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dalparadise

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  1. Surely no lighting could be so spectacular as to be seen from five blocks away. Why do blinking lights so interest you?
  2. The Houstonians craving this are unaware of The Galleria. I think <100 sounds about right. On a serious note, a comparison to The Galleria is valid, I think. When that mall was introduced into a seemingly illogical setting -- It was considered the middle of nowhere at the time -- it focused on destination retail and the novelty of an ice rink in hot, humid Houston, to draw people who were curious. It also was designed as an enclosed city unto itself, with a nod to "public spaces" (ironically on private property) that had rarely been seen outside much older cities. It invented (or more accurately re-invented) an architectural type, further distinguishing itself and sealing its longevity as a model for others to follow. I hate to think what "Marq-E on Main" will look like when it turns The Gal's age.
  3. Strange, I found the discussion of places he would "seldom frequent" and "occasionally frequent" to be very poorly said.
  4. And you are impressed with it? I didn't have any fantasy in mind, I was merely observing. I didn't actually WANT anything out of HP, as I find shopping, dining, entertainment and living options in other parts of Houston to be excellent. I have no secret hard-on to buy Gap khakis or even Cartier watches downtown. If retail is, in fact, the answer to building downtown life past 6pm, and if we all agree that downtown life is our goal for whatever reason, I think this seems like poor execution. I think turning the shops inward does exactly what The Park Shops did -- it eliminates its interaction with the street and with the larger potential neighborhood that might begin to develop, had this been considered. If the types of retail planned were more destination oriented, people would have a reason to seek this place out and to come back often. If it had the mentality to create more of a sense of place to encourage a streetscape, it would draw even people not looking to shop, but merely gather. Again, this begins to build community -- something this collection of what looks like temporary buildings lacks. In the end, for all its promise, it's really just an inward-facing outdoor mall that may serve office workers and a few people killing time before a concert or basketball game and no one else. The thing I find funny is that we already have one lame mall downtown that no one goes to, why does anyone think we need two?
  5. If HP had about 10 times the retail space and some air conditioning, it would be a run-of-the-mill mall. If its storefronts faced the street, it would be a curious collection of lackluster shops that make a downtown shopping district. If its tenant list were interesting enough (except for HOB and Lucky Strike-those are great, but perhaps not enough to sustain it) it would be a destination. If it were connected to residential or better positioned near a critical mass of residential (no, a few Midtown bargain hunters shopping for high school apparel isn't enough) and gave that population a public square -- not just an un-air-conditioned mall (this claustrophobic tin can is going to be miserable in summertime) it might form the core of a real urban neighborhood. If its architecture reflected local materials, or some hint at a Houston or Texas regionalism, it might inspire developers around it to continue its mission with complementary retail and restaurant developments of their own. As it is, HP is none of these things and doesn't appear to be in this for the long haul. HOB seems cool, though for "happy hour" I counted five people behind the bar, serving seven customers this evening. Granted, it was Monday, but someone needs to adjust staffing levels or their employee costs are going to run them out of business. And why stick on a crappy mall to this thing? It would have been fine as a stand-alone without the Lidz and the handful of restaurants we already have. I'm a big Houston booster and try to look on the bright side in cases like this, but HP sucks.
  6. Yeah, Houston's House of Blues is looking more like House of Snooze or House of Blows, architecturally. BTW -- the "signature location" in LA on Sunset does NOT look like a tin box. It looks like a Little Woodrow's or some kind of tiny Cajun shack. You go in early and it's just a small room with a bar, with a curious seam running across the floor. Then, at show time, the whole upstairs swings open on hydraulics, exposing the stage and seating/dancing areas. The "tiny shack" you were just in has instantly become the balcony for a 1000-seat show club. It's very cool to see it happen. I'll bet Houston's doesn't do that. I'll also bet the exterior will remain as you see it now, albeit with a neon sign, so people wont confuse it with a parking garage, storage units or AT&T building.
  7. Texas' count is a great accomplishment, but just remember -- every time an NYC Fortune 500 company decides to move to the suburbs, New York State loses an HQ that the metro area retains.
  8. Except it will have stupid heads of presidents along it. Sweet fancy Jesus, this is dumb.
  9. The biggest obstacle to The Dynamo playing at the Astrodome is the Texans and the Rodeo, who own the lease agreement and aren't sharing. They aren't about to let anybody in on their party without a major piece of the action. And by piece of the action, I mean ALL of it.
  10. Bleh, articulating beautiful Italian stone veneer as formed concrete on a big-box store isn't noble. I generally love clean designs, but having toured many of the great cathedrals of the world, I can tell you the class of this building type is not understated. A cathedral should leave you awestruck in your procession to it, then double the effect upon entering. Ours is very beautiful inside -- I have been lucky enough to go in -- but outside, it could be mistaken for the downtown headquarters of Ryland Homes.
  11. That's all I said in my original post-- that it would offer affordable rooms to conventioners and not much else. No big deal really. I think you misunderstood my post about the Dallas thing. I surely didn't want to get involved in that, which is why I also won't try to drag up the HP vs. Victory nonsense. But, in that childish argument, I remember someone comparing the developments and paralleling the La Quinta (and the rest of the developments) to the Victory development, which really did seem silly and added fuel to that childish fire. I do not wish to play in that, else I would have gotten involved before that thread was locked. BTW -- My name on here is not meant to be ironic or oxymoronic or to have anything to do with Dallas at all. It's a play on Sal Paradise, Jack Kerouac's protagonist in On the Road -- just FYI. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sal_Paradise
  12. Most here would probably say that I am. I wasn't bragging, though. I was just pointing out that it's a little odd to care about a La Quinta opening in your town. I don't think locals use hotels like this, aside from putting up family over the holidays or something like that. Who would go to a La Quinta in his own town? Would you eat at the restaurant? Drink at the bar? Stay in a room for a weekend? I'd be interested in a cool new hotel that offered something for locals. This one will never see any Houstonians who don't work there in low-paying jobs. In other posts, people were touting this opening as proof that our Downtown revitalization was on-par with Victory in Dallas, where the W opened. I found that odd.
  13. for the record, I never suggested "giving SWA a pass" if it was an oversight. I did suggest that judging them in the media and amongst our Internet forum, before the facts were in was unfair. That said, I don't understand the language "falsely accepted". I do understand the Dallas paper's report to say that SWA flew aircraft they knew were in violation of the ADs listed. That's bad. Had it been an oversight and they had caught the error and self-reported -- okay, fine them an amount to send a message that sticks. The fact that they are now being shown to be dishonest and reckless with people's lives tells me they can't be trusted to self-regulate. If the FAA lacks the teeth to do some serious punitive damage to SWA, perhaps this bad PR will do the job. I can't believe they'd be so stupid to do something like this. It's just as I said earlier -- sooner or later, a mechanic or someone with an FAA certification was going to realize that this company policy was putting his hard-earned and expensive certificate in jeopardy and blow the whistle.
  14. Agreed, but A&Ps, not actually the FAA, are the the public's only line of defense in this instance. They put their certification on the line when they sign off an inspection. the FAA regulations depend on them to be enforced. In my mind, they're held to an incredibly high standard. Still human, but high. The more of this story that comes out, the more I'm swayed to the idea that someone's being dishonest here.
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