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N Judah

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Everything posted by N Judah

  1. The current setback rule was the reason for the stupid CVS parking lot -- in other words, the presence of regulation, not the absence of it, was the problem in that case. Strip malls are everywhere, even in zoned cities, believe me. So are ugly buildings. Same for garages that face the street. An absence of street life is a problem in most American cities, and there are lots of zoned downtowns that aren't as lively as our Main St.
  2. Depends on the team. A regular MLS franchise, no. A minor league franchise of a storied team from a mediocre league (i.e. the deal with the Mexico City team) - maybe. A minor league franchise of a European team? Definitely.
  3. "Hassled" ? Just don't look at them and you'll be fine.
  4. Oh come on, it's not THAT bad. You guys really like to complain...
  5. I know what you meant by "structure." I was operating on the assumption that the roof of the dome was held up by those white pillars around the outside. There's nothing holding it up on the inside, so everything except those pillars and the roof could be taken out. Extra buildings could be added on as needed. Of course, I'm not an engineer and neither are you, so who really knows if we're "intitiled" to our opinions.
  6. The way I see it, the point of a big transit center wouldn't be to generate growth near the city core any more than an airport would. It would just serve to make it really easy for people to catch their train or bus. I don't think downtown would be a good place at all, considering it's so crowded. As for changing the structure, they could shell the thing, which would keep the basic framework (and thus, the history), keeping it recognizable as a landmark, but change everything else, and add on to the outside also.
  7. The neighborhood will change, trust me. It won't be like that forever, especially if some kind of transit center is put in. Not like the neighborhood really matters -- I don't mean transit center in the sense of encouraging development like light rail -- I mean transit center as in a centralized location where people can quickly and easily transfer trains, or get on a bus, or easily transfer to a train to the airport. I'm talking commuters, not sunday shoppers. You also seem to have overlooked the fact that reliant stadium is there, amidst a "parking lot and crapy apartments." I can easily imagine people from Dallas and San Antonio taking some kind of commuter rail into Houston to watch an international soccer match. Or the Final Four, or whatever. But that won't be the primary purpose of the transit center.
  8. They could make it into a massive train station/transit center. The soaring Astrodome ceiling would make a grand entry for people arriving in Houston by train from wherever it is that we'll have train links to in the future.
  9. Well I happen to think it's pretty cool (and very Houston, in a good way) that a downtown development can serve two pretty different markets without blinking.
  10. They should have a sign in front of the Shamrock: "Whole Foods in front, McDonald's out back."
  11. American Apparel is more like the anti-Abercrombie. They go out of their way to avoid logos, they're 100% American made (quick, name another clothing store that can claim that), and their stores try to avoid extra frills, unlike Abercrombie stores or Hollister stores which try a little too hard to convince you that you're in a surf shack or an alpine lodge. I read in a magazine recently that the new concept for Abercrombie mall stores is to try to re-create the look and atmosphere of a New York brownstone. How they'll manage that I don't know but I have more respect for American Apparel for authentically contributing to urban environments instead of re-creating them in the suburbs.
  12. So what else will be at the NW Mall site besides a soccer stadium?
  13. Maybe the "design competition" I saw suggested in the Letters section of today's Chronicle can be for that Prada store you want.
  14. That looks really, really nice. I saw on another thread that blocks in midtown are going for $58 per square foot. Does anyone want to take a guess about how much these units might rent for? (I'm assuming that the higher the cost of purchasing the original land, the more expensive the apartments.)
  15. My understanding - and this may be completely wrong - was that HCTRA wouldn't be the ones operating the toll lanes down the center of I 10. Rather, as they were not toll lanes but actually HOV lanes that just happened to charge a toll, they would be owned and operated by Metro. But I'm sure you know much more about this than I do -- I guess I'll just have to double check my sources on this one. Good points. I definitely see what you're saying. Anyway, at any rate, this new development is really win win. If rail doesn't come through there for a while, they still have attractive mixed use stuff for everyone to enjoy. But if/when rail comes through, at least they've got a head start. Then they can say that rail is justified by serving existing development, rather than basing the whole thing on the idea that it will spur develoment at some point in the future.
  16. Funny how no one ever mentions freeways as the cause of sprawl. Without freeways, no one would want to live so far away. Anyone who's lived here for a decent amount of time has probably noticed that the freeways come first, and then the houses. The freeways aren't built to meet demand, but rather create it (ironically the very technique that the anti-rail reactionaries disingenuously accuse rail proponents of using). If Houston were truly an organic city, we wouldn't be so spread out, but we wouldn't be crowded like the pre-car cities.
  17. My understanding was that the contraflow toll lanes that are soon to be in the middle of I-10 would eventually be turned into rail.
  18. What do you mean? all I'm saying is that if a rail line ends up along i-10 in the future, it would make sense to have a stop at memorial city, esp. if this development goes up. maybe one out at that Katy Town Center too, which breaks ground later this month, btw.
  19. My guess is that they're priming themselves to be a stop on the commuter/heavy rail that will be coming down the pike at some point in the future.
  20. Here is an interesting article on 'flipping' in Las Vegas.
  21. If you think midtown is "ghetto" sir, you must have a pretty charmed life . . . </flame> I think Houston's growing pains aren't the result of 'ethnic diversity' (what a dumb thing to say...which councilmember was this?) so much as Houston's willingness to accommodate all kinds of diversity, including income and job diversity. Contrast this to San Francisco, which has a fully represented cross-section...of people who can afford to live in a place where the average house costs over half a million dollars. Most of the 'diversity' in SF is sleeping on the street or has already left, having been pushed out by anti-growth zealotry (the city having achieved the remarkable feat of actually *losing* diversity in the 1990s). A lot of recent immigrants live as far as the boomtown suburbs two hours to the east, which look more like Houston than anything else, and even have Houston-style infrastructure problems.
  22. You're talking about the Westpark Tollway, right?
  23. The 'Museum Walk' sounds like an interesting idea, too. I can imagine something like that taking the Museum District and packaging it in a really tourist-friendly way. Maybe it will be the Big Draw everyone here is waiting for.
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