Vacant for nearly three decades, an artificial island in the middle of Lake Woodlands is gearing up to become one of the region's most exclusive gated communities.
The Howard Hughes Corporation — the former development company of everyone's favorite reclusive film producer and aviator — will divide Mitchell Island into 19 single-acre lots costing between $1.5 and $3 million each, according to Swamplot. A bridge from the lake's swanky East Shore neighborhood is under construction.
Mitchell Island will be divided into 19 single-acre lots costing between $1.5 and $3 million each.
Tim Welbes, co-president of Woodlands Development Company (a Hughes subsidiary), tells CultureMap via email that plans for a "unique collection of homes" are underway but not solidified. Details, including a timeline and potential architects, were not yet available.
Woodlands visionary George Mitchell intended to use the 22-acre island, completed along with the lake in 1985, for the headquarters of his Mitchell Energy & Development Corporation. Plans for the island HQ finally were abandoned in 2005, with little to no activity on the water-bound property since.
But with 10,000 employees expected at Exxon Mobile's forthcoming north Houston campus by 2015, Woodlands development is reaching a fever pitch in an a already-booming local real estate market. The master-planned community, meanwhile, swiftly approaches its final batch of available lots.
“We are selling land at higher price points than we ever have before," Paul Layne of the Hughes Corporation tells the Houston Business Journal. "We have about 2,600 lots left, which should be probably another three to four years of sales."
A view of Mitchell Island, to the left, from Northshore Park
