Tanglewood residents ask court to block high-rise
Squabble is similar to Ashby fight over building near Rice
Homeowners in Tanglewood, a leafy subdivision near the Galleria where a trail winds through a picture-perfect boulevard lined with oak trees and the average home sells for $1.8 million, have filed suit to keep a high-rise from being developed at the entrance of their neighborhood.
The owners of the property — descendants of Tanglewood’s original developer — are planning to sell their land or partner with a developer to build a 20-story residential tower on the site at the northeast corner of San Felipe and Tanglewood Boulevard, according to a petition filed this month in state District Court.
“They want to preserve Tanglewood as it has existed for 70 years,” said Rick Butler, general counsel for Tanglewood Homes Association Inc., which is seeking a declaratory judgment against WMJK Ltd., an entity associated with Tanglewood Corp., a real estate firm with its headquarters on the site of the planned development. The situation is reminiscent of the so-called Ashby high-rise case where residents of an affluent neighborhood near Rice University spent more than a decade opposing a developer’s plan to build
a residential tower near their homes. If built, the residents said, the tower would have cast shadows on their homes, limited their privacy and caused an abundance of traffic.
This time, though, the homeowners claim a tower would violate decades-old covenants that were established to preserve the character of the neighborhood.
The 55,000-square-foot site, which includes WMJK’s headquarters at 1661 Tanglewood Blvd., is noted as “unrestricted acreage” on a city of Houston land plat, but the homeowners claim it is part of a restricted area.
“If the restrictive covenants are ambiguous, they must be interpreted in favor of the innocent landowners who purchased their homes with the understanding that they were buying homes in an exclusively residential neighborhood, absent the fear in unzoned Houston of having a skyscraper looming over their backyards,” according to the petition.
The association has asked the court to rule that the property is encumbered by covenants, among them a 38-foot height restriction on new buildings, the need for approval of architectural plans and construction documents by the homeowners and other restrictions it says prohibits high-rise buildings.
The Reservations, Restrictions and Covenants governing this section of Tanglewood, posted on the Association’s website, does note an exception for the WMJK site, allowing it to be used for commercial purposes.
Tanglewood Corp. President Kendall Miller, grandson of the neighborhood’s founder William Farrington, is the registered agent of WMJK, according to state records. Through a spokesperson, the family declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.
Residents found out about the proposed tower after they received marketing surveys about the project, Butler said.
Founded in 1949, Tanglewood is comprised of some 1,200 homes, many of which are on oversized lots. New builds along Tanglewood Boulevard, the neighborhood’s signature treelined street, are increasingly replacing the original 1950s ranch houses.
A 17,000-square-foot lot in the neighborhood sells for as much as $1.5 million, said Marilyn Thompson, president of Martha Turner Sotheby’s International Realty. The WMJK property is appraised at $4.5 million, according to the Harris County Appraisal District.
Thompson said properties in Tanglewood have maintained their values and she doesn’t expect a building along San Felipe to be a detriment.
“If they design it as a very attractive building, I think it’ll be OK. We live in an urban area. People want to live closer to where they spend their time, to where they work and socialize,” she said. “You’re not going to avoid this.”