remembering ed wulfe

Ed Wulfe, towering figure in Houston real estate development, dies at age 85

19 Ed and Lorraine Wulfe at The Social Book 2015 Launch Party January 2015

Ed Wulfe and wife, Lorraine.

Photo by © Kim Coffman

One of Houston’s most visionary and admired figures in real estate has died.

Ed Wulfe, a gregarious and beloved civic leader who spearheaded the development of shopping centers in the Gulfgate, Meyerland, and Uptown areas, passed away on Sunday, July 28, in Houston. He was 85.

“Ed Wulfe spent decades reshaping Houston into the city we know,” said Mayor Sylvester Turner, in a statement. “Even if you didn’t know his name, you saw and experienced the significant ways he made our city better. Mr. Wulfe revitalized the Gulfgate and Meyerland Plaza shopping centers and successfully chaired a city-wide referendum campaign to expand Houston's light rail and transit systems.”

A towering presence in commercial real estate for more than 40 years, Wulfe was president and founder of Wulfe & Co., the Houston-based commercial retail real estate brokerage, development, and property management firm. His most recognizable work came via the award-winning and nationally recognized Meyerland Plaza, Gulfgate Center, and BLVD Place — all of which were pivotal in changing the atmosphere and culture of their respective areas.

Notably, Wulfe's innovative development of the high-profile BLVD Place received the Houston Business Journal's 2015 Landmark Award for Mixed-Use development. His redevelopment of Gulfgate Shopping Center and the resulting revitalization of the surrounding area generated ULI's 2012 Development of Distinction Award and two 2003 Landmark Awards for Gulfgate as the “Best Commercial Real Estate Rehabilitation/Renovation Project” and the “Best Impact on the Community Project.” His renovation of Meyerland Plaza Shopping Center earned two Legacy Awards for “Deals That Made a Difference” in 1995 and 1996.

Commercial yet personal
“All of those projects were special to him,” Robert Sellingsloh, president of Wulfe & Co., tells CultureMap. Sellingsloh, who worked alongside Wulfe for 39 years, notes that Wulfe took a keen and personal interest not just in specific retail developments but in the areas they supported.

“Each retail project is unique. That’s what Ed loved about real estate,” says Sellingsloh. “In the ’90s, Meyerland Plaza was special to him because it was a redo and reinvention and because he lived in the area for so long. In the 2000s, we developed Gulfgate, which Ed felt had real significance and helped change the neighborhood. And in 2012, with BLVD Place, despite the special challenges, Ed knew that it was an important, prominent corner.”

A man of the city
Wulfe’s bio is a study in city planning and urban development. He began his career as a mechanical engineer with Texaco, before moving into real estate. Wulfe spent 17 years with Weingarten Realty Investors, where he rose to executive vice president and a member of its board. Since 1998, Wulfe served as chairman of the Mayor's Main Street Coalition, where he led the redevelopment of Houston's Main Street Corridor.

In 2003, he successfully chaired a city-wide referendum to expand Houston's light rail and transit systems. In 2012 he co-headed the city's successful $100 million parks bond issue campaign. He served as chairman of the Stadium Land Redevelopment Committee and co-chairman of the Broadway Scenic Enhancement Committee.

“But Ed’s other legacy is his dual careers,” says Sellingsloh. “He spent almost as much time on his civic causes as he did his real estate. It’s really remarkable.” Wulfe was a past chairman of the board and president of the Houston Symphony and a founding member of the Greater Houston Partnership's Quality of Life Committee and the Steering Committee of Houston's Quality of Life Coalition.

“Ed was innovative — he always embraced new ideas that he thought were quality and worthy,” adds Sellingsloh. That meant warming up to walkability at a time when it was often dismissed in Houston. It also meant championing mixed-use retail. “Ed was quick to embrace that,” says Sellingsloh. “He saw it in mature cities — not just in the U.S., but in Europe. Ed knew that as you urbanize, the area gets more dense, and you have to be creative in how you build retail.”

In a city where developers can, at times, be all too comfortable with the status quo, Wulfe pushed forward. “Retail has evolved over the decades,” Sellingsloh says. “He was never close-minded. Being persistent was very important to him. He wouldn’t mind circling back and trying again if he was unsuccessful the first time.”

A towering, humble presence
So affable, generous, and humble was Wulfe that it could belie his true prominence in the city. Culturally, Wulfe will be remembered for helping negotiate the end of the 2003 Houston Symphony strike. He served as chairman of the Holocaust Museum Houston and president of synagogue Congregation Emanu El.

“He was just an absolute joy to work with in everything he did — he was a lot of fun,” recalls Sellingsloh. “He had a magnetic personality; he was always very positive and energetic. He had a great sense of humor and a huge heart, which is why many of the employees of Wulfe & Co. have worked for the firm for decades. He was a remarkable man and truly one-of-a-kind.”

For his part, Sellingsloh hopes that Houstonians remember and regard Wulfe as a force in local, urban development during a pivotal time in our growth. “Ed never got stuck in the past. He was always looking forward. And that’s exactly what our city needed.”

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your friends and neighbors

Pioneering East End development brings cohousing to Houston

Digital image of a a finished cohousing development with people in the foreground.

Render provided by CoHousing Houston

A digital rendering of the finished CoHousing Houston.

Houston's East End neighborhood will soon welcome a bold new experiment in housing in the next couple of months, one dedicated to communal space and curing the epidemic of isolation plaguing modern America.

Called CoHousing Houston, the development occupies a property at 114 Delmar St. that consists of 33, individually-owned units built around a central courtyard. This layout isn't much different from a modern apartment complex, but there are architectural deviations and governing principles that gently nudge the residents toward in-person interactions.

One is the common house, a massive gathering space, kitchen area, and work station that serves as a community center and event hall. While the individual units do have their own kitchens and bedrooms, they are short on extra rooms. This encourages people to move their hobbies and activities to the common house or to the shared outdoor porches and balconies when the weather is nice.

The idea of communal housing is as old as humanity itself and is practiced by groups as different as hippy communes and the U.S. Army. However, few Americans live in communal housing after they reach adulthood, preferring privacy and a large space to call their own. CoHousing Houston is aiming to be the best of both worlds.

One resident is Kelli Soika, a married mother of three who lived in a similar cohousing unit in Colorado before moving to Houston in 2018. She found the cohousing model incredibly liberating, and worked to create the first one in the Bayou City.

"You have this great place to solve problems you didn’t even know you know you had," she tells CultureMap. "I would have to go to the grocery store with the three kids, and it was hard. Now, I can ask a neighbor to watch the girls for an hour. I hear it’s like living in a small town in the past, though I'm not old enough to remember that. It's the kind of place where if you leave the door open, someone will check to make sure you're okay. In a regular house, you could fall down and it might be days before someone found you."

Soika emphasized the power of community connection. Surrounded by multi-generational households that are funneled into the communal spaces by design, she can draw on the innovation of young couples or the wisdom of the elderly. With one kid starting college, it's nice for her to be able to talk to someone close by who has gone through the same thing. Her husband can drop into an evening bike riding group whenever he wants without having to arrange various schedules. In her opinion, little neighborly touches like that are worth the slight loss of privacy or space that are inherent to cohousing.

"If the power is out and you don't know what’s going on at CenterPoint, you've got a group going through it with you," she says. "These things keep happening, and when I moved into cohousing, it's just not a crisis because you've got other people to help you and be with you in it."

Isolation and loneliness is a major problem in America, studies suggest. Increased workloads and the explosion of social media have led to a sharp decline in time spent in "third places," locations that are not home or work. According to some estimates, people stopped going to third places as much as 37 percent between 2014 and 2017, and that was before COVID sent people into deeper isolation. In Houston, soaring temperatures and poor public transit keep some people out of parks and other outdoor activities even as the city invests heavily in park improvement. Some activities such as pickleball and live-action gaming centers have picked up the slack, but these still involve planning that many tired workers simply don't have the energy for.

In that world, cohousing seems like a viable alternative to increase social engagement, though it may be too big a change for Americans, who are famously individualistic.

Soika says that there are weekly meetings in the common house to deal with issues that affect the entire campus, such as parking disputes and insurance. Residents own their $300,000 to $525,000 homes, but there is still an HOA, and governance is democratic. CoHousing Houston tries to make sure that the majority of people can still attend and have their voices heard in the regular meetings. Those disinclined to group gatherings can still participate in small groups that handle specific matters, but like all democracy it involves more work than simply owning your own home. There's also the worry that such a governing structure tends to empower people who have time and resources to attend meetings, such as single income households.

"You don’t want to have the decisions dominated by people who have managed to dominate the meeting structures," says Soika. "We have rounds where we laboriously go through each person and have them talk about it. It helps the quieter ones. We want everyone to be heard."

Another concern is safety. Soika was unable to say of there was any kind of provision for what to do if a resident became a problem, such as exhibiting violent behavior against other residents.

"I guess we would call the police," she says. Having lived in cohousing since 2012, she says she's never come across such a situation.

CoHousing Houston is expected to open fully this fall. Soika already lives on site, and most of the units in the $300,000 range have been sold. Units in the $450,000-525,000 range remain available. Interested buyers can find more information at CoHousingHouston.com.

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