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2016 10 19: Photo by me

Fence up around entire plot - including Rosalie Closed - damn I am pumped for this!!!!!

Roll Call: Who all is going to the hard hat tour on saturday? A few pictures from sunday..

Jones hall has already renovated. It is a beautiful building. Who cares about Dallas? Houston has more opera, symphony, museums that Dallas will not have. I love when they have the free opera at Herman Park. It's so fun eating food and sit back and watch it. Dallas has nothing like that. A friend of mine came down from Dallas to visit the the Menil and love it! And the expansion of the Museum of Fine Arts.

"It's 50 years old" in and of itself is not a good reason to level a building. The complaints about Jones Hall pretty much all fall into some category of "it can be fixed." Seat width and number of aisles? Modifying that dang near falls into routine maintenance territory. Modifying the stage, adding restrooms, changing stairs to ramps, replacing the ceiling... none of that is exactly rocket science, and all of it can be done for a lot less in both time and money than starting over from scratch - if you want to see how, just look one block to the northwest towards the Alley,

There's now glass installed on the side facing 610.

Demo permits issued! http://swamplot.com/daily-demolition-report-at-the-fairgrounds/2016-10-19/

Allens Landing by Marc longoria, on Flickr Allens Landing by Marc longoria, on Flickr Allens Landing by Marc longoria, on Flickr Allens Landing by Marc longoria, on Flickr Allens Landing by Marc longoria, on Flickr

happy for you guys! i remember being so freaking excited for my whole foods on post oak! its 1 block from my home and 2 blocks from my work and i didnt realize just how much i would be going there but its at least 3 to 5 times a week! congrats and hope its built and open before you know it!

"Dallasy notion"? Your stat on total annual attendance didn't prove anything, as you seem to think. If you can find a stat on actual symphony ticket sales (not ticket giveaways to fill seats), that might mean something. Jones Hall seats 50% more people, for one thing. It is used by other organizations besides the symphony. It would be like saying that the Astrodome was a more successful baseball venue than Minute Maid Park, and then pointing to total annual attendance including rodeos, monster truck rallies, and all other events there, and ignoring its much larger seating capacity. Show me Astros ticket revenue at both places and then we'll talk. Really, you don't have to believe me when I said that I remembered reading this, but your counterargument is embarrassing. As for my "unwarranted assumptions," obviously I cannot prove that a renovated Jones Hall could not suddenly become a great piece of architecture with world class acoustics. I'm just making the argument, I don't think it can. Yeah, it's an assumption, but I don't think an "unwarranted" one. Show me some concert halls that were somewhat sentimentally admired and taken care of local landmarks in their cities, whose own music directors wished they could eventually be replaced, which then suddenly after 50 years had gone by were renovated into acoustical and architectural jaw-droppers. Then you can say my assumption is "unwarranted." Until then, I think my assumption is pretty good.

Ok, people who work there, have gone to it over the years have a certain sentimental love for it, the way I love the house I grew up in. It's not a landmark beyond the Houston metro. Most people you would talk to in the Houston metro would agree with what I've been saying - good, but not great. We can do better.

I dispute your assumption that nobody really loves Jones Hall. The article that kicked off this conversation included several quotes from several people who clearly love Jones Hall. The organizations that are housed in it clearly have a lot of love for it; hence they have decided to go the route of refurbishing, rather than abandoning and replacing. to coin a phrase, How quickly did you skim the Chronicle article? ;-)

Going to be so awesome for the area. May need to visit Maple Leaf soon to check up on it!

@nate4l1f3

Sad trombone.mp3

I don't really recall. They moved the pay kiosk for the surface lot and had some new signage directing parkers to it, so in addition to half the lot being taped off, it looked like they were re-aligning for some kind of semi-permanent change.

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Obviously it would take longer to raise $400 million than $200 million. With the oil downturn, it would probably have to wait a few years. But you'd be getting a magnificent hall that could be a landmark, and that would have a 50-75 year life expectancy. With the Jones, you've got something that will never be a gorgeous landmark like the Meyerson, is already 50 years old, and you're paying all this money to give it another 25 years of being good but not great. Ive read in the past that the Dallas Symphony consistently sells more tickets than ours, despite not being as good a symphony. Not hard to see why. Someone who isn't a music lover would take a date to the Meyerson because it's such a stunning place. That person would not take a date to Jones. It was built at a time when Houston was still a large regional city rather than what we are now, when it was comparable to Baltimore or Milwaukee, and we had to make it multi-purpose because we couldn't afford a pure symphony hall that didn't accommodate our other organizations. That necessarily involves compromise. Now we can build something first rate. Let the Chevy go and put the money towards a Mercedes.

Convince the Legislature to raise taxes so there's non toll sources to pay the construction costs.

This is going the crown stucco jewel of Uptown. Will really tie in the other tan/beige beautes.

Could have the same reason as the lack of recent postings in the "when will the boom end" thread.

Well, goodness knows, if Dallas isn't replacing any parts in their symphony hall, then we certainly shouldn't be doing so either. And on that note, someone should probably alert Lincoln Center officials in New York City that Dallas isn't replacing any parts in their symphony hall so Lincoln Center shouldn't be wasting their money refurbishing the home of the New York Philharmonic. They did a relatively minor refurbishment to Jones Hall a while back mostly, I think, to bring it into ADA compliance and then to repair the exterior marble... had nothing to do with the flexible ceiling (the flexible ceiling was a feature when the hall was originally constructed).

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quiet zone hombre. i like it as well... it's far from tacky. can't please everyone i guess.

I believe the building El Rey currently occupies will be demolished as part of this redevelopment. There's currently a new El Rey under construction at Yale and 610 that will presumably replace the one at 34th and Ella once they vacate the building.

The board voted to allow the school to accept the donation and the name change to Kinder High School for the Performing Arts. This is great news and I imagine some of this money helped with the shortfall that occurred after they realized they had to add an underground garage. This is a real win for the upgrade of the facilities at KHSPVA. I applaud the boards approval. Now maybe other philanthropic minded citizens will do the same for some of the other schools that need help just to improve classrooms needs.

Just about done! After they arranged all the patio furniture for the photoshoot shown above, they moved everything aside again to wash the whole deck, and today they positioned all the furniture again! Bar still isn't quite ready yet, but the rest appears done: