toxtethogrady

According to the following, it is still a go.

http://www.chron.com/neighborhood/memorial/business/article/New-H-E-B-coming-to-San-Felipe-and-Fountainview-5692834.php?cmpid=email-mobile

Well, the article says it's started.

Now if this were DC, that H-E-B would be on the first floor.

Geez - everyone's looking for progress on building proposals that were announced in January. Considering some projects often don't start for years after announcement, a project doesn't die if it hasn't made any progress in 8 months...

One would think, but not everything out there is suitable. I see empty auto showrooms on the North Freeway, but nobody's in a hurry to redevelop them.

But that could change.

Whatttt? That's the third(?) time we've heard that rumor..

The second time was before Skyhouse River Oaks was announced.

But yes, this has made the rounds.

HBJ is reporting from other sources that Houston is on a pace to build 30,000 homes this year - a record. Add that to the 18,000 apartments and it's still not enough.

* College football stadium

Allen spent $60 million on it. And it's got engineering defects.

Now, that's an Art Car! 

Every other stadium I've seen recently seems more like a overbudgeted high school stadium. 

Including the one in Allen, Texas?

This is probably one of the most documented concrete pours in Houston history...

This is probably one of the biggest projects since Heritage Plaza, and there are a whole lot more amateur photographers documenting this work than there were in the '80s.

You mean not too many alligators?

Yep - the first Porta-potty just showed up!

I'm hearing rents for a lot of the new buildings are $1.50-2.00 a square foot. The cheaper properties are all outside the Loop.

Houston is way too big and has way too much empty space in the core to be getting this expensive. My biggest gripe is the loss of character in the near downtown neighborhoods. Wish there was someway to balance progress and history

It seems it would also be too expensive to be running out of developable lots. But that seems to be the chief lament of the developers from Downtown to Conroe.

Not only that, but land and materials are getting expensive, and labor is in short supply.

i am curious as to how middle income people are supposed to live in the city. 

It's becoming more and more of a problem, as highlighted by recent articles in various publications stating that Houston is getting more expensive and less affordable overall. That's quite a reversal from ten years ago, when Houston's attraction was its affordability.

And it's going to spread. The wards that used to have some of the cheapest real estate in town are now starting to attract a lot of gentrification (just ask the folks on the Northside, where Pegstar plans to put its new concert venue). The reaction of the middle and lower income population has been to move farther and farther out. The word is they can't develop lots fast enough to meet the demand for housing, and the demand for apartments absorbed 21,000 units in the past year. Houston is turning into New York.  

i wonder if there are any houston based reits we should be invested (do people still do reits?) i digress.

Nancy Sarnoff at the Chron asked a similar question and came up with:

AmREIT

Camden Property Trust

Weingarten

LGI Homes

Whitestone REIT

http://blog.chron.com/primeproperty/2014/08/stock-snapshot-houstons-publicly-traded-real-estate-companies/

I had heard there were 28,000 units under construction at the moment - including some in buildings like 2929 Weslayan that have been underway for almost two years. And the pace of construction of 4-, 5- and 6-story midrises appears to be accelerating, if anything.

But if one of those 30-story highrises has 300 units, it would take 60 of them to provide 18,000 units in a year. Imagine 300 new apartment towers in Houston by 2020.   Now imagine it's not enough to meet demand. 

If only it were going to be taller...

mmmm concrete!

Plenty of that Downtown this weekend.

I understand the money situation and general cheapness the city has at times, but Houston could've easily made it so that only people with tickets can board the train.

Actually, I would have loved a train system that was entirely free. Fort Worth's Molly Trolley is an entirely free bus system that anyone can get on and off of at any station. It encourages more ridership and more visits downtown. I can understand a modicum of a need to recover costs, but that can be done so many ways other than extracting fares from passengers.

 

from the planning commission:

 

 

 

 

 

 

There goes the neighborhood.  

That's a lot of new apartments!

It takes a lot of apartments to make up for 21,000 being absorbed in a year.

Apparently something like that happened downtown. I'm not sure if soil sampling caused it.

I agree. Hopefully the downtown incentives are enough to encourage them to build something downtown.

If not that, then the occupancy rates north of 90% should be a good lure.

Houston is going to need new 21,000 apartments a year for the next 5 to 10 years. Some of them are going to have to go downtown.

I wouldn't mind this exact tower downtown, hopefully they follow the Skyhouse trend. 

You mean up in less than a year from groundbreaking?

So look, Burj Khalifa, Tallest building in the world had a footing, but also had a shit ton of piles that went a whopping 160 feet down.

Some of the early photos of the construction of Kingdom Tower in Jeddah seem to indicate a rather shallow foundation with no piles. Not sure whether piles are being eschewed for other reasons or whether soil in Jeddah is more stable than Dubai. But the gumbo underlying Houston is certainly a design challenge.

And in other news, a city water main was found to have developed a leak...