TheNiche

Maybe we should do some polling to find out what percentage of various areas make regular use of public transit. Maybe probable ridership is more important than density.

The Census already does that for you. The caveat is that existing transit use may not be a reliable indicator of the potential within that neighborhood for non-users of transit to adopt transit use. That is to say, if all that light rail could accomplish is to induce bus users to switch to light rail at several times the cost per rider, then little has been accomplished and the endeavor has been wasteful.

They're about four miles apart, but one is a development and the other is vacant land offered for sale. There is no comparison between a proposal and a non-proposal.

Do you see that large expanse of vacant land just to the north (to the right) of the KBR site in the photo you posted? That was a former Superfund site that got cleaned up by Frank Liu some years ago. And then, on its western periphery, I think that Alan Atkison has been buying up land and cruddy old warehouses. There is so much land at play in that area that if nothing were built except for wrap apartments were built on it, it'd take about an entire decade of building absolutely no other apartment units anywhere in Houston's urban core to fill it all up. But if this location can command a capture rate of even 20% of market demand, I'd be very impressed. But that would mean that the time horizon for buildout would be 50 years, and I can assure you that the purchaser will be unable to tolerate those kinds of holding costs. And in the mean time, development potentials for office or retail space are very limited, and the land prices probably exclude industrial as anything but an interim use. This means that lower-density development primarily of a residential character is inevitable.

Nice try Niche. I have about 50 relatives there, and my opinion is not based simply based on my observations, but their testimonials as well. I myself rode both the bus and train while there, and reading houstonians praising bus is about as big a joke as there is. No comparison, more like an evil necessity.

Transit is an unfortunate reality for big cities, generally speaking. The automobile is ideal. Light rail is better than buses, but so much more expensive as to render it impractical along most routes and for most cities.

It’s just a feeling you get. Shops and cafes on corners, people walking around, entrances to mass transit under or above ground. A city where you don't have to move away to become famous, a city capable of hosting an Olympics, a city with name recognition where you don't have to say the state or country name after it. A city where you can fly in and take a train into the city or to any major area. A city with at least one major theme park nearby. A city where TV shows are shot and set in. the list goes on.....

I hope someday soon after the light rail, the city will decide to build a mass transit system like all world class cities have. In reality, METRO light rail is just a street car. If you go to cities like San Francisco their light rail is used in addition to their heavy rail BART system, which is exactly what Houston needs to head out into the suburbs (used as a commuter/urban rail).

So...a city capable of fostering ridiculous and often outright stupid triviality. That's what passes for "global". Citykid, you're pissing me off. I'm going to go get a beer from the corner bar. That's what Houston has to offer. And it is good (and cheap).

Guys, now we're off topic.

I like these ideas, but how much is someing like this going to cost? I mean if we are talking about converting all of these freeways into roundabouts - double decker roundabouts no less - what would the pricetag be? $10 billion?

The biggest cost drivers on recent freeway projects have been land acquisition issues. In the downtown area, building up and down is probably less expensive than building outward. And whatever the case may be, facilitating easy movement of commuters within the downtown area adds to its viability, dynamism, and to property values there and nearby.

That said, 2016 Main probably wouldn't cost terribly much to buy up and take down. And I wouldn't mind seeing the gigantic white cross on the St. Joseph Professional Building go down...with the building if necessary. And aside from those two highrises, there's not very much standing in the way of widening. Perhaps there should be a moratorium on anything more than two stories in height being built next to the downtown freeways in order to protect the easement for future use.

Except that no one ever expected that. You are combining two valid critiques into one in order to make a winning argument against something that no one ever argued. This property could have been a spectacular mixed use development. The reason it did not happen was because the developer wanted to move ahead in a bad market and could only get a big box stripmall done. The rental market in Houston is more than sufficient to support having some apartments on the same site with ground floor retail. West Ave, City Centre, and Post Apts on W Gray all have shown that the model is more than just viable.

West Ave and CityCentre have vastly superior locations to this site, in areas that were underserved by new high-end retail. And the Post Midtown Apartments have a miniscule amount of retail; about the equivalent of one strip center. The Allen House site is also better than the subject, and look at how much difficulty they've faced pushing through even the first phase. Then consider Marvy Finger's site on Waugh and how much easier it was to let a big box retailer develop than to wait for the stars to align where each of the components of a mixed-use development were favored by the capital markets.

But that's the problem with a mixed-use development is that the stars must align for every component. That's why Pavillions was so many different things until the developer had to pull the trigger on one thing. The same principles are at work in any mixed-use development where the extra uses are more than just a design accent. A site like Ainbinder's can only prudently be developed as a multi-use site, and that is what has happened. And the fact is, people don't mind walking to the building next door. If it doesn't look contrived enough for you, that's your problem.

When's the opening date for this Wal-Mart? I'm looking forward to buying affordable pre-cooked chorizo in sliced deli meat form for my Red Barron Fire-Baked Original Crust Cheese Pizzas. Sprinkle with parmesean cheese. Yum!

exactly - that's why you've got to keep moving the traffic straight through until you've removed the bottleneck from the CBD. A roundabout is a 360 degree bottleneck-in-waiting.

The solution is a 720-degree roundabout. Two roundabouts, one on top of the other, one going clockwise and the other counterclockwise. If there's a backup on one, then thru-traffic can take the other.

In essence, it'd be the same concept that we have today except with double the capacity on the same amount of land.

I've been hearing some anti-Vancouver stuff lately--companies pulling out, and it just not being a great city. Frankly, I think "world-class" is a pretentious term thrown around that people attach to whatever city has the best looks.

I think that it implies which cities tourists can most easily idealize themselves as living in without everyday familial or financial constraints or the need for employment. That's how they see a city when they visit it, after all, and most people lack the imagination necessary to impose realistic expectations upon themselves.

That said, Slick Vik's comment was pretty much random. The East End line is probably the one least deserving to be built up, given the low density, minimal congestion, and the ready availability of alternate parallel routes.

Humanism? Romanticism? Tax rebates in the form of Beaver Nuggets?

I thought this was about the next light rail line.

The debate centers on whether it was wiser to construct the entire line all at once and more quickly or to construct it much more slowly and in segments, comparing the impact on local businesses. I suggested that small business owners should be compensated financially for any implied government taking. Rather than refute the basis for financial compensation, the folks on here tried to defend constructed notions of neighborhood and community that are founded in Romanticism. That's how we got here, but we are on topic.

What luciaphile moved to the 'Anything Goes' thread, she did so thoughtfully and appropriately.

(Next time, before claiming that we're off topic, you should read the thread.)

At the risk of offending the "you didn't build that" English grammar illiterates, "the government" is what made Hempstead prosperous in the 1st place no matter how far back in Anglo Texas history you want to go. Regional winners and losers were chosen from the beginning whether it was the granting of land or RR ROW, choosing the county seat, the building of roads there instead of somewhere else b/c previous choices had made a town a regional commercial center, etc.

Niche your universe, like mine, is "turtles all the way down" and it is pointless to consider "reparations" for some artificial construct like "Hempstead" or "the African American population."

What we are left with is defending our own micro spaces in an attempt to protect our unalienable right to property - ich bin ein NIMBY.

and that's why, to return to topic, affected Houstonians should fight METRO for everything it wants to do until those Houstonians get the maximum amount of justice possible from a government agency acting to disrupt their lives.

I hear what you're saying, however I have no interest in quantifying and subtracting out government benefits that had been allocated so many generations ago that nobody living today can personally remember them. At some point there has to be a cutoff, where the status quo can be defined and beyond which government damages can be defined and accounted for.

As for METRO, of course individuals should fight for their due. I don't deny them that. It's just that the system that ascribes what they're due should not be hijacked by special interests. It should be a cold and calculated manner that can be applied in many circumstances and that will not be changed on account of superficial differences or politically-sensitive individuals or populations. That's how justice is achieved that is equal and inclusive. It must be blind.

Niche tends to argue from the macro perspective, discounting any of the individual micros that make up the whole as expendable, as though "the Houston economy" had any meaning beyond the collection of the 10s of 1000s of individual economic actors from 1 person operations to the biggest chemical plants.

On the contrary.

Consider this. I do not care for labor unions or labor laws. If you don't like your job, then you should do something else. If it's a company town, then move elsewhere. The company will either get the picture or you will remove yourself from them. I believe that the individual should take accountability for their own happiness and not fall into the trap of believing that such a thing can be assured by a union rep or a bureaucrat. The individual has free will and property rights (which should be protected because that is the purpose of government). They are not a slave. If they live like one, it is nobody's fault but their own.

And if the best thing that one can accomplish on their own isn't to their liking, then that's why we have psychiatrists, anti-depressants, and Ayn Rand novels. And we should legalize assisted suicide, because that is the ultimate expression of individualism.

No doubt you could construct a truth table to establish the validity of what you've said here, and I'm no logician and couldn't hope to dispute it; but I'm confused about the composition of the "many" -- travelers -- whose interests are held captive. Why privilege travelers over other "manys"? Such as the set of property owners: is it not in the collective best interests of that many, so defined, for governments to struggle to exercise their power of eminent domain?

It may be obvious that my concern for the many is provisional. It goes to the core of my few convictions that what is worth preserving is generally not in the hands of the many.

In the example, let's say that the universe of property owners exist within Texas. The two most materially impacted subsets of property owners exist in Hempstead and Chapel Hill. The capitalized value of retail sales that are attributable to travelers and to locals whom make a living by selling goods and services to travelers is what supports some amount of the property value of Hempstead. If travelers begin to patronize Chapel Hill as an alternative, then the property values in Chapel Hill rise even if they fall in Hempstead. One community's loss is another's gain. If you're a member of the Hempstead community, then you're going to feel screwed. And I understand why you should feel screwed; that's why I don't have very much of a problem (in theory) with reparations being granted under those circumstances. The government should un-screw Hempstead for having made Chapel Hill prosperous instead. And in fact, if a mechanism can be devised whereby a portion of Chapel Hill's newly found prosperity can be zeroed-in on and captured to pay for un-screwing Hempstead, that's also fine by me. All the better.

The scenario presented is an entirely distributive situation. There are 'x' number of dollars to spend in community 'alpha' or 'beta', neither of which is inhabited by a superior or more deserving race of people. They're all just human (and they all exist either within the universe of property owners or as patrons of property owners). They are on equal footing. So all that's left is that travelers should not be made inconvenienced whenever practical; what is at stake is their time, which is valuable. And after all, there are vastly more travelers that transit those communities each day than there are people that subsist from travelers that also live in those communities.

If you've got any philosophical leg to stand on, it is the notion grounded in Romanticism that local tradition should be upheld for its own sake and enforced by government intervention and at the point of a sword. The United States may as well demand that Russia shut off its gas wells in order to effect the United States' preferred climate at the expense of the warming of Siberia and Russian economic development; Catholic fundamentalists may as well demand the abolition of birth control devices and abortion. Southampton and Boulevard Oaks may as well prevent the widening of a major thoroughfare and then complain when traffic becomes a concern, and then get what they want both times even though they're smack dab in the middle of the urban core of the nation's fourth largest city and fifth largest metropolitan area. And the worst of it is that traditions at any scale are understood superficially by those speaking in the role of the third-person and typically invented by those speaking in the first-person, just as Hitler invented the Aryan race.

Luciaphile, I reject romanticism in favor of humanism. That's my MO. Granted, it's a lot easier to say that than to contribute to the administration of my preferences. I never claimed to be an effective advocate of my beliefs, some kind of social engineer. I shall only state them and hope that others might prevail upon my reasoning to win small humanistic victories, even if I should never know of them.

Well, considering that the "heyday" of the downtown club and cafe scene occurred from 2004 to 2006, I wouldn't say that anything killed it, at least during the time of the rail construction. If you look at the evolution of the Main Street scene, it began in the late 90s with a few restaurants and bars. It grew when the "see and be scene" crowd decided downtown was the new thing. From 1999 through the early 2000s the white scenesters flooded the bars and niteclubs. Then, the first clubs began opening on Washington, causing the scene to shift. The clubs began to shift in demographic to a 50/50 white/black crowd, and the music trend toward hip hop and other popular black music. By the mid 2000s, the club scene largely catered to black club goers. However, while whites may claim that it died...and blame METRO...the Main Street crowds were far larger during this time than when the hip white scene occupied Main Street. Eventually, the clubs had run their cycle and began closing in 2006 and later, long after the rail construction was completed.

The rail construction did not kill anything. The scene simply morphed from white centric to black centric, and self-centered whites think that it died off. It didn't. Hence, my statement.

Well see, now that just opens a pandora's box of racially-charged hypotheses involving mass transit and the presence of black people, including some broader implications thereof. What HAIF really need at this particular moment is someone like TexasVines to say what we're all thinking in order to kick off a fun series of arguments.

Afton Oaks?

Sure, that's a good example. If there would've been a substantial adverse impact, then it should be litigated and they should've been paid off for it if doing so would've brought the project cost down from the alternative or made the trip substantially more convenient for riders.

having been a small business owner myself - and I still am one - I'll just respectfully disagree. with everything you said in the post.

travelers used to stop for bbq, gasoline, whatever in Hempstead. then the 290 bypass got built. travelers still ate bbq, stopped for gasoline, whatever. just not in Hempstead.

No, I agree completely with your assessment. Its just that I don't care whether consumers' road trip expenditures are made in Hempstead or Chapel Hill. The localities might care, but the statewide agency that sponsors and funds the project should only really concern itself with the possibility that those expenditures might go to somewhere like Louisiana instead...which it won't in your example.

Otherwise you find yourself in a situation where localities, neighborhoods, and special interests can dictate terms to a larger entity, holding even well-conceived projects hostage. And that's ridiculous, too, because the best interests of the few (i.e. restaurateurs) are often poorly aligned with the best interests of the many (i.e. travelers). Not always, but often enough. Allowing special interests that latitude or codifying veto rights into statute would be absurd.

Red Line + Lee Brown tearup of the downtown grid shut down a thriving downtown cafe scene and the collateral small businesses that scene created. most small businesses operate on margins so thin that removing a big % of customers for even a month is death. that some % of the projects that kill them are paid for with their own tax $$$ is ironic.

and it's all those small businesses that provide the fabric for general economic success in any part of town, so your "core employers" may survive but they alone can't create a thriving business culture.

IMO these big construction projects that make people avoid an area until it's finished have an effect more like a hurricane or some other natural disaster rather than being the moral equivalent of a taking.

Yeah, I know. So what? You've got to crack some eggs to make an omelette. Eggs are a finite resource that cost money. If the project is worth it (which I do not mean to imply that it is), then small business owners can be made whole for their government-imposed losses and move on...temporarily closing during construction, opening new businesses elsewhere, or whatever they please to do. Having been a small business owner myself, I can say that an opportunity to take some money and run might be quite a welcome circumstance to many people.

As for your comments regarding "business culture", I don't get it. People gotta eat somewhere. If not on Harrisburg, then on Canal or Navigation. It'd be the same story all over town. Even if spent differently, the money will be spent. It probably won't be captured by West U or anywhere like that, either.

2) it's extremely annoying how long construction projects take in general (not just rail, but street repairs in general). I feel like it would be more cost effective to pay more workers for a shorter amount of time than to pay a smaller amount of workers for a longer period of time, no? I mean it seems like these projects could get done it half the time or less.

TXDoT was good enough to do that for the Katy Freeway and makes a habit of providing incentives to their contractors for the on-time completion of a project. I think that that is excellent public policy. My time is worth it. That's the whole point of relieving congestion in the first place, after all.

And yeah, I've never been especially receptive to the argument that the construction kills businesses. Retail dollars just get spent elsewhere. And it's not as though core employers are going to move out of town due to a temporary construction project. If there's an adverse impact that might constitute the moral equivalent of a public taking, then just compensate small business owners and let them close shop so that the project can be wrapped up sooner than later.

Interesting that they're so far along in some places and barely placing barrels in other places along the same line. Seems like it should've been done simultaneously and all at once instead of spending money on early segments that end up sitting unused for a period of time afterward. Neither the private sector or even TXDoT would typically allow this sort of thing to happen. Also, does anybody know when work will commence on the underpass? Seems like that would be on the project manager's critical path, but nothing is happening.

As impressed as I am at all the new development that is sprouting up in that area, I can't help but think that we're witnessing the emergence of a 21st-century version of Gulfton. Lots and lots of density, some industrial mixed in, and very limited private affluence without any meaningful public amenities that might anchor what little affluence is there.

Oh well. Poor people gotta go somewhere, right? I hope that HISD's demographer has some foresight.

Is that a City of Houston press release? Whoever it is, they need to find someone who can write (and at least know the name of the city's primary airport).

Not to mention, someone that can get their basic facts and figures straight about the project.

A 235,000-square-foot building on 0.03 acres would have a floorplate size of 1,308 square feet (barely enough for elevators and stairs) and would be 180 stories tall.

we should rename TheNiche to TheTangent

Hey now, my posts have been on topic; the responses to them have been tangential. Low-attendance baseball games adversely impact the development potentials for retail opposite a baseball stadium. That was my point.

I was thinking of the Yankees but could've referenced the Black Sox for all it matters.

Out of curiosity. What makes that location so much more attractive?

The HP site is more attractive than northeast downtown because it is a more densely developed and more highly visible part of downtown. There is more of everything there. Right there.

By contrast, NE downtown has a baseball stadium and charitable venues, most notably homeless shelters, vast surface parking lots, and low-traffic streets. There are 81 home games per year played by the Astros, but many of those games aren't in an ideal time slot for entertainment-oriented retail; and many of their seasons suffer from droughts of wins and attendance. They aren't the White Sox.

Here's a link to the Downtown Management Districts 2011-2015 Service Plan dated November 2010:

http://www.downtownd...ervice Plan.PDF

On page 18 they detail their Goal #4 of (making downtown) a Vibrant Sustainable Mixed use Place with (4b) Exciting neighborhoods to live in.

They continue;

Action: Consistent with newly prepared neighborhood plans for downtown, work to

attract more residential development at various price points including finding

ways to bridge economic and physical challenges. This includes required

market research and analyses.

Operating: $30,000/ $150,000

Action: In collaboration with other entities, work to expand open space, park &

recreational offerings for downtown residents as well as addressing the

current functionality of existing spaces.

Operating: $20,000/ $100,000

Action: Working with others, pursue school/ educational opportunities in or

immediately adjacent to downtown to meet the needs of a younger

residential population.

Operating: $10,000/ $50,000

Whatever the case....its a win win because the city WANTS residential so it can further develop a mixed-use environment. before you bash understand that this is a process and compared to what this portion of downtown looked like 15 years ago (almost ALL surface parking lots) I'd say they are making progress. Let them continue to build a customer base that will make downtown attractive for outside investors and developers.

I'm not sure how your excerpt proves the timeline of events. The program you mentioned is clearly larger/newer than their budget. And that's okay. They're just shifting some funds around. I just want to be sure that you've got your facts straight.

I do understand that this is a process, which is precisely my point. Residential is the horse and retail is the cart. Let's not get their order confused.