Lowbrow

comes with free lederhosen and sound of music soundtrack... ricolla!!

In an attempt to be as least productive as possible today I broke down that list into: oil 15,035 public 13,708 financial 9,808 energy 6,559 travel 2,824 retail 2,500 law 2,438 hospital 1,869 waste 1,200 media 1,100 chemical 788 education 655 total 58,484 there is some grey area. fine line on some energy/oil and some financial/law.

Foley's is headquartered here too so perhaps that is mainly administrative. (They are owned by the May company out of St. Louis though.)

Ok, idea #2: Freefall zone. Install a huge fan and give eveyone a freefall suit and cut em loose. Weeeee.

sniggle snort.

LARGEST EMPLOYERS IN DOWNTOWN HOUSTON COMPANY EMPLOYEES Shell Oil Company 5,744 Harris County 4,750 Exxon Mobil Corporation 4,420 City of Houston 4,000 JPMorgan Chase 3,000 Continental Airlines 2,824 Foley's 2,500 US Post Office 2,314 CenterPoint Energy 2,199 US Government 2,100 Christus St. Joseph Hospital 1,869 Bank of America 1,812 Halliburton 1,796 Reliant 1,760 ChevronTexaco * 1,700 Bank One Texas 1,200 Waste Management, Inc 1,200 Houston Chronicle 1,100 Deloitte & Touche L.L.P 980 Vinson & Elkins, LLP 903 PricewaterhouseCoopers, L.L.P. 893 Devon 875 Fulbright & Jaworski LLP 843 El Paso Corporation ** 800 Lyondell Petrochemical Co 788 Ernst & Young 771 Dynegy 700 Baker & Botts 692 University of Houston-Downtown 655 Southwest Bank of Texas 646 Kinder Morgan 600 Metropolitan Transit Authority 544 KPMG Peat Marwick 506 Amerada Hess Corporation 500 Calpine 500 *ChevronTexaco is relocating employees to downtown, after which it expects to employ 4,100 in downtown by the summer of 2005. **El Paso is relocating employees to downtown, and expects to employ 2,900 in downtown by the end of 2004. LINK

Yeah Downtown can get pretty crazy on friday and saturday nights. Not as hopping as 6th street in Austin but still rather active. So like someone asked above what are the limits of midtown? I45 on the north and east, 59 on the south, where is the transition from midtown to montrose? Main? Bagby? For that matter, where does montrose end heading west? Shepherd?

This time around it is a beautification and restoration thing. They are doing a pretty big stretch.

That low building on the other side of the bridge there in that picture is pretty interesting. I wonder if it is going to be put to use for anything. The top part at street level looks like an abandoned gas station with plenty of homeless occupants. Most of the trash spilling over from that building into the bayou looks like the accumulation of a few bag-peoples shopping carts. Mostly clothes and the like. While its sad to see the refuse... its even sadder to wonder what happened to the owners of the carts. Took off for Miami I hope.

You sure it wasnt a For Lease sign? Thats what I recall. Man I probably walked right past ya Danax. I was there all morning too.

Photochop?

Yep, the Chrysler ME412. 850 hp. top speed of 248mph and 2.9 seconds 0-60. sick. But its really a Mercedes.

I heard someone recently bought this building on Buffalo Bayou and is pushing for retail and food/drink establishments to move in. Does anyone have any more info? Looks like a beautiful site although the building could use a hand. See if I can find a pic... http://houston.commercialexchange.com/Photos/eProp/web/16880.jpg here is the real estate description: lol and here is a pdf with most the info I was looking for: Wulfe & Co. Brochure

hmm ive only been able to find this 2 year old chron story calling it at 8 stories. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/b.../bivins/1788817

oops repost http://www.houstonarchitecture.info/haif/i...hp?showtopic=36

I stopped at the car show after hitting a few places in midtown too. I still like the Park Lofts at Crawford and Elgin. I wish it wasnt such a walk to the rail from there (my calves are pretty tight today). I wimped out on Tropioca... it was the only place open that I saw that morning. My sister brought me some lime tea thing with the tapioca balls in it once.. it didnt sit with me well. The car show was a blast but I somehow missed out on 3 of the cars I wanted to see the most: Aston Martin DB9, Vanquish, and the Audi RS4 wagon. Guess I walked thorugh too quick. Loved the GT40 and the 2000GT... oh and the hemicudas.

Yeah, Hakeem would make more sense. I haven't yet decided. This is just one facet to my search. I have also been scoping out midtown and uptown. My target move-in is may. (if I'm not in Dubai, UAE at the time) So I have plenty of breathing space.

So I headed into downtown on Saturday to look at some different loft possibilities. I parked my car at the Fannin South lot and took the light rail in. I was wandering around the Main Street Square area about 9am. The area seemed really dead. I was hoping to find a place to have some breakfast and coffee but no success. I didnt realize the tunnels were closed on weekends. I was downtown for about 8 hours and while I saw or walked past many homeless, I only got panhandled twice. I eventually had lunch at the Spagetti Warehouse. I'll mention some of the places I looked at in case anyone else is looking. The first two places I looked at from the outside were the Capitol Lofts and the St. Germain Lofts. These are essentially the same building at Main and Capitol. The St. Germain Lofts are lease units that seem to be trying to get enough sale interest to convert. I was warned away from these, something about getting what you pay for. The St Germain is right on the corner of the building and looks across Capitol at the proposed sight of the Shamrock. I decided against these because of location. They are definately in the heart of things and I could see that being appealing to some but I think I'd rather be on the perifery looking in some... not quite dead center. The next two buildings were in the historic district of downtown otherwise known as downtown - north. The Franklin Lofts are at 201 Main and was formerly known as the First National Bank. They suggest that they are the first "skyscraper" in Houston (built in 1904). The lofts occupy 3rd-8th floors. These were beautiful large lofts but also a little pricey (270's - 700's). The views of downtown and north to UHD and Buffalo Bayou were nice. Catty corner at 915 Franklin is the older Bayou Lofts. These are the units that seemed most my style. These were more in the 175-400k range. They also have wonderful views of downtown and the bayou. They lack the nice closet space seen across the street at the Franklin but beyond that it was very comparible. After that I went and checked on the San Jacinto Lofts at 915 N. San Jacinto. They only had one unit left and it was on the north side of the building facing I-10 and a few run-down warehouses. Huge amount of space in these. Very high ceilings. The last unit was asking $199k. Sounds like they have been selling slow and they are motivated to get rid of this one. Here you are bounded by the correctional facility on the south, the metro police station on the east and I-10 and a few warehouses on the north. Not really my scene. I also decided to skip the high-rises on the south side of town. Mainly the 2016 Main building. I just didn't care for the feel of the neighborhood. I do have a daughter that I would like to feel safe walking around the block with and I just didnt get that groove. Maybe it was because of the small village of homeless shacked out under I-45 there. All and all it was time well spent. I wish i'd had my camara with me. I was also told that that Islamic Temple at Franklin and Main (old bank building) is going to be sold and converted to something else. (owned by Kareem Abdul Jabar??) Supposedly they just couldnt work with the parking situation there.

The round parthanon thingy looks better than the square.

I could just imagine Dr. John Lienhard having an episode of Engines of Our Ingenuity on that quote. "Invented" hehe

They just don't have these wife things sucking every last creative tendency out of their souls. (so says the recently divorced guy)

LINK

Oh yeah that reminds me.. he was the original architect of the Rothko Chapel over at the Menil aswell.

there are a bunch i didnt put on there

Houston: Pennzoil Place BoA Center William's Tower Corpus Christi: Art Museum of South Texas, The Dallas: Bank One Center Minneapolis: IDS Center Atlanta: One Atlantic Center