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I spotted 12 brick mock up stands and core drilling barrels.

I do believe the podium is completed. Now there is a retaining wall forming. From the rendering, it appears there's a small area before the hospital floors. The stacking diagram says mechanical? Construction photos from today.

Looks like the tower crane is running out of room and will have to be jumped soon. Turner's Cut.

hindesky- Awesome! Love the lighter colors. All the brick choices are very elegant. Let's go!!

Photos via Architect Farshid Moussavi's Instagram feed: https://www.instagram.com/farshidmoussavi/

Architect - https://www.fsdesignbuild.com https://www.fsdesignbuild.com/projects/tsu-academy-of-aviation

The gorgeous One Dynamic Way seems to have gotten a paint job. The lower portion of the building, that's supposed to connect to Two Dynamic Way, has been painted this week. I really like the color, or texture.

Reminder that this Saturday is the annual Art Car Parade, on Allen Parkway, in front of The Allen (keeping this on topic). Cars roll at 2pm, but as always, the best viewing is getting there early, maybe noon-ish, and just walking along Allen Parkway looking at all the cars up close, and interacting with the owners, and all the off-beat Houstonians who come out for this. Look for me in the Hippo Car. Come say hi!

Whitmire plans $3 billion in improvements to downtown over 30 years using hotel occupancy taxes. '"The entertainment district will be going three miles in each direction. It will reach the arts and theater district," Whitmire said. He said plans are in place to expand the George R. Brown Convention Center to compete with other convention centers. "We are going to have larger conventions," he said. And they want to attract big things, possibly even another professional sports team. "Yes, Toyota Center will get ready for hockey," he said. Most importantly, the mayor said the purpose is to clean up downtown. Problems that Carol Churchill said she's just seen grow over the years.' https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/harris-county/mayor-whitmire-downtown-houston-investment/285-b3403310-d7c2-47c3-b26f-cfea56dc337a

Berg Hospitality Group shared a rendering of Turner's Cut to its social media last week. Additionally, the restaurant group announced their latest addition will make its debut in May. Turner's Cut is an upscale steakhouse concept opening soon in Autry Park. It's located at 811 Buffalo Park Dr, Suite 160, in Hanover Autry Park. https://www.instagram.com/p/C5oq6ikJliL/

In a milestone moment for the city’s long-awaited Hispanic History Research Center,more than 200 Houston residents packed into a dilapidated warehouse Saturday in the East End for a community forum to discuss the future of the promised Latino-focused archival library. Hosted by Council Members Mario Castillo, Joaquin Martinez and Julian Ramirez, the self-coined “Three Amigos” and the city’s only Latino council members, the forum was the first opportunity for community input on a project that has been in the works for years but has, until now, made little progress. The planned Houston Public Library facility was first added to the city’s projects listduring former Mayor Sylvester Turner’s administration after voters approved funding in a 2017 bond issue, but library representatives said natural disasters like hurricanes and the pandemic delayed the project. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/hundreds-show-forum-houston-hispanic-research-19398353.php

According to this website https://mmgrea.com/houston-4q23/ (@urbannizer shared in another thread) this lot is in the planning stages for a residential building, expected construction start date is 06/01/2024. I'm not sure how reputable this is, but thought I'd just share and get the conversation going. (also, couldn't find an existing thread for this lot, but if there is, please feel free merge)

So this is gunna be a pretty neat building, eh fellas?

I received this message from Cityliving this morning, and asked me to share it:

Hines' new Levit Green life sciences campus near Texas Medical Center adds tenant Apr 15, 2024 https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2024/04/15/hines-levit-green-life-sciences-pranax-tenant.html Houston-based Hines has landed another tenant for Levit Green, a 53-acre life sciences campus near the Texas Medical Center. Pinehurst, Texas-based PranaX inked a lease for a 7,400-square-foot, turn-key lab space on the second floor of Levit Green’s Building 1 at 6420 Levit Green Blvd., Hines said April 15. PranaX’s business focuses on using exosomes, or membrane-bound extracellular vesicles, to confer regenerative therapies aimed at treating aging, inflamed and damaged tissue and organs. The company recently entered into a technology licensing agreement with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to commercialize exosomes as therapeutics, natural supplements and wellness products that can promote healthy aging.

I believe the goal of this development is to be a high-end mixed-use development. They are catering to the River Oaks crowd, not the crowd that would make up the average "synergistic high traffic urban center". The casual dining options you are seeking aren't willing to pay to lease out these spaces. The type of urban center you are seeking will most likely take place on the east side of downtown. Places like East River and East Blocks.

Oxy bought their site within the development.

The HUB. UH Football Operations Center.

Couldn't have said it better myself., @rechlin. It's disappointing Cityliving chose to delete all the great photos he shared. His dedication in documenting many of this city's new development and buildings were and still are invaluable. I hope he will continue to do so, even if he decides to publish his photos elsewhere (I know he'll see this because he still visits this forum several times almost every day, but chooses not to contribute as he did before.) However, Cityliving's constant deletions - which seem to come across as revenge for not receiving as much praise or likes as another user - are problematic for the reasons you described. I realize the revenge motive is speculation on my part. Still, it appears to be a pattern. He'll post something negative about another user's drone photos or not feeling appreciated. Afterwards, he goes on a mass deletion spree as if it's his way of punishing the entire forum. Furthermore, I agree with your position regarding "a big feature of this site is serving as a historic record of construction projects and their progress." Sure, many of us like visiting the site to post or view recent content relating to current project. But that's only one of this forum's driving forces. There are just as many people who visit this site to see developments from their planning stages to their construction phase, and the completed project. Some also find it interesting seeing what may have been planned for a property before or previous occupants. This is why older content, be it posts, PDF files, and photos, are as important as current content on this forum. I don't get why certain members of this site refuse to see the value in that (I'm saying this based off another topic on the forum where some complained there is no need for older content.) Lots of people use this forum for many reasons. From what I've observed, there are many who utilize this forum as a reference tool or an archive. I've come across countless social media posts and online forums sharing older content from this forum. The content is used to highlight what may have been built before, previous occupants, demolitions, construction phases, and so forth. Also, let's not forget, many of this city's journalists, bloggers, or those whose social media focuses on architecture, construction, transportation, and real estate (like WalkingHouston) constantly visit this forum. Many of them use current and past content in their research or report what has been discussed or shared here.

All 3 buildings have name. "The first portion of the project, a 273-unit section called The Artist, is nearly a third occupied after opening in February. Another 31-unit building, called Muse, is to open in May. Construction on the 184-unit Icon phase is expected to complete by September." https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/real-estate/article/downtown-houston-affordable-apartments-housing-19400037.php

Construction update this week. The School of Pubic Health building is rising fast! SCRB5. SOPH. SCG2.

Construction update this week.

Thank you for inviting me up! Construction update.

Did you take a break from gazing at the Austin skyscrapers to pen this gem of a post?

Is there not a moderator who can delete these posts?

Rainey Street by Dave Wilson, on Flickr Going Up, Up, Up In Austin, Texas by Randy von Liski, on Flickr

Buffalo Bayou Partnership owns almost all the vacant land around here but not the Seafarers International Union.

This building is now visible driving down i10!

Architect - https://www.hksinc.com

33% sold

Stormwater grids have been installed and are now being covered with porous covers and white rock.

This abandoned building is getting demo'd. I don't even recall the last time this building was occupied, it seems like it's been vacant for almost 20 years according to google maps.

Tower crane was taken down today.

This week's construction update. I believe the podium is completed and now they're going to start on the hospital floors. Just an amazing building. It's so stout.

It's pretty explicitly not for people like me, but if it's built right, it could be 50 years from now. Unfortunately that's generally how new construction goes. Hopefully the Concept Neighborhood stuff is a little more accessible, but it'd be silly to expect anything in River Oaks to be for anybody but the 1%. The benefits are still universal, though. When the most agressively densifying mixed-use developments are concentrated in wealthy areas, the downsides of gentrification elsewhere are mitigated. All that said, getting rid of minimum parking requirements, minimum setback / maximum lot coverage requirements, etc. would go a long way toward making it easier to build smaller, lower-tab suites. Likewise, we could work making it easier to open food stalls in parks. Mexico City has an amazing park food culture that feels like something we could emulate in places like Discovery Green, Hermann Park, Buffalo Bayou / Eleanor Tinsley Park, Emancipation Park, Elizabeth Baldwin Park, and even Autry Park.

It's a difficult situation. I have spent a small fortune on photographic equipment and my income relies on copyright protection, and I understand the situation there. But at the same time, when someone posts photos here and then later deletes them, it's harmful to the community. A big feature of this site is serving as a historic record of construction projects and their progress. You can't just go out and take a photo to replace one that someone else deleted, because things have changed since then. So the photos are irreplaceable. At the same time, I don't know about anyone else, but for me, if someone has already taken photos of a project at a given point in time to post here, I'm not going to waste time doing it again, since someone else already did it. I already lost a lot of interest in taking time to post photos here after an earlier incident where a moderator deleted a bunch of threads made by someone else, some of which had many photos that I had taken and didn't want removed, so I'm certainly not going to take pictures of a construction project the same week someone else did, since there is minimal extra value in that -- and when I do post photos here I generally only use quick cell phone shots because I don't want to put much effort into something that someone might delete. But when someone deletes photos they have taken, that removes it from the historic record, and there's no way anyone who was dissuaded from taking the photos can go back in time to that point to retake them themselves. It's better to have never had the photos taken in the first place than to have them taken and then deleted, gone forever. IMHO if there is going to be a rule against reposting deleted photos, there should also be a rule against systemic deletion of one's own photos due to how much it breaks the social contract. With social-media sites, it's pretty much universal that posting content grants an irrevocable license to the site to continue to distribute that content in perpetuity, and that probably should be the rule here too (admittedly, this site does not mention anything about this in its well-hidden terms-and-conditions page), which would allow lost photos to be restored. If one doesn't want their photos to stay on this site, in my opinion, they shouldn't post them to this site in the first place. The Wayback Machine already keeps these photos and publishes them online for anyone, if it crawled the thread in time, so reposting deleted photos is no more illegal than what the Wayback Machine does. I don't know whether that means it's illegal or not.

It's worth noting how this $3 billion over 30 years is useful for today. The revenue capacity from SB 1057 is used to support lending now of the magnitude of that at play in Dallas. It provides the backing for the loans that will be taken out in the near future to finance the improvements. The intention is not to gradually spend in dribs and drabs over 30 years as revenue comes in. SB 1057's structure, after all, is exactly what was used in Dallas. The whole point was to give us the benefits that Dallas had previously won for themselves from the Texas Legislature. See https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/88R/analysis/pdf/SB01057H.pdf

They need to make the ground breaking announcement already...

This is great news! Pending further concrete details, I don't see how this announcement can be taken negatively... follow-on private investment will be multiples of whatever Whitmire has planned, even if it doesn't reach the $3B figure. Austin had its boom and is now in the early innings of its bust. ATX is what Houston was in 2015, a crane-filled skyline with tough times ahead. The vast majority of the current construction pipeline there was capitalized before interest rate hikes started when the city was enjoying major tech expansions, robust VC/Startup activity, relocations from other markets, etc. That party is largely over. There may be a lot of cranes in the sky, but the sunshine has ended. It is overcast for the foreseeable future.

Now Leasing. https://www.coopheights.com

Today I stopped by T2 to look at the construction progress of the forthcoming Jewel of Texas Tower, The Sylvie. As usual, Hines is best in class. Just an amazing building. The exterior glass circle is just breathtaking.

Went inside the bank today. This old building is truly amazing.

River Oaks Name Exploitation