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margaret.ann.1958

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Everything posted by margaret.ann.1958

  1. With lots of investor money and lots of work, this building does have potential. For fifteen months during 1995 and 1996 ... which I have later referred to as the angriest period of time in my life ... I resided and worked at 801 Calhoun, now known as 801 St. Joseph Parkway. At the time I was there, this hotel was known as the Heaven on Earth Plaza Hotel, then before I moved elsewhere the name was changed to Houston Downtown Plaza Hotel. The hotel was originally a Holiday Inn, then later a Days Inn, so that is why there is a half-circle sign on the east and west sides of the building. This building is located on the south side of the block bordered by the streets St. Joseph's Parkway and Jefferson, Milam and Travis. This building is a couple blocks away from the condominiums at 2016 Main, and on the other side of I-45. At the time I moved there the hotel was operated by people associated with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (who the Beatles went to see in the 1960s), they were having financial problems, and they offered part-time employment to people in exchange for rent. During my first months there I worked part-time at the front desk, then towards the end of my residence there I worked full-time as the administrative assistant to the general manager and assistant general manager. I have read, and I have heard on the news that this is a 30-story building, but if I recall correctly, it is only 29 stories; if you go in the elevator, you can notice there is no button for floor 13; the 14th floor is really the 13th floor, and so on, so by the time you get up to the 30th floor, it is really the 29th. If I am remembering incorrectly, if the elevators do go to the 31st floor, then the building does have 30 floors. The first floor with rentable rooms was the eighth floor, the level with the swimming pool outside, so one can count from the outside how many floors this building has. After a high-rise safety meeting the assistant general manager attended in the Exxon building a couple blocks to the north, he came back saying people who worked in that building referred to ours as "the Beirut Hilton". It really did look bad and the last time I drove by months ago it still did. At the time I resided there, there was a meditation school on the 20th floor, then as the months went by the 19th floor was also being used by the people associated with the maharishi. Most of the time I lived there, the hotel was managed by one of the meditators. Once someone told me meditators are not good managers, because when there are problems they just go meditate. Certainly with their lack of cash-flow in the building, there were numerous problems irritating to the tenants. Working at the front desk, I was there one day when a man came to turn off the electricity, then the meditator/manager gave him a check immediately. One time a guest of the hotel told me that this was typical of hotels to become run-down that were owned by the meditators; he claimed he had been to one other city and stayed in a hotel that was owned by the same people and that building had similar problems. There were many problems in this building when I lived there, some of which were mentioned in the Houston Press August 15-21, 1996 issue, the article "Out Heaven's Gate" on page 8 and 9. There were at least two columns of plumbing that did not work. Floor 12 was disgusting, even with black liquid coming up in at least one sink; I saw this problem in one room and was told it was happening in others. There were rats in the building and people were afraid; one guy even put a metal plate on the wall behind his toilet; my supervisor at the front desk told me some rats were crawling up the plumbing and chewing through the wall behind the toilet to enter the rooms where they smelled food, she giving the example that since there were not enough people to clean the rooms, that sometimes it was a couple days before it could get done, and the rats would smell left-over food, like pizza left behind. One day I was on Milam and saw my front-desk supervisor crossing the street, and when she got near me she said that thing laying in the street near the crosswalk at Jefferson was a big rat that was run over by a car. Once when I was in the elevator and the door opened at the eighth floor I saw a rat run down the hall and under a doorway. I started sleeping with my bathroom door shut, but I doubt that really would have helped since I saw that rat crawl under a door! There was asbestos removal in a couple of upper floors while I was living there, the floors that were being converted to two-room apartments. Because of the cash-flow problems, we often were able to use only one elevator, then sometimes that one quit working. It was after that when I moved from the 25th floor to the 17th floor, so I would not have to walk up so many stairs to get home whenever that problem would happen again. There was a problem with, if I remember correctly, a valve related to the swimming pool, so the swimming pool was drained and closed ... which was sad for me because the one thing I really did enjoy while living there was taking my CD player with me and swimming late at night to music. The rooms on the south side of the building, facing I-45 are noisy with the traffic constantly zooming by, but like I used to tell people, if they'd constantly play nice music in their rooms, it wouldn't be a big problem. We were forbidden to use what was built as the main entrance to the south, and were commanded to use the secondary entrance along Milam, but occasionally defiant residents exited south. Later I've heard about Feng-Shui, to which I suppose the meditators' beliefs were at least similar. They also had eastern music constantly playing to the north in a vacant room on one of the top floors. I was told by one of the meditators that their beliefs included that if a certain percentage of one percent of people would meditate, there would be peace in the world. If I remember correctly, it was said to be 1/4 of 1%. We were also forbidden to open the windows in our rooms; some of the railings on the balconies were loose, and at the time the swimming pool was still open, we could look up and see one railing hanging off the ledge. A few years ago I was working a couple blocks away from that building, and I walked by during lunch and saw the sticker on the front door that said the building was condemned by the City of Houston. With all of its many problems, I understand why. With lots of investor money and lots of work, this building does have potential, and it is now more convenient having the Randall's grocery store nearby, whereas when I lived there the nearest grocery store was Fiesta south of downtown. It is very sad that this building became so run-down and an eyesore to the Houston skyline.
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