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Skyboxdweller

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Everything posted by Skyboxdweller

  1. Skyboxdweller
    Window wall installation reminds me of Leger, greyed out. It’s definitely happening . It’s interesting watching a bit of the learning curve as they begin putting the glass in .
  2. Skyboxdweller
    Crane jumped . Glass walls startIng on the 8 th floor .
  3. Skyboxdweller
    The rendering of the residential bathroom looks like the tub is positioned in an elevator lobby. Great for both exhibitionists and voyeurs.
  4. Skyboxdweller
    We have a 20% vacancy rate on office space in this city and the major tenants ( 0il and gas and related businesses) are consolidating, reducing staff and using less space. I addition, there is a helluva lot of sublease space on the market. One would think that start-ups can find a deal in Class B buildings or in short term subleases in downtown, uptown or energy corridor buildings. At current absorption rates we have a dozen years of excess office space and building this space for start-ups appears to me to be ill--conceived.
  5. Skyboxdweller
    I don't think the walk from east to west under 610 is difficult at all. I walk to Target, ROD, Central Market and Highland Village from my base in Four Leaf Towers. It would be nice if the space under the freeway was occupied by flower stalls , but this isn't Paris or Amsterdam or Mexico City and people in their cars in Houston are in inert bubbles and rarely acknowledge that there is a world outside the interior of their SUVs.
  6. Skyboxdweller
    Agree. Unlike the feud between the owners of the Fountainbleu and Eden Roc hotels in Miami Beach. In that case, the developer of the Eden Roc hired Morris Lapidus, the architect of the Fountainblue to design his hotel. When ER became a popular hang out and developed more buzz than the FB, the owner of the latter struck back. He built a tower at the property line that blocked the sun at the Eden Roc pool during the afternoon and presented a blank concrete wall with no windows on its northern elevation, except for a windowed suite on the top floor, where the owner of the Fountainbleu could look down and get satisfaction from the deserted Eden Roc pool area below. Nasty.
  7. Skyboxdweller
    I don't know what having a branch of a restaurant that opened in another city has to do with success or failure . We have plenty of restaurants in Houston owned or operated by non=locals and they seem to fill a niche and stay open for decades. I think the not invented here defense is too limiting. Would you not buy warm bread from an outpost of the best bakery in Paris even if the local version was only 90% as good?
  8. Skyboxdweller
    Thanks for the information. There is an opportunity to bracket the pocket park that occupies the site of the former fortune teller with a use that benefits from the green space, like an outdoor dining terrace
  9. Skyboxdweller
    Does anyone know who owns the building site identified for a future residential tower on San Felipe? If it ever gets designed it would be great to have a multi-use building with more retail/service businesses on the ground level of Post Oak Lane, especially if IW and 3 get built out in the manner of the Whole Foods complex, and a floor or two of office space.
  10. Skyboxdweller
    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/apaches-stock-rockets-toward-biggest-gain-in-nearly-50-years-after-company-strikes-oil-2020-01-07 Maybe the vacant lot between La Table and Verizon gets a hq building after all. Apache has a 50% profits interest after cost recovery in a new offshore oilfield discovered off the coast of Suriname, in South America. It's adjacent to a field in Guyana that will be yielding almost barrel of oil a day for each person in that country by mid-decade.
  11. Skyboxdweller
    Hanover would be the logical buyer from a defensive standpoint. They may have too much Houston on their plate for the next couple of years, with the Buffalo Bayou project, etc.
  12. Skyboxdweller
    The tower rises, shaped like a porpoise heading to the Galleria. Concrete being poured for floor 8 today
  13. Skyboxdweller
    Pouring the top of the garage . Planters outlined in rebar on the deck adjacent to the Cosmo. Pool getting walls on the right San Felipe corner. Tower floor framed on the right.
  14. Skyboxdweller
    Everything in moderation, agreed. When I look at subsidies for any project meant to serve private interests I wonder why the project couldn't make it on its own. This project is located amid a strip of industrial and light industrial buildings, including a waste transfer station. wedged along Beltway 8. It's probably less than two miles east of see-through high rise office buildings that have no tenants. The developers claim that they are constructing a walkable environment. This is pure hype. It's a parcel surrounded by industrial buildings, far from greenspace and far from shopping and anything of interest to walk to. I walk three to four miles a day in Uptown/Galleria. I have restaurants,supermarkets, clothing stores, and parks along my route. There is a McDonalds on the other side for I-10 that is in walking distance from the Cannon, and not much else. It's clear that this project can't make it on its own without subsidy, that in a city with a large office vacancy situation more office space is not a burning public need and with subdivisions built inside of reservoirs a mile or two west of this development the public would be better served with subsidies directed elsewhere. Re 2008, which is someone what off subject, how many investment bankers, rating agency personnel, portfolio managers and others who packaged,peddled and profited from subprime mortgage debt were brought up on criminal fraud charges? Zero. They are still living in Greenwich, CT. and Bel Air, CA on the proceeds of their ill gotten gain.
  15. Skyboxdweller
    It's a future subsidy that substitutes for equity. In order to give the debt capital the required internal rate of return, if the future cash flow was burdened by a normal tax rate it would limitthe amount of debt that the project could bear. The sponsor could have put more equity in order to deliver the required financial ratios ( cash flow to leverage). But instead, you and me are providing a subsidy in lieu of sponsor equity. What do we get out of it? A suburban Disney-land office park that will look and feel dated before the grout on the brick veneer sets. This is what drives me mad about "free enterprise" and "entrepreneurship:" in America. We have socialized risk and privatized gain....See financial crisis 2008 for reference.
  16. Skyboxdweller
    The Chronicle statement that the Founder's District is funded by Mark Toon is inaccurate. At least $6M of the funding has now been provided by the City of Houston.
  17. Skyboxdweller
    It's outrageous that this development gets a 90% tax abatement for basically providing market rate office facilities in a city that has a 20% + office vacancy rate downtown and nearby in the Energy Corridor. If this project couldn't make it without a subsidy from you and me, Joe Taxpayer, then it shouldn't get built. By giving it a tax advantage it hurts the ability of existing owners of taxable property to fill their buildings, which in turn results in their lower tax valuation, thus a double whammy to the tax base. Follow the money......how many of those elected reps who voted for this corporate welfare directly or indirectly received campaign funds from the developers, their attorneys and/or other interested parties or cut-outs?
  18. Skyboxdweller
    You are correct in terms of direction. My apt will face the western elevation, and although I've seen the architectural plans for the other three directions, I've not come across the western one. This building is complex, from the underground parking and podium structure supporting the pool, to the 7th floor garden/lounge areas surrounding the tower. The pool is going to be on the San Felipe side. The base was set about floor 6 1/2 and I can see them creating boxed areas for plantings and/or water features. I believe the building both widens and gets taller as it moves from San Felipe to the Cosmo, and believe that they are angling the northern elevation so that the apartments do not look directly into the Cosmo. In 10 days they should be done with the seventh floor and have much of the 8th floor formed and the mystery will be solved. From then on the structure should rise much more quickly as the floor plates are much smaller than those of the base and no ramps or pools, etc. will need to be built.
  19. Skyboxdweller
    The forms for the first tower floor are being built today. I’m curious as his the space is going to be divided among apartments.
  20. Skyboxdweller
    The color, texture and coursing of the brick is just beautiful. God is in the details.
  21. Skyboxdweller
    It’s a beautiful day in the hood.
  22. Skyboxdweller
    If one worked at the Hard Rock Hotel going up across the street, it would be a great commute.
  23. Skyboxdweller
    Laying the rebar and cables to support the pool ( lower right)and putting up the supports for the 7th floor which tips out the podium.
  24. Skyboxdweller
    Do you know who owns the other development site on San Felipe which surrounds the pocket park on the corner? I live directly across the street from the lot and its used now by dog walkers and frisbee dudes on the weekend.
  25. Skyboxdweller
    If Apache is bought and merged out of existence the property is gone. The tax burden on holding vacant property in the Uptown market doesn't seem to be driving a lot of development. The lot on the south side of Post Oak Blvd , across from Uptwon park , has been vacant for years, the former Willy G site is used as a parking lot, the site of the former Whitehall acts has been vacant for five years, and the lot owned by the Tisch family, Loewe's hotels, is vacant for over a decade. Yet vacant they sit. It doesn't seem to work that way in other parts of the country.
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