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livincinco

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Everything posted by livincinco

  1. I don't think that it is worth the time and effort to evaluate this place at this point. We know that there are going to be a series of store/restaurant openings in March/April. We're just not going to be able to begin to evaluate whether this is going to be a success until that point.
  2. I'm crossing my fingers on this one. I'm in SoCal right now and my kids made me drive to In n Out immediately after we left the airport. They want to have it every day that we're here...
  3. Your optimism is overwhelming. I walked through this center on Saturday and was pleasantly surprised after all of the negative commentary that I've been reading on the site. The bottom level looks almost completely leased and foot traffic was reasonably good. Retail in the upper levels should fill in pretty quickly once the restaurants open. I know that everyone is very anxious for the other restaurants/shops to open right away, but it just doesn't make any sense from a retail perspective. If you can't be open for the Xmas season, why would you open in January and lose money for the next couple of months? Expect to see coordinated openings and a significant amount of advertising in the springtime.
  4. Way too early to judge the success of this project. Wait till we see what happens in the surrounding blocks over the next couple of years. I think that there is a good chance that additional retail development comes in to the south and the west.
  5. They might be the second best team in the west right now, but I would love to see them trade a couple of their forwards for a decent back up center. They've got to reduce Yao's minutes during the regular season. They can't compete in the playoffs without a healthy Yao.
  6. From today's Chron - looks like the official opening is scheduled for Thursday. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headli...iz/6052683.html
  7. How can you say that so conclusively? The expansion of the GRB, the Hilton Americas, Discovery Green, Minute Maid and the Toyota Center are all in close proximity to each other. I don't see how you can say that the location of the stadiums was not a contributing factor to the development that is now occurring in that area. I think that there is an open question as to whether stadiums drive sufficient development to justify the public expense, but I would argue that there are too many cases of development that has occurred around downtown stadiums across the country to discount their contribution completely.
  8. This is great. Keeps the positive momentum going in Downtown.
  9. Did you tell them - Yes, we liked it so much - we built a whole bunch of them!
  10. site plan for the redevelopment. http://www.fidelisrealtypartners.com/prope.../MarqEFLIER.pdf
  11. Strictly wishful thinking. Just appears from the outside that it was built with that option.
  12. I was walking by there today and it looks like the white concrete spaces could be opened up to street level retail. Can someone confirm if that is correct?
  13. There's a virtual tour on their website - www.hob.com. Looks great inside.
  14. Part of the reason that Houston has developed the way it has is that there are no natural constraints to prevent it from happening. Think about the geography of some of the cities that we're talking about. Manhattan, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Boston - all have had the growth of their downtown areas dictated by constraints of mountains, water or both. Atlanta, Phoenix, Houston - No geographic constraints on growth leading to sprawl. Suburbanites don't love their cars. Suburbanites love having a yard and being away from the noise of the city and are willing to accept their cars as a necessary sacrifice.
  15. I don't think that's necessarily true. If you've got everything you need/want within walking distance and don't need a car, that's great. If you have/need a car, I don't think that the difference between 5 miles and 15 miles matters too much to people.
  16. I'm not sure I understand why those two lifestyles have to be mutually exclusive, especially in a city as large as Houston. The most recent statistic that I found showed that about 7.5% of employment in Houston was in the CBD. Apply that proportionately to the population and that would be a vibrant downtown population of about 450,000 with more than 5 million that could still live in the suburbs.
  17. A project that was upsized? That's going to be very disappointing to all the pessimists who complain that every project ends up smaller than planned.
  18. It becomes more appealing for retail once One Park Place and some of the other proposed residential development goes in downtown. It's walking distance for them.
  19. I know what you mean, but I've always had the feeling that those are "professional" vagrants instead of true homeless. Kind of a weird distinction I know, but I think that a lot of them are sleeping under a roof somewhere.
  20. Not really, the whole thing doesn't make any sense anyway, so why worry about little things like that?
  21. I've seen panhandlers down around 59 and Chimney Rock also, but I don't see them at night. By comparison, I was in downtown San Antonio a couple of weeks ago and there seemed like there were homeless sleeping all over the place. I know that this is totally subjective, just curious if anyone had the same experiences.
  22. I don't spend a lot of time downtown, but from what I've seen, I would agree that Houston seems to have a pretty small homeless population downtown, at least in comparison to other major cities. Is that true?
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