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OK…I finally go back home for a short visit. Took this this morning.

The vertical panorama function on my drone comes in handy in Houston.

The park will really be in a bowl of high-rises with this and the tower on block 98. I can't wait to see what it will look like in 2-4 years time.

This building looks Massive.

It could be that a lot of their clientele are opposed to the expansion so they thought the optics of a protest would look good.

I saw that crane with the red boom from a distance, I assumed it was taking the last tower crane down but I guess not. Probably flying up landscaping, trees and shrubs.

Uh, as much as I like this development I really hate the idea of the old Felix building being torn down.

Thanks for that map, I just wasted an hour.

Phase II (Montrose Collective Southwest) planned for the west side of Grant St. SubdivisionPlatPDF_20210823-PLAT-MONTROSE COLLECTIVE SOUTHWEST.54113.pdf

The Columbia TAP goes through Texas Southern and its well lit and always clean. And their security peeps are always very nice, and so are the students. Harris County has multiple bike paths going through UoH. Random people jog and bike around and through Rice and UoH and Texas Southern. So we have precedent for this. If I was the city would carve up HCC tbh if they are getting upset and remind them that, as @Texasotasaid, they are a public institution.

Found a rendering produced in 2019 but the developer has removed their webpage for this. https://juancasillasacosta.com/W-Gray

I think it's just a marker - the building itself has no sort of protected status (and in fact was basically rebuilt when it became Uchi)

Spotted demolition equipment parked behind the building today, and the dumpster serving Eleven-Eleven has been removed. Guessing it will be gone by the end of the week.

Yeah just a bunch of businesses nobody cares about like Matty and Big E said. These are what make Houston great.

Also, this may be a duh, but I hadn't noticed before that they are planning to potentially use the green/purple stops downtown in both directions.

Weird. That's not good for anyone, HCC included. Or, rather, especially HCC. Not a good move for them to try to figuratively wall themselves off from their surrounding community.

Has anyone else thought our city has exceptionally poor light timing? I am at my wits end trying to get someone to fix a few intersections that cause giant clogs on my morning and evening commute. They require some realllllly simple fixes that would save all the commuters 5-10 minutes if corrected, each day. Why is it impossibly difficult for the city to figure out? Have they just said "screw it" with COVID? The recent freeze only seems to have made the bad turn into ugly. I drove down Westheimer from the Beltway to 610 last weekend, Saturday about 8pm, and I kid you not, hit a red light at every intersection but 2 the entire distance. That is A LOT of intersections. It was a painful experience knowing the light immediately ahead was going to turn red as my current intersection light was turning green. After awhile it became almost comical how poor the timing is. What could have been a 35 mph cruise the whole way down turned into a 45 min nightmare. I experienced a similar feat driving San Felipe between Voss and the loop. Hit almost every light without fail. Driving the speed limit only seems to make it worse. It appeared some people had outsmarted it and knew if they went 50 in a 35, they could make every light!!! Dangerous as heck. Anyone know how to program some traffic lights? Hit me up. :)

Ten years or so ago, it was indeed used for some parking. But anyone can take a look at Google street view and see that stopped parking back there years ago, and at least as of January 2020 the portion of the lot behind the structure is currently a fenced-in grass-covered nothing.

Wait so is Uchi get torn down or what? I have reservations in a couple months! 😝

Brick going up

Thanks y’all for the info!

The plaque was installed by and property of the Texas Historical Commission. It confers no protections to the building.

the problem is though that to get from LaBranch to Austin the signs within the HCC campus direct you to take this sidewalk: https://www.google.com/maps/@29.7358657,-95.3751558,3a,75y,328.79h,92.52t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s2M9I6uce7ZDtHRKNb8U_aQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 none of the paths that are bike friendly on any other campus are that narrow. even without cycling this sidewalk is woefully inadequate to move students to/from classes, so yeah, I can understand the concern. basically, HCC needs to upgrade their s**t. honestly, they should have worked better with the bike plan to be able to upgrade that sidewalk at the same time, it's probably a thing that they would have been willing to eat/split the cost.

That is correct.

Yeah but TOD and parking mins are separate things. If the city had never adopted TOD or WP ordinances, the same would still apply to this construction not needing a minimum amount of parking. EDIT: Nevermind I misunderstood you lol

Yep, it is about 1/2 mile east of the market-based parking area in EaDo and when they enacted the TOD ordinance, they only included future BRT stops SW of the Eastwood Transit Center. Even so, being a commercial location, it would only have qualified for a 50% reduction as Primary Street TOD only kicks in when the stations are built and the pink is secondary. HOWEVER, with the University Line BRT being pushed forward right now, I think Polk is sketched in as a future BRT stop. TOD would automatically kick in once the station is finished and then you would have opt-in market-based parking. We'll know more about station locations as early as this fall. I'm guessing Eastwood TC(duh)/Polk/Harrisburg/Navigation. Also, looking at this map, the pink secondary line actually gets all of the way up to Telephone, where that large complex is where Bohemeo's is. I wonder how much of that complex would qualify for a 50% reduction. I would imagine the primary designation would extend down to Telephone/Leeland when the Polk BRT station would open.

I love the view out to Jones Hall! This diagonal view and the redevelopment of Jordy's Toilet into a proper park (okay, more so the latter) should do wonders for the appreciation of our wonderful performing arts buildings downtown

Thanks for making my point

lower center of gravity + bigger wheels. both wins for stability.

and depending on who's coming from the other direction, they might get there sooner than they intended. anyway, yeah, there are still streets in downtown that are timed if you go a specific speed that you catch green the whole way. on LaBranch you can green from McKinney to St. Joseph, if you go a bit over 25. Jefferson, from Louisiana to where it enters 45 is the same. I think Louisiana is still timed too. anyway, for anyone who likes HIIT and bicycles (and you live close enough to downtown), downtown on a weekend morning is the best way to get the workout, specifically LaBranch. no one is on it at that time, and you can mash the entire half mile stretch it stays green, then over one street to take the bike lane on Austin back to Rusk, by that time your HR will be back down again, then mash down LaBranch again. do that about 10 times, throw up and go home.

Way back when my mother worked at the then Hermann Professional Building one could travel from downtown to the medical center along Fannin and make all the lights if 19 mph +/- was maintained. It seems slow but it was no slower than stopping and starting every few blocks and preferable to stirring the gearbox. Automatic transmissions were available then but optional on almost every vehicle except maybe Cadillacs and the like. Mother had a Nash Rambler with a recalcitrant 3-speed manual so she was more than happy to maintain the slower speed and avoid all the shifting. Of course, there will always be some jackass who stomps the throttle at every green light and crams on the brakes two blocks later (again and again) not to mention the jerks who simply run red lights. There should be a special place in Hell for them because they will probably get there eventually.

Was looking back through the proposed stations maps and saw that the funded and planned, but temporarily pushed back bicycle connector from Cottage Grove to Memorial Park is not pictured (that I marked in red below) :( They've evidently been waiting for 18+ months for railroad approval to go underneath the tracks and the funding has been pushed back to FY 2023. The project seemed in doubt to me because of TXDOT wanting to expand I-10 without an elevated platform. I guess this project is just in limbo. It is really inexcusable how inaccessible Memorial Park is to cyclists and pedestrians.

Hudson House River Oaks coming soon!

Nothing embodies gentrification more than a former “African Art center” being torn down to build a giant warehouse to store yuppie’s disposable income in the form of excess consumerism.

This project is so massive lol

Back during Bill White's terms as mayor he had a project that improved the light timing fairly well. I recall it made a big difference during rush hour on Westheimer at the time. There was a document put out that went into detail and supposedly the timing was going to be maintained into the future. I guess that fell by the wayside after he left office.

AAA was in that office building, until they picked up and moved to Dallas...

Ugh! I’m shocked at the number of self storage places in this city.

The “rendering” is actually a photo of an already built storage facility in Spring. https://amazingspaces.net/locations/springwoods-exxon/

doubt it. the rendering included here looks ultra suburban... even rural almost. I bet the actual rendering is a much smarter use of land.

That basketball dome still sticks in my mind.