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Onto the good stuff! Splitting this into two postings.

I also attended the event and was fortunate to meet ekdrm2d1. I saw him taking pictures and figured he had to be a HAIFER. It's nice to put a face with a name. I thought the event was very well run and informative. Also for all of those arguments in the past about whether the med center was in the 3rd ward. If it wasn't it is now. This will be there second development in this very large tract of land that I'm sure will continue to grow. So yes the Med center is in the 3rd ward. The new buildings 2 which are very attractive 2 and 3 story edifices. It's a very nice layout with the two buildings running parallel to each other with a connecting courtyard that provides quite a bit of open space. The buildings facade facing the courtyard is primarily glass and the front facing the main boulevard looks to be made of a white concrete or panels that have multiple widows of varying sizes running vertically and horizontally. They will have a park on one end that will be made available to patients to walk in, and a separate building for events held by the UTHSC and HHSE. The preview was followed by a nice table of light bites and beverages. It was very well attended by politicians regional health care specialists and UT brass. They plan on Breaking ground this summer with completion 20/21

The idea behind the subsidy is that it pays for itself and thensome through increasing the tax base in the long run. The subsidy was thought to be necessary to get the first new residential projects going, which would pay higher taxes in the long run, and to spurn new projects without a subsidy.

“Rimmed” brings to mind a *very* colorful image. 😉 #haifafterdark

Here are the webcams I have. I forgot to post this earlier. I have two here from MFAH https://www.mfah.org/about/campus-redevelopment/ http://www.earthcam.net/projects/museumoffinearts/houston/rwd.php?cam=live Next is the UH dorms being built, up until a couple of weeks ago it also had the new Fertitta Center. http://uh.edu/infotech/services/webcam/more-cameras.php Here is the Holocaust Museum expansion. https://app.oxblue.com/open/mccarthy/holocaustmuseumhouston Next is the new Memorial Herman tower. Its pretty much done but the time-lapses are worth looking at. http://www.breakingnewgroundproject.org/projects/texas-medical-center/construction-cam/ Next is Tradition senior living https://app.oxblue.com/open/TraditionSenior/BuffaloSpeedway Lastly is THE Tradition senior living. https://app.oxblue.com/open/TraditionSenior/Woodway

One thing I'm a little disappointed in, after looking at the images that ekdrm2d1 shot, I wish they had engineered for a green roof. Those roofs are crying out for some grass.

i believe the Meninger is private care. this is state operated. Their facility next door turns away up to 60 people a day. So this is very necessary to the mental health of our community and helps get some of the people off of the streets.

They are putting some serious work into this sales office. Pretty impressive!

Report from last night: first of all, it was surprisingly packed. Every seat full plus 30-40 SRO, so maybe around 100 people? PDF of the presentation not available online yet, so my phone photos will have to suffice. Timeline: 50% design early Feb. 90% design late Feb, 100% design mid-March, Construction begins late March. Here is the proposed system as a whole. They are thinking that construction on all 4 of these will be mostly done by the end of the summer! The detailed #2 segment: The route will extend from a soon to be built plaza at Austin street on the north end of downtown, where the parks board will be joining the westbound and eastbound bike trails together. They originally were going to split the north and southbound bike trails to Caroline and Austin, but due to Caroline being a clusterf*ck with construction for the next 2 years, they are going to go 2-way just on Austin. So a reduction of one lane and parked cars between the street and the protected bike lane. Big thumbs up for this solution. This will run from the north side of downtown all of the way to McGowan. Next section: This is where the only negative comments came from. Several townhome owners from the Anita/Tuam area were there and mildly perturbed that there would be a parking reduction. Peter Eccles actually handled this pretty well. Total loss of parking spots would be 37 spaces. One homeowner, who identified himself as a bicyclists, was unconvinced that it made sense to eliminate the parking and had they studied it. He said that it had been studied, and that the parking in the area never topped out above 45% utilized, and that was actually during the day when it was likely that construction workers were parking. At night, it varied from 30-35% utilized. The 37 spaces were equivalent to 7% of the parking. (Ed. comment by me: rekttttttt) One homeowner said that although his parking would be affected, the bike lane was so so much more important (raucous applause followed). All intersections with lights would have the bike traffic lights added to give bikers a few extra seconds to enter the intersection. At HCC, the project would dogleg over one block, and that dogleg would occur in HCC's campus at Winbern. Everything south from there would be sharrows, so shared on-street with cars and bicycle arrows painted on the street. At either Prospect or Calumet, the sharrows would dogleg over to Crawford. Crawford at Hermann will likely be turned into a four-way stop. They received feedback from the children's museum that they didn't want to have the bike lane going through when they have so many buses parked along the street there. Let me know if y'all have any questions. Edit: presentation looks to be up now http://houstonbikeplan.org/implementation/infrastructure/austin-corridor/

A marina in midtown would be easy - 288 already brings in water for the boats every rain, so all they need is some docks

I know next to nothing about this project except that it should be reshaped and put in midtown.

It's worse than that. Remember that, when it comes to housing, it's not a question of whether it gets built, it's a question of where. The residents of this building would generate a whole lot less impervious cover per resident (and square foot of built area) than almost any other type of development, with the exception of house boats in the ship channel. If housing doesn't get built here, it (and a lot more impervious cover in the form of roads and highways) is going to get built further north and west of here, which is to say, upstream. If nearby residents are TRULY concerned about drainage issues affecting their neighborhood, they should send RD a thank-you note.

For anyone confused about the shape I drew in the previous image: The overall development looks like that.

Thats a nice shot of Uptown. From this angle it appears fairly dense.

Helped a blind man through the construction zone earlier this week. Sidewalk was closed, so he was forced to walk near traffic. I helped guide his path. Just to make sure!

I am glad for this. Anything which boosts Houston is good. But let us not forget that Houston already has the Menninger Clinic which has a world wide reputation for mental health care.

This is what I was thinking as well. Did some digging and apparently here in COH deed restrictions, when they are signed, last for around 25-30 years. Some are continuously renewed after the fact for another 25-30 years, and some just stop and are abandoned. I'm wondering if the residents simply dug up older deed restrictions, but the restrictions have sense passed and they never renewed the restrictions (this would be a possible argument for why a commercial property was allowed to be built in the first place. Thats a possible out for this development (although lucky! You never want to hope for this to be the case.)

The new in bound off ramp at Holcombe for the med center on 288 that is under construction now is going to have a spectacular view of downtown. Since it's going over the freeway it has a nice elevation to give an unencumbered view of downtown from the southeast and a relatively clear shot.

Some of it may because there were more rental options downtown, and some of it may have been renovations being done (they replaced all the elevators, and that is a special hell that I would not wish on anyone), but after everything is done the rental prices are all less than what I originally signed a lease for in 2013

I suspect they'd be held to be abandoned as far as restricting commercial use of the property, but going from a one-two story commercial building to a highrise is quite a shift. I'd have suggested getting a declaratory judgment on the issue before moving forward with the purchase. Edit: I'd need to see the actual language of the deed restrictions to determine arguments on the potential scope of abandonment. Abandonment of a portion of a deed restriction does not meet abandonment of all of the restrictions. So, if the restrictions also impose height or other limitations, those might be enforced even if the use restriction could not be enforced.

A little disappointing that they are going with Sharrows for the last segment (did they say why?) but overall it looks good

A side effect of the new, fancy housing is the existing housing had to lower their prices to compete - Houston House's rents have gone down by hundreds of dollars since the Skyhouse duo opened

Looking at this project proposal, it seems like pure fantasy to me. Just a hunch.

The deed restriction fight could be interesting. Doesn't seem they've been enforced since the current use of the site is not single-family use. I wonder if they are still enforceable.

You have some good opportunities here with direct water access, the golf course, and a growing community that could embrace this. Hopefully someone gets some background convo to share from the TIRZ meeting today.

I wish I was a fly on the wall the moment RD rimmed the idiot that didn't properly check the deed-restrictions. Fact that nobody checked on this, and that now it has to, most likely, go infront of committee and get a 75% vote means that this might actually not happen, and everyone involved is going to lose a bunch of money. Damn. I mean that is literally one of the first things you do! Even before you start Schematic Design...even sometimes before accepting a job with a client! Thats a critical blunder, and even worse, an unnecessary one. EDIT: This is by the way, from someone that works in the industry thats simply trying to put this into perspective. Lets just say there are probably many an architect who probably wouldn't have accepted this job if they found out that the deed-restrictions didn't match the proposal by the client (or if the architect still wanted to work with the client then at least they could go out there and find another piece of land to make it work.) Basically at this point, they are trying to push a square peg into a round hole.

Downtown is alive, It has a pulse, a heartbeat and has been taken off life support systems. Every time I go downtown on any day there are many more people walking, riding bikes, eating and drinking, in the bars and restaurants and the parks and Avenida de las Americas are always crowded!!!!

There is a neat little apartment complex right next to The Georgian that I never even knew existed - it's got maybe 10 units in two buildings, with covered parking spaces. That will probably survive quite a bit longer because the land is not a large enough parcel to interest the developers. Unfortunately, The Georgian is yet another example of medium-low density being replaced with medium-high density. A marginal improvement in density - but it's also understandable that they would not try for a highrise there given that it abuts directly to single family homes. (whatever happened with Ashby anyway)

I must admit I've been surprised by how many people I've seen at Finn Hall after hours.

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Found some renderings of a mixed-use project by Gensler. http://terraloom.com/

I talked to an executive at CBRE a couple years ago in his office in Bank of America tower and he specifically said "a tower like the one we are in will probably never get built in Houston again." Now I'm not saying what he says in absolutely going to be proven true but I think an executive vice president of the largest commercial real estate firm in the world might know a thing or two. Chase and Wells Fargo were built when executives cared more about their egos, and having the biggest tower in town. Now they prioritize employee comfort and ROI. Very few companies now would be willing to spend hundreds of millions more on a project just to have it be the tallest tower in Houston. And just to be clear I would LOVE to be proven wrong. A supertall would be amazing, I'm just not holing my breath.

Doug Johnson had a great big personality and made everyone laugh. He always seemed to be having such a good time. I used to love the banter between Doug and Ron Stone. Another one of the early newscasters who made his mark here on Channel 2 and later 11 was Ray Miller, who ran the news at channel 2 and was the original eyes of Texas host. His son Doug Miller has worked at channel 11 for probably 30 years.

Its only a draft, but still shows a lack of vision, or awareness of what is possible. Its like they exist in a bubble and are unaware of precedents done by other cities anywhere else. There is a lot of potential (even using existing rail lines and utility corridors) to really implement a true multi layered transportation infrastructure, but everyone there seems to have blinders on. EDIT: By the way, the extension to the courthouses' is a waste of time. You have two light rail lines with potential to head west and all they want to do is extend them 0.1 miles to courthouses that might either be relocated or demoed within the next decade?! Just have no clue what these people are thinking. EDIT2: They really need to grab all the people that have worked on Downtown Greenbelt project, The I45 Corridor project, etc... When I looked at those presentations, immediately I told myself, these are people with vision. Who are excited to do their jobs, and want to go all out for this city. METRO is clearly lagging behind and is taking a half-hearted approach.

One of our drone operators needs to take a video from this angled height. It's remarkable because not only do you see downtown and the med center, but you also get Galleria/Uptown and Greenway Plaza in the view. It's an amazing angle and height for a better informed understanding of how Houston is slowly filling in from all directions.

I haven't had a chance to snap a picture, but significant work was happening all yesterday from morning until the night. The entire outer shell is being removed.

The red crane came down today. Not a lot of visible progress from the outside.

Tower crane has been up for several weeks

Well to differentiate themselves from other business. Personally I would like a single use bag ban and bottle & can deposit in this state but that will never happen.

Good! We don’t have 20-30 years to wait for the majority of uninformed/ignorant consumers to get on board with these plastic bans. I feel they need to be forced at this point especially for the sake of our planet, ocean and wildlife. They didn’t ask for our non biodegradable waste in their habitats. And shame on Texas for going backasswards on the city plastic bag bans. I live in Santa Fe, NM now where there is a plastic bag ban and it has been a very easy transition for us. The affordable and durable fabric reusable bags have worked out just fine when grocery shopping and are much stronger than the flimsy plastic bags. It’s truly a no brainer. I do concur that some plastic bags will still have purpose but not in the highly wasteful amounts that we are currently using.