editor

I just noticed today that UH/D did it next to its new building: The Apple Maps image makes it look like a detention basin, but going by on the train today I could see that it's athletic fields.

I think more "alleviate" than "resolve." I don't think there's a magic bullet for solving the problem. An interesting idea that is very old, but I only learned of recently, is changing the way property is taxed. Instead setting the tax based on the improvements on the land, the government taxes the value of the actual land. Here's a Times article about it: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/12/business/georgism-land-tax-housing.html Here's the upshot: “Blight is rewarded, building is punished,” he said in a recent speech, repeating it over and over for emphasis. The refrain is a windup for Mr. Duggan’s scheme to fix the blight: a new tax plan that would raise rates on land and lower them on occupied structures. Slap the empty parcels with higher taxes, the argument goes, and their owners will be forced to develop them into something useful. In the meantime, homeowners who actually live in the city will be rewarded with lower bills. … The notion that land is an undertaxed resource — and that this distorts markets in destructive ways — unites libertarians and socialists, has brought business owners together with labor groups and is lauded by economists as a “perfect tax.” And yet despite all that agreement, there are just a handful of examples of this policy in action, and none in America that match the Detroit proposal in scale.

I'm not lying at all. I'm not sure why you would imply that I am. Aside from choosing to be rude. I'm not going to choose a lifestyle that keeps money out of real estate agents pockets and doesn't require burning dinosaurs and ruining the planet every day. I'm not sure what "privacy" people are missing living in an apartment. Do you have some fantasy that there are people with jet packs hovering around skyscrapers looking in windows? I'd be more worried about creepers driving through my single-family neighborhood looking in my house and garage, or weirdo neighbors with drones and binoculars checking out my daughter's bedroom in a single-family house. Nobody's looking into a window 300 feet up. Different people value different things. You value your backyard. I value the thousands of dollars saved from not needing a car, and using that money for traveling overseas. You value the illusion that somehow you have more privacy than someone living a different life. I value what when something goes wrong with my dishwasher, I make a phone call and an hour later two guys are replacing it at zero cost to me. Maybe you value bad neighbors, and watching your neighborhood go to seed. I value being able to immediately pick up and move someplace better if that happens. Maybe you value using your home as an imaginary piggy bank and watching its value go up and down with the whims of the market. I value putting that money into investments that I can control. As for "Average Joe," I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. There are over 110 million Americans in multi-family housing (36.8 million in apartments + 73.9 million in condominiums). It's not like multi-family life in some weird niche. If you think the "Average Joe" will only consider a single-family home on a half-acre lot with 2.5 children and mortgage for the rest of his life, 1953 called and wants its goggles back.

I go to Phoenicia about once a week. Happily, it always seems to be packed, even on weekends. I avoid the Midtown Randalls at all costs. I think I've been there three times in the last three years. Each time, it's been out of milk. How does a supermarket run out of milk? If you don't have milk, are you even a supermarket? I was among the first shoppers when that place opened, and I loved it until I moved away from Houston. It has not been maintained well, and I don't think that basement parking garage has been swept out even once in the last 25 years.

Dunno. The layout inside makes it look like it used to be a Mexican restaurant. (Lots of brick arches and such.) Google's Street View from October, 2022: March, 2021: The pictures show it vacant from June of 2016 to January of 2020. Since the people running it now say they just opened in February, they must have chosen to keep the name. The older Street View pictures make it look pretty uninviting. At least in 2011 there were stools at the outside service counter.

Need the parking lot for the customers. The parking garage? It's been my observation that downtown area parking garages are mostly used by suburban teens to drink beer, smoke pot, and make more Texans.

Added to the HAIF events calendar:

E-mail me directly at editor@houstonarchitecture.com, and I'll get it fixed.

It's a terrible picture, but it shows work continuing as of yesterday (April 6, 2024).

I think taxation is the easy go-to boogeyman for every city's problems. Citing taxation shifts the burden onto some opaque bureaucracy, rather than actually doing something to make things better. Both Midtown and Downtown have to work to change the perception of the CBD in the minds of people. Every time my wife meets someone they can't believe she lives downtown. They either say "Nobody lives downtown," or "Ooooh! That must be scary!" Does nobody live downtown? No. But that's what a lot of people in Houston think. Is downtown scary? I don't think so. I'm more afraid of getting gunned down in downtown Conroe than in downtown Houston. What little promotion of downtown I see has always been directed at people who already know that people live downtown/Midtown and that it's not scary. You're never going to get the suburban lot-dweller who's using his quarter-acre home as a piggy bank to move downtown. But you can get his kids to consider it, because they're not already burdened with three decades of sunk cost mortgage payments and constantly telling themselves the lie that renting is more expensive than owning. I think the Post is doing a good job of bringing in open-minded people from the 'burbs to show them that downtown is just a place like any other. I expect that a few of those people will consider living an urban lifestyle in the nation's fourth-largest city. Sportsball fans always fill my parking garage on game days, and I often get into very brief conversations with people when I enter from a residential floor. They can't believe that anyone lives downtown. These are always suburban families, so you're never going to get them to move here. But I make sure I tell them that there's 20,000 people living downtown, and there's lots of good things about it. Perhaps their kids will remember that and consider it in the future. If there's time, I let the parents know I only have to put gas in my car three times a year, so my total gas\ expense is less than $100 for an entire year. Maybe it's mean, but maybe it will also make them think that there are benefits they didn't consider.

There's a new(ish) place to eat downtown: Louis' Deli on San Jacinto between Prairie and Preston. The place is a bit divey, but in a good way. The people who run it are super duper nice, and eager to please; something that seems to be in short supply post-COVID. Or maybe it was just my bad luck going to this nice place straight from Campesino Coffee, where the barista I always get could not care less about whether the customers lived or died, or even existed. I've had nicer customer service from both the I.R.S. and the D.M.V. Back to Louis place: "Deli" is in the name, but it's more like a cross between a hamburger stand and a diner. A small diner, since there's only three tables. But most customers seem to get their food to go. I stayed for my cheeseburger. Pretty generous, considering the price. That's a $25 hamburger down the street at the Nash, but at Louis', it's $10 flat. And unlike the place down the street, it comes with a smile from someone who remembers that this is supposed to be the "hospitality" industry. Also, Louis' will deliver, while the Nash tells me it doesn't have the staff to even deliver inside its own building anymore. The meat is seasoned well, which is another thing that's becoming rare, and it's all served very very hot. Have you ever noticed that food in England is served at a much higher temperature than here? It's like that. I'll definitely go again. Nice people, good food. And lots of things on the menu I'd like to try. Here's the menu posted in the window: It's just good, basic food done well, and served with a smile. It seems like 90% of the new restaurants in Houston are trying to be theme parks, rather than restaurants; more interested in social media thumbs than in actually serving a meal. The guy who runs the place says it's been open since mid-February. I hope it stays open for a long time. I know I'll do my bit to help it out. If you ever see an elderly fat guy with a bucket hat at the corner table, say hi.

One Park Place feels inadequate.

Insert hot beef injection joke here.

Simple answer: More people. Hard answer: More people.

Can you tell what the goal of the replat is?

It's common in places out west that suffer from flash floods to build public parks into detention basins. Here are two examples from Las Vegas: In both you can see the openings of the underground flood diversion tunnels. Las Vegas has a huge network of flood tunnels that not only handle flash floods, but also catch the trees, mud and boulders that precede them:

I'm curious to know if these crimes ended up in the standardized crime reports that are sent to the FBI for statistical purposes, or if they were left out. If they were left out, we need to know the real crime rates in Houston with these "shelved" crimes included.

Lizard people. Whitmire's campaign was mostly funded by the lizard people. Everyone knows their lair is underneath that government complex. That's how they control the politicians. The lizard people need more traffic on Houston Avenue because the vibrations run the generators that power their heat lamps. It's science. The entrance to their labyrinth is underneath the fake "slide" at the corner of Kessler and Elder. Did you never think it was strange that there would be a tiny playground in the middle of an industrial wasteland, with just one piece of playground equipment, surrounded by a security fence?

I rode the Galveston trolley for the first time a few weeks ago. It was… not great. I never thought that I'd think one of the fake bus trolleys would be a superior form a transit, but it really is. The actual diesel-powered trolley was unpleasant. I think self-contained diesel-powered train cars make a bit of sense. I've been on a few in the less-fashionable areas of Devon and Cornwall. But they were much larger machines, and you could crowd into one end of the car or the other to mitigate the noise and vibration. But the Galveston trolley is more like a theme park ride than transit. Ideally, it would be electrified. But then, if it's never been electrified in the past, that would probably ruin its historic integrity. I'm not sure what to make of it.

Every time I'm disappointed with the rate of development in Midtown, I try to remind myself of what it looked like when I lived in Houston in the 90's. Mostly one-story abandoned commerical buildings, surface parking lots, and a struggling Little Saigon neighborhood. The development of West Gray between Bagby and Cushing was just getting started, and very few people could envision what it became. Anyone who thinks pedestrian-oriented development can't work in Houston should visit that area.

I looked at the paper permit in the window a few weeks ago and forgot to post it: In other cities I've lived, "speculative'" meant they were just building it out hoping that having a finished space will attract a tenant, but that none was currently on the hook. Does it means the same thing in Houston?

If there's coffee, I'm there. It's nice that there's so many coffee options downtown, though I wish more of them were open later, since sometimes I like to sit in a coffee shop with a book and decompress after work. I noticed lately that Campesino is open until 9pm. I really thought it was only open until 4pm. Maybe it's a sign that business is doing better.

The boast is off by an order of magnitude. $76 million ≠ $760,000,000, even in real estate.