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TheNiche

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Everything posted by TheNiche

  1. TheNiche
    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.
  2. TheNiche
    The incentive seems to have followed Finger rather than the other way around, so has Finger taken the bait or has the City? Who's the cat and who's the mouse in this game? Whatever the case, I see the most powerful application of this incentive as being the creation of more residential in that area. Only with more residents (many complexes, thousands of units) will retail ever become viable. Do not fool yourself that a stadium and one apartment project can support any significant quantity of retail. The demand is insufficient to support it. Upper Kirby, yes. Northeast downtown, absolutely not!
  3. TheNiche
    Did the abysmal failure of Houston Pavilions teach us nothing!? No, absolutely not. HP had a far superior location to this one, too.
  4. TheNiche
    That's a separate building and a separate parcel. The sign has been there for many years.
  5. TheNiche
    That shouldn't matter to post-modernist aesthetes.
  6. TheNiche
    I don't believe you. That is a crappy highrise site. Details, please.
  7. TheNiche
    Those people can drive or be picked up at their doorstep on-call by the free shuttle service. Hell, they could even buy a limo and stock it with good booze with Third Ward savings over the TMC. And yes, I can speculate to the true cost of operating in the TMC. I just did, and that was a conservative estimate. You're clearly not stupid, so I don't think that you're being intellectually honest with yourself or others. Away with you, troll.
  8. TheNiche
    How is it that trees cast shadows in one direction and the buildings cast shadows in the opposite direction, as if the sun were in the northwest sky? Does this image foreshadow the initial full-spectrum flash of a nuclear apocolypse?
  9. TheNiche
    Let's say that the Men's Center can accomplish their mission on 1.5 acres. The difference between $150 per square foot in the TMC and $6 per square foot in Third Ward is $144 per square foot. That's a $9.4 million difference...up-front. That they could hire a driver to run a 24-hour on-call shuttle service to the TMC in perpetuity...forever...for that amount of money (and its time value) and still have a whole bunch left over with which to pile on the client services. Of course, that assumes that they regularly give a crap about any of the things you mention...which I'll bet they don't particularly in the first place. Yes, it certainly is.
  10. TheNiche
    For what reasons would that be in the public interest or in the interests of The Men's Center organization? You'll note that I'm specifically excluding your personal interests from the above question. Please do not take offense, this is because they are irrelevant to our discussion; this is in accordance with the notion of Pareto efficiency in a cost-benefit analysis; and Pareto was an ardent socialist, so you can't just label me a conservative and dismiss me. Just answer the question.
  11. TheNiche
    5445 Almeda is a four-story office building with a Chase Bank branch and drive-through in an area where triple-digit land sales are totally, completely unprecedented. No matter what the broker says it is, that is not land. Moreover, that property is not and has never been part of the Texas Medical Center; the TMC is expanding southward, not to the north.
  12. TheNiche
    Even if their basis is $2 PSF, they're still carrying an asset worth at least $40 PSF. If they relocated to the Third Ward or Near Northside, they could probably find land for between $4 PSF and $8 PSF and still be accessible enough to their clientele that they wouldn't be doing them any disservice. And with the gains from selling their facilities in Midtown, they could either have better facilities in the Third Ward or provide a greater scope of services. OTOH, if they tried to move into the Texas Medical Center, then they'd probably have a difficult time finding any land priced below $150 PSF. And I doubt that any office buildings would be thrilled with the idea of leasing space to them. So indeed, TGM's idea is totally insane. The cost of such a move would certainly diminish the quality of services that could be provided.
  13. TheNiche
    That's some interesting logic. Perhaps Memorial Hermann should consider moving its Medical Center facilities to a less expensive site. The KBR site on Clinton Drive is up for sale; maybe they could move there. Do you know why they won't? Lots of reasons. 1) Executives and staff don't want to work in a post-industrial ghetto. 2) There isn't an agglomeration of similar organizations at that location that they can rely on to consistently draw in new clients. 3) Donors prefer giving to non-profits that operate within neighborhoods that they are highly-visible; it aids in the development of the donors' vanity. These are also the reasons that Midtown is still a preferred location for homeless services. And that's not going to change until bleedingheart do-gooders do what makes sense for their clients as opposed to what makes sense for them...which is never, because they're selfish like everyone else.
  14. TheNiche
    Yes, absolutely.
  15. TheNiche
    Neil Peart doesn't laugh. Damn, now I have to go listen to 'Fountain of Lamenth' as penance for speaking His name.
  16. TheNiche
    Looks like a bore. An expensive bore.
  17. TheNiche
    Yes, that's the site for an eventual second phase of Fairmont Museum District Apartments.
  18. TheNiche
    Were you referring to the pond or mass transit?
  19. TheNiche
    Indeed, and the pond appears pure and refreshing.
  20. TheNiche
    Agreed. And we need more affordable options for shotgun pistols.
  21. TheNiche
    Actually, it is the end of the world for white people and attractive Asian women under the age of 35. And that's the only thing that actually matters in life. Or weren't you aware of that? Seriously though, I think that the rate at which crime is reported has a lot to do with ethnicity (a given), that people don't think of Montrose or the Heights as being as shady as they are and therefore are less cautious or outright avoidant of the area, and that when a crime does occur in a 'safe' area, there is a sense of indignant outrage...whereas if someone gets mugged in 4th Ward, that's expected to be pretty much par for the course. So yeah, I don't trust the crime stats as a predictive indicator of whether any given pedestrian walking 500 feet through a neighborhood is likely to be a victim of violent crime.
  22. TheNiche
    Anybody can be sued for anything, but someone with a large non-homesteaded asset is especially likely to be a target. And who wants to be the unfortunate defendant to set a precedent by losing their case? Nobody, that's who. Settlements are expensive, too, and so if marginally effective means of deterring crime might be more effective at deterring legal frivolity, then that's what's going to happen.
  23. TheNiche
    If you want to be more assured of your safety then move out of the 'hood, Slick. No matter their badge looks like, a guard can only be in one place at any given time.
  24. TheNiche
    The guard is for the apartment owner's safety, not the tenants'. It's just the management company making a show of things. If this sort of thing were to happen again (which it will by virtue of its location) and management had not provided notice to you and upgraded their security presence in some form or fashion, then the victim may have a good case against the apartment operator for negligence. When a suit of this nature is victorious, damages can come in at utterly ridiculous amounts--tens of millions of dollars. And yes, even if the tenants should've known that their neighborhood was unsafe, the landlord is still exposed to this risk. There's no accounting for incompetence on either side, only for the landlord's 'reasonable' efforts to stem a known problem.
  25. TheNiche
    It would appear that pronouns are a problem for Wal-Mart haters.
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