Heights shopping center is a blend of new and preserved

When Houston developer Steve Radom began planning Heights Mercantile, a new shopping center on Heights Boulevard, he had one overarching goal: that it not feel like a shopping center.

It would have been easier to scrape the three-acre site and throw up yet another staid strip mall with a mattress store, a cellphone shop and an urgent-care clinic.

Instead, he went after high-end athletic apparel retailer Lululemon, hip eyeglass maker Warby Parker and several new-to-Houston stores.

"I decided not to do the easy deals," Radom said. "The decision was to be really thoughtful and build up, over five or 10 years, a different kind of destination."

It was also part of his vision to add cultural and community amenities to help counteract retail headwinds, like the surge in online shopping.

The development includes six buildings - four of which are original - bisected by 7th Street and across from the popular Donovan Park.

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Lululemon, which offers yoga and craft classes at its Heights location, and local ice cream shop Cloud 10 Creamery operate out of restored Craftsman bungalows that were original Sears kit houses and date back to the 1920s, Radom said.

The development has green spaces and picnic tables. Radom also struck a deal with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston to put in a gallery space with rotating works from the museum's collections.

A newly built two-story structure has boutiques and offices; a Local Foods restaurant will soon open there. On the second story, there's a fitness studio. And a high-end nail salon, medical day spa and eye clinic are being added.

The structures together accommodate 45,000 square feet of space.

Radom, who runs small development and investment firm Radom Capital, comes from a family in commercial real estate. He owns Heights Mercantile with his brother-in-law, Evan Katz.

Radom has redeveloped other properties in the Heights area, including a 1955 washateria and some small retail and office buildings. He recently struck a deal to buy the 1930-vintage Stages Theatre building at 3201 Allen Parkway.

He bought the property for Heights Mercantile over the course of a year and a half from five different sellers.

The Pappas restaurant family owned the bulk of the property, which for decades served as its corporate headquarters.

Radom's plan for the site was always to weave the historic fabric of the existing buildings in with modern structures. He hired the Austin firm of Michael Hsu Office of Architecture to design the project and SWA Group, the landscape firm that designed Buffalo Bayou Park.

He has also purchased land across Yale to expand the development, though nothing is expected to happen on the site for at least a year.

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The project, alongside the Heights hike-and-bike trail, has caught the eye of many a Houstonian who has driven - or bicycled - by.

"I noticed they were incorporating some of the bungalows on Heights Boulevard and thought that was so intriguing," said James Phelan, a former Heights resident who works in commercial real estate and technology. "So many developments of late just scrape and build new."

Early on, however, some nearby Heights residents were not so welcoming. A group went to the city with concerns the development would add loud bars to the area, turning it into another Washington Avenue.

After the complaints, the city denied Radom's request to include some of the existing parking spaces that Pappas had used for years but that partially fell on city land to count toward the project's parking requirement.

Radom was disappointed but took the news in stride, recognizing that neighbors are often resistant to any change that could alter the scale and character of an area.

"That's the challenge to being a developer, and it's also an opportunity," he said.

He bought some adjacent property that housed two 1970s-era warehouses and tore them down to add more parking per the city's requirement.

That area is now painted with bright eye-catching graphics. Leafy and otherwise landscaped areas fill the space between the buildings.

In a rare turn for car-centric Houston, bicycle parking has become a premium on weekends and Radom is having to add more bike racks, "the dream of any development for Houston," he said.

Lauren Bailey, CEO and co-founder of Phoenix-based Upward Projects, which is opening wine cafe Postino in the project, cited Radom's patience and attention to detail.

On one of her trips to Houston, she said, Radom spent 15 minutes explaining the design philosophy of a redone brick wall.

Radom, she said, seems to care more about developing what's right for the community than filling as much leasable square footage as possible.

"He could have jammed way more stuff on that site, but it would not have felt the same," Bailey said. "He didn't do that because it wasn't the right thing for the community."

Even so, some questioned his plan to preserve the site's older structures.

When the project was in the planning stages, an official with the city reminded Radom that there was no requirement to restore the buildings.

"We were asked by several people why we would want to preserve the buildings. That they were older and not especially beautiful," Radom said. "My response was there was a way to make them beautiful - an older aged patina version of something that had some more appeal than brand-new."