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Houston: Morgan Group Plans Another Pearl Brand Luxury Tower

Quote:

Houston (Harris County) — Morgan Group has revived its plans to build a 13-story Pearl brand luxury apartment tower in the north end of Midtown.

The Pearl Rosemont project has been in the works since at least 2015, probably earlier. It was introduced then as a five-story wood frame podium style apartment building with zero building lines on all sides. It’s located at 102 Dennis Street, three blocks south of West Webster Street Park. The design firm was Wallace Garcia Wilson and it had a price tag of $20 million. It’s going to cost much more than that now.

It was supposed to have been built between July 2015 and July 2016 but more than three years later this 153-unit project remains listed on the Morgan website with a “TBD” anticipated opening date.

Meanwhile, Morgan did get underway on a Pearl brand project elsewhere in town. The Pearl Midtown is a six-story, 264-unit building with a 24-hour cyber cafe, resort style pool, retail and parking garage, located at 3120 Smith Street. Currently under construction, it’s scheduled to open end of the year.

Back to Pearl Rosemont, Morgan has submitted plans on the 102 Dennis Street project that on one document refer to it as Pearl on Helena. The project was before the Houston Planning Commission on Thursday for a 3-foot building line variance (zero line for balconies and overhangs) on Drew Street, a zero building line on Helena, and a 5-foot building line on Albany Street.

The project site is a full city block and has an area of 50,000 square feet. City staff took note that Morgan has moved the structure back from adjacent rights-of-way and increased the height.

“The Helena and Albany pedestrian realms will feature a distance of 26.5’ between the back of curb and proposed structure. The Drew and Denis pedestrian realms will each feature 15’ of space. The Albany pedestrian realm will feature additional space in order to protect the root structure of an existing mature tree. A tree protection easement is being required as a condition to approve the variance.”

The developer’s briefing notes to the commission recall its previous version:

“This project was previously approved for four floors of apartments over two floors of garage in July of 2014. This site is within
the Midtown TIRZ, which has an adopted Project Plan approved by Council that calls for buildings to be constructed up
close to the sidewalk as a way to promote a walkable pedestrian environment.

“The plan for this property is consistent with the Midtown Plan. An urban style apartment building with nine floors of apartments over a four-floor garage is proposed.”

“There is a very large street tree on Albany, which the builder proposes to save by notching the building back 8.5’. New trees to be planted will be a minimum of 3” caliper. Sidewalks will be a minimum of 6’. Other streetscape amenities will include pedestrian scale lighting and a mural from a local artist on one of the walls.