Subdude

Yup, you hit that proverbial nail on the head. That design is certainly lack. Maybe the whole idea of a street/tunnel portal like that doesn't make sense if you want to develop street level retail (as was supposed to be the case with "Main Street Square"). Of course, that being said, there is the nearby donut shop and nearby CVS. Would street-level retail thrive more if there were not adjacent tunnel access? In the long run, I can see steet-level evolving to serve downtown residents, so it would be more of a different mix than is in the tunnels. Less restaurants, more food stores. Fewer Kinkos, more dry cleaners.

That was the idea in the 1000 Main building.

The tunnels are all privately owned, and it would be hard to convince the owners to open the tunnels for easier access. Also, as private property, the owners can keep out panhandlers etc. That's another big reason why people take the tunnels - you don't have to worry about being accosted by some drunk wanting change. I can see it being a hard sell to encourage more street-level weather. The tunnels are convenient, climate-controlled, and free of street people. Street-level retail might not seem especially inviting to many people when there's an alternative.

Wage slave, workin' for da man.

Tunnel business going up? Street-level shops on rail line draw attention to new competition By NANCY SARNOFF Below the streets of downtown Houston, hundreds of restaurants, retail shops and consumer service businesses are connected by a labyrinth of air-conditioned tunnels. From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., downtown workers flood this subterranean shopping mall to eat lunch and run errands. It's been that way for years. But just last week, CVS Corp. opened a new store above ground on downtown's Main Street. Around the same time, the pharmacy retailer closed one of its Eckerd drug stores in the tunnel. Eckerd was recently acquired by CVS. That raises a question: As downtown continues to reinvent itself, with much of the new activity taking place in the open air, could interest in the tunnels be fading? "There are those who think we should pour concrete into the tunnels just to get people on the sidewalks," said Laura Van Ness of Central Houston, a downtown business organization. While the CVS move clearly indicates a desire by retailers to have a street presence on the new light rail line, most people agree that tunnel shops won't be going away any time soon. Monte Wall, owner of Merle Norman Cosmetics in the tunnel, isn't about to consider relocating to street level. "I like the concept of working five days a week," she said. "I also like that my business picks up when it's warm, it rains or it's cold. That's most of the time." But as more retailers open on Main Street, won't that hurt the businesses in the tunnel? Freddy Castillo, manager of tunnel vendor Document Solutions, doesn't think so. "So many companies are coming back to downtown," Castillo said. "For both tunnels and street level, I think it'll be enough to go around." Based on occupancy statistics, tunnel retailers have good reason to stay put. Retail occupancy is actually better there than it is on the streets of downtown. Occupancy underground is at 83 percent, while street-level and mall occupancy is just 76 percent, according to Central Houston Inc. and the Houston Downtown Management District. Tunnel retail, however, accounts for only about seven percent of all retail downtown. "The tunnel has kind of its own clientele," said Rahim Jiwa, owner of McKinney Marketplace. "There are people that have been downtown for 10 or 20 years, and that's all they do. They get their exercise there, eat their breakfast, their lunch. They literally don't see the light of day." But for tunnel and street-level retail to coexist and attract shoppers, they need to be on more-equal footing, said real estate veteran Stewart Robinson of realty firm Binswanger/Conine & Robinson. "At this point today, they are not equal," Robinson said. "The tunnel system serves the office worker." Indeed, shops in the tunnel aren't open on weekends, and many often close before 3 p.m. But staying open late and on weekends will require the building owners to step up security to keep lobbies open after-hours and on weekends. "In other cities where retail is a seven-day-a-week, 18-hour-a-day situation, those buildings deal with their lobby security and retail security and still secure their upper floors," he said. Tunnel stores also need to be more accessible to street pedestrians, with landlords providing the retailers with better street signage, Robinson said. Jiwa agrees. "There are people who are here for 20 years. They don't come downtown, and they don't even know there is a tunnel," he said. nancy.sarnoff@chron.com

This is great news! courts renovation to cost county $40.2 million Plan to return building to 1910 appearance is one part of major shift By BILL MURPHY Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle Harris County plans to spend $40.2 million to restore the historic Civil Courts Building to its appearance in 1910, when it was built. The 1st and 14th state appellate courts would move from the South Texas College of Law building to the courthouse when restoration is completed, scheduled to be summer 2008. As part of the same plan to improve county courthouses, the Family Law Center would close in 2006 and reopen in April 2008 after a $27.9 million renovation. Mike Yancey, head of the county's facilities and management department, will brief Commissioners Court on a master plan for the downtown county courthouse complex Tuesday. Commissioners Court would have to approve the plan before it could go forward. During private meetings, several commissioners have voiced support for it, Yancey said. Plans call for the Civil Courts Building's exterior to be restored to its 1910 state, while only parts of the interior would be restored

He's got a point. It is a tad garish, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of the new condo towers (the Mercer springs to mind, bringing with it a headache) are not exactly style kings. I'm not a big fan of the color, but for once it isn't beige, which is a good thing.

$10 to breathe oxygen? If you're interested, I have some fine beachfront property I would like to show you!

I hope this project actually works out. So many others on that side have fallen through (not a bad thing in all cases). Right before the opening of Minute Maid Park, at around the same time another loft redevelopment had been proposed for this building, the building was all lit up at night. It was really cool looking from the 59 freeway. They should do the lighting thing again to advertise the project.

Sept. 5, 2004, 10:57PM WRAP-UPS Downtown dreamers wanted By RAD SALLEE Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle Houston has come a long way in just a few years. The new ballpark and sports arena now echo with cheering fans, at least some of the time. The streets and sidewalks have been rebuilt, almost. And MetroRail is running with only one or two mishaps a week. Now, downtown officials and businesspeople are asking the public for advice on the future of this already improved urban landscape. Now that much of the needed infrastructure is in place and the big attractions are drawing crowds, the next step is to "people-ize the streets" by attracting "more retail and more residents," said Jodie Sinclair, spokeswoman for the Houston Downtown Management District. Opinions can be given at www.houstondowntown.com. Look in the top right corner for "Let planners know what you think" to get a survey form labeled, "What should downtown look like in 20 years?" The first part of the survey asks people to choose five potential changes from a list of 10 and rank them by priority. The second asks respondents to make suggestions. The list for the first part includes such choices as more stores and restaurants, more parks and plazas, more schools and churches, more affordable housing and a continuous greenbelt along the bayou. Sinclair said the responses will be released this month. Link

Work seems to be coming along on this. They cleaned the front facade, and it makes a big difference. They are also replacing the canopy over the front entrance with a new one that replicates the original.

Is this going to be Single Room Occupancy by any chance? Considering the building's size, the location, and the economy, it seems like that might be the case.

Beautify the `superblock' and watch the Midtown area's tax base grow By DAVID CROSSLEY Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle News Services Often we hear in Houston that it's "too late" to do something that would have great positive impact on quality of life. We are approaching one of those moments. Two years ago, I proposed that a new urban park be created on the Midtown "superblock" on Main Street abutting the McGowen rail stop. This four-block long property with no streets crossing it has been the subject of a hunt for the right development project. I felt that no urban development really needed that kind of configuration, and indeed that much space with no pedestrian ways across it so close to a rail station would be terribly counterproductive. The only thing that really makes sense there is a great public park. Many creative people put a lot of energy into the idea, which we tentatively called McGowen Green. The proposal, which was accompanied by exciting drawings from Kevin Shanley and SWA Group, McGowen Green would be urban amenity, tax revenue source seemed to catch fire for a while. But a Chronicle article last week (``Ideas filling vacant block / Some see park, others see urban oasis in Midtown, Aug. 31'') indicated that the board of the Midtown Redevelopment Authority (MRA) is acting to convey its interest in the property to Camden Property Trust, which already owns about half of it. Camden apparently intends a large apartment project there, probably with some retail or artist space on the ground floor. This is a real shame for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is loss of significant future tax revenue for the city. Parks are the greatest of urban amenities, and properties adjacent to them tend to rise in value faster than other properties. With a lush river garden ambience surrounding a formal boat pond and promenade, McGowen Green would produce the highest value center in the Midtown district, and in time one of the most important in our city. To my knowledge, the MRA board hasn't expended any energy exploring the benefits of a park or the creative means to finance it. A lot of the important work to determine how parks affect real estate has been done by Dr. John L. Crompton, a Texas A&M professor knowledgeable in the economics of park development. Crompton's studies reveal that people will pay more for property close to parks than for property that does not offer this amenity. This means they pay higher property taxes. In effect, Crompton says, this represents a capitalization of park land into increased property values of proximate land owners. Crompton calls this the ``proximate principle.'' If the incremental amount of taxes paid by each property attributable to the presence of a nearby park is aggregated, he argues, it will be sufficient to pay the annual debt charges required to retire the bonds used to acquire and develop the park. As it happens, the board of the MRA is the same board as the Midtown Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone, or TIRZ. One of the purposes of a TIRZ is to increase property values during its lifetime (in this case 30 years) so that the city receives greater revenues from the district once it begins to pay full taxes. Most people who do projections on land values would say that the increase in taxes coming from the four-block Camden project would be dwarfed by the taxes of developing - at a much higher value - the 14 blocks surrounding a park on that property, not to mention the second tier of properties in the next ring of 22 properties. The public interest clearly will not be reasonably served by encouraging the Camden project, which should be developed on several of the blocks surrounding the park. And why does an apartment project in an urban place need to have continuous land without cross streets? A four-block long apartment project would create a horrible pedestrian environment, and one of the goals for Midtown has been walkability. In his ground-breaking book Cities in Full, Steve Belmont says that neighborhoods deprived of natural features are severely handicapped in the competition for middle-class households. He cites examples showing that a well designed and maintained park can substitute for natural features as the heart of a thriving neighborhood. He also claims that for a neighborhood on the path to revitalization, [a park] represents a prudent investment with the power to attract affluence, and he notes that it takes relatively few affluent newcomers to reverse the negative image of a derelict neighborhood. Last spring, my organization, the Gulf Coast Institute, distributed hundreds of postcards urging Mayor Bill White to pursue the development of McGowen Green. These were signed by nearly 500 people and mailed. Surely, before it is too late, the mayor and City Council (the property is in Councilmember Carol Alvarado's district) should have a look and determine whether the long-term interests of the city are best served by a great urban park or by another apartment project. Midtown needs an important park that people will actually use and that will draw tourists to the area. The park would be a gift to future generations that cannot be given later. Link

I don't know. The Plaza has been vacant for nearly 20 years. All that time they've been paying property taxes and the property has decayed, making it worth even less, and they've been holding out for a price that the market obviously doesn't agree with. Maybe not exactly "stupid", but close to it. Sitting for decades on a decaying asset hardly strikes me as an especially astute business strategy.

They came up with Museum District boundaries by finding all the museums and drawing a line to include as many as possible. At one point there was some museum or other near Allen Parkway, so the district was stretched to include that. All in all, it's pretty arbitrary and meaningless. It's not a really a neighborhood like the Montrose is.

I used to think this was a really ugly building, but it's grown on me. Now I think it is just a somewhat ugly building. Apparently well-built, though. During tropical storm Allison it didn't flood even though everything around it did. The building is sometimes said to have inspired Michael Graves' Portland Building:

That is such a funny design, with the pinkish color and the Earth Wind & Fire top.

Well it's about time. That's great news if is true. It's just unbelievable they've waited this long, but then again this is the Chronicle. Just as amazing is that they don't have a Spanish edition, just occasional stories in Spanish buried among the English. They're such an embarrasment - a small-town paper that somehow ended up stuck in a big city.

The Finger sale never went through. Not enough parking, too many development issues, stupid owners.

That sign has been on the Ben Milam since MMP opened. To my knowledge no serious redevlopment plans have ever been announced for the property. The postponement/cancellations of Ballpark Place and Ar'talia seem to indicate that devlopers do not see much potential for residential in that neighborhood for the near future. As much as I would love to see Ben Milam redeveloped, I really don't expect to see it happen for a long, long time.

I would imagine they were all destroyed. Remember, these old hotels had been operating basically as flophouses for years. The former Brazos hotel operated under different names after the 1940s.

OK, one more noir diner dame and I'll stop (remember I'm trying to make as many meaningless posts as I possibly can in a short time ) Mildred Pierce:

OK, one more famous noir-ish diner denizen: Mildred in "Of Human Bondage"

The childhood home of cosmetics mogul Mary Kay Ash (nee Mary Kay Wagner), founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, is threatened with demolition. The diminutive house at 2111 Kane Street was Ash

Dora Lantrip Elementary School at 100 Telephone Road will receive an extensive makeover as part of Houston Independent School District