Hugh Stone

Your taste (or lack of it) is absolutely a personal issue. If you are entitled to reiterate your opinion, then so am I. I have a passion for quality architecture, I say this tower is very nice. You called yourself a grinch. I'm not making fun of you, I'm only agreeing with you.

This new tower is beautiful. Most people are going to love it. Just like most people love Christmas and can't really relate to grinches or their personal issues.

The design is terrific. This will be a great addition to the skyline. It will make the view from I-45 be even better and make downtown look even wider from the west. Love that the northern end of downtown is getting some serious height. 

If this is what strip malls look like these days, I can live with it.

Does anyone know if there is a thread at HAIF or any info about #17 on the above pdf (28 floor residential w/ 9 floors of parking).  

Thank you!

Remember 'nucklehead'?

I don't know if Slick Vic is DonCheto, but I'm almost certain that he used to go by an obnoxious banned poster named "nucklehead" that diminished the quality of this website a few years ago for a short time. Nucklehead started ridiculous inane topic after topic to bash Houston, deliberately infuriate people who really like Houston and created threads to engage in flamewars to distract himself from what surly must be a very mundane existance.  

Sure, it was entertaining enough, but I remember how thread after thread was constantly derailed and hijacked so that everyone just talked about nucklehead's made up adventures and fabricated stories of fortune that even a small child would question. Sound familiar? Same M.O.

Editor, if it is a violation to have more than one username at this website, please check this out. I would love nothing more than to see Slick Vic's account be deleted so that this website can get back in business. It's a great time to be into Houston, please don't let this troll drive away the valuable contributors to this website.

If I'm wrong, my apologies to all.

The new jobs, population gain and demand for office space doesn't hurt either.

SAVE THE DOME!

7 building cranes in downtown Houston at the same time would be a spectacular sight.

I don't have anything to say. I'm just posting so that no one else has to look at LTAWACS' post when they first open this thread.

Your welcome. 

http://swamplot.com/the-mixed-use-tower-uptown-park-has-been-waiting-for/2013-07-23/#more-66567

This tower looks like it would be over 40 floors. That would be pretty significant.

@ livincinco:

My point is that the 'damage' that a really ugly attention grabbing decorative crown on a very tall downtown building could make the downtown Houston skyline less beautiful and also that not all crowns are beautiful. Some are beautiful. If downtown Houston gets lucky enough to get a another beautiful one I will be very happy. But don't assume that just any building with a decorative crown is automatically going to be better than a boring flat roofed box. A bad over the top design is way worse than a little too simple boring design -IMO. At least people don't notice boring buildings as much and its boringness is usually just confined to itself. But something that commands undesirable attention is way worse. It hurts everything around it because it draws the eye to it.

I never said or suggested that an ugly crown would hurt business or new construction. This is simply about aesthetics and of course it is personal taste. BTW, just about every post on this thread is about personal taste - and making sure that everyone is thoroughly aware of his or her opinion. Remember all those posts from the same people about how boring the new Chevron tower is going to be? There are a lot.

I don't care about the Memorial area, they can build as many hideous, pointy crowns as they want out there. I was only using it as an example to make my point. They don't have a world class skyline to protect, like downtown Houston does. 

It's a decorative crown put on by someone who wanted this building to 'stand out'. I guess they achieved their objective. This tower has received plenty of attention. Not the kind  anyone wanted. Given a choice between ugly and boring, I'll take boring. Boring does less damage.

How exactly did you make the logic leap from my post to assume that I would want city council to be making the design by committee decisions?

 

Talk about a logic fail on your part.

You're right, I guess I should have assumed your post was directed at God when you said "make it better".

So, if not the city council or God -  who then? Chevron? I think they already made their aesthetic decisions. Maybe the citizens of Houston should get to vote for a tall building design Czar so that we don't get any more boring buildings or cheap crowns. 

No need getting huffy. I'm just trying to understand the logistics of how the downtown skyline can be made "better".

You mean like this decorative crown? Would you really want city council members making design by committee decisions on aesthetics on high profile buildings in downtown Houston? Yes make it better, but better to who? The guy who approved this beauty...? Careful what you wish for. At least what Chevron is currently proposing won't hurt downtown. When you see the effects of high profile ugly it makes you realize that there are worse things than boring.

I thought it was the complaint desk of the damned 

Its not just this board. The Swamplot comment board is usually nothing but a collection of complaints. More often than not, people only take the time to post things if they are unhappy about something. It's human nature. If someone gets good service in a restaurant they might tell somebody. But if they get bad service they will tell 3 people.  

The spot the tower is going to be built in is surrounded by other tall, impressive towers. I think in this case height is the only factor that would make this building really stand out and command it's own presence (at least at a distance). If instead of this tower, Chevron were going to build some revolutionary design, but it wasn't any taller than the buildings that surround it, it would be sort of a waste of a good design. In this case, because of the height, a glass box will work just fine and will only make the Houston downtown skyline more beautiful.

Just going by the rendering, the floor count of the tower maybe 50 stories. But it looks like it is sitting on top of a 7 story garage or lobby and the top floor looks twice as high as the other floors. This tower might actually look like a 59-60 floor building.

If parks spur cool towers (which they sure seem to be doing lately) the city of Houston should buy up key blocks in areas of downtown that have excessive surface parking lots (such as the southeast corner of downtown) and build a park on it. Then just sit back and watch the building cranes rise around it. Sounds like a productive use of tax dollars to me.

As long as the dome is saved for a future generation who might be smart enough to do something cool with it, I'm all for the new plan. It saves Houston's most iconic structure. 194 million sounds like a bargain to bring the Astrodome back to life. So what if a few whiny freaks grumble on the internet. The internet is just where all the disgruntled, unhappy people that no one listens to in real life go to die.

I say, ignore the nay-sayers and the people with all the big, grandiose ideas with no funding or hope of getting their ideas to come to fruition and bring the dome back to life with the only plan on the table.

Is this plan good enough? No. But nothing ever will be. There is always going to be someone on the internet griping about anything "they" do to it so let the disgruntled "disgrunt".

The Astrodome is a monument because of what it represents to Houston. It's only real purpose in my opinion is that it remains standing.  Just like the Statue of Liberty or the Alamo. What point do they serve either except that those structures represent something that is important to 'some' people - but not everyone. Well, that's all the Astrodome really needs to do too. It's stands for something for those of us who are proud of Houston and the mark that the Astrodome left on the world. It changed the entire sports world as we know it. And it should be valued for the fame, acclaim, and prestige that it has given Houston.  If you don't get it - your opinion isn't worth a stinking pile of doggie poo and you need to stay out of the argument or go back wherever the hell you came from.

The fact that someone actually found an actual practical use for it on occasion is just icing on the cake. 

Hopefully, this boom will leave an epic mark on the Houston skyline like the one in the 70's did.

Good!

I like it. I'd like more if it were going to be built on a block that would make the downtown skyline look bigger from some direction. I don't think this is going to stand out very much at that location. Infill's always a +.

Where's the crane?

Aqua tower looks like something discovered on LV-426.