Last week, we got word that the old Astroworld site, which has been empty since the last of the old rides were auctioned off in January of 2006, has a new owner – it had previously changed hands back in 2007 – and the Chron’s Nancy Sarnoff spoke to the new owners about their plans for the site.
It’s Mallick’s first major investment in Houston. The boutique real estate firm developed the Horseshoe Bay Resort Marriott in the Hill Country and has been involved in public/private inner-city redevelopments in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex.
“We feel like Houston is probably one of the stronger economies in Texas right now,” Mallick said.
The calls he’s received since buying the property are proof that others agree.
It leaves open the chance that something could happen to the property sooner rather than later.
“Given the tidal wave of phone calls I’ve received since we purchased it, I really don’t know at this point,” Mallick said. “There’s a huge amount of interest in the entire tract and portions of the tract.”
Before anyone gets too excited about that, here are a couple of points of comparison. The Robinson Warehouse site has been fallow since January of 2007. Unlike the Astroworld land, its owner (at the time, at least – I have no idea if it’s the same folks or not) had a specific plan for the land, and seemed to be raring to go on it. It hasn’t happened, that’s all I know. Also at that time, the old Stables Restaurant was torn down, with the land underneath it being acquired by a group that now owned a “crucial one-acre parcel in the Med Center area”. They didn’t have any specific project in mind, as far as I knew, however, and as with the Robinson Warehouse site, it’s still dormant today. Point being, don’t be surprised if a couple of years from now you read another story about another sale of the Astroworld site to another real estate group, with nothing else to indicate that something will finally be built there.
Seems to me the land is useless until the future of the Astrodome has been determined. In any case, the entire Reliant Park area is a prime space for a considerably large, high density mixed use development.