The wrecking ball is chipping away in earnest now. Downtown’s old Sheraton Lincoln hotel is going away.

By this time next year, the Sheraton Lincoln will be replaced by a surface parking lot.

Wait a minute! This is downtown Houston. Isn’t land like this supposed to be extremely valuable? Only a parking lot?

The Sheraton Lincoln, 711 Polk at Louisiana, sits on a half-block of prime property, across the street from the Hyatt Regency Hotel.

It’s only a three-minute walk from the Sheraton Lincoln demolition site to the Heritage Plaza office building, which just sold for a whopping $325 million.

So, it only makes sense to ask the owner of the Sheraton Lincoln site a question or two.

Is this it? A flat parking lot is the highest and best use for the Sheraton Lincoln site?

A parking lot is a viable use, for now, says Paul Layne of Brookfield Properties, which owns the Sheraton Lincoln property and several major office towers in downtown.

But 10 years from now, who knows? Maybe an office tower could be erected there.

“Long term, it is an excellent building site,” Layne says.

Brookfield also owns the Total Plaza on the other half of the Sheraton Lincoln block. Brookfield will develop three levels of underground parking on the hotel site and with the surface lot, there will be 330 parking spaces created.

The Sheraton Lincoln opened in 1962 and it has been closed down since 1988. Many developers have examined the 29-story building, trying to come up with a viable redevelopment scheme for condos, offices or a new hotel.

In 2007, David Songy of Atlanta-based Songy Partners made a run at redeveloping the Sheraton Lincoln, announcing a $100 million plan to transform it into an Omni hotel. But that was before the nation fell into a recession and financing for new projects vanished.

For the foreseeable future, Brookfield will concentrate on the eight-month process of demolishing the hotel. Implosion was not feasible, because of the building’s close proximity to the Total Plaza building new door. The removal of the hotel will give the occupants in the Total Plaza some great views of downtown and Brookfield will build an elevator to connect the parking lot to the neighboring office building.

The Sheraton Lincoln was developed by the Lincoln-Liberty Life Insurance Company, a firm led by former U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen. The hotel, developed prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, offered service to African Americans, as Bentsen demanded, when integration was not common.

The Beatles stayed at the Sheraton Lincoln in 1965 when they made their only appearance in Houston.

Who’s Number 1?

Newland Communities, a major force in Houston’s homebuilding business, has been named national Developer of the Year by Builder and Developer magazine.

Newland is developing four master planned communities in the Houston area: Cinco Ranch, Telfair, Summerwood and Eagle Springs.

The magazine noted that Newland’s Cinco Ranch was the top ranked community for new home sales in the nation. The San Diego-based developer has master-planned communities across the nation.

It was a pretty good year for awards for Newland. Its Fish Hawk Ranch in Tampa was named green development of the year by the National Association of Home Builders. And the Greater Houston Builders Association named Telfair, a Sugar Land project, its community of the year.

Who’s Number One? Part Two

Looking for a sexy real estate investment that’s going to make you a lot of money? Sure, you’d like it to be a chateau in Europe or a villa in the Caribbean.

But if you are looking for a good investment, you might want to try something much more boring — a warehouse in Houston.

Grubb & Ellis just ranked Houston as the No. 1 market in the nation for investment opportunity in industrial real estate. Los Angeles was ranked No. 2, followed by Oakland and Dallas/Fort Worth, according to the Grubb & Ellis Investment Opportunity Monitor.

Houston’s oil and gas sector and activity at the Port of Houston make Houston’s warehouse market a promising place.

Ralph Bivins, former president of the National Association of Real Estate Editors, is editor-in-chief of RealtyNewsReport.com.