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Angostura

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Everything posted by Angostura

  1. Angostura
    I assume the other "donut hole" is the pool.
  2. Angostura
    Definitely small-m modern. The Lindy effect basically says that the life expectancy of a (non-living) thing is proportional to its current age. A restaurant that's been operating for 50 years is more likely to still be operating 50 years from now than a restaurant that opened a couple years ago. Ditto an architectural style that has been in use for a couple centuries is more likely to still be in use a couple centuries from now. Specifically, sometime around the middle of the 20th century, architects started designing to a different scale. Instead of designing features to be appreciated by someone walking past on a sidewalk, they started designing features for someone riding past in a car (or flying over in a helicopter). The motto of this kind of architecture seems to be "Look at me! (but only from a distance)." As the period where cities are designed around cars rather than people comes to a close, that style of architecture might also fade out. After all, it didn't take us all that long to realize that building in raw concrete was a bad idea.
  3. Angostura
    Architecture is not immune to the Lindy effect. If a style from 100 or 1000 years ago looks good today, it's likely to still look good 100 or 1000 years from now. I'm less sanguine about the staying power of modern architecture.
  4. Angostura
    First of all, kind of cool that there's a tunnel under the RR tracks between the warehouses and barge terminal. Second, I think the key word is "conceptual." BTW, the warehouse in the upper rendering looks to be near Turkey Bend, Navigation @ Norwood.
  5. Angostura
    Most hotels in non-resort areas are kept afloat by business travelers, not leisure travelers. (Same is true for airlines, for that matter.) Sao Paulo has twice as many hotels as Rio de Janeiro, and it's not because SP is a more attractive tourist destination. I suspect that most of the people who stay in downtown hotels over a weekend are either there for a convention or a sporting event, as anyone who's tried to get an elevator at the Marriott Marquis an hour before first pitch of an Astros game can tell you.
  6. Angostura
    Soon there will be no place in the Heights that isn't within walking distance of a boutique ice cream shop.
  7. Angostura
    Great fit for what Caydon is trying to do. Also a great spot for a hotel: lots of bar and restaurant options within walking distance, and transit access to downtown, TMC, Hermann Park, Museum District, plus NRG, MMP, Toyota Center, TDECU and BBVA.
  8. Angostura
    Site work permit was issued in May. The permit in Nancy's tweet is for the building shell. There are separate permits for each floor's buildout, the parking garage, the amenity deck, etc., which were also issued last week. You can search here if you really want to see the whole list.
  9. Angostura
    Unless the bikeshare is very actively operated, it can be dicey to depend on it for commuting, especially into/out of a CBD like Houston's. Aside from station placement, there are two big risks you face as a commuter: having a bike available at the station nearest where you live, and having an open dock at the station nearest where you work (and vice versa for the trip home). Dockless solves one of these problems, but not both.
  10. Angostura
    This is about half a mile from the Greyhound station, so I don't think that'll be a huge deterrent. If you work downtown or in the TMC, living here means you can get by without a car, which puts an extra $800 or so in your pocket every month. Living car free, in a place where you can reasonably live car free, is fantastic, and this is the first neighborhood in the city where one can reasonably live car free.
  11. Angostura
    Oh, so this is the SW quadrant of the lot, which puts the retail at 19th and Lawrence (makes more sense than 20th). Which means that there is still one more shoe to drop: the NW quadrant (which we see as gray boxes in some of the Phase 1 renderings).
  12. Angostura
    So, lemme get this straight. Phase 1 is the 9-over-3 building on the NE quadrant of the block (SW corner of Nicholson and 20th), and Phase 2 is a 5-over-1 building on the NW quadrant (SE corner of Lawrence and 20th)? That puts the GFR on the corner of Lawrence and 20th?
  13. Angostura
    The question isn't current rents for aging strip centers. It's the opportunity cost of keeping a parking lot a parking lot. And at typical rents, that opportunity cost is about $800/month per space (assuming you're just building single-story retail, which you're probably not). With CoH parking minimums and assuming surface parking, parking takes up 55-75% of land area. So unless parked rents are much, much higher than unparked rents, we're going to see less parking in the area over time, and more of what remains priced at a level above zero.
  14. Angostura
    Beyond a certain density, alleys make a lot of sense, as anyone who's had the misfortune of strolling around Manhattan on trash day can tell you.
  15. Angostura
    Some properties for lease (w/o parking) on LoopNet: $2.60/sf/mo $2.25/sf/mo (2nd floor) $2.25/sf/mo $2.50/sf/mo $2.92/sf/mo Making a place denser and more walkable tends to increase, not decrease rents, though the tenant mix will probably be different.
  16. Angostura
    Let's say you own a block in Midtown with (considering 5-ft setbacks) about 57,000 of buildable area that currently has a 20,000 s.f. strip center and 90 surface parking spaces. At triple net retail lease rates of $2/month, those 90 parking spaces are costing you over $800/month each in opportunity costs. So yes, I'd expect the number of parking spaces to decline over time. Since it's not very efficient to charge for parking in small lots in front of strip centers, I'd expect parking to be concentrated in places like this garage. I'd also expect parking to be more efficiently allocated once it's priced at a level above zero.
  17. Angostura
    Because pretty much every place you would park in this garage to go already has their own parking. And street parking is plentiful 20 hours per day, and free after 6PM. There are 12 blocks surrounding Midtown Park, and 10 of them are at least 50% surface parking. An 11th is pretty close to 50%, and the 12th is an apartment building wrapped around a parking garage. The area is not under-parked.
  18. Angostura
    So, remind me again why we need city-mandated parking minimums if developers and tenants are already acutely aware of the need to provide parking in places where personal vehicles are still the dominant mode of transport? BTW, I don't disagree that the vast majority of customers for this development will need a place to park, and I'm skeptical that the land value here is high enough to justify structured parking. But there is already a massive amount of parking within 1000-ft of this site, most of which (YMCA, high school, Hare Krishna temple) will sit empty during peak hours for this development. It's not a case of not enough parking, it's a case of poor allocation.
  19. Angostura
    There is no shortage of parking near Heights Water Works, it's just (under-priced and therefore) poorly allocated. That said, given the current CoH parking rules, it may have been worthwhile for WW to have a parking structure to serve the various Braun developments in the vicinity, and allow additional retail of residential development of existing surface lots.
  20. Angostura
    From here: ...though you're probably right about the payment terms.
  21. Angostura
    I think there's too much focus on making a few places slightly less shitty for the rare pedestrians who might find themselves there despite a complete lack of pedestrian-oriented buildings. I'd rather see us build a handful of truly great pedestrian-focused (even pedestian-only) places in areas that have the bones for it, like the Main St corridor.
  22. Angostura
    The complete streets mindset generally requires a buffer between sidewalk and traffic. In this case, traffic on main is generally very slow-moving, so it probably doesn't need to be this wide. Or, in this case, since driving on Main is so pointless anyway, you could just remove all distinction between traffic lane and sidewalk, and restrict Main to deliveries only from Commerce to Wheeler.
  23. Angostura
    Basically, yes. HCSA built and owns the stadium, and leases it to the Astros, who retain substantially all revenue generated inside, including naming rights and non-baseball events. In return, they pay a few million dollars a year in rent (now $8.1M, with the lease extension). The team also pays for certain stadium improvements. BTW, an annuity purchased with the $178M naming rights fee paid by Coca Cola would more than pay for the team's lease costs over the 28-year term of the naming rights deal.
  24. Angostura
    AFAIK, the Astros retain all revenue from concessions at MMP, and the agreement with Aramark is with the team, not HCSA. It's important to remember: much like Ticketmaster, the ticket-buying fan is not Aramark's customer, and much like Ticketmaster, Aramark is very good at delivering value to their ACTUAL customers, the venue operators.
  25. Angostura
    Up until recently, the approach had been to surround stadiums with nothing but acres of parking, so people had no choice but to pay $18 for a beer inside the venue. This approach is... better.
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