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Sev, you missed his point completely. All those things are legitimate issues, worthy of public consideration. To the extent that they are valued by the community these issues need to be proactively codified into city ordinances. In this particular case, however, the City's reaction against Buckhead Partners after Buckhead had already invested a half million dollars in upgraded infrastructure to accomodate a project that was allowable under existing ordinances was unjustified and is tantamount to theft. Additionally, I'm sure that there will be other damages sought, and likely awarded to Buckhead. Clearly it is not good policy for a City facing down a fiscal crisis to be paying settlement fees to developers because those developers were restricted from adding to the tax base.

So what do you think of the new giant crosses?

I recently posted my thoughts of Houston Pavilions on SSP... PROs -NRG leased ALL of the Pavilions' office space, so this basically has allowed them to stay alive. And insured that we'll at least have retail space for the future in that area. -The House of Blues Houston is the rock of this development hands down. It's been one of the most successful of the HOB franchise to date, and continues to draw top notch crowds for it's concerts. Don't know how the restaurant has held up, but HOB is certainly not going anywhere. -Forever XXI has a steady stream of retail customers, so it can be counted on the plus side. -Business overall has started to pick up in the restaurant arena. Guadalajara has been a big hit, and has a strong showing of daytime and evening customers. Still a little early to see about Yao, III Forks, Mia Bella and Andalusia, but what I've heard so far has been good. -Houston Pavilions has went above and beyond the call for promoting retail shopping in downtown. They have contracted out pedicab services that go to the Theater District, Discovery Green and Midtown to pick up shoppers and bring them to HP. Most people don't know about this, but it's really handy and (hopefully) is adding to the visibility of HP. CONs -Lidz and Journeys were early casualties... they opened too soon, and were in HORRIBLE locations. The development is just now getting enough "interest" that people are willing to actually walk through it, but at the beginning there just wasn't anything there. -Books-a-Million is (IMO) the crappiest of the big bookstore chains. It doesn't fit in downtown Houston. I applaud them for their bravery, but I think that B&N or Borders (or an ORIGINAL big bookstore!!!) would have been much better for that area. I do shop there though, because I want to support retail in downtown, and their travel guide section is passable. -Pedicabs aside, they still haven't done enough to forge a link with the new "zone of activity" by Discovery Green. There's still way too many people that come to downtown to visit the park, but don't know about HP. They need to be more aggressive with their promotion. I continue to hear that there's "nowhere to eat" or "nothing to do" once people are done at the park. -It's half empty for crying out loud!!!! So frustrating! So for me, HP is still in the plus column by a 5-to-4 vote. We're much better off having what we have of it than we were with 3 surface parking lots, but there's still a long way to go. I think that 2010 is going to be a good year for HP though, especially on the retail side.

Wow! We don't hear news like this very often..

Nice idea, bad execution. The cross is out of proportional scale w/r/t the height of the horizontal cross in relation to the height and width of the bldg. The horizontal cross is slightly too high and lends a visual effect of being top heavy. It's location of being adjacent to an elevated freeway does not deter this effect, but rather enhances it, as most often viewers are moving directly through space towards the bldg. The paint job on the exterior is mostly indiscriminate over it's coverage of diverse materials from metal details to the masonry facade. It looks unprofessional.

If a corporation were to propose putting its logo up on the side of a building like that along with backlighting, it wouldn't have been allowed a permit from the City of Houston for reasons stated in the Sign Code. Why does a religious symbol get a pass when a corporate logo or other advertisement does not?