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A couple of shots from yesterday afternoon

All of the sub-grade floors of the hospital are all going to be for parking. TCH wanted to add a bunch more parking spaces without adding an additional garage, and so they decided to go down 4 floors. When the hole was at its deepest, it was 5 feet below sea level, which is about 55 feet deep. In areas outside Houston, this isn't too remarkable. However in a town where the water table can be as shallow as 8-10 ft below the ground, such a big hole is quite remarkable. Busted :-) The buildings are indeed designed to go much higher. Currently, there are two buildings scheduled to go up: a 17 floor maternity center, and a 7 floor pediatric hospital. Both of them have been designed structurally to go up to 24 stories each. However this has nothing to do with the hole. The hole was so deep simply because TCH wanted more parking.

About a year and a half back I was lucky enough to experience the view from one of the penthouses at night. This was before the unit was built out, so there weren't any light fixtures (at all!) to create reflections on the interior side of the floor-to-ceiling glass curtain wall. I stood right up close to it, enveloped by darkness, and experienced a sensation of hovering in thin air without feeling unsafe or in any way fearful of wind or gravity. And as rush hour traffic began to die down, the opposing rivers of light began to flow freely beneath me on 288. And the refineries in the distance were visible and were flaring something undoubtedly very toxic, yet breathtaking to behold. It was as though the city was alive, and as though I could observe its heart beat, its pulse, and every aspect of its being. I could observe the lit up downtown area as its brain, and the TMC as its liver. I watched this omnipotently, from above.

I would not disagree with the notion that there needs to be thoughtful, intellectually honest, and carefully constructed regulation. However, the post to which I was initially responding sounded like the tirade of a communist revolutionary. Somebody needed to prod you into at least admitting that greed is good. Ironically, though, the nature of our representative democracy has resulted in a one-party government with an exceptionally weak and confused minority, and I suspect that the situation will probably result in a knee-jerk regulatory changes that are not as thoughtful, intellectually honest, or carefully constructed as they ought to be. Also, this post has a lot of overtones based in baseless morality and appeals to popularity. How about we drop the rhetoric and just be intellectually honest? That goes for the other guys on here, too, but at least they're making an attempt to stay on topic.