The Rice (Houston)
The Rice, formerly the Rice Hotel, is an historic building at 909 Texas Avenue in Downtown Houston, Texas, United States. The current building is the third to occupy the site. It was completed in 1913 on the site of the former Capitol building of the Republic of Texas, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The old Capitol building was operated as a hotel until it was torn down and replaced by a new hotel around 1881. Jesse H. Jones built a new seventeen-story, double-winged hotel in 1913, also called "The Rice Hotel." This building underwent major expansions: adding a third wing in 1925, adding an eighteenth floor in 1951, and adding a five-story "motor lobby" in 1958. In addition, there were several renovations during its life as a hotel. It continued to operate as a hotel before finally shutting down in 1977. After standing vacant for twenty-one years, The Rice was renovated as apartments and reopened in 1998 as the Post Rice Lofts. It was sold in 2014 and renamed simply The Rice.
For Rice Hotel in St. Louis, see National Hotel (St. Louis, Missouri).Location
909 Texas Avenue
@ Main Street
Houston, Texas
United States
1913
Mauran, Russell & Crowell; Alfred C. Finn, and J. Russ Baty
June 23, 1978
Restoration[edit]
Randall Davis inquired about redeveloping the Rice Hotel property in 1995. He had already rehabilitated old buildings and repurposed them as loft apartments. Three examples are the Dakota Lofts, the Hogg Palace, and the Tribeca Lofts.[14]
Michael Stevens, head of the Houston Housing Finance Corporation (HHFC), proposed a public-private partnership, which included $5 million in capital from the Randall Davis investment group with a $5 million matching funds from the City of Houston. However, as cost estimates for the renovation increased, private investors backed out. Stevens developed a tax increment financing (TIF) scheme in which the Rice project would borrow against future tax revenue increases. The City of Houston planned a Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ), placing the Rice within its boundaries. Based on projected tax revenue of $700,000, he coaxed a $6 million loan from Wells Fargo Bank, replacing the $5 million from the Davis group under the original plan. As head of HHFC, Stevens committed another $8 million to the project, $3 million of which would go toward buying the Rice outright. HHFC would recover its investment through selling federal tax credits for restoring historic buildings.[22]
Stevens sold most of the municipal interest in the hotel to Columbus Properties for $4.5 million in cash. Columbus (later renamed Post Properties) also assumed all the municipal debt related to the project, but also gained the tax credits and the ground lease. The city retained ownership of the property,[22] while Davis obtained a forty-year lease.[14]
Davis hired the architectural firm of Page Southerland Page to plan the renovation of the abandoned Rice Hotel. The firm presented Davis with a plan to limit public rooms to the ground floor. Alternatively, the Texas State Historical Association proposed restoring the Crystal Ballroom. Davis decided to model the public area after the 1913 Rice Hotel. This included restoration of the former two-story lobby, the Crystal Ballroom, and the Empire Room. The ground floor reserved 25,000-square feet of retail space, with a wide cast iron awning covering the sidewalks on the Texas Avenue side and part of the Main Street side.[14]
Tenants[edit]
The Petroleum Club of Houston, founded in 1946,[29] was originally located in the top area of the Rice Hotel. It moved to the ExxonMobil Building in 1963.[30]
Previously Amy's Ice Creams had its Houston location at the Rice Hotel.[31]
Zoned schools[edit]
The Rice Lofts is zoned to the Houston Independent School District.[32]
Residents are zoned to Crockett Elementary School,[33] Gregory Lincoln Education Center (for middle school),[34] and Northside High School (formerly Davis High).[35]
By Spring 2011 Atherton Elementary School and E.O. Smith Education Center were consolidated with a new K-5 campus in the Atherton site.[36] As a result, the building was rezoned from Smith to Gregory Lincoln.[34][37]