The former "Disco Kroger" corner in Montrose just hit a major milestone. Artis Montrose, a seven-story, 330-unit apartment project on the old grocery site, topped out Monday as crews wrapped framing on the seventh floor and shifted focus to roof installation. The podium-style building reached its highest structural point roughly nine months after breaking ground, a moment the project team marked on site.
Arch-Con, the project's general contractor, said crews are now pushing to complete the roof while getting interiors ready for buildout. "It’s a remarkable achievement for our team and trade partners to be topped out and completing the roof installation since breaking ground in October," Arch-Con senior vice president Michael Vaughn said in a statement, according to Bisnow. The outlet reported Arch-Con used 112 subcontractors during the wood-frame phase and had about 46 workers handling framing at peak.
The podium complex at 3300 Montrose Blvd spans roughly 528,734 square feet, with five levels of wood-frame apartments, about 361,324 square feet, stacked over two cast-in-place concrete parking floors totaling nearly 167,410 square feet, according to Arch-Con. The full program is set to deliver 330 units and around 14,000 square feet of interior amenity space once buildout is finished.
Design and amenities
Developers say the third-floor podium deck will carry a roughly 20,000-square-foot outdoor center courtyard with a pool, event lawn, outdoor kitchens, workspaces, a garden and a fire pit, and that interiors were planned by Virginia-based Focus Design Interiors, according to reporting from the Houston Chronicle. The program also calls for a second-floor pet spa and cyberlounge overlooking a double-height leasing lobby, plus a fourth-floor fitness suite that looks down on the main club and game room.
What it means for Montrose
The topping-out comes at a time when multifamily construction in Houston has cooled from its pandemic-era highs, a shift that has left asking rents in the Montrose submarket roughly flat, according to Bisnow. Citing CoStar data, the outlet reports Houston hit its lowest level of multifamily starts since 2011 in the first quarter, a backdrop Southeastern said helped shape its timing for the project.
Southeastern, the Augusta, Georgia-based developer, picked up the site after Kroger closed the iconic 24-hour store in January 2021 and later demolished the building, according to the Houston Business Journal. The company describes the name "Artis Montrose" as a play on "Art is Montrose" and says the complex is expected to open in 2027.
With framing done and enclosure work next in line, construction is set to pivot toward the building envelope and interior fit-outs over the coming months. When the dust finally settles, the 330-unit Artis Montrose is poised to add a sizable batch of upscale rentals to Montrose, with neighbors left watching for retail deals and rental pricing details as the 2027 opening gets closer.
