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Those Shell and Chevron rumors seem pretty unlikely. Chevron has made a huge commitment to its downtown campus. Very unlikely to be moving anywhere. Shell has recently extended its downtown leases and is expanding its footprint in the energy corridor. Also very unlikely to be going anywhere.

I gots my Walmart! Right now I'm taking my Walmart brand Cialis with my Walmart brand red cream soda, while I eat me a steak-um sandwich dusted with my Walmart-brand Cheeto-stained fingers. I better go cus my sister/wife has the NASCAR Blu-ray in the player and she is getting her dentures out of the Mr. Coffee maker. Yee-ha! Looken forward to seeing her in her Paula Deen lingerie!

man.... if that would have been an HEB with no 380, we would probably be none the wiser about the bridge of death. Walmart... saving lives!

Did you read my post? Big box stores are not sorely missing. There are now three Walmarts within a 3-4 mile radius of most of the Heights. And you completely miss the point and fall back on the old tired argument that no criticism can be made when the previous use of the land was industrial. The fact of the matter is that the land involved represented a once in a life time opportunity for the area. @ 35 acres of land were available for redevelopment. That is about 10 acres more than Regent Square is using. But, instead of building that property up with housing, office, hotel and retail, a large part of it will just be parking spaces. The rest will be big box retail and strip mall retail. Only 280 units of residential when @100 were demoed by Ainbinder and 30 rental houses are going to be demoed by the Yale St Market developers. With 35 acres, you could have easily put in 500-750 units of housing in addition to office, retail etc. But, everywhere else in town gets the good stuff, but the Heights gets the junk. Sure, in 2008 when the market crashed, strip malls seemed like a great way to cash out on that property. But, in 2013, it is now clear that it was a huge opportunity lost for the area. Now, developers are prowling the Heights looking for any little strip of land to put up multifamily when @30 acres were wasted on trying to making Houston's urban core more like the suburbs.

Almost definitely the garage levels have less floor-to-floor height than a normal high-rise building. Also, the ground floor of the building without the garage may be "taller" than the floors above. Imagine "grand" lobbies with 20 foot ceilings. It is practically a standard in this area for office buildings with 9-foot ceiling heights on the upper floors to have about a 13-1/2 foot floor-to-floor height to allow for structural beams and electrical and mechanical equipment above the ceiling. There is a lot stuff above the ceiling in a modern office building: air ducts, electrical conduit, plumbing both for domestic water and sprinkler systems as well as duct dampers, reheating coils, and wiring for data etc.

the top picture is a historic apartment building. the AIA museum district tour discussed it, but i do not remember the details.

Perhaps you haven't noticed, but Uptown is built on a suburban street grid. The McDonalds fits just fine there. Besides, the only change OK City demanded of the McDonalds in Bricktown is that they clad the McDonalds in brick, to fit with the other buildings. They did not remove the drive thru. The new modern McDonalds is already a style that fits in Uptown. I still don't understand all the uproar over this little McDs. Why not go large and complain about all of the strip centers all up and down Post Oak and Westheimer? Why not demand GFR in all of those condo towers? Let's gripe about something that actually matters!

HoustonBoy, I'm supprised that the W, Ritz-Carlton, or Mandrin Orental have decided to build a hotel in Houston since its booming. I want to see that 50+ story Ritz-Carlton annonce in Uptown again and open intime for the Superbowl.

well, then I'll get real pissy and talk a lot of trash about them on the internet.

Actually, the embarrassment is the notion that somehow McDonald's should be forced to sell or give away their land so that your idea of a good use can be implemented. Are you unaware that McDonalds has owned that parcel for decades? Or, do you simply not care, and instead, advocate eminent domain for any property that you think should be repurposed? Do landowner have no rights in your world? They sold off half of it. How much should they be forced to sell?

We? Do we own that land? You seem to think that someone other than McDonalds (or a franchisee) owned that property and did something bad. What you do not seem to realize is that McDonalds owned the ENTIRE parcel, and sold half of it to the developer of the highrise. They could have not sold any of the parcel at all. I am "embarrassed" at your lack of knowledge of how these things work.