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    Kirton tells CM he'll move in himself

    The Ashby high rise returns from the dead, but the developer insists it's nomonster

    Tyler Rudick
    Sep 29, 2011 | 4:46 pm
    • Local civic clubs denounced the building from the onsite, citing narrowtraffic-prone streets and a destruction of the neighborhoods visual character.
    • Replacing the Maryland Manor Apartments at 1717 Bissonnet, the new residentialbuilding now plans to offer luxury rental units.
      Rendering via Buckhead Investment Partners Inc.

    After two quiet years, Buckhead Investment Partners submitted construction documents to the city this week, requesting permission to move forward on the controversial Ashby high rise. With the city's rental market at a high-water mark, the investment group has shifted its focus from high-end condominium owners to high-end renters.

    Planned for a site at 1717 Bissonnet near Rice University, the massive 23-story residential building pared down much of its original design to get city approval in August 2009. Over 20 residential units were removed from the plans, as well as portions of the building's retail and office space. The new constuction documents, Buckhead says, are for the same plans approved two years ago.

    With support from then-mayor Bill White, the Stop the Ashby High Rise movement took shape in 2007 to attack the building's traffic impact on the two-lane Bissonnet. The organization's website estimates 2,000 cars will come to and from the building each day, stating that even "the developer’s own traffic study indicates a significant worsening of traffic."

     

      "The building's not going to have teeth and arms," says Buckhead CEO Kevin Kirton, referring to the yellow monster signs Stop Ashby High Rise placed throughout the Rice area. 

    Since filing a federal lawsuit in February 2010 challenging the city's traffic argument, Buckhead has remained virtually silent about the project. The court case attacking a rarely-used driveway ordinance will be reviewed in March of next year.

    "Time hasn't healed our wounds," Jim Reeder, co-chair of the Stop Ashby High Rise Taskforce and a law partner at Vinson & Elkins, tells CultureMap. "This is a great neighborhood of single family homes. In our view, the new rental option is worst than the former condominium model, bringing in a more transient population not invested in the area."

    Reeder feels Buckhead has done little with the building's design to address the concerns of its neighbors, aside from removing certain elements to simply appease Houston officials. He says his group is evaluating options within the city's permitting process and will consider judicial approaches, if necessary.

    "This is an iconic project for them," Reeder notes. "They're not interested in creating something more palatable to the neighborhood."

    "The building's not going to have teeth and arms," says Buckhead CEO Kevin Kirton, referring to the yellow monster signs Stop Ashby High Rise placed throughout the Rice area. "I am disappointed to hear that so many people are upset about it. In the history of the city, there's never been such scrutiny over a proposed building site as a result of traffic impact studies.

     

    "I n our view, the new rental option is worst than the former condominium model, bringing in a more transient population not invested in the area," Jim Reeder says. 

    "We ended up removing a public plaza — the one feature that connected the building to the rest of the area."

    In spite of scaling down the original design, Kirton still feels 1717 Bissonnet is "a great project," particularly in light of the high-end amenities that include an outdoor pool and putting green.

    "I grew up in the neighborhood and can't wait for the building to be complete," Kirton says. "I'm ready to move there myself."

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    your friends and neighbors

    Pioneering East End development brings cohousing to Houston

    Jef Rouner
    Jul 7, 2025 | 12:15 pm
    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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