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Beautiful! This highlights the the benefit of them turning this building 45 degrees from the standard downtown layout. It makes it possible for cool variations like this. Great addition to the skyline!!!

Exterior trim going on.

The hole. Rebar and steel for the hole. Horizon Tower For Lease sign that's about to be posted.

To me one of the most exciting parts to this is The Standard hotel is a partner. Having a Standard in Houston and especially Montrose, would be incredible for the neighborhood. Really interested to learn more and hope this is an active proposal.

Great photo. Brochure worthy. Texas Tower shines out like Houston's signature tower.

I literally thought I was taking crazy pills when the thread shifted to figuring out the location when I had JUST posted it. lol After viewing the video again, this project will take up the entire block bounded by Sul Ross, Montrose, Branard, & Yoakum. https://www.google.com/maps/@29.7375412,-95.3915216,200m/data=!3m1!1e3

I think our friend Phillip_White pegged it above. The fly-through video very clearly states the address as 3990 Montrose. Since that address is (a) owned by one of the project partners (Univ of St Thomas) and (b) currently a surface parking lot, there doesn't really seem to be any doubt of the location fo this project.

I likewise checked it out last week and had a similarly awesome experience. The drinks and food were great and the buildout of the space is incredible. The only suggestion I'd have for them is that they could really use a bike rack.

Now that is something we def need, more simple entertainment options. I love playing putt putt and getting hammered. Looks like this will coincide with the remodel.

https://www.puttshack.com/blog/puttshack-signs-new-lease-in-the-shops-at-houston-center This looks cool

What on earth are "curated" condos? What does that even mean? And how can it be "iconic" before it is even built? More than the usual amount of marketing blather here. Surprised it's not "artisanal".

This is mostly in jest. The podiums might be ugly, but at least he gets things built.

https://www.sanestrella-houston.com/

Zuma Fun Centers is being dismantled and demolished. HCAD lists the current owner as Whiteco Industries. Same company as Whiteco Residential that develops luxury housing? What exactly is going on here?

wow!!

Link to survey about the I-45 North Houston Highway Improvement Project (I-45 NHHIP). https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2022UTP

This is a miracle!

This might be why the Night Shift manager I talked to the other day said that they were looking for a new parking solution and that they would be taking advantage of the 50% reduction.

That's so legit! Exciting. I think this will be the only putt putt course inside 610?

694073490_UsersGuideforWPandTODreport_6_24_2020.pdf

Segundo Coffee Lab's hours on Google and Facebook have been updated to 6am-9pm. I was there around 7 this morning and they were indeed open.

So you're saying it should be called Not Even Donuts

https://www.suebausa.com/under-construction/ https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2021/02/05/sueba-usa-opens-multifamily-development-rosenberg.html

Has anyone heard about this? Their website is pretty generic, but someone on the Nextdoor app mentioned it’s going to be at the southwest corner of Montrose & West Alabama at 3900 Montrose Blvd. Their list of “partners” (see image below) appears to be quite wide ranging...including both Bludorn restaurant and giant Japanese tech investor SoftBank Group. https://bridgecityhouston.com/theorigin/

as it relates to sidewalks, yes. found this. https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/sidewalk-regulations.html I'll guess there's other expectations around more than just sidewalks though.

Agreed, but city council is not interested in being the heavy hand here. There is currently no enforcement options for forcing repair of sidewalks. They do have some programs to install new sidewalks near schools and near disabled residents, but it is sloooow moving. What it comes down to is money of course. I read that the outstanding estimated sidewalk rehabilitation cost is immense in the city. Like 9 figures? And it is technically the responsibility of property owners and not the city, so I doubt the city is going to pay for that. It would be great to have an option provided by the city to provide a low-interest loan where the city comes in and does all of the work and the homeowner pays a small amount over time. I think a lot of people would prefer to have better sidewalks and would pay a small amount for it, but wouldn't drop $2k or something.

OK, so it hasn't been 20 years of HAIF. It's been 19 and change. But the 20th anniversary is coming up, and because I need a job, I've been looking through what remains of the HAIF archives to fill in my LinkedIn profile. So I thought I'd share some of my memories here. The issue of how old HAIF is remains kind of vague. HAIF started as a subsection of houstonarchitecture.info. But that site didn't start on that domain. It was on a different one before moving to ha.i, which happened in 2002. So that's why if you base things on the site's content, it's been 20 years, but if you base it on the address, it's been 19ish. Which you like to use is up to you. There's not a lot left in the HAIF archives. But what is there shows that HAIF was a pioneer in a lot of spaces. Things that we did back in the early days of HAIF were cutting-edge, and considered normal today. Unfortunately, back in 2002, the notion of a terabyte of cheap storage that fit in the palm of your hand was as science fiction as flying cars are today. So over the years, I saved very little. But here are some highlights, in no particular order. HAIF Days We used to have custom banners at the top of HAIF, celebrating different random days of the year. Birthdays, holidays, and naturally HAIF anniversaries. We don't do that anymore. Back when HAIF started, it was a cute, fun, community-building exercise and people loved it. Today, we don't do that anymore. People on the internet are just looking for an excuse to complain and be "offended" on behalf of other people they don't even know. The end came one year when someone moaned about a "HAIFy Christmas!" banner, and threatened to splatter their angst all over social media in a smear campaign. I just gave up. We can't have nice things anymore. So here's a selection from years past: I'm not sure what Duran Duran day is, but we marked it twice. Bastille Day One of many for Halloween. I've always been a big Halloween guy. One of many for when storms threatened. This was for Memorial Day The day the first iPhone came out. Another Memorial Day one. I have no memory of why @Pumapayamgot his own day. Maybe he wrote us a check? Again, I have no idea why @TheNichegot his own day, either. Other days We also had custom banners for non-holiday days. This was on the day that I quit my job at the television station. This was the day after I watched an Indiana Jones movie. This was the day when I held a "Spot the Editor" contest and got scammed out of an iPod. Oh, well. I tried. This was when we released HAIF:book. Yes, there was a companion book for HAIF. This was the year we had M&M's custom-made in the HAIF name and colors. Super expensive and a real ordeal to pull off back then. Now you can just order them online. Inspired by a flight into Hobby airport one morning. From back when we used to sell ad-free HAIF. I think this was supposed to be an optical illusion. I don't think anyone ever noticed it. I have a vague notion of the HAIF Finance Challenge. But don't really remember anything about it. This was when we had a photo contest. This was making fun of all the local TV stations hyping the shift to HDTV. We did manage to eventually give away an iPod. I don't remember how, though. This was the day we started paying our hosting provider to purchase carbon offset credits. Today, it's hard to find a hosting provider that isn't green, or headed that way. HAIF:cam At one time, we had a small network of live webcams around town. This is a picture from 2002, taken from the camera at Dakota Lofts. Piece of crap, that thing was. But I'm almost positive that we were the first web site to live stream a hurricane coming ashore, in Houston or anywhere else. HAIF:weather Everyone has a weather app with them all the time now. This wasn't true way back when. At one time, HAIF:weather was the only weather app you could get for your iPhone, other than the built-in one from Apple. It had current conditions, a five-day forecast, weather radar updated every 15 minutes, and streaming audio forecasts from an actual real meteorologist: Keith Monahan over at KHCW (now KIAH). This was in the days before Apple had an App Store, so all apps were "web apps," which is a trend to which more and more companies are returning. Apple featured HAIF:weather in some of its marketing material. Even today, you pay extra for radar in most weather apps. We had it 13 years ago for free. HAIF:weather on Apple's web site. HAIF:weather installed on the first iPhone. Who's up for a game of Super Monkey Ball? HAIF:traffic The HAIF:traffic logo At one time we hooked up with a traffic service and provided live traffic maps and updates on the web, mobile devices, and even by text message. Today there are a thousand apps that will do it. We were one of the first. And probably the only one to grade traffic on a scale of Movin' Easy to Mass Hysteria. A screenshot of the we version of HAIF:traffic A screenshot from the mobile version of HAIF:traffic It's a fact: HAIF is awesome In 2009, HAIF was named best local web site of the year by the Houston Press. Icons and embarrassments When looking through the archives, I found a bunch of interesting icons. I don't remember what we used them for, but they're neat to see. This was the icon we used to use for "City Services." It was funny twenty years ago. it has not aged well. Advertising HAIF We used to do quite a little bit of advertising for HAIF. Much of it online. We sponsored web site, and even podcasts back when the podcast community hated the word "podcast" because it implied that all audio streams came from Apple and were only for iPods. Things sure have changed. Here are some of the images we used. Again, not all of them have aged well. This is an ad we ran when HAIF reached 300,000 posts. HAIF:memes Before they were called "memes," they were called "image macros," and there was a whole bunch of them for HAIF. Here are a few I found. HAIF:jobs Before CareerBuilder was a big deal, it hooked up with local web sites to get jump-started. We were one of those web sites, and HAIF:jobs was born. HAIF-TV The early years of this century saw a lot of streaming video services emerge. But they never really went mainstream until the last half decade or so. Even companies like Williams, with massive video infrastructure and deep pockets, learned they got into the game too early, and folded their operations. HAIF-TV didn't get very far, but we documented a few things. This is a still shot from a video of the implosion of a downtown building. I think it was a flophouse, but I'm no longer sure. "Crawford Hotel" sticks in my head, but I might have made that up. radio:HAIF HAIF's streaming audio was more successful than the streaming video. radioHAIF only played local artists, from garage bands to the River Oaks Orchestra, or songs about Houston (Dean Martin, and R.E.M. both have songs called "Houston.") There were also occasional weather forecasts and local information breaks. It ran for several years, and worked on multiple platforms. Audience-wise, it had maybe 50 or 100 people listen a day. Not many, but enough to make it worth doing for a while. A photograph of radioHAIF playing on an AppleTV When we pulled the plug. HAIF:book The dead tree edition of HAIF. It sold about 50 copies. Look for it at a Half-Price Books near you! HAIF:calendar For a while, we published yearly calendars. But nobody uses calendars anymore. And for those who do, we can't compete with Snap-On Tools. Going all dot-com For many years, HAIF was on a .info domain. Then one day, a domain squatter offered me the opportunity to buy houstonarchitecture.com for $15,000. I didn't have $15,000. But when I mentioned in on HAIF, the donations from you nice people came pouring in, and within a few weeks, HAIF had moved to the .com it's on today. That's the kind of community HAIF is. Hard times for HAIF, and good HAIF has always been up-and-down. In good times, HAIF did really well. It made enough money for it to be my full-time job and support my wife. When times were bad for Houston, they were bad for HAIF. But there were a few notable bad moments. The Great Recession The recession hit HAIF like a ton of bricks. Advertising revenue for HAIF, and the rest of the internet, fell like a stone. We lost 90% of our revenue within a month. Simultaneously, Google's ad monster revved up and killed all of the competition. Today, online advertising is (IME) 95% controlled by Google and Facebook, leaving crumbs for the rest of us and the non-Google ad networks we rely on. In 2006, a thousand ad views on a web site like HAIF would have earned between $20 and $60. Today, you're lucky to get 75¢. This is why the congresscritters in Washington are beating drums about "big tech." Hurricane Ike I really don't know what happened here. HAIF was roaring along until this storm came. HAIF had been through bad storms before, most notably Tropical Storm Allison, but always bounced back. In the days before Hurricane Ike, HAIF traffic skyrocketed. When the storm hit, it plummeted, and for some reason didn't really come back. Lots of people were without electricity and internet for days, weeks, and even months. And perhaps being away from HAIF for so long, they forgot us. Perhaps they needed to focus more on their physical community, rather than this virtual community. That's understandable. But I've never really been able to nail down what happened. Miscellaneous Here are some images I found in the archive that I'm not sure what to do with, so I put them here. The future of HAIF While I no longer own HAIF, and am only able to devote a few hours a week to it, largely behind the scenes, I can say that financially, HAIF pays for itself, and should be here for the long run. The current owner takes a hands-off approach, and that has always served HAIF well, as it has allowed people to come and go, to express themselves, and to make this a better place. If you have memories of HAIF, please post them here. I'd love to read them.

Could it be the block where IBC bank is and the old Canopy was? Most of the businesses here have closed. Some Mortgage Recovery Fund owns it so they probably want to get their money back when the leases are up. St Thomas University owns the lot where Black Lab was and city of Houston owns the library but I wouldn't be surprised if they sell to UST.

Are we sure this is Blue Nile the Ethiopian restaurant and not Blue Nile the diamond company? Maybe I missed it and it said restaurant somewhere, but the jewelry store would seem to make a lot more sense for the Galleria.

how can you maintain something you were exempt from needing to have in the first place? and thanks to existing structures carrying the legacy of exemption (as far as I can tell) for the entire property, if you buy a strip center that didn't need (and so doesn't have) a sidewalk, there's no requirement for the new owner to put one in, unless they are going to tear down the existing structure and start over as if from a greenfield. am I working off false presumptions? in this case, @wilcal has a very good point, why not a bond to put sidewalks in wherever they do not currently exist? regarding the youtube, I've been watching his videos for a while, and they are intriguing, I like his series on why suburbs are unsustainable. he calls suburbs (as they exist in the USA) Ponzi schemes, while I think that's a bit of an exaggeration, I do agree with the premise that suburbs as we build them aren't exactly sustainable affairs, and make anything other than single occupant vehicle transportation pretty much impossible.

They were still working on the windows this morning. Still moving at a snails pace. The Tower next to the Hess building is going to be done before this and it started years earlier.

I really don't want to give much credit to the city or county or TXDOT. It makes me really sad to see how particularly terrible the sidewalk infrastructure is in Houston. I'm not talking about perfect walkability, I'm talking about no pedestrian infrastructure at all. Any time I see a pedestrian killed in the news I go and look at the area on Google Maps so I can kind of get a feel for what choices the pedestrian/driver made and how much of that was affected by the built environment. The far far majority of the time, there is a lack of cohesiveness for the pedestrian experience. And this is multiplied X 100 when you are talking about people that need to push a stroller or use a wheelchair. Relying on developers to (re)develop a property to build a sidewalk freaking sucks. TXDOT has done a tremendously shit job. We mention 1960, which has had huge portions rebuilt, and they flat out decided against putting in sidewalks in large portions. They are going to rebuild the portion from Humble to Atascocita and have finally decided to start to integrate sidewalks. There are a tremendous number of people, in poorer areas, that have little to no promise of ever having sidewalks put in because the city or county isn't going to do it and whatever old store isn't going to be redeveloped until who knows when. I honestly think that we should do a sidewalk and potentially bike-lane focused bond.

I think you’re being overly critical. We have our flaws but as the city continues to grow we’re seeing a smarter development pattern in Houston proper. We can talk about Houston metro all day but our focus really needs to be on Houston proper. That’s where we need to continue building up Midtown, East End, etc. The goal in my personal opinion is to have Houston’s main neighborhoods continue to get denser and more transit friendly. Once Metro builds the Inner Katy BRT line, things are going to start to fall in to place. Not every area of our massive metro has to have perfect walkability. Over time those areas may adopt better measures for pedestrians but let’s make Houston proper the best it can be. I think it’s also healthy to see the flaws in your city and want better. There’s nothing wrong with hating some things. That means you give a $h%*

I watched this this morning.

Let's be fair though, the areas that FM 1960 passes through are really a lot more representative of the majority of our nearly 7 million person metro area than being in the western half of the loop. Greater Houston continues to grow unabated while the population of the city proper remains flat and is its share is shrinking down to become a little more than 1/3 of the region. I'll just say it, despite being the person to you know, post on the forum, I've always kind of had a mixed love/hate relationship with this place. The City of Houston proper is cool and some outlying places are cool but the bulk of where most people live in the metro as a whole are really disappointing to me. I also don't really want us to grow so fast anymore, because any growth from now on is going to take the form of the schlock that's expanded out along the Grand Parkway between Katy and 290 and that doesn't add anything good for those of us already here except more traffic and making the attractions or public places we do have more crowded. It's not just walkability, it's everything. These insular McMansion subdivisions keep the residents inside. They have one way in and out so the commercial development that follows is just a crust around the edges of free standing Chick Fil A's and car washes and nail salons, Ctrl+C Ctrl+V. Then the service industry peasant class moves into apartments kept neatly out of the way. The only parks are kids baseball fields or whatever the Precinct 3/4 people can justify mowing once a month. Since we are now in the retail apocalypse new growth isn't spawning new town centers or malls that act like places or anchors for development. The outlying towns in the growth direction like Katy and Tomball decided not to capitalize on it or annex the stuff around them. I realize that you will say Houston has always been like this, but that's just not true. Older areas developed up through the 70s and 80s were "ugly" with stuff like gas stations and billboards but most older neighborhoods do have kind of a community vibe. Like if you go to Garden Oaks or Sharpstown they have streets with sidewalks that all join up, there are city of Houston parks and public schools embedded in them. These places are also a lot denser than more modern suburbia. Also back in the day there were developers with interesting visions like George Mitchell and The Woodlands and all sorts of clusters of shiny office towers and shopping centers and stuff that was exciting. Nowadays its just filling the prairies with KB Homes the Landing at Mustang Bend 70" 90" whatever the hell those numbers mean. The FM 1960 area is sort of like the transition zone or prototype of the newer wave of suburbs versus the older ones. Eventually Greater Houston is just going to be this massive behemoth with no character whatsoever. The boosters will go "oh look at this ethnic restaurant in this skanky strip mall from the 80s we are so diverse" as being the only thing of note in a whole swath of blah. Yeah I get it, me living in Houston complaining about our sprawl is like moving to Phoenix and saying its too hot or moving to New York and saying people are rude in the subway. But its my honest opinion.

not much closer to Nagle street, but one of my friends loves La Reynera on McKinney.

Clutch, comments like that will just derail the thread. They always do. Not suggesting it isn’t a significant issue, or worthy of conversation. I’ll just suggest that maybe you can start a new topic at an appropriate place in f you want to address the issue. The topic generally just spirals into a chaos.

One can dare to dream.

Will there be trees along Westheimer? That would be very awesome cuz for a corridor that is in such a cool part of town, it would nice to emphasize the "cool" aspect of it and get some trees in along that street to bring the temp down a bit while walking. 🤫

This is why the TOD ordinance was so important. After reading the requirements for TOD and Walkable Places for the CoH, if these are the standards they want to uphold for TOD streets then I applaud the cities efforts. Absolutely gorgeous! This one project is going to change development in this city. There is a new standard for the typical “Houston shopping center.” And pardon my French but it’s developments like this that make other businesses around that have been slacking for a while finally get their $hi* together and clean up their property. Not to rant, but there is def a snowball effect from good quality aesthetically pleasing development affecting a neighborhood in a positive way. We see that a lot in this forum and what better neighborhood to see this than Montrose? This development also solidifies the neighborhood as it enters a new generation of change. Montrose is truly special.

WOW!

They are starting to open up some of the sidewalks and planting the trees.

Wow. This brings back a lot of memories. Some of us are still hanging around from HAIF v1, before the great hack brought that down. That was a sad day. Wayne, thanks for all your support on HAIF over the years.