Nate99

Sorry about that. I first tried to crop it, but that cut out the length of the block being barricaded, then I just blacked out his face, which seemed overly negative, so I added a smiley, which in retrospect is probably more creepy than upbeat. If I were better with the internetting, I'd replace him with Katrina Looter Man or Harambe's ghost or something, but I'm just not.

Part of the "entertainment" is coming along nicely - terror slides! Dude looked straight at me while I was taking this pic. If you recognize yourself and want me to, I can post the original, but you don't look nearly as happy. I couldn't figure out a good way to crop him out, I don't like posting obvious pictures of people on the internet without their consent.

Wow. This is seriously ambitious. Looks like they are planning to take two lanes out of McKinney. If it gets built out as rendered, this will attract the growing crowds around conventions/DG/GRB. I'm sure all of the retail/entertainment/restaurants are just ideas/possibilities at this point, but they do look like they are at least dedicated to framing out the new structure. One nit - we're going to need awnings and fans at Swampy's Neighborhood Kitchen...

Looks like they just started work on the interior for the restaurant. I ate at one of these in downtown LA once, it was pretty good, I think it will do well, though Cafe Express across the street might not like it much.

Is the Kirby location where the high-rise is now, or further south at the bank turned Schlotzky's (or the other way around). EDIT - per the article, it was 2801 Kirby, which is/was a Wells Fargo branch, at least in December of 2016 when the Google car drove by, in between Schlotzky's Bank and the tower.

Definitely an interesting location. I'm guessing this is a resort style place, right? Looks like nearly of their properties are either near/on beaches or casinos, but they do have a New Orleans and NYC location "coming soon". The mega-block just north of the Marriott Marquis downtown would be perfect. It could be the interesting downtown hotel pool scene district.

The soil samplers will figure it out...

Interesting article and it gives some of the costs of alternatives. Not surprisingly, the main cost driver is staffing because apparently, unsupervised toilets get trashed and/or people get attacked in them. Seems like the kind of thing that should be prosecuted. The phrasing of LA times pop-up ad at the end of that particular article was unfortunate. Let's see, skyrocketing homelss too violent to manage a public toilet...

Looked like they were prepping the orange panels for repaint.

Three days' work...

These guys work weekends...

Shake Shack took down the construction walls that extended out on to the sidewalk. The interior looks close too, looks like they are working on computer systems and whatnot, the screens in the kitchen area were on and there were workers stringing cable when I walked by earlier today. I would guess they will be up and running in a couple of weeks.

Do you head out around sunrise to avoid traffic?

Good info, thanks. Interesting that the "immutable" angle gets any traction when the City is offering them an alternative location.

Judging by those vents, Capitol St. is going to bellow delicious greasy-ness. If that doesn't bring vibrancy to Houston's street life, nothing will.

They are moving fast on this one, very impressive.

It's kind of open, at least if you wander around from Pennzoil, there's nothing/no one to stop you continuing through the tunnel level. It looks really well done. In one mole person's opinion, it's the best looking bit of the tunnels by far.

Fun to dream, yes, but so many gigantic and glaringly obvious issues to get through. There's a template to approach something in that area if one was feeling similarly inspired, that is, start with flood mitigation and work with the CoE before you scare the pearl clutchers with your high rise renderings. It has been instructive listening to the local feedback loop. Every development is assumed to make flooding worse and traffic unmanageble, never mind that new/expanded roads and the storm drains that would come with them get massive resistance every time they are raised for discussion. Selling the locals on any kind of medium scale project or larger is going to be tough. These people really like their back yards exactly the way they are and are willing to indulge in fantasies about renegade sand pits and nefarious river authorities out to get them. It's a niche, we'll see if it holds value.

The morning view down Capitol...

I didn't mean to imply that institutionalization was the answer, just that it's not even an option until they do something worse than chronically ruin others' property. A reasonable expectation might be to use sites like what the city proposed, but it's not enough of a draw because it has some restrictions and/or they can't get cash for drugs as easily. Seattle, Los Angeles, Vancouver (BC), and San Francisco have provided varying levels of housing and that just attracts more people away from the Aldines and Cloverleafs across the US and Canada. One can live quite cheaply in all kinds of places if you don't cause trouble, but access to drugs is fairly limited off in the sticks, and it's even harder to panhandle to the wildlife. There are better/safer options already available for these people, but they can't hold it together long enough to use them. The secured dorm model is the shelter model that we have, and these people don't want that, unless you want to relax the rules, which I don't get the impression is at all workable, but maybe there is a middle ground. Peripheral personal experience and reading anecdotes are really all I have to go on, but I get the impression that people may end up in shelters for a short period of time due to bad luck, but unless they press that bad luck with addiction or mental health issues, they find somewhere to subsist off the streets, and there are a lot of resources to help people do that. If these programs are successful but overwhelmed, by all means, lets do more of that. But in the other case, it can be a full time job of a couple of people to keep just one person with addiction and/or mental health issues from harming themselves. That's a ton of resources, and the more resources cities use to provide accommodation, comparatively, the worse the local problem seems to get, and that's just easy economics. It's another one of those "hearts and minds" type issues that I think you have to fix over generations, but the drivers that land people on the streets seem to be getting worse, not better. As you point out, prison is very expensive and not at all proportional to the crimes committed, but literally crapping on the city is something I would start making compromises to individual liberties to address, but anything can be abused. No easy answers when people have nothing to lose. Maybe there are more success stories out there, lots of different cities dealing with this in different ways.

Would that perhaps be a design feature intentionally scaled the way it is to keep a car that has inadvertently (or otherwise) jumped the curb from getting through to the glass and further on to the tunnels below? The planters would need to be thick enough to stop something heavy moving fast and the gap between them and the columns would need to be sufficiently narrow.

Sorry, that was a private joke to myself, I should probably keep such things private. The press release-ish verbiage describing the food halls use the precise phrases "chef driven concept" and "local bar talent" with such regularity, I infer a lack of self-awareness on the author's part. It reads like boilerplate.