'Stonian

I actually do not think the building looks as hideous as some are making it out to be.  It's not a world class stunner but neither is it a piece of crap.

It's a tab bit above "average" IMO. I mean, what if it was simply all precast concrete between floors with glass windows giving a plain striped effect as on the back side  - now that would be boring.

What we have is a balcony/sky garden on the 7-8 floors and multiple facades all around which makes it somewhat atypical.

Love the water color - beats dingy dirty brown any day.

This project looks like a smaller City Centre or more appropriately - Uptown's version of The Woodlands Market Square.  Great addition to the district IMO.

I believe the previous posters were referring to the additional part of the garage to the left in this rendering: http://blog.chron.com/primeproperty/files/2011/11/Skanska2011.jpg

Speed of construction does not necessarily mean a building is poorly built. I know a development company that does a very good job with its residential buildings (not the best, but certainly way above average) that did a 49-story building in 13 months, plus two months for the interior.

It's all about how much money you're willing to spend on extra people, extra planning, and extra work days.

To be clear, my comments on Novare's aggressive construction schedule and that they do things "on the cheap" were in no way intended to imply that I believe their buildings are poorly built, simply that we should not expect this building to take long to come to fruition NEITHER should we expect anything extravagant from this developer on this particular project.

Prior to the last couple of years, my occupation was in the construction field, specifically a project manager for a top homebuilder/developer. Many times customers would "complain" that we were building their homes too fast and it appeared we were just throwing the house together. Ironically, it has always been my experience that the homes that go up the fastest are generally the best built because fewer major mistakes were made that needed extra time to correct! Additionally, when we adhere to a robust schedule, it limits the amount of time that construction materials are exposed to the elements.

7 years ago I personally bought a condo built by Novare here in Atlanta and I have not had any issues regarding construction quality, in fact I'm quite pleased - and this coming from a construction guy!

I live in a condo building in Atlanta also developed by Novare (the developer for this proposed building in downtown Houston). The SkyHouse apartment building that Novare is finishing up here sits a few blocks from my building and is just a "Plain Jane" tower with an adjacent garage.

NO LIE - they broke ground on this thing in FEBRUARY 2012 and its is almost completely finished (10-12 month construction schedule!) In fact, the apartment building itself has one of the smallest footprints I've ever seen for any tower so thats how it went up so fast and they pretty much worked 6-7 days a week. Please note that Novare does things "on the cheap".

They did at least include an oval roof top in the final design which differed from the same original rendering here, however the building and garage have VERY LIMITED retail and the garage design particularly has been completely degraded by bloggers on the Atlanta Construction Forum http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=166320&page=268.

Nevertheless, this would still be a boost with getting more residents living in downtown Houston - so I really hope it gets off the ground!!

I love the new orientation of the stadium as it takes advantage of downtown's "Skyline" view! Need a better rendering of the exterior facade to make a judgement call. It looks to be another "breathable" metal exterior in the same vein as Dynamo Stadium. If so, that scares me. I'm certain it reduces costs but college football stadiums are built to last 50 plus years and I worry if a super modern look will be outdated in 10 years, but I'll withhold judgement until a more detailed rendering is available.

Thanks for posting!

Looks like a crane to me..., Here we go!!

My bet is it's the site of the older Avalon apartments on Westheimer between Shepard and Kirby. I love all the new redevelopment inside the loop however I just wish developers would target more run down strip centers and empty lots. If the goal is to get more residents living inside the loop, then tearing down older complexes and replacing them with newer ones really mutes the population gains.

Hopefully someone from Hines in a position to make decisions regarding retail for this project reads this blog and reconsiders retail here because it really does appear to be a no brainer.

I wonder if parking considerations factored into any decision not to include retail here. The retail spaces would almost be forced to rely on the Galleria or Transo's parking garages because the 518 spaces in Waterwall Place's parking deck would hardly accommodate 322 residences and their visiting guests (1.5 cars per unit is somewhat standard for these type developments) let alone additional retail visitors.

Personally, I know I have a difficult time finding on-street parking whenever I visit the Waterwall Park.

Should we call this a Regent's Square construction Kick-off!? http://www.chron.com/business/homefront/article/High-rise-kicks-off-major-urban-development-3788652.php

The article states construction of other buildings after "The Sovereign" high rise apartments should start in about a year! Could take 10 years to complete But hey..., i'll take it!

Looks like this latest version of River Oaks District will eventually get started considering the approved tax rebates from the City. http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/City-OKs-tax-rebate-for-developer-3773542.php

Thanks Golyadkin!

Question about a near by development - Have they started demolition of the old 24 hour fitness gym further down Post Oak for the proposed new office tower?

Huge News! Could the Irving HQ be on the way as well... we'll see? Exxon had better keep that secret under wraps as long as possible because you know the North Texas (i.e. "Dallas") boosters would throw a supreme hissy fit.

Haha, regardless, I'll take the 2100 jobs that come with moving the refining operations from the D.C. area (Fairfax Va.) to Houston. The Irving HQ with its 350 jobs would just be the icing on the cake, but make no mistake about it, these thousands of jobs are the "cake"!

http://www.bizjourna...mobil-jobs.html

http://blog.chron.co...0000-employees/

While this explains the recent move to demolish the Pavilion, I'm still not sure what all this means for the overall BLVD place project. Ed Wulfe states in the article that selling 6.4 acres off to Apache allows the project to move forward this summer. This almost assures the project will be revamped in some major/minor way!

http://www.chron.com/business/article/Apache-Corp-buys-a-big-chunk-of-BLVD-Place-3603732.php

My guess is this project is too big in its current state to get the massive capital that it needs to begin construction. The credit markets have somewhat thawed but banks are still gun shy about loaning the big money for these huge mixed-use projects.

Ed Wulfe would be smart to break this project up into stand alone phases and piecemeal it. This can be successfully done and still keep the overall vision of the project, a vision that I've never been totally captivated by to begin with. The current vision is similar to "Uptown Park" but I think it should be more like "City Centre"!

Yeah they've started on the fenced in section north of Kipling. The permit sign says Phase II so apparently the two phases were switched at some point as noted in an earlier post, besides it wouldn't make much sense to start Phase III before Phase II. IMO the very fact that any section would start "second" would make it phase "2" regardless of what it was initially titled LOL.

It doesn't appear any retail is included in this new phase, but I'm ok with that because they have plenty of retail in the 1st phase (almost 200,000 SQFT).

They began construction on Phase II yesterday (Friday 4/13). Permits are posted and plenty of heavy equipment was feverishly working when I visited a friend who lives in Phase 1. They already had a pretty good sized hole in the ground.

West Ave is an awesome development!

Also, after thumbing through Wallace Garcia portfolio, they design great multifamily apartment projects with the majority of them in Houston, so this one at Lakeside should not disappoint.

Sorry, I was confused about the exact location, thanks for clarifying. That other location at 8811 Lakes at 610 Drive appears to be another 319 unit apartment project by Grayco Partners called "Lakeside". http://www.smartapartmentdata.com/share/Reports/Houston_Construction.pdf

Houston's intown apartment construction is getting crazy... which is a good thing!

Nancy got us good this time.... too funny!!!!

Great News! Keeping the stadium at the Robertson site helps more with revitalizing the area between U of H and TSU. The area closer to I-45 would have more visibility but the manicured grass fields are currently not the rundown eyesore that the Wheeler/Scott intersection is.

The new football stadium, Hofheinz's renovation, Metro's light rail and accompanying street reconstruction (somebody please reconstruct Cullen as well!), the new Cougar Place (Sophmore) and new Freshmen dorms on Wheeler, and the West Dining Hall will all be great improvements to the area and give it a "newer" feel within a couple of years.

What fool would drop deposit money down on a condo without knowing what property it's going to sit on!? I understand presentation and all but I'd think knowing the location of the tower and what the possible views/adjacent buildings were etc. might be kinda important (you think?). I suspect he's announcing now (with no property and no funding) simply to discourage other developers from going forward with their competing projects.

I couldn't read the entire article because it was behind a paywall -- I knew he didn't have funding from the part of the article that I could read but if you don't have funding OR a site picked out why even announce the damn thing! And why on heaven's earth would you produce renderings showing your tower placed on someone else's property

Maybe Pumapayam is right about Randall Davis...

No, not at Post Oak and San Felipe. From the renderings this new tower looks to be adjacent to the (still to be demolished?) existing building that previously housed Hermes. The location is basically right smack in the middle of BLVD Place on Post Oak. That's why I speculated the Whole Foods site may still be a go.