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Boots are back on the ground. I repeat. Boots are back on the ground!

Been a while since I sent pics. Here is the progress so far. Topped out on concrete, two floors of framing on half. ArchCon also moved the trailers off the lot they were renting off Navigation and into the garage of the building. Also, I'm not sure if there is a thread for this, but work has started on Phase 2 of the InHome development on Canal right behind Mi Familia. (Sorry about low res. Upload cap!)

This is really nice at night. This photo doesn't do it justice. Houston @ Night by Marc longoria, on Flickr

They were making pretty serious efforts to improve downtown already. All the phases of Buffalo Bayou Park over the years, starting in 1986, usually a $15-20 million city contribution for each phase. Two Market Square redos in twenty years. The Main Street makeover in conjunction with the rail line. The Cotswold Project to beautify the historic district. Discovery Green. The Downtown Living Initiative. More that I'm forgetting.

Sorry for the double post but here's a new rendering that matches up with the markers on site: https://www.abcahouston.com/ouieats

Activity has started back up again. Looks like this is finally moving forward! WOMH Oui Eats by Marc longoria, on Flickr WOMH Oui Eats by Marc longoria, on Flickr WOMH Oui Eats by Marc longoria, on Flickr

Construction is almost done on this. I'll see if I can snag a photo sometime.

Thanks for sharing. Under Segment 3, Fourth Ward Gateway: "Reconciling METRO Bus Staging, detention, and Pierce Skypark entry, all proposed in the same location at the south end Downtown Connector ramps." I didn't realize the skypark was still on the table. BIG fan of having a Highline or 606-type park in our urban core.

Mayor Turner’s letter to TXDOT can be found below: http://www.houstontx.gov/planning/nhhip/docs_pdfs/Commissioner Ryan - NHHIP - Letter & Technical Appendix.pdf My read is that Segment 3 can proceed essentially as proposed. Segments 1 and 2 are where the bulk of the city’s more significant changes are focused.

IH 10 @ Waco, we don't see many from this side of town but it looks gorgeous from this angle.

How is Texas A&M getting away with investing hundreds of millions of dollars in our city without provoking Cougar-town to man the ramparts? Is it going unnoticed because they aren't showing any soccer fields or tennis courts? 😉

The idea is that medicine needs more engineers in the field to make treatment more advanced and cheaper. (Aggie engineer here, student when this all was announced although I'm in aerospace, not medicine) They pitched it to us that in engineering school our way of thinking is changed to a creative problem solving capacity and that we seek to understand instead of just memorize (I've been told by friends that med school professors love having engineers in their classes for this reason). Rather than just knowing what the body does, in med school engineers seek to understand the how and why. They say this would allow us to use that creative problem solving ability to attack the problems head on. Instead of just providing treatment, physician engineers would constantly come up with new solutions- hardware, using data, or otherwise- to treat patients. Essentially, applying the problem solving ability of engineers to the medical field. Really what it is is broadening the pool that medicine pulls from, adding people of new backgrounds, which will definitely make the field better.

Progress on Austin St in downtown:

Very happy to see some movement around Oui Eats. Coupled with the (hopefully to be finished) Holiday Inn Express on N. Main, Black Page Brewing, WOMH, and Raven Tower, I expect to see quite a change in the area by mid-late 2021. There are still several vacant, high-vis lots for sale along N. Main and Boundary St. that I suspect (if we get some kind of normalcy to our lives back) won't remain vacant for too long.

ha, I guess if you can't convince people to pay for the safety of others, find a way to show that they are paying for their own safety too wow, they're moving pretty quick, on Monday they were still working from Polk to Lamar. roughly a block a day to paint?

Skyparks, the Bagby total redsign, bike lanes, pocket parks...the city is certainly going all out now that these expensive condos and apartments are going up in DT. I am incredibly all for their efforts, its just funny what having people with higher net-worths move into DT has done to the city's efforts to improve the area.

Not only money but the medical field was way behind the tech curb and is now drastically changing with new technology being introduced. Doctors will increasingly need to know robotics and automation. Houston could be the new technology-medicine hotbed for innovation with all of our medical institutions adapting to new technologies in the field.

Taken from the Lamar St side;.

I had forgotten that I took this about 2 weeks ago. I'm a newbie when it comes to wide angle stuff / compositing.

Property flyer has concept renderings. It looks gorgeous. https://images2.loopnet.com/d2/wXhjfI1VLM7l-Sl9dohE1wmwS9rNy_OKZ05g_MVZd8M/document.pdf

Noticed an outlined development on a property flyer. The old office building on Richmond was once a planned to be a robot brothel that fell through. https://www.loopnet.com/listing/5615-richmond-ave-houston-tx/14016727/ Highlighted in green on the left https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/5440-Richmond-Ave-Houston-TX/18710651/

Con Forms Placing Boom spotted.

Garage is coming along.

Levitt Pavilion has changed. WWG is now using the Shell campus as apart of the master plan. Levitt Pavilion will be relocated, and additional storm water detention will be added. https://www.instagram.com/stellarpgtx/

I will never forgive the city for not allowing the robot brothel... it was bringing me one step closer to living my Blade Runner dream

New section of land has been marketed for sale. 5 acres along the South Main frontage road. https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/12115-S-Main-Houston-TX/14041033/

I’m moreso worried about when this fed pump manipulation ends and the stock market crashes, but I agree the hotel is a large part of the equation here.

https://today.tamu.edu/2020/05/18/texas-am-system-brands-landmark-campus-in-texas-medical-center/ Texas A&M System Brands Landmark Campus In Texas Medical Center The five-acre mixed-use Texas A&M Innovation Plaza in Houston will be home to the Engineering Medicine program. By Texas A&M University System Communications StaffMAY 18, 2020 The Texas A&M Innovation Plaza in the Texas Medical Center area will include the renovation of an 18-story building, plus $401 million in private sector money to build two new towers. Texas A&M University System The Texas A&M University System has announced the name of its landmark 5-acre campus in Houston, Texas, at the prominent intersection of Holcombe Boulevard and Main Street near the Texas Medical Center (TMC). Setting a new standard for collaboration in engineering, medicine, research and education is the first all-new mixed-use campus for the Texas A&M System in Houston: Texas A&M Innovation Plaza. The Texas A&M University System initiated the new campus by acquiring and renovating an 18-story office building at 1020 Holcombe Blvd. to be the home for EnMed, a unique two-degree program that provides students the chance to earn a master’s degree in engineering from Texas A&M University and a medical degree from the Texas A&M College of Medicine. The EnMed Building will open later this year. Complementing the academic, research, discovery and innovation missions of the EnMed Building, Texas A&M Innovation Plaza will provide a welcoming, secure and vibrant experience to the campus population and visitors alike, with generous green spaces and lifestyle amenities not commonly found in the TMC area. With groundbreaking scheduled in late 2020, the System’s public-private partnership (P3) developer is bringing additional investment of $401 million to fulfill unmet needs in the area with two complementary towers totaling an additional 1.9 million square feet. “EnMed is just the first example of innovation that Texas A&M System intends to bring to the Texas A&M Innovation Plaza,” said Texas A&M System Chancellor John Sharp. “We are excited to have such a visible location in the Texas Medical Center.” Scheduled to be complete in June 2022, a 19-story, 714-bed student housing tower will overlook a scenic plaza flanked by a large garage with retail and dining at grade with convenient, affordable parking for 2,800 vehicles. Texas A&M medical students and Prairie View A&M University nursing students will be given priority for housing, but students from other institutions could fill open slots, if available. Scheduled to be delivered in January 2024 is a 17-story, 515,000 square-foot integrated medical building that will be built atop the 13-story parking structure. With generous, efficient floorplates and robust building technologies, this integrated medical building will be ideally suited to medical, clinical, biomedical, technology and office uses. Accessible via Main Street, Holcombe Boulevard and Fannin Street, Texas A&M Innovation Plaza is also adjacent to the METRO TMC Station, providing convenient connectivity via bus and light rail service to the TMC, Museum District and Downtown Houston. The developer for the P3 projects is Medistar Corporation. American Triple I Partners, founded by Texas A&M alum Henry Cisneros, is part of the financing team.

Developers sink or swim by their ability to beat other developers in the race to build. It's all the requirements of government entities and financing sources that slow things down. If you've ever gotten a mortgage on a house and put up with request after request for more detail and explanation of your financial history and current job, you can imagine what the process is like on a $100 million loan. That being said, Houston's developers built 20 million square feet of office space in the early 2010's and got 5,000 apartments off the ground in the downtown area alone before the bust, so not too shabby.

From the Dallas Regional Chamber of Commerce: 10,000 + American Airlines Group AT&T Bank of America Baylor Scott & White JPMorgan Chase Kroger Lockheed Martin Medical City Healthcare Naval Air Station Parkland Hospital Southwest Airlines Texas Health Resources Texas Instruments UPS US Postal Service UT Southwestern Medical Center Walmart 5,000 - 9,999 Army & Air Force Exchange Service Children's Health CookChildren's Health Care System Dallas County Community College District FedEx Fidelity Investments Home Depot J.C. Penney L-3 Technologies Lowe's McAfee Methodist Health System Pepsico Raytheon State Farm Insurance Target Tom Thumb University of North Texas System Verizon Communications

From Greater Houston Partnership: Largest employers (excluding government employers (except hospitals, universities and research centers) and fast food chains). More than 20,000: H-E-B Houston Methodist Memorial Hermann Health System UT MD Anderson Cancer Center Walmart 10,000 - 19,999: ExxonMobil HCA Kroger National Oilwell Varco Schlumberger Shell Oil Co. Texas Children's Hospital United Airlines UT Medical Branch Health System 5,000 - 9,999 AT&T Baker Hughes Baylor College of Medicine BP America CenterPoint Energy Chevron CHI St Luke's Health Dow Chemical Co Halliburton Harris Health System Hewlett Packard Enterprise Home Depot Houston Community College JPMorgan Chase KBR Lone Star College Michael E DeBakey VA Medical Center S&B Engineers and Constructors Target Corp. University of Houston UT Health Science Center Walgreens

I know this is off topic some.. 'The Moderne' has not made one single sale?

I couldn't find any info. on Kimpton's website re Houston, so hopefully they haven't pulled out... If they are still committed, I actually believe this will break ground in Q1 2021 since the hotel now is a larger part of the equation with the reduced project scope. What is becoming more clear is that Houston just isn't quite there yet in terms of high-rise for-sale units. We're seeing developers propose larger scale projects with condos a part of the mix, and after their sales office tests the market over a period of time, they reduce the number of units accordingly as we've seen with the Allen and now Laneways. While much smaller in scale, Moderne at Rice Village is a great example of the current market. Of course, this will change over time, but for now it seems buyers are still more interested in actual homes or town homes then vertical living when it comes to for-sale units.

Exactly. They should have said ground zero instead.

Wouldn’t it be kind of a good thing to be under construction during a downturn? If you anticipate that the market is recovering when this project delivers (in two years or so), their timing may be perfect. Or am I missing something?

Not really. I mean looking at the brochure, they still have plans for block A and block C. I believe block D is the existing tower. And block B is what they’re building at the moment. The architecture changed but I think the overall scope is the same.

Downtown Houston Skyline with Be Someone Bridge by Raul Cano, on Flickr

Untitled by Houston Midtown, on Flickr

Converting all pdfs into jpegs over the course of today. All materials can be found from this post above: Once I look through all documents I'll probably put in my too cents, but my inital reaction is that this is an impressive amount of work. They really did listen to comments and actually working hard to pitch the cities side to TXDOT. I'm glad they also posted the timeline for what is going to happen going forward. This clarifies why TXDOT again didn't include recent inputs and that was because both are working parallel to each other, but will not cross over until both processes are complete. In order to not create one giant post I will be posting the jpegs in spurts. INTRO: I'll post the next segment in a couple hours.

Blue screen is up on the other side.

fullsizeoutput_bcd by George Zimzores, on Flickr