River Oaks luxury tower is unveiled
The River Oaks, rebuilt from shell of midcentury building, offers luxury style
Houston’s ultrahigh-end condo market is just a shard of the city’s luxury housing stock, but by one measure, it’s on an upswing.
For two years, Arel Capital sought a buyer for the penthouse floor of its new condominium tower on Westheimer.
Priced at a stunning $14 million, the 14,000square-foot unit was to be the largest penthouse in Texas, the broker for the property boasted.
It turned out there wasn’t much of a market for a condo the size of a small castle.
“I do recognize that’s pretty big,” Richard Leibovitch, managing partner of New York-based Arel Capital, said on a recent tour of the property. “We’ve made modifications.”
Now the top floor of The River Oaks, the residential tower rebuilt from the shell of a midcentury apartment building at 3433 Westheimer, is being offered as two separate units. The price: a more digestible $7.5 million.
Houston’s ultra-high-end condo market is just a shard
of the city’s luxury housing stock, but by one measure, it’s on an upswing.
So far this year, buyers have purchased 29 units in a mid- or high-rise building for at least $1 million apiece, Houston Association of Realtors data show. That’s up from 21 sales during the same period last year.
Yet there are still 109 units above $1 million currently listed for sale.
Those numbers aren’t overly concerning to developer Randall Davis, who has been building condos for more than two decades, but the market for such properties in Houston isn’t predictable.
“It’s a slow market that comes in fits and starts,” he said.
Since Arel Capital began marketing condos in the 79-unit River Oaks building about three years ago, nearly 85 percent of the units have sold and about half of those sales have closed.
“Prices are up 30 percent from when we started,” Leibovitch said, citing an average sales price of $2.25 million.
In Arabella, another highend tower going up along the West Loop at San Felipe, about 75 percent of the units are spoken for, said Davis, the developer. Seven of 10 units with private pools are sold.
The developer of Giorgetti Houston, a midrise in Upper Kirby with $1 million-plus price tags, recently held a groundbreaking ceremony after announcing that 50 percent of the units had sold.
Prices at The River Oaks start at $1.8 million and top out at $7.5 million for one of the 6,200-square-foot penthouse units, which have 14-foot ceilings and 1,700-square-foot terraces.
The developer started construction on the building in 2014, gutting the original 1960s tower and adding two floors.
Now 19 stories, the building stayed true to the structure’s modernist roots, interior designer Lauren Rottet said at the property, describing the modern artwork on the walls, vintage furniture in the lobby and overall Mies van der Rohe inspired designs.
“People in the early sales came to me and said, ‘Oh my gosh. I’m coming from a very traditional house. I have a Louis XIV. What will I do?’ I said bring it. It will never look better than to be set against a more contemporary, more simple background,” Rottet said.
The building, originally designed by Houston architect Cameron Fairchild, had always been a rental tower.
Arel Capital, which owns primarily rental buildings, originally planned to spruce up the property and continue renting its units.
But after researching the local condo market, the developer decided instead to double down on its investment, spending more than $100 million on the renovation alone. It hired EDI International to redesign the building and McDugald Steele as the landscape architect.
“What became clear to us was that with this location and these views there was a demand for something much, much nicer,” Leibovitch said. “So we actually changed our whole business plan within the first year.”
The building is bordered by the River Oaks neighborhood and longtime institutions St. John’s School and St. Luke’s United Methodist Church.
“Buyers here have a greater degree of certainty that this is the view they’re going to have for a very long time,” Leibovitch said, “and it’s really going to preserve value.”
The building offers hotel-like amenities: a 24-hour concierge, a gym with fitness instructors and a massage room with an in-house masseuse.
It contains a sizable art collection, including 14 large-scale works.
Art consultant Lea Weingarten took Leibovitch to visit galleries in Houston, New York City and the international Art Basel show in Miami to scout artists.
“Usually art is an afterthought,” Weingarten said. “Richard and Lauren put this front and center.”
Houston has never been a high-rise town. Yet wealthy Houstonians, many with second or third homes, are increasingly looking for a “lock-and-leave lifestyle,” said Jacob Sudhoff, whose company is marketing the units in River Oaks and Giorgetti.
They want fine finishes, attention to detail.
“And they’re willing to pay for it,” Sudhoff said.
Monthly homeowner fees have been set at 75 cents per square foot. For a 3,000-squarefoot unit, that’s $2,250 per month.