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609 Main broke ground yesterday for full construction - activity on site will soon be very noticeable.

2/27 by Russell.Hancock on Flickr

I guess SkylineView must be out of town or busy so I will try to fill a little bit of that void

http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/blog/breaking-ground/2014/03/luxury-uptown-condos-sell-out-by-over-half-before.html

I would be happy with just 20 storey buildings filling up the gaps. The fact that we are getting 30 and 40 storey buildings is just gravy. I wouldn't care if we didn't get another 60+ for years if we keep on getting so many infill projects. I like supertalls but priority for me is: 1. Infill 2. Increased residential population 3. Increased entertainment options 4. Increased transit options 5. Increased dining options 6. Grocery options to suit the growth 7. Other retailers 8. Improved public spaces 9. A supertall or two 10. Better lighting. I think that would bee my list in order

From just now: Facilities for tidying up after a long day of demolition:

Agree with your point (livincinco), and I see what you are saying in regards to DT... Dallas' DART is a great lesson to be learned by San Antonio, Austin, El Paso, RGV and lastly Houston. For DARTs great intentions the system is not a foolproof design. In fact my travels to-from Dallas (in and around the Mockingbird Station area/Downtown/Lovers Lane etc for a family wedding) I actually only saw 1 train. And I was looking for them! I never saw anyone waiting for the train(s) and never saw one in Downtown despite being there on a Saturday night. My point(s) boil down to one single idea: Houston will approach ~10-11 million by 2030 (the metro area) and without building a system that will meet that demand we will be mired in total gridlock with no way to get around. We need BRT/LRT/CR/HR and everything in between to help move people around. We also need to have that system designed properly.

I got that last view driving home yesterday afternoon as well and it was really stunning in person. Not sure why they had a Astoria crane hanging over Post Oak though.

Market Square Development - Tower Galveston - East End Flats

This is the problem with historical preservation. There's simply no consensus about equal architectural standards across times and styles to establish much greater good for the community. You like "southern plantations", I like shipping containers and Brutalism. To me, this is a typical example of southern neo-georgian and with Courtland Place in such close proximity AND urban town-homes across the street it was a good candidate for boundary-edge architecture. To me, we should not preserve anything younger than 100 years unless it was a public bldg that was meant to last. And some things are built to last and other things are to raise the new generation in. The standards are determined by the precision in scale of the drawings exacted to the finishes. A hundred year bldg is exacted to the 1/64" precision; a fifty year bldg to 1/32", etc. I say live and let live on this one; 10 to 15 family units will be getting a new home in the heart of Montrose. I guess that means nothing to people who want to be able to drive around the city and gawk at houses like they are museum pieces.

I'm not sure if anyone else posted about this-- it was about "Montrose" but after I watched it I felt slightly unsettled in that I didn't think it told much about living in "Montrose" Www.osmtx.com/southwest

drew this up last week so I decided that i might as well have done a sketch up model. I call it Discovery Tower. It's an 84 floor, 1095 foot tall mixed use skyscraper. located on the block bound by Austin/Lamar/Dallas/La Branch. ground floor retail along Lamar, Austin, and La Branch. view from above disco green: the footprint is sort of like 609, but without the garage on the side... the garage goes up to that line almost half-way up. the entire central area that rises taller than the sides is hotel everything left of the hotel is residential, and everything to the right is office: two views from above:

Maybe it is just me, but noticing the Texas flag still waving on the Texas Tower as it slowly comes crumbling down is visually poetic and sad Great picture though.

b/c it has a pretty lighted curvature... duh!

The person who posted is enough proof for me.

It's worth noting that if we are talking about LA and their transit solutions (or at least, transit answers), some of their BRT is on old railroad ROWs. I think we should convert the Columbia Tap Rail Trail to BRT (with leaving some extra ROW for bikes, like LA does). This line would give buses a connection to TSU and 5th Ward and link 288 and 45 together. Plus, it leaves that space on 288 free for other uses (including the inevitable widening). While I understand that BRT and buses are different things, METRO should upgrade the bus stock (they look they haven't been updated in a while) to be "BRT-compatible". The BRT lane would have stoplights/gates to keep people off of the track just like trains would. Or we could dispense the bike trail entirely since so much trouble has happened there.

In complete agreement, it would make no sense for the city to provide incentives for retail development until the residential base is in place. To your point, once that residential base is sufficient, low level retail will develop and that's a really good time to look at how to develop retail.

Bus/BRT is far more flexible than rail because you have the option to initiate a number of different levels of service on it utilizing either dedicated or not dedicated right of way considering the amount of congestion or demand in the area. Additionally, BRT allows the ability to add features to individual stations progressively if volume increases on a particular route. As a result, it's much more cost-efficient especially when trying to build a large network.

I'm not asking for anything. I'm saying this: Perhaps if Russia intends to simply annex the Crimea (which looks pretty evident) that maybe they will work with the Ukraine to allow residents of different ethnic groups to leave with open visas. And the larger part of the population of the Crimea is native Russian (or Russian descent), so those are people who are likely in favor of Russian actions that have transpired lately. Unfortunately without American muscle (and blood) on the line the EU won't do anything and Russia and the Ukraine may come to blows. Which honestly - from a hypothetical standpoint I would like to see Russia face a serious advisary (compared to Georgia in 2008). I do hope that it doesn't come to a conflict, but if it does that it ends quickly with relatively few casualties. Back to the Olympic coverage - I feel that NBC did a much better job than during the London games. They've been trying to increase the scope of coverage to all the top athletes and not just the Americans. I liked all the "fluff" pieces they did about Russia/about sporting figures who've overcome odds and the like. I love those feel good stories. I love to tie together reasons why these men and women train, what they've had to overcome. I don't really know anyone who just wants to watch sports to see statistics and a score? Give me a reason to cheer for team x or y, or person a or b. Fluff pieces do that. I don't understand the dislike/disdain I see from people who are seemingly tired of these stories. Would Houstonians love JJ as much if he was a jerk, or just kept to himself? Nope. And you can spin it however you'd like to, but we simply wouldn't care as much about him if he was that way. To us he would be no different from Wade Smith or other less celebrated players. Would he still be great - yes, but his off field stuff has endeared him to us and for that we follow him closer and are ever the more watchful for his exploits. The Winter Olympics are less popular here and elsewhere in the States because like track and field we seldom get to watch these events - if ESPN or others had a channel dedicated to olympic sports (I think NBC actually has one) then we would get more coverage and more television sets would watch. Unfortunately even my rather large cable/dish package doesn't have the olympic sports channel so I (one of the few who try to watch everything) miss out. Thankfully we're getting new cable providers in our area!

Any information on the Market Square proposal? Was that for the block south of the square where International Tower is now proposed?

Also a large part of DART funding came from fuss that were intended for Houston, due to politics here. So in a sense you can blame us for their system being built the way it was; they had a quick turnaround to use funds and made routes as quick as possible. That's one thing people don't understand. If we fight federal funding here IT'S STILL GOING SOMEWHERE ELSE. That tax money we pay to federal funds isn't disappearing because they aren't being used here.

There is a reason drycleaners, nail/hair salons, coffee shops, sandwich shops, donut places make it in suburban strip centers... they have relatively cheap leases. The trouble is getting these needed, though low operating cost (and low value) businesses to take a risk on more expensive leases in the core. They will also need enough foot traffic to survive. And while the demand is I'm sure high for a dry cleaner (for example), most Downtown workers who need dry cleaning probably just wait till they get home to use the local cleaners. There will be a time when enough residents live Downtown that they will demand that kind of retail and that they will get that kind of retail, but I do not think we've reached that level yet. With the build out of the proposed and now underconstruction residential properties in Downtown we will reach that peak where there are enough people living within a walking distance that these sort of stores will start to pop-up. That will help fuel more retail and further exploration into the Downtown market by private retail.

I agree on most of your points. There's certainly a requirement for arterial corridors in any transit system, the question is whether you try to funnel traffic to those corridors, which is the current bus/rail methodology, or maintain multiple corridors that exist with lower traffic. I tend to feel that multiple corridors is a better approach. I don't mean to minimize Downtown Houston at all. My point is more that METRO currently indicates that about 40% of the Downtown population currently utilizes METRO to get to work. If transit penetration is about 2.5% through the region and Downtown is at 40%, that indicates to me that Downtown isn't really the problem and that solutions should focus on the balance of the region rather than taking Downtown from 40% to 60% (which would only be about 30,000 additional users). Regarding LA traffic, certainly agree with your points and in fact, left LA because of how horrible traffic got. I'd also point out though that Dallas built their system in advance of need and their traffic is horrible too. I honestly don't know of anywhere that a good transit system has improved traffic. Everywhere that I know of that has successful transit has high density; is completely gridlocked; and derives high usage because driving is so painful. I'd also point out that at no point did LA's traffic problems really impact its growth. If you look at population levels by decade, it continued to grow rapidly throughout that time period in spite of its horrible traffic. You might be right, by 2030 there might be enough ridership to justify commuter rail on multiple routes. I just question the value of building it before there is a quantifiable need for it. There are plenty of immediate needs. Let's address those first.

http://build-content.com/buffalo-studios/

If I'm playing SimCity, I would skyconnect a re-re-renovated Greenstreet to a renovated Park Shoppes (Houston Center) via a Highline absolute knock-off, type steel stucture going over Fannin north from Dallas and turn east down Lamar to arrive at the Southwest corner of San Jac & Lamar (there's a tunnel entrance there too). Killer app: water features (and could also be a sidwalk below landscaping feature). I don't think the Dallas St. renovation that was envisioned earlier by the mgmt district really made much suggestions for addressing the parking garage street faces or the loading docks. It's best to try and minimize the racket and olfactory offenses, and those beeping, approaching car buzzers are the worst.

Yes, seriously. Either provide a pix or send me to the post page to refresh my memory. Sarcasm is wasteful. Thanks.

First off, this should go on exhibit somewhere, sir! . Reminds me of the massive models on exhibit in NY and Shanghai. Are you going to keep adding the new towers as they are being built? Also, just curious, when beginning, how do you decide what the scale will be? And your adoring public DEMANDS you to create uptown and midtown! LoL!

A couple of things: In response to all the people who've copied and pasted and replied here... 1) I'm in favor of more transit options. Never did I ever say we should build this and destroy that. The more the merrier. Keep the park n' rides! Build rail! 2) I think the hub and spoke system is the best alternative. What do you propose? 3) Dallas - while usually a good comparisson to Houston, is not Houston. Houston is a singular city. We do not have Arlington, Fort Worth and Plano (plus others) pulling commuting numbers away from our largest employment areas. And the major employment areas are: Downtown, Uptown and The Medical Center - All of those employment areas contain large numbers of commuters. Our geography is largley a spoke. Even our major suburbs lie at the edge of those spokes and we needn't build some rather convoluted system like DART. Dallas grows north/northwest/northeast, with most of the city stopping a few miles south of downtown. You've all seen it. Houston on the other hand has grown not quite evenly, but much more so than Dallas. 4) My argument that we should build now - is again missed largely by you who fail to see that it will take 10-15 years to complete these projects. By that time the average daily commute time will move well north of the 28 min. we're looking at now. 5) Daily commute times are also calculated by those who travel 15 minutes from Upper Kirby to Downtown (or similar neighborhoods) versus those who are spending 1 hour from Cypress to Downtown. Those average out to be 28 minutes, that in no way reflects all commuters! And as inner city streets fill with more and more traffic those numbers will skew more and more towards a longer commute time. Fair to say we saw the numbers drop in the 2000s because of the influx of workers from the suburbs back into the inner city. Think of it like this: Houston needs a new power plant, not because we are currenlty at capacity but because we will be soon. So would you risk brownouts and electrical disruptions over building something that will be needed? I think not. Honestly, rail - done right will help commuters in Houston. Futhermore it will allow continued linear development down our major corridors and allow quick non-vehicular transit options to those who want it. The need will still be there for buses, park and rides, private cars and the like. Noah didn't build the ark because it was raining. He built it because it would rain.

They're moving faster. Two floors last week instead of one. Should be gone by May at this pace.

The good news is that the person who was doing this wasn't killed - the officer shot him in the arm. Which I wonder how soundly said officer will sleep tonight wondering if he got lucky he shot him there, or that the assailant moved just the right way and the arm kept the bullet from hitting him in a more precarious location? Imagine what the guy must feel if he was aiming at say the perps head or chest? I often wonder how military members get help for their ptsd but police officers seldom do (at least its not widely discussed); but police must suffer many of these same issues (even just being in a car chase) there must be some long term issues these officers suffer from - perhaps unknowingly at that? I mean the officer who shot the guy at the HPD Starbucks is only on desk duty for 3 days. If I were in his shoes I would need more than that amount of time to clear my head and be able to react/think properly to a crisis situation - training or no training.

Soil samples:

The Days Inn is quite something. I doubt that it will even make visually interesting urban decay as it rots away. It's freaking huge too in a sea of mostly empty lots. Maybe they'll eventually build tall buildings all around it and hide it from everyone.