dalparadise

Surely no lighting could be so spectacular as to be seen from five blocks away. Why do blinking lights so interest you?

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.

Strange, I found the discussion of places he would "seldom frequent" and "occasionally frequent" to be very poorly said.

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?

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.

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.

Really? It doesn't seem all that funny.

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.

Except it will have stupid heads of presidents along it. Sweet fancy Jesus, this is dumb.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Actually, if these new allegations hold up, it crosses the line into the scenario I portrayed as crazy for Southwest to attempt, because there was no way to get away with it. And thus, they got caught. I can only assume the person(s) who made the decision to keep flying the planes after they were found to be in violation of the ADs had little experience dealing with the FAA and thought it really wasn't that big of a deal. It was a very big deal. Nobody familiar with FAA regs or how that agency deals with non-compliance would take such a risk. This is the kind of thing that could cost them their brand name, once it's all done. I'm just a lowly private pilot. I invested $6000-$7000 into obtaining my certificate and hate to think of giving the FAA a reason to take it away. Can you imagine what kind of idiocy it takes for SWA to risk the $billions in their operation over something like this? Even if they're just held to the $10 million, or a portion thereof, that's a serious case of stupidity. I've gotten up in the air and realized I had forgotten to set my transponder to "altitude," which allows ATC to know my altitude on their radar screens. Though this is a very common occurrence, I was so afraid of an FAA call that I self-reported the incident. After doing a little reading on the subject, it turns out that this has happened so often that modern radar has been updated to handle the quirks of transponders' old technology, so there's really not a reason to turn them off of "altitude" in the vast majority of cases, as we're all instructed to do on the ground. It's safer just to leave it on and that is now the prevailing opinion. Well, my reporting, and that of thousands of others is leading to this safety measure becoming common practice. I've flown with my transponder properly set since. That's how the system's supposed to work.

This sheds some new light on the subject: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dw...b2e20a.html?npc It's not looking good for Southwest now.

No question that non-compliance with an AD is a serious matter for an airline and the FAA has zero tolerance for it. I do think "intent" should play a role in assigning punishment, however. That said, would you rather fly a dishonest airline, or a negligent one? I honestly don't think SWA is either, but do not wish to be an apologist for them. I don't really even particularly like them. When I first read the story, it seemed as if the reporter was trying to chum the water with the word "unsafe" and to depict the scenario as the airline being dishonest. While that may actually be the case, it is not clear at this point. The reporting seemed a bit naive. Plus, it was provoking responses like "they put profits ahead of passenger safety" which is unfair without knowing the full story. Like I said -- it may be the case, but if you really look at it, it seems like a real oversimplification of the situation and one that would not benefit the airline in the long run. They'd be crazy to do this. It would cost them millions in regard to their fleet over time and there is NO POSSIBLE WAY TO GET AWAY WITH IT. Anybody with any knowledge of how the FAA works would know this. That's why they self-reported. Pilots do the same thing. FAA regulations are complicated and constantly changing. Pilots violate them all the time. There is a self-reporting Web site for describing your infraction when you do. If your infraction generates an investigation, you are generally let off easy if you self-reported. The goal is safety, not punishment. The system wants to create an atmosphere where a company like SWA will self-report, knowing it may cost them millions, in order to stay safe. It's worked very well for many years and is an effective check against unreasonable power imposed by the FAA and unsafe practices by the aviation community.

The FAA doesn't ground individual airplanes. They can ground an aircraft type for investigation into a crash, but when it comes to enforcement against individuals or companies, they can levy fines, suspend or pull certificates and that's about it. It's up to SWA to self-impose grounding and to self-police inspection regimens in order to stay in compliance. And there's the issue. The FAA did not "permit" SWA to fly those airplanes without inspections. Whether SWA did so KNOWINGLY or not is exactly the question. The ADs involved might have been two- or three-year inspections, not part of the annual. We don't know. So, if the inspection was a 36-month AD and the records mistakenly showed the planes had been inspected, that might explain how a plane could go 30 months out of date before it was caught. SWAs entire fleet is 737s. They'd have no reason to make exceptions in their regimen for these few aircraft. Seems like an error, to me. It doesn't make it right, but it might shed some light on an honest mistake that's being portrayed as sinister by a reporter who doesn't seem to understand the meaning of "airworthy".

We agree almost completely. In your edit, you seem to come around to my point. SWA did not put their profits ahead of safety as you describe, because they CANNOT do so as you describe. Ultimately, breaking the cycle of inspections on those airplanes would render them useless. They could not perform repairs or upgrades without signoffs on their logs. Their entire staff of mechanics in airfields across the country would have to be in on the scam and be willing to put their certifications on the line every time they serviced the plane. This is not to mention the independent mechanics who serviced the plane. This seems like a clerical error that was caught and SWA volunteered the info to protect their standing with the FAA. The FAA only ALLEGES purposeful wrongdoing. But you make it seem like SWA had some motive in passing on inspections to save money. It would cost them millions in ultimate loss of aircraft flying time because repairs couldn't be completed without current ADs and inspection compliance when a plane broke -- which happens very frequently. It would put them out of business if a part failed and the plane crashed. It's too easy to check the logs and see what the maintenance history is. To imply they knowingly tried to get around FAA inspections is ludicrous. They screwed up, missed a date, closed the wrong books or something. It wasn't an effort to deceive. That just doesn't make sense.

The interior of the place is spectacular. The outside, not so much.

I think it'll help round out the convention schedule downtown, offering more budget accommodations to convention travelers. Other than that, I couldn't care less about this. It will affect me exactly zero. When I like to splurge on a weekend being a tourist in my own city, or spend New Year's Eve, or eat a great restaurant, I like posh hotels. I'll never set foot in this place and don't care that it's coming here.

No, an aircraft that is deemed not airworthy cannot LEGALLY take to the air, but is not necessarily unsafe. That's the only point I was making. Plenty of planes out there are out of annual inspection and not flying, but are perfectly safe. I was not trying to condone SWA's shoddy maintenance record keeping. I was merely trying to temper what I believe was a reporter's misunderstanding of a definition. Airplanes receive airworthiness certificates that DO NOT EXPIRE, with the provision that they are inspected regularly. The day after the last day of the month of its inspection, if the plane hasn't passed the inspection, it is no longer airworthy, or legal to fly. The safety of the plane to fly is not determined, absent that inspection. Most likely this was a bookkeeping oversight, as there is nothing to gain by cutting corners with your FAA inspections. They'd either get caught in the following year's inspection, or when a part failed and they were sued after a crash, causing them to have to go out of business. Even if they just wanted to modify or update the planes in the next few months, they'd have to go to the log books with an inspector present, who would catch that the planes were out of inspection and be unable to do the work until they were brought up to speed. This would render their multi-million dollar aircraft useless. They were not "caught with their pants down" trying to get around the FAA. They probably made an error in their airframe logs and missed pulling the planes in question out of service for their inspections. Yes, it was wrong. But, I still contend that the amount of maintenance attention an SWA plane receives just as a matter of course in protecting their $millions invested in their fleet is far greater than their obligatory FAA inspection would render. In other words, if the plane surpassed its inspection date on August 31, 2007, it is highly unlikely that it was any less safe to fly on September 1, 2007 than it was on August 30, 2007. It's a matter of definitions and the FAA plays strictly by the book -- as they should.

Agreed, and being lax with the FAA is never a good thing. However, the idea that SWA was flying planes that were "not airworthy" was the issue. By definition, that was true. By evaluation of the planes -- albeit in absence of said evaluation -- that wasn't the case...yet. Keep in mind that the FAA doesn't inspect planes. Airframe and Engine inspectors inspect the planes -- just like the hundreds of ones SWA has on staff maintaining the fleet every day. The absence of an official inspection is not an indication of a plane not receiving maintenance to keep it airworthy. In fact, much, if not all of this could be a simple bookkeeping error, which in itself is still a violation, but not an indication the airplanes were unsafe, just that they were not airworthy.

The airplanes become "not airworthy" the day they go past their annual inspection without receiving it. It is not an indication of the safety of the aircraft to fly. It is an indication that SWA did not comply with its mandated inspection regimen. Whether that is an indication of the airline's approach to safety, per se, is debatable. Airliners' self-imposed maintenance regimens far exceed the requirements of the FAA. It's a matter of protecting their investment in multi-million-dollar aircraft and avoiding legal actions resulting from dead passengers. In other words, it's just good business. Of course, FAA compliance is also good business. Without it, they can't fly. Most planes in SWA's fleet are 15 years old or older and undergo the stresses of pressurization much more often than most carriers because their flights are relatively short. So, the FAA's inspections are probably more pertinent to SWA than to others and I would feel better if they stuck to their obligation to have their planes inspected. However, an oversight like this does not make me question their safety, so long as it does not become practice. I think this is a case of the media not understanding the definition of "not airworthy".