wilcal

Talked with the Downtown District's Director of Planning and she said that they are still working through 90% documents to get to the city and have no determined a first start date or construction length 😕 The original presentation from December started a June start date, and this article says fall. She said a few issues with infrastructure upgrades and phasing sequence with the city. Their original timeline was: Feb 2019 90% plan submission. April 2019 100% plan submission May 2019 Contractor Procurement June 2019-21 Construction So if they are still working on 90% plan submission, then that's at least 2 months behind which does lean towards a fall start as reported in March.

Managed to talk to someone who talked to the rep. Lime is just waiting on "the city to get their $!#@ together". Evidently they want to do painted boxes in the city ROW for scooter parking.

Anyone talk to the Lime rep(s) at the Houston Bike Summit this weekend? Evidently they were showing off their newest scooter with 10" wheels and a front suspension. No official announcement of course or we would have seen it.

The "Mystic Forest Maze" hahahahaha May also be referred to as "that time I got drunk and got lost in a porta potty"

Was curious so had to look it up. HCAD just has 5 years of values... but OUCH. 2019 is almost $4,000/day in property taxes. So how much property tax has been "squandered" since 2007? $10 million?

No Alamo Drafthouse anymore: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/real-estate/article/Regent-Square-moving-forward-but-with-no-Alamo-13851493.php?utm_campaign=CMS Sharing Tools (Premium)&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral The owner of a 24-acre parcel across Allen Parkway from Buffalo Bayou Park announced plans Thursday to build a 600-unit apartment complex and 50,000 square feet of retail space on the site, the latest development phase within a larger project known as Regent Square. Boston-based GID Development Group said it intends to start construction this fall on the buildings, which will occupy eight acres at West Dallas and Dunlavy streets. GID announced plans to develop Regent Square in 2007. At that time, the property housed the Allen House Apartments, which GID had owned for decades. Most of the apartments were demolished, but the project stalled until a 21-story apartment tower was developed on part of the site at 3233 W. Dallas. That building, called the Sovereign, was completed in 2015. "Our goal for Regent Square is the creation of an exemplary, urban mixed-use district in the heart of Houston. Phase 2, the core of the masterplan, is poised to establish the project as a dynamic, walkable place as it weaves high quality restaurants, retail and residential into the fabric of the surrounding neighborhoods," James Linsley, GID Development Group's president. Several years ago, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, an entertainment concept that combines a movie theater and dining, said it was planning a location in Regent Square. A GID spokesperson said those plans were off. Boston architecture firm CBT is designing the new buildings. Apartment floorplans will range from studios with separate sleeping alcoves to large two-bedroom units. The shops will ring a central plaza designed by Houston-based OJB Landscape Architecture. JLL has been tapped to oversee retail leasing for the entire mixed-use district, which will eventually span 24 acres along West Dallas Street between College Memorial Park Cemetery and Waugh Drive, GID said.

Is "mixed-use" tenants not residential+commercial?

A second CityCentre right next door? Who tf would want to live at the mall? "Hun, pick me up a cinnabon on your way up from the parking lot"

No idea, but I would assume we are heading that direction. I'll bet some info is out by the end of the week. Hahaha. Fortunately, I think plan is to limit rentals to 16+ Also, I actually already asked the BBP Twitter account if they are planning on changing their ban on all scooters (motorized or not) and they replied and said that they were aware scooters were possibly coming and they had talked about it, then deleted that tweet, and replied again and said that the city would be implementing rules for the scooters. No reply to followup question about them currently having stricter rules than the city.

They don't check closely from my understanding. I know of at least two places that changed their configuration afterwards and no one has said anything in 2+ years.

Of course, but that's not practical for grocery stores, unfortunately. In my research just now to find an article that talked about the grocery stores saying it's a necessity, I came across an article about the reduction of the zones in 2014. It was my recollection that they dropped it to 500' from schools in some zones, but this article seems to think that grocery stores have been completely exempted now: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2014/01/why-houston-changing-its-alcohol-sales-law-help-food-deserts/8065/ I don't have insider knowledge, but I bet there's a reason why grocery stores avoided the dry Heights until the law was passed (and HEB backed the passing of the ordinance IIRC)

Lime making a presentation at the bike summit this weekend as well...

EDIT: According to an article I linked to below, grocery stores > 10,000 sq ft are exempted from these rules now. Large number of churches is an issue. Y'all are probably familiar, but city prevents alcohol sales within 1000' of a school or 300' of a church. City has control of the school number and can set it between 300' and 1000'. I don't think anybody is going to Here's that quadrant of the third. This is not exhaustive and a result of me doing some quick google map scrolling: Also, it's 300' or 1000' from the property line, so instead of circles, these should be squares and they should be larger (these circles are from a midpoint of the address, not the edge of the property). The TLDR: good freakin luck. The city can reduce the big circles to those of the small ones, but I think the pilot program the city was playing with would reduce them to 500' Also of note, is that there is a food co-op at the corner of Elgin/Emancipation http://nuwaters.org/, but they only sell produce from 8-12 on Sat/Sun. It's certainly not a Wheatsville Coop like in Austin.

I won't bike third ward/Columbia Tap Trail at night, but that's about it. I've never been hassled/had issues riding through midtown (by Pierce Elevated) or anything like that. I just did a lot of the Tour de Bcycle (73 stations!) and I don't feel comfortable riding bcycle bikes on the street in lots of places because they're so much slower than my hybrid.

Added it: Also, I'm in complete awe at the lack of grocery stores in the Denver Harbor/Kashmere Gardens area. You know what there are a lot of up there 😕: