rechlin

There is an elevator facing Phoenicia that is open to get up to the Shops level.  Note that the adjacent stairs there do not work -- the door is inexplicably locked at the Shops level so you'll have to walk all the way back down again and then take the elevator if you make the same mistake as I made of trying the steps.

Unfortunately the Fulbright tower is also under renovation now, so you can't use the escalators there to get up to the Shops level either.  There's an elevator in the far back of that also, which seems to be the only way I found to get up.

Access to the Shops is just really terrible now, but there are at least two elevators to get to them.

On 6/14/2022 at 12:49 PM, bobruss said:

Speaking of Buffalo Bayou. There is a great story on the cover of the New York Times today about Buffalo Dave and his efforts to keep Buffalo Bayou cleared of trash. 

Link for the lazy:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/climate/bayou-dave-trash-cleanup.html

Great story indeed.  Thanks for pointing it out.

The "hot" area for bars and clubs in Houston seems to move periodically, I guess as people get bored with an area and want to move to the new "trendy" area.  Over the decades it has been Main Street, Midtown, Richmond Ave, and Washington Ave, some multiple times.  I've never been a club person so I don't know which of those is hot at present; maybe nothing is hot right now with so much lost to COVID.  I agree that this area of Main would perhaps be the best place for an evening entertainment district to just remain indefinitely, but some patrons can be finicky and don't want to go to a place that isn't up-and-coming anymore.

Cars already can't be stored on the street; they have to be moved every 24 hours or be towed, per Houston city ordinance.  This means that any residence (including garage apartments) already needs off-street parking if the residents want to own cars, because you can't realistically move your parked car every single day.

4 hours ago, Avian said:

A sign for a new Cooking Girl location appeared here as they have been gearing to open up. I’m super excited to have one so close 

The Sichuan takeover of Montrose continues, bad news for Montrose Chinese across the street though.

Sichuan food is good, but it's too bad that's the only Chinese cuisine that seems to be spreading.  Last year the only Jiangsu (population: 80 million) restaurant that I knew of in Chinatown closed, and the only good examples of Shaanxi (population: 40 million) food that I could find have closed too.  China has dozens of different cuisines, and I'm glad we have more than just American Chinese and Cantonese food here, but it's a bit boring that we have at least half a dozen Sichuan restaurants near me in the west half of the loop but few from elsewhere.

3 hours ago, BeerNut said:

Should tax based on weight as heavier vehicles cause more wear.  

Wear on roads increases by the CUBE (not just square) of the increase in weight, so I really don't understand why vehicle registration fees aren't more affected by the weight of the vehicle.  Fees should go up by the cube of the increase in weight.  For toll roads (to keep this topical...), they go by axles, which helps but is still a poor proxy since an extra axle can actually reduce wear.  Maybe weight divided by number of wheels, since more wheels/axles distributes the weight better to reduce wear.

I think that, for example, vehicle registration on a 6000 pound SUV should be 2*2*2 = 8 times the registration fee of a 3000 pound subcompact car, for example, to account for the increase in wear on roads.  Similarly, the registration fee of a 5000 pound electric large sedan should be 1.25*1.25*1.25 = 1.95 times the registration fee of a 4000 pound regular non-electric large sedan.

I have no idea why they did the website switch, because the new txdot.gov/nhhip.html site is a convoluted mess, which requires way too much clicking and scrolling, compared to the much more friendly ih45northandmore.com site.

Fortunately, it does seem most/all of the old information is still on the new site, even if it's not easy to find.  Just go here and click "Show All" below "Newsletters" and you can find the documents:

https://www.txdot.gov/nhhip/updates.html

If you still want to use the old site, it's on the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220120064733/http://www.ih45northandmore.com/

7 hours ago, Urbannizer said:

Does anyone have access to this article 

https://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/news/2022/03/16/cj-development-buys-independence-heights-property.html

Quote

John "Johnny V" Vassallo's CJ Development group bought a 5.22-acre property in the Independence Heights area of Houston for a new mixed-use project.

Houston-based CJ Development paid an undisclosed amount to purchase the property at 124 Crosstimbers St., near the intersection of Crosstimbers and Yale streets, from Gross Investments, which is also based in Houston.

Vassallo, a partner in CJ Development, has roots in Milwaukee as a real estate investor and operator of restaurants including Mo's Irish Pub. He is an active developer in the Houston market and currently plans to start construction this year in Wauwatosa on the 28-story Drew Tower.

Vassallo said his plans for the Houston site include a 12-story, 500-unit multifamily development that will have about 16,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor. Milwaukee architect Jason Korb of Korb + Associates Architects is a designer on the Houston project with Houston-based Identity Architects.

While the terms of the Houston land transaction were not disclosed, Harris County Appraisal District records said the property was valued at $3.4 million as of Jan. 1, 2021.

David Cook and Meredith Cullen of Cushman & Wakefield’s land brokerage team represented the seller in the deal. Houston-based Gulf Capital Bank provided financing for the transaction.

“Crosstimbers and Yale represented a rare opportunity to develop a strategic piece of real estate in north Houston,” Cullen said. “We were familiar with CJ Development’s previous development requirements. This site offers excellent ingress and egress to all areas of the city, and we knew this would be the right time to discuss the possibility of selling with (Gross Investments president) Shawn Gross.”

Vassallo told the Houston Business Journal that he was attracted to the property because it lies on a clear path of growth heading up Yale Street, which is in line with the uptick in development Independence Heights has seen in recent years. Vassallo pointed to Fidelis Realty Partners’ Yale Marketplace development as an example of the recent work being done in the area. Yale Marketplace is a 61,000-square-foot neighborhood shopping center anchored by a Whole Foods 365 location that won an HBJ Landmark Award in 2019.

“There are some great things happening there, and we saw an opportunity with a mixed-use development,” Vassallo said. “Meredith really has a great deal of insight about how the community works, so this was an easy purchase for us.”

The U-shaped building will have nine floors of apartment units sitting on top of a three-story garage. The third floor will be devoted to a range of amenities, including a swimming pool and a fitness center, among other features.

Vassallo said his team has already held initial meetings with city officials and plans to break ground by the end of the year.

Cullen said he was excited about CJ Development’s plans for the site because he thinks a mixed-use development that is predominantly composed of high-end apartment units will fit well with the types of development underway in Independence Heights.

“There had been very little retail in the area for years, but that has started to change,” Cullen said. “Now that there are businesses catering to those with disposable income, it’s not only driving people to move there, it’s creating new jobs for people. It’s such a historic area that I really see Independence Heights becoming one of the backbones of Houston.”

Cullen added, “What Johnny plans to do with the site will be the first major mixed-use project in the immediate area.”

Vassallo's Drew Tower in Wauwatosa has gained a needed city approval, but faces appeals filed by a neighborhood opposition group. That project would have 65 apartments and about 80,000 square feet of leasable offices.

@EaDo Louis largely correct here.  The aerial photo is recent, but the 3D models of buildings were mostly auto-generated (sometimes hand-generated, or maybe a combination of the two) based on an old aerial photo.  Google Earth defaults to showing the old 3D models even when you are viewing the current imagery.  Unfortunately Google has not made much effort to update the 3D models in recent years so they are getting increasingly mismatched from the aerial view.  Remember when Google Maps let you look at the imagery from 45 degree angles and rotate around to see from 4 different directions?  Those are the images used for these models, probably about a decade ago.

2 hours ago, Big E said:

Contrary to the theory of induced demand, cars don't just conjure themselves out of thin air to use new or improved roadways, won't just disappear if you get rid of it (yes, some people actually argue this).

If the widening or creation of a freeway makes people more comfortable with moving farther out, that means they will be driving more miles, using more freeway capacity, than they would otherwise have.  That is induced demand.  The danger here is that it encourages sprawl, which is the opposite of what we want in a modern city.  As you acknowledge, I wasn't using that as a reason to oppose this project, because I don't think induced demand is a major factor with this particular project, but it is still a real thing that we should be aware of.

I've been following this project for many years now, spending countless hours poring over the schematic maps, and many, many, many hours skimming the EIS (hundreds and hundreds of pages).  It's just something that has been of big interest to me because it will affect so much in this city for decades to come, and because I spend a lot of time in or near the downtown area.  And I say this even as someone who almost never drives on IH-45 (I think I haven't even driven on it all year so far!).

It's certainly not perfect, but there's a lot of good in this project.  Yes, some people will have changes forced upon them that they won't like, but they will be compensated, and that is the price of progress.  I'm a regular rider of METRO buses and rail, and I am particularly excited about this project adding multiple bidirectional HOV (or potentially HOT) lanes to greatly improve the reliability of bus service along the corridor.  This project also will be tightly coupled to the BRT lines that METRO will be building, especially the one to IAH.  IH-45 is one of the most dangerous interstate highways around, and this project goes a long way to improving safety on the Houston portion of it, by adding or widening shoulders, reconfiguring ramps to minimize weaving, and more.  Induced demand is a real thing, and people use that as an excuse to fight this project, but in reality, very little is being done to add extra lanes for regular traffic -- most of the route will either have the same number of regular (non-high-occupancy) lanes in each direction or just one more.  Everyone knows that traffic will never actually get faster long-term, but at the same time it's true the new road will allow more people to travel on it every day.

A lot of attention is being paid to flood mitigation, too, so this project should mean fewer problems due to flooding, not more.  And the replacement of a number of low bridges should mean a huge reduction in the number of incidents of trucks hitting bridges and shutting down the freeway for hours.  The trenched roadways in Segment 3 along with caps (upon which parks will hopefully -- and quite likely -- be funded) will greatly reduce the psychological barriers that were created when these highways were first built.  There are a couple places where bridges crossing the freeways will be lost, but they will be more than made up for by improved crossings elsewhere.  The barriers between Fourth Ward and Downtown, between Midtown and Downtown, between East Downtown and Downtown, and between Midtown and the Museum District will all be reduced compared to now.  The barriers in Segments 1 and 2 will admittedly be essentially unchanged, though.

Great attention, particularly on the side opposing this project, is being paid to the apartment residents (particularly in subsidized, low-income housing) who will be displaced by this project.  But many of them have actually already been displaced or will be displaced regardless of whether this project goes through, and the new housing provided for them will be better quality and not far away from what they have now.  And all the land being acquired is right along the freeway already -- it's not like neighborhoods are being split up to build this (unlike what was shamefully done when these freeways were first built).

I do think there are things that still need to be addressed.  A very long list of requests have been made for improvements (posted earlier in this thread), and it does seem TxDOT and other parties are intending to incorporate many of them into the project.  Many of them are good ideas and are feasible.  But somehow this has been translated by some into a desire to stop the project entirely.  A big one from the list that I would personally like to see is the proposed re-routing of the UPRR near downtown.  The former "Be Someone" bridge will have to be rebuilt for this project anyway, and the North Canal project (not a part of this project but still intertwined) affects the rail route too, so by using a slightly different alignment and acquiring a little right-of-way, the barriers in the Warehouse District and the West End will be greatly minimized with the removal of tracks.  Again, I don't live in either of those neighborhoods, but I can see how it will benefit them.

However, and this is the real cause of my frustration leading me to making this post, because I am not opposed to this project, I have been variously accused (mostly on reddit, admittedly) of working for (or even owning) a construction company, working for TxDOT, and working for other Houston organizations interested in making this happen.  None of that is true.  It seems many of those who are opposed to the project just default to calling anyone in favor a "shill" and don't seem to believe anyone could be in favor without being financially vested in it.  It's so frustrating that people can't speak positively of this project without receiving personal attacks.  And the reasons they give for opposition are almost always disproven by things written in places like the EIS, or else just speculation with nothing to back it.  Yes, as with anything infrastructure-related, this is a tremendously expensive project, which is one of the few remotely valid reasons to be opposed to it, but the more it gets delayed, the more it's going to cost.  Regardless, something has to be done about the highways involved, and nobody has yet presented any better alternatives.  The evolution of the design over the decade of so of presentations has shown a lot of improvement, and overall I think it's very clear the benefits outweigh the negatives.

Any name-calling or unjustified attacks between people on both sides of this debate need to stop.  Instead we should just look at the facts as they are now.  Not things that happened in the past and can't be changed, not things that will happen regardless, but things that will happen if this project goes through and won't happen if it does not.  Look at the EIS and other sources of real information, not speculation, and then we can talk.

TL;DR: stop fighting, look at the facts

Already have a thread here; moderators please merge:

I got a photo.  It seems they are just using it for parking at the moment:

22 hours ago, editor said:

April 4 was the last day, according to the manager I spoke with a couple of days earlier. 

There was an (un)helpful sign on the door for a couple of weeks: "We're closing!  Your prescriptions will be moved to ________________."  The line was never filled in.  Glad I wasn't counting on that CVS!

As I recall, the sign facing the inside of the door was filled in with a location, but the sign facing outside was not.  I thought it was strange, too.

Not really a restaurant/bar, though it provided easy access to some of the restaurants in the tunnels, but the CVS at Main Street Square closed about a week ago.  Signage is all gone already too.

Most big O&G companies have realized they need to diversify, so it wouldn't surprise me if they want to be in facilities like this to do R&D toward renewable energy.  And if Houston wants to remain the energy capital of the world as energy shifts to renewables, it's great if companies want to be doing that here too.

Judging by the railroad bridge in the rendering, I wonder if they've given up on the idea of relocating the railroad tracks?  Though that was probably going to be done in conjunction with the IH-45 project, and if that is being delayed indefinitely, we may never get the relocated railroad tracks.

I thought drones were prohibited in Memorial Park.

And I'm surprised this is only for car traffic.  I'd think buses and trucks and motorcycles would be allowed, and those nice sidewalks on either side would make me think pedestrians would be allowed too.  The 35 mph speed limit would make me think bicyclists should be allowed too.

@cityliving I'm not sure what you are doing differently now, but your photos are finally showing up with proper color on my computer now and look great!  Thanks for all the time you are putting into the aerial photography.  What did you change?  Was it a color space conversion issue?

So many different exterior finishes.  I count gray painted concrete, gray painted bricks (maybe CMUs?), reddish-brown bricks, gray stucco/EIFS, brown stained wood, gray painted wood/Hardiplank (maybe two different shades?), multiple shades of trim, and white windows.  And of course two more different kinds of bare/treated wood for the fence and garage gate.  Isn't that a bit much?  Did they just pick up random construction materials from various abandoned construction sites and combine them to have enough for one building?

This building is completely gutted inside, wall to wall, front to back, and floor to ceiling, so it's now one big two-story room.  Looks like they might be getting ready to put something in here: