Sunstar

22 hours ago, Highrise Tower said:

I’m not touching you!

Great day for a stroll. 

According to the original details on their Website the building was supposed to feature “Seven gardens and six reflecting pools inset along the building’s perimeter”

I didn’t see anything like that in the final product, I’m guessing they scaled down their original version?

On 11/6/2020 at 3:21 PM, downtownian said:

 

Long time horizon here unfortunately - decade plus.

The good news is we'll have new sections or developments opening up every year or two as they roll the plan out. It will be an ever evolving project. 

On 10/27/2020 at 2:06 PM, MidCenturyMoldy said:

I think it's mostly the boring glass curtain wall, especially on the parking garage. I must note that I haven't even been to Houston since the glazing started, so I haven't seen it in person. But I also don't like the top all that much and I don't like the entrance.

 

I'm not a big fan of 609 Main, either. Again, mostly because of the boring curtain wall. I LOVE the exterior of 811 Main (BG Group Place)...just not thrilled with the notch that makes it look like a giant BIC lighter.

Is there an alternative to glass curtain wall, or a different way it could be applied to improve the overall effect? I just feel like all new buildings are built this way now. You don’t see a lot of stone facades going up anymore. 

I like it better when they break the development up with a few little side streets as opposed to building it like some insular fortification.

Would have been cool if they had worked a spire into the deign. 

2 hours ago, DarklyMoron said:

Well, this is a Steven Holl building. Glowing crystalline boxes are sort of his thing. If you want swooping sculptural forms, get yourself a Gehry.  The challenge with museum buildings is that they aren’t great candidates for bold undulating form. Curators and conservators would be thrilled with hermetically-sealed boxes. Windows and curved walls are the enemy. Overall, I think Holl has done a good job of breaking-up the large mass with the 7 insets, the cantilevered sections and the diaphanous cladding. And the true test will be how it works as gallery space inside. But, you’re right. It is a blocky building in the end.

yeah, Gehry is on the other extreme for me. I never could figure out how the interior of his buildings are even usable. In this case, just a little bit of slice would have been nice 😊. But I’m still waiting for the end product and hoping to be pleasantly surprised. I’m hoping the gardens and reflecting pools offset the imposing facade a bit and create a pleasant pedestrian experience. 

1 hour ago, Texasota said:

Some of the Downtown Management District's renderings teased us with a full cap, but a bridge is better than nothing.

I believe the cap park is still on the boards, it’s just a bit South of this rendering 

6 hours ago, MarathonMan said:

The model/rendering looks cool.  I’m still bummed that the most interesting aspect of the exterior design (imho) — the roof — will go largely unseen.  Although, it should translate to a spectacular ceiling on the inside.

agreed, the building will appear very blocky and imposing from street level. Wish they could have brought some of those sweeping design elements down into the facade a bit.

18 hours ago, H-Town Man said:

 

Shrug. I guess the Riverwalk in San Antonio is an example of where close commercial development makes the experience more interesting. I liked the original vision in the 2002 Master Plan where everything north of Commerce would be cleared out and you'd have a "Commerce Street Promenade," but that isn't likely to happen anytime soon.

 

According to the new East Sector Plan, there will be a promenade on the North Canal similar in appearance to what was depicted for the Commerce street promenade in the original Master plan. Interestingly the North Canal would give the warehouse district a riverfront. 

From BBP Website:

“The trail will begin at Allen’s Landing Park and continue east under the Fannin Street Bridge, transverse up the slope along Commerce Street before passing under the San Jacinto Bridge to the Wilson Building on Commerce Street. The trail will continue through the second basement level of the Wilson Building and under the Harris County Sheriff’s Inmate Processing Center.“

https://buffalobayou.org/construction-begins-on-key-buffalo-bayou-trail-connection/

20 hours ago, EaDo Lou said:

Work has started on extending the bike trail further east of McKee just south of Buffalo Bayou.  Just a short extension to the existing trails at James Bute Park will allow the trails on the south banks of Buffalo Bayou east of HWY 59 to be connected to the rest of the Buffalo Bayou/White Oak Bayou trails.

I wonder if BBP managed to acquire the old Gable Street Power plant property from Centerpoint? Would be great to turn that into a recreational area. 

1 hour ago, jmitch94 said:

I personally have started to care less and less about what stuff looks like form the freeway. That is not how you live or truly interact with a city. I want developments to be very inviting and cohesive with their surrounds at the ground level which is where people actually are going to be. I'll always trade freeway presence in a building for one that adds to the neighborhood instead of just another sculpture for suburbanites to look at on their way to an Astros game. 

Why can’t both be important? Glibly writing off people that care about how our skyline looks as suburbanites going to an Astros game runs contrary to the many skyline pictures I see on this forum every day. 

This building is staying fairly close to the renderings from what I can see. I like how the angled line of the tower extends itself into the base as a demarcation between the stone and glass. 
 

The one part I cannot get a feel for is the side facing the Calpine building. It’s vague from the renderings but appears to be recessed grating with some sort of stone outcropping as an accent. It’s very had to make parking garage bases look nice and it looks like they gave a strong effort here. The alternative would have been to bury the garage, but then I feel like they would have needed to cut budget on the high rise portion, which would be a shame. 
 

My only complaint is that the most interesting angle of the building faces into downtown and won’t be outwardly visible. It would have been a nice touch to our skyline, but from the freeway angle it will look like aBother fairly boring building. That feels like a missed opportunity to me as this building is on the edge of downtown and will be prominent in the skyline.

Plus the Texas tower will block the view of this angle from within downtown.

2 hours ago, thedistrict84 said:

The warehouse at 1119 Commerce St. downtown has a construction fence set up around it. Looks like the Harris County Flood Control District is finally ready to move forward with demolition.
 

https://www.hcfcd.org/Find-Your-Watershed/Buffalo-Bayou/F-82-1119-Commerce-Street

 

https://imgur.com/gallery/eQ9YOaN

Oh well, I had always hoped this building could somehow be incorporated into BBP’s design, but I understand that downtown is probably better off without it from a flood control perspective. Also, the south side bayou trail can now continue East, although the next barrier is right across San Jacinto at the Harris County inmate processing center.

I was hoping.that would meet the same fate as 1119. All that land plus the adjacent parking lot would open up a nice bit of green space along the bayou.

Metro hints at a future light rail extension along 90a, but the only substantive thing I can find on the MetroNext plan is two way HOV. Missouri City is part of Metro’s service area and voted in the bond referendum, but light rail is unlikely unless Sugarland and other Fort Bend towns are willing to chip in. This feels like a big miss to me, but I’m not sure what the projected ridership for such a line would be even with full participation from Fort Bend county.

I’m also curious If Metro could purchase their own ROW inside the existing Union Pacific ROW when the time came. 

21 hours ago, cspwal said:

In case anyone is wondering, that was at the corner of McKinney and Main, which is now a parking garage

the good news is we got the Julia Ideson building as our new library. In the above picture it’s interesting that it seems like downtown more or less ends at McKinney. Not sure if there were any notable buildings south of there at that time. 

On 10/4/2019 at 1:39 PM, jermh said:

I'm not sure if it's been linked before; but the Houston Public Library archive has a ton of interesting old photos. 

 

Here's an example:

 

 

Link to the archive: 

https://digital.houstonlibrary.org/

 

Seen in the lower left.

Chevron will never develop anything on that lot. Perhaps they would consider selling it or gifting it to the city instead of just keeping it as an empty field. 

1 hour ago, HoustonMidtown said:

Untitled by Houston Midtown, on Flickr

 

 

It seems like they've stripped out more of the original building than the renderings had indicated, unless the plan is to build it back similar to what was there.