TheNiche

It depends partly on the extent of repairs that are necessary. Also, if you wouldn't build it the way that it's currently configured in the first place, then there will either be some rent loss or additional operating expenses that reflect functional obsolescence. Sometimes that is curable, other times not. Other considerations in the outcome of buildings like these that can determine whether they're saved or demolished will be the price of underlying dirt, its configuration, and demolition cost of the structure. So for instance, if it's a tall building on a small parcel of land that is six inches away from another structure, then it probably won't get torn down because the cost of doing so would be prohibitive. (There are exceptions, of course.)

So, pretty much artists' studios wherein art is broadly defined to include any variety of creative professional. Sounds good. Someone should develop some of those. It might work as a component in a redeveloped Central Square Building, but such an endeavor could be put in many different structures. Is this the best structure for such an endeavor, or are we only desperately seeking a means to back-fill an obsolete structure?

I don't want to talk about this on Facebook. Facebook sucks. I'm going to talk about it here. Tell me more about the necessity of serendipitous connections. And tell me how an individual or a building might contrive them. I do not understand.

The photo you just linked to of the MCM bannister was one that I took about five years ago. It is the awesomest thing about the entire building, hands down. (I was there with permission, btw. The building isn't worth a breaking and entry charge.) You know a lot more about dorm life, business incubation, and hip things like that than I do. I only know about this building and real estate development and being a business owner and being a student. I'm not with it at all. So I'll defer to you on what's cool. You obviously know better than I. The Rice Graduate Apartments are within walking distance of the campus and also connected by shuttles, just like many of UH's dorms. This system makes sense to me as a mechanism to balance cost, the student experience, and the potential for growth of both the student body and the academic facilities. Placing dorms miles apart from the campus and in a completely different neighborhood with a completely different character seems nonsensical to me unless they're going for some kind of satellite campus or research annex. [bite my tongue!] Sorry, I keep forgetting that you're the expert. The apartment complexes in Austin that you're talking about--I've secretly-shopped most of them--they're appealing to a small proportion of UT students. Whose numbers are greater. Who reside in a smaller city. Who aren't as geographically dispersed within that smaller city. Who received more scholarships. Who came from higher-earning families. Whose parents gave a damn, worked the system for their kids, and saved for their kids' college funds. Who were by-and-large in the top 10% of their high school graduating class, who bumped peons like myself into second- and third-tier institutions, most of them in their hometown and close to family. The demographics are different, and so the apartment market dynamics are too. An apartment operator that has a lot of small spaces in Houston's downtown or midtown area should concentrate their efforts on young professionals, recent college graduates. It should operate like an upscale for-profit co-ed frat house...and if they want to get creative, then they might very well should be marketing heavily in Austin, because that's where the UT grad will move into when the UT grad figures out that Austin has a crappy labor market. Cheap talent can catch the bus. When I was at UH and talking with a future business partner about starting a creative business...which we ended up actually getting bank financing and doing (regrettably), our incubator was One's A Meal on West Gray. We just drove there and talked and ate and drank coffee. It wasn't very close to where either of us lived, but it was open 24 hours without being a Denny's and wasn't too expensive. In general, Houston isn't expensive. It's wonderful like that. Poor people own cars and drive them, and they rent what they need because the rent is affordable. Maybe we're so inexpensive that we don't need incubators like they have in Silicon Valley. Maybe we're so engineering-heavy and devoid of coastal venture capital, that we don't want it either...except as some sort of a fashion statement. [bite my tongue!] Sorry, I keep forgetting that you're the expert. Well, anyway. Just a thought...but, you might check into Boxer Property's business model. They basically serve the need for business incubation in Houston such as I perceive it to exist.

If there's any single impediment to the redevelopment or tearing down of this structure, it is the current owner's unwillingness to accept reasonable offers. To his credit, I'd suppose that asshole property owners are par for the course up in Bronxville, NY. Then there's the asbestos and the physical condition; every building system requires major repair. But those things are curable, and in the grand scheme of things this building isn't in as bad a shape as some of the other abandoned highrises. The biggest obstacle is that the floorplans are bizarre, narrow in some places and deep in others, resulting in a high ratio of common area to rentable area. Views to the east, south, and west are encumbered by massive concrete walls and the building's parking garage. When natural sunlight is at a premium inside of a highrise, then there's limited aesthetic benefit of it even being a highrise. At one point in time, Morris Architects had gotten very far along in planning to make this their corporate headquarters. They would've modified portions of the structure in ways that cured the incurable. The plans were really something to behold. But again...the building owner was reticent to accept a reasonable offer. Morris leased space in First City Tower instead. To address the issue of the building's highest and best use, I agree that some kind of specialized use would probably be best. (I'd like to see a second design center, like exists off of Woodway, but with the Cork Club restored on top.) I'm hesitant to endorse the idea of it being dormitories because to the extent that Rice or UH are going to build new dorms, it should be on their campuses. Business incubator space seems like an interesting idea, and if students want to start a business in such a facility, then they should be welcomed to; but the focus should not be on students.

Good to see some positive news on this one, considering that it had gone sideways for over four years. (God damn...has it been that long? What the hell happened!?)

METRO's sole purpose is to exploit positive externalities by providing public goods that the private sector is unable to provide at the same level of quality or quantity. The many are only so willing to subsidize the few because the many shall benefit from it. The few are incidental.

Let's not fool ourselves. The time savings offered by HOV/P&R is merely an inducement for people to decide to use that infrastructure. The real benefits of carpooling and P&R buses are that there are fewer vehicles on the road in the inner-city neighborhoods where HOV lanes terminate. The benefits are not just related to an easing up of inner-city congestion, either. A recent survey by the Downtown Houston Management District revealed that nearly half of downtown employees carpool or take mass transit. (Carpooling and transit use was the highest among downtown employees commuting from further than five miles out, so you cannot attribute this to light rail.) On account of that there are fewer downtown employees that are demanding a parking space, the City can ease up on parking requirements for new downtown development and employers are more likely to locate downtown (or will be willing to pay higher rents, thereby justifying more downtown development) because they don't have to issue as many parking vouchers to their employees.

No, we already have one and it sucks. I prefer regional control and leadership that is directly accountable to voters.

As stated previously, I may as well compare to Lake Jackson. There would be no predictive validity to anything in particular that was being studied.

"Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded." ^ Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.

1. I'll do you one better. I'd like to see every transit agency, road district, rail district, navigation district, port, and public airport merged under a single umbrella agency for the Houston region. The agency would also be tasked with administering inbound funds from federal, state, and local sources, as well as from users. An even-number of board members would be elected according to geographic districts to ensure adequate community-level representation from throughout the region, and a single at-large board member would break ties. The board would appoint an executive director and directors of each division in order to mitigate organizational cronyism, and H-GAC would be tasked with an external audit of all financial, transportation, and environmental studies, as well as the process for developing their 'Major Thoroughfare & Freeway Plan (MTFP)'. 2. Any car with a wheelbase greater than zero is safer than a motorcycle.

Mexico City has 21.2 million people and Delhi has 16.8 million people. You may as well compare them to Lake Jackson as to compare them to Houston. And besides, their population is also much poorer; they do not like it there; they prefer to move here. I can't blame them. I wouldn't want to live there, either. Climate change is impactful, however as a matter of public policy I believe it to be far less important than allowing for global economic development and wealth-creating activities. I say this because developed nations have a population base that plateaus and then begins shrinking. Developed nations with liberalized trade policies instigate fewer wars with other developed nations. Developed nations can afford sustainable lifestyles without literally sacrificing food from their plate. Developed nations have better legal, political, educational, and physical infrastructure, which results in a higher marginal productivity of labor, higher crop yields, more efficient rural land use patterns, and more environmental justice. These factors are critically important because ultimately rural land use patterns will fix or exacerbate any real or perceived CO2 problems. In order to achieve these aims, it is necessary that poor nations be allowed to go through their energy-intensive development phase as a matter of international policy. What we do with respect to our domestic transportation policy is basically irrelevant by comparison, and it wasn't even that especially important in the scope of our own CO2 output. Driving a car that pollutes less or taking a train is so insignificant that it is mostly just a cathartic exercise. Catharsis is a luxury and should not be subsidized by government.

Sidewalk construction makes sense, in the same vein as that HCTRA is required to contribute toward non-tolled roads if those roads help to improve access to its tolled facilities. METRO has to provide paratransit, too, right along with even rural areas of Texas. Where there isn't a transit agency, they get implemented under one of the regional 'Councils of Government'. My understanding is that the Tata Nano actually isn't selling very well in India because its so minimalist. Indian new-car-buyers are as enamored by luxuries as American new-car-buyers, and whereas the low-end of the market is dominated by motorcycles. Where safety is concerned, motorcycles are where I draw the line. I wouldn't want those to be subsidized because their benefits are offset by healthcare costs. As for pollution issues, the Tata Nano or something like it seems like a good idea for the United States. Our fleet average for light vehicles actually being used on the road is 18 mpg. Anything to improve that is a good thing.

Oh, well I'm sorry to see that the concept of an economic life expectancy did not take. Besides which...what is the maturity of the bond issues? Have you bothered to ask that question? No, of course not. What exactly is on the table? From the sound of things, regardless of the outcomes regarding GM payments, the University Line will have to be re-planned from the beginning of the process. Anything could happen at any time...but not now...which is just the way I like it.

It should be a federal program available as an option to anybody below a particular poverty threshold. And then the federal government should remove itself from all but interstate transportation and the breaking up of government-sponsored taxi cab cartels.

Okay, so it would cost as much as the Red Line. That's still plenty fine by me. Either the user pays or they get a maintenance or insurance voucher to cover a portion of the cost. It shouldn't be totally free.

This interests me. Cite sources, please.

Well sure, until the system outlives its economic life expectancy, LRT vehicles have to be replaced, maintenance and repair costs for the fixed assets increase, and the system ultimately becomes so dysfunctional as to merit replacement. Entropy happens. Nearly every major city underfunded their employee pension funds. Houston was among those, unfortunately. Just because a way of doing things is common does not mean that we should let it slide. If mine is a good argument, then it should be considered on its merits. The only routes that I see as having been within the realm of consideration are the Red Line and portions of the University Line, and I would've done a lot of things different...probably spending even more money than had been proposed (at some future date, inflation-adjusted) to keep it from being so half-assed. And the story of the Red Line isn't only about bus route truncation. That's part of it. The other part is that it replaced TMC shuttles to outlying parking lots and prompted the elimination of Downtown and Midtown trolleys, and that although the line as a whole is touted as having relatively high-ridership per mile, that it is only because it is so short. If it were compared against high-profile equally-short segments of light rail in other systems, I suspect that it would be a fairly middling route. So let's say that we had a sales tax of 10% for public transportation, ten times more than at present and possibly an even higher multiple depending on whether the GM payments remained proportional or not. Does transit ridership increase from only 2.3% of commuters because the transit is better or because people are poorer and less able to afford nice things? Is the increase proportional with transit spending (so that it's now 23% of commuters), or are new homebuyers of 'Forest Glen Valley Brook Canyon' still trapped behind the gates of their master-planned community, miles away from a major thoroughfare, reverse commuting to an employer in a non-METRO jurisdiction, who relocated because the employer didn't want its clients to have to pay insane sales taxes?

Freeways and cars are money better spent. It only seems as though they are more expensive because individuals that buy new cars tend to have more money and better credit and make purchases that exceed the necessity of personal mobility in order to accommodate personal preferences for luxury and status. Consequently, car manufacturers make new cars to cater to the wants and desires of new car buyers. The purposefully inefficient newer cars eventually become older, and then poor people have to buy them and put up with them. Take the Tata Nano as an example of what could be. It costs about $3,000 and gets 56 mpg (per U.S. measurement standards). There's a diesel model in the works with fuel efficiency approaching 100 mpg. I would expect that smaller, uncomplicated, inexpensive cars would have lower insurance and maintenance costs, that lighter vehicles would cause less deterioration to pavement and other infrastructure, and that small ultra-compact vehicles could give rise to codes allowing for more efficient parking lot layouts. It would only cost $189 million to purchase a Tata Nano for each and every one of the 62,951 people that commutes using public transportation anywhere in the ten-county metropolitan area according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That is approximately one half of the cost of the original seven-mile Red Line by itself, allowing people access to tens of thousands of lane miles of road in our region and to work anywhere they please. The Tata Nano is the best federal program that won't ever be.

You're imagining things and confusing the issues. Well yeah...NYC and Paris have a few (hundred) years on us. My point had nothing to do with the size of a city and everything to do with failed policy responses to big city issues, which are issues that ease of access to our suburbs allow us to duck. We won't be able to avoid them forever, but we can right now. Many people live in River Oaks. Many people work in The Woodlands. It's just that they aren't that many in the grand scheme of things. Population growth within the boundaries of the municipality are irrelevant. For one thing, the boundaries change. Houston engaged in a spree of annexations in the early- and mid-90's, adding approximately 100,000 to its population base and culminating in the annexation of Kingwood in 1996. As a consequence of the political outcry that resulted, the City's policies toward annexation have been far less aggressive ever since, concentrating on taking in commercial properties by way of 'Limited Purpose Annexations' to the exclusion of residential areas. Interestingly, however, LPA's have allowed the City to collect sales taxes from people that live in northwest Harris County that do not receive the benefit of City of Houston services within their neighborhoods. And of course, all those people are within METRO's service area. So yeah, I wouldn't count them out as being irrelevant. ...it's just that you need to recognize the realities of public finance. The money doesn't grow on trees. It comes from people. There's only so much to go around. When METRO issues construction bonds to finance a capital expenditure, it has to pay them down concurrent with operating expenses. Take these into account alongside the time value of money, and light rail's lower operating costs cease to remain a compelling argument.

Your memory is poor. I don't like TXDoT. I've said this many times. I support tolling all existing, replacement, and brand new freeways under HCTRA or private ownership regulated under the umbrella of a regional transportation authority whose board members are elected in a manner similar to how school district board members are currently elected. And I'm pretty much okay with HCTRA. They're well reputed. If things change, then I'll re-examine my support of them in their current form. We have a suburban city. Unless you've got a time machine in your back pocket that'll put Humpty Dumpty back together again, we're stuck with the city as it exists in courthouse records. It comprises millions of parcels, most of them deed restricted and under fragmented ownership. We could spend $100 billion on inner-city transit, and it wouldn't change what we are...except that we'd be much poorer. IMO, a sustainable urban core and suburbs go hand-in-hand. The suburbs act as a relief valve on demand and pricing, keeping the urban core affordable to a wide cross-section of society (unlike Paris), basically anybody that desires to live in it. And we accomplish this without constructing gigantic public housing projects or having to enact price ceilings (unlike New York City). That's what is great about Houston is that anybody that is willing and able to work can live well, and also according to personal choice. And if we aren't expensive or exclusive enough for someone, then they can move somewhere else. I don't want that kind of person voting in my city. Yes, the experience of using public transportation is far more cumbersome than simply driving around however one pleases. It's slower, it requires an accounting for routes, schedules, and weather. And even if it doesn't seem expensive on the face of it, that's only because farebox recovery is so abysmal. And my evidence that people prefer to live in a city like Houston is that they're moving here, away from there. Try engaging in a little more reading comprehension. Yes, how about actual Census numbers? 2010: 5,964,800 (+1,295,229) (+28%) 2000: 4,669,571 (+938,440) (+25%) 1990: 3,731,131 Our rate of population growth is accelerating, both numerically and in percentage terms. That's an excellent answer to a question that wasn't asked. Try again. Doesn't seem like it from where I'm sitting.

The distance between the I-10/I-45 split and the I-45/US 59/SH 288 interchange is 2.3 miles along I-45 or 3.8 miles along I-10 and US 59. Adding to the land requirements for such a large and complex freeway such as you propose, there aren't currently very many ramps along the east side of downtown, so adding those from such a complex freeway would probably require more than just a single block of width in many places. And in fact, because there are so few east-west streets in east downtown that aren't truncated by Toyota Center, the GRB convention center, or Minute Maid Park, the ramps would pretty much have to be for Leeland/Bell, Capitol/Rusk, and Congress/Franlkin (each of these being one-way pairs). Polk and Texas would both be messy connections due to bidirectionality on one and the full width of light rail crossing the other. There are a whole slew of buildings that would bite the dust for ramps, including all three buildings from Lofts at the Ballpark. I'd imagine that land costs would probably weight out pretty close to the same figure, going east or west. Where the value of buildings are concerned, Lofts at the Ballpark is probably far more valuable than 2016 Main, considering how low the condo prices are (on account of the extremely high maintenance fees because the building is in such poor shape). The only thing that's at all valuable along the Pierce Elevated is the St. Joseph Professional Building. However, if you're talking about a single super-wide/double deck/sunken freeway that's large enough to handle all of today's capacity as well as to remain functional for a few decades, then we're talking about a really big and complicated road. I'd think that the hard costs would eclipse the land acquisition costs...and you have to build this expensive road 65% further along the eastern route than you would if you came up along the west side of downtown. Then consider that of what's left of I-45, you'd probably want to keep a portion of it in place to serve a purpose similar to Spur 527, as a rapid accessway to the western side of downtown but from the north. So that also has to be reconstructed and costs additional money, and you don't get to reclaim that land. And after all is said and done, the eastern path is a longer commute in terms of distance for most people, so that's just one more downside.

Hiring a contractor is not a fire-and-forget exercise. Somebody has to manage the manager. I speak from experience. You don't think that developers just hire a construction guy and then sit back and relax for 18 months, do you!? That's because we had been running up a trade deficit under a weak dollar policy. We bought consumer goods in exchange for raw materials (and financially services) so that net exporting nations could go through a resource-intensive process of building up their economy. And yes, it really is just that simple. Not to worry, there's a reason that they call it a balance of trade. In the long run, the current accounts balance averages to zero. Sixty years of traffic congestion would seem to indicate that employers tend to move their operations to suburban edge cities when access to the central city is suboptimal. As also evidenced by that period of time, building more roads and better roads is the solution of first resort and is highly effective at sustaining a growth rate. There is a point beyond which more and better roads cannot keep pace with demand, and there are some corridors along which we are beginning to be challenged by that limitation. This is one reason that at a certain population threshold, the rate of growth of a city begins to stagnate even as it has accrued so many highly-desirable 'big city' amenities. Transit is expensive and cumbersome. It becomes a great place to visit in which you wouldn't want to live. I'm not saying that only hipsters ride rail, just that hipsters are the only justification for upgrading bus-based transit to rail-based transit because the proletariat was already riding buses in the first place. The hipsters are what's left over to be induced. No, I need a source to prove your absurd statement that Houston's growth is slowing down. I also need a source to prove that displaced bus routes translate to more buses and increased frequency on other routes. This seems unlikely if operating costs for the light rail have to come out of a budget that would've otherwise allowed for more buses. There's only so much money to go around. I'd expect that sacrifices would have to be made because drivers won't work for free. To all of your other comments, I mostly just want for you to acknowledge the effect of an economic opportunity cost. It's great to have options, but it is also good to have less public debt or lower taxes or better roads...or something altogether different, like more parks. There's lots of stuff worth doing, but only so much to do it with.

I suspect that if I rode light rail in the TMC area during a shift change, the "absolute majority" of the people that I would see riding it would be people that live in Houston that are going about their business...and most of them probably going to get their cars from a parking lot so that they can drive home, even though I won't watch them doing that. Sample bias in the context of an anecdote proves nothing and is unimpressive. Quantify. But why would we want transit butlers? Why should the federal government even want commuter transit that doesn't cross any state lines? I'd like to rejigger our carrier fleet so that it is smaller and so that it launches only remotely-operated drones, sell the existing fleet to Saudi Arabia or China, and then pay down the national debt and reduce the tax burden, returning money to individuals so that individuals (or those individuals' local governments, if that provides room for local tax increases) have greater flexibility to use money in a manner that is best suited to the particulars of their own lives in their own towns.