking.
Altogether, the company has identified seven potential development sites in Uptown Park and plans to add significantly to the existing 169,000 square feet of retail space.
Uptown Park expansion When it's completed, Uptown Park could include luxury residential, office space, retail and a hotel. Here are the developer's projections:
Residential: more than 1,000 units in at least three buildings
Hotel: more than 300 rooms
Retail: an additional 100,000 to 150,000 square feet
Office: 850,000 square feet
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http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news...ne-5250104.php
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