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You know it would be "cool" if Houston had a supertall 'sky-rise' but to be honest Id rather have about 3-4 30-40 floor buildings that look nice than an overgrown monolith poking out of the urban core. In theory they look nice but when built they look bad!!!!

Just look at the Sears Tower - a monster in a sea of beautiful buildings - its so bad It makes the skyline sick!

Just my opinion - hope there arent any Chicagoins offended by my post, but if there are - they need only to look at our new courthouse and they will rejoice nothing in there town looks that bad.

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You know it would be "cool" if Houston had a supertall 'sky-rise' but to be honest Id rather have about 3-4 30-40 floor buildings that look nice than an overgrown monolith poking out of the urban core.  In theory they look nice but when built they look bad!!!!

Just look at the Sears Tower - a monster in a sea of beautiful buildings - its so bad It makes the skyline sick!

Just my opinion - hope there arent any Chicagoins offended by my post, but if there are - they need only to look at our new courthouse and they will rejoice nothing in there town looks that bad.

WHEW! So it's not just me. I think the Sears Tower is about as attractive as a leg brace (and I hope no leg-brace wearers are offended). To take it a step further, it's pig ugly. The only redeeming things about Sears Tower is that it's an engineering feat, and it's tall; what a circus freak of a building.

That being said, I still think Chicago has the best skyscrapers in America, but not necessarily the best skyline.

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Yeah, it was one of the runners-up in the Bank of the Southwest competition by Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill.  There are a lot of photos in a book that was written about the competition.  The dome thing on top would have held an observation deck.

Subdude is correct. Older residents of Houston might recall that there was a 20-something story building which used to occupy that lot which was demolished (circa 1983), built circa 1962. I was shocked when I first moved to Houston to see such a modern building demolished. Unfortunately, the mid-80's bust doomed the site; it still is a surface parking lot. Such is the pattern of Houston development.

There was a particularly offensive piece of statuary which used to 'grace' the site; a semi-nude female bronze, straight out of a Frankie Avalon movie. It's been relocated downtown, somewhere; mercifully, I forget where.

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The only decent Supertalls of late are the Petronas Towers.

Cesar Pelli really did well on those, but nothing can compare to the grace and style of New Yorks: Chrysler, 40 Wall Street, and (crapy old) Empire State. The late 1920's were and still are the glory days of the highrise. I only hope that modern designs can age well....

which brings up another topic B)

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Arche 757 and dbigtex! It's like HAIF old home week! :)

That skyscraper that was demolished for the unbuilt Bank of the SW tower was on the southeast corner of the block. That's why the sidewalks along that corner are brick, while along the rest of the block they are regular concrete.

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I was flipping through a KPF book @ Half-Price Books, and it had one building proposed and designed by KPF but never built in the mid 1980's. Being KPF the design was quite nice (if my memory serves me right) had a resemblance to 311 South Wracker in Chicago.

Cant remember the name though... since we were on the topic.

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I think that's the Block 256.

BTW, I think I have that book! :P

KPF Projects 1976-1986.

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  • 1 month later...

The Bank Of The Southwest Tower

was never built

:o what <_< darn :( alll mann :huh: WHAT! why

Tallest non building of the west of the Mississippi River

Info of the BLOCK 265 Tower

http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=138414

http://www.skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=8783

Photo image of the tower in Person

http://skyscraperpage.com/gallery/showphot...&papass=&sort=1

Info of this mainly tower of Houston Bank of the SW Tower

http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=103046

Photo image of this Bank of the SW Tower!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v707/dom...thwestTower.gif

Downtown views of this tower and the BLOCK 265 TOWER!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v707/dom...tonDowntown.bmp

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v707/dominax2004/A.bmp

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The Bank Of The Southwest Tower

was never built

:o what  <_< darn  :( alll mann  :huh: WHAT! why

Tallest non building of the west of the Mississippi River

Photo image of this Tower!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v707/dom...thwestTower.gif

Downtown view of this tower and the BLOCK 265 TOWER!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v707/dom...tonDowntown.bmp

And it's all your fault! ;)

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I don't know if I would say major dump (seeing as I work in the building), the elevator banks do suck, but they've actually been replacing them and the lobby was redone recently. From the exterior, I would agree its nothing fancy nor is the inside super luxurious, but its a serviceable, standard office building. I was in the Pennzoil Building this last week, and yes the lobby area is nice, as is the well documented exterior, but the rest of the floors were nothing special.

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Yep, I am in that building quite often.

I actually like it from the outside. Are they still treating the granite? Some floors (10th) are nice.

It all depends how they want to build out the floors. I am currently in 1100 Louisana. Some floors are state of the art, while other are stuck in the 80s.

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The Southwest Texas Bank you are referring to doesn't really have anything to do with the Bank of the Southwest that had planned to build this tower. The original Bank of the Southwest went through a number of acquisitions and name changes and is now part of JP Morgan Chase.

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a few skyscraper and real estate sites are saying that developers are trying to bring this building back,and that the area where it was designed to be built is still a street level parking lot

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a few skyscraper and real estate sites are saying that developers are trying to bring this building back,and that the area where it was designed to be built is still a street level parking lot

Are you for real....This is the building that would have given Houston its signature tower.

But why would they do this, especially given the lack of demand in the current office market, which still has vacancies.

If they do this though, I imagine they would have to redo the design, as the original Helmut Jahn desgin ended up being the precursor to the Philly's Liberty Place Towers, which ended up becoming that city's signature in its skyline. Building the Jahn designed tower now would be viewed nationaly as an attempt to copy Liberty Place in Philly.

I would love for this to be true, but I just can see it happening for those two reasons.

EDIT: Dominax,

Thanks for the photoshopped pic of our skyline with the two main tower its missing and sadley were never built. I have forever tried to imagine what our skyline would have looked like today with these two buildings included. This really helps me...

Anyone else have anymore photoshops of what this dream skyline could have looked like today, especially the famous views from the north and west of Downtown?

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I don't know if I would say major dump (seeing as I work in the building), the elevator banks do suck, but they've actually been replacing them and the lobby was redone recently.  From the exterior, I would agree its nothing fancy nor is the inside super luxurious, but its a serviceable, standard office building.  I was in the Pennzoil Building this last week, and yes the lobby area is nice, as is the well documented exterior, but the rest of the floors were nothing special.

Obviously you haven't visited Bracewell & Giuliani LLP in South Tower Pennzoil Place, 23rd floor.

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  • 1 year later...
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In today's economy and office market, no. American firms are become more leery about building massive high rises so the number of firms who would do so are limited. But even if willing, the market has to bare it, and in most U.S. Cities, the market simply isn't there to absorb the space a tower like BotSW would present. Even with the positive turn in the DT office market, Houston is one of those cities.

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does anyone think theres a chance this can still be built

Absolutely not. Hizzy is essentially correct. Supertalls simply aren't viable without either 1) subsidy, 2) a big tenant that has agreed to lease a substantial chunk of the building so that it isn't all speculative, and 3) the perception of an economic boom with long-term sustainability.

Houston has none of these going for it...although I'd personally like to see Exxon consolidate its offices throughout the region into such a building.

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They can have underground parking. I wonder if companies that build tall or super tall buildings ever considered having a mixed use building. Offices and apartments/condos for workers or whomever........

The recommended parking ratio for most investment-grade office buildings is 3.0 spaces per thousand square feet of leasable space. In Central Business Districts with excellent mass transit access and privately-owned offsite parking garages/lots, you can usually get away with about 2.0 spaces. Still, if that were a 3 million square foot building, you'd need 6,000 spaces. That need can typically be reduced by incorporating apartments or condos into the mix, but it'd still require one space per bedroom as per City code.

To give you an relative measure of how large the parking garage would need to be, the new 14-level garage owned by Cambridge Development just south of the Fannin/Knight Street split has a 1,200-vehicle capacity. There just gets to be a point where people become severely inconvenienced by higher and higher parking garages.

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