wilcal

How exactly do you think any project is developed? How do you think Complete Communities or other planning initiatives happen? Sometimes they come from within the Planning Department or from Public Works and sometimes they come from the mayor's office. And cherry-picked entities? You mean the ones that already deemed this area dangerous? 😄 Can you elaborate on why you think that Public Works "fumbled around for a few months"? It's a pretty simple solution. Seems like it would have taken about one 15 minute meeting to figure out some implementation ideas. You paint a picture like they were losing sleep for weeks on end trying to wrap their brain around the problem. You have such a skewed view of how you think the city operates. What if I told you someone in the crooked city government came up with the implementation for every project. It wasn't a cluster at all until big business interests from Midtown got involved. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but many of them have built their business models not on local residents, but by drive-by commuters who live far away. Whole Foods is evidently very much unhappy with how their store is performing and Spec's freaked out since their sales dipped when Brazos closed (yes a new Total Wine opened between the Heights and their store at the same time 🤔) Are you talking about Westmoreland who would have lost their convenient access road from Bagby into their neighborhood? This project would have been a disaster.... for non-resident cut-through traffic using Midtown as a highway bypass to get from 45 to 59 and possibly for downtown workers who would have had to consolidate on *gasp* Smith and Louisiana which are two whole blocks away.

Yep, I'm too excited about this project to have a potential grey cloud hanging over it, so why not ask? I've emailed brokers after seeing things on here a few times, and they've been forthcoming every single time. This part of Midtown is picking up momentum and I want to see it going.

I emailed the broker and they confirmed that it's Amcal that's now under contract. He said that they are hoping for a March closing.

Gazebo/covered space going up

Core/soil sampling happening on site? I'm pretty sure that there is another thread for this but I couldn't find it and that there was a large apartment complex planned at some point.

Would you mind letting me know what meeting this was heard at? I had reached out to CM Kamin's office and they wanted to double back to the people at the meeting to clarify that all safety measures were moving forward.

I've received confirmation from Houston Public Works that this is not true. This is likely a case of telephone gone awry and CM Kamin was likely telling the group about how the bridge WOULD be reconstructed. The planned bike/ped improvements are still going forward.

To be clear, are you saying that there was a plan for a tear down of the bridge before they closed in summer '19 for emergency repairs? Also, in regards to reduction in pedestrian improvements, I reached out to someone who I would assume would have known about it, and they said it would be news to them.

If this is true, then this is truly outthousand dollarsingrageous. Your timeline is messed up unless you want to elaborate further. BikeHouston identified the intersection as needing improvements well before the bridge was even closed for repairs. I'm one of the ones that suggested it as I lived in Westmoreland at the time (BH offices are in Westmoreland as well). The mayor's office was not pushing that upon us. The whole reasoning for closing the bridge was that it needed to be repaired and the money that it would cost could be better utilized and to change the intersection. Turner approved of scheduled improvements a full year before the bridge even closed for emergency repairs. Source: https://www.h-gac.com/transportation-advisory-committee/pedestrian-bicyclist-subcommittee/documents/COH Safer Streets Initiative PBSC 20190124.pdf I was also told, not in a specific way, but a member of HPW that I approached about how poor the lighting was underneath the spur and how dangerous it was. They hinted that significant improvements and a reconfiguration had been talked about. This would have been 3rd or 4Q17. I wouldn't call a potentially multi-year heads up surprising. Except as I mentioned above.... the changes were being clamored on for this intersection for years before this happened. Even so, what's the relevance of someone in the mayor's office wanting to do it before? They're the ones that killed it in the end, too. Someone gets to decide, and that's the mayor's office, so how is that corrupt? If anything the corrupt nature is that they wouldn't even allow HPW to do a full traffic study to understand how unnecessary or necessary it actually is. HPW said that Smith could handle the load of cars, but that wasn't good enough for some people since it wasn't an actual traffic study.

Gah, I put the two logos together a week ago and forgot to post here! Kinda strange.

Target looking very very close. Saw many employees showing up for their shift this morning I'm guessing for stocking/etc. You can see the 3 lifts in the picture, so clearly some painting/finishing/whatever is still happening.

Wasn't able to grab a pic, but the mural was looking really good.

Four-way stop added to intersection Austin @ Holman by HCC. Really nice touch! Much safer imho. They also added bikeway wayfinding signs on HCC's campus.

This is a few dozen page PDF put ought by the city: https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/docs_pdfs/User's Guide for WP and TOD report_6_24_2020.pdf It's pretty quick to scan though, and covers both Walkable Places and Transit-Oriented Development.

Fiesta to become "Greentown Labs" a green energy incubator.

I honestly think someone is living there. It seems like there is a vehicle or two there all of the time.

I'm just saying that Kamin said recently that they would be applying again for the HGAC funds during the next call for projects whenever that happened. HGAC call for project when they were rejected started in 2018, so they had to have funds allocated from before that. And yes, Harvey rebuild may have been part of it: that's what happened to the W. Alabama funds.

Houston-to-Dallas bullet train given green light from feds

City budgets vs national budgets make the difference there.

From the planning department's platting update email: Nothing we didn't already know, except that it's interesting that applicants can try to get a waiver on the sidewalk requirements. Also will be interesting to see how many SPAs are requested/granted. It was a mega PITA before, so hopefully it's actually easier now.

You're leaving the HGAC component out of this. They applied for HGAC funds, which require matching funds from the applicant. I honestly got the feeling that they only scheduled CIP funds for the lower Westheimer portion of the project to try to get the HGAC grant, and when that failed they decided to pull all funding and reallocate. They (I think Kamin?) said that they would be applying for HGAC funds again in the next round.

I'm kind of stunned why they would build a highway so close to another highway.

A bevy of building permits issued for the retail build-outs:

No joke. There's probably room for 50 things like this across the East End.

What about partial re-usage? I just want a bar with a view from the top of that front building. The skyline view would be amazing.