The Great Hizzy!

That's a pretty flimsy website.

People are surprised that there are delays and cancelations of large-scaled mixed-use, residential and commercial projects in THIS economy? Seriously?

Has anyone ever parked at the TMC Garage 4 At 1406 Cambridge Street?

It's Jerry Jones. Take it for what it's worth. Surely, it's a friendly jab, as he genuinely likes Bob McNair, and of course is pretty hypocrtical, given what the Cowboys cheerleaders wear.

I would imagine that someone told Jerry that his comments might probably offend a number of his own fanbase, who surely wear boots and cowboy hats and don't mind checkerboard table cloths on picnic tables.

Anyway... no biggie.

I noticed it on the Katy this morning coming back from Sealy. Even with the new lanes open going inbound, traffic is pretty bad from Fry Road east to about Campbell. I also notice plenty of backups on the feeder roads and the on/off ramps.

Not only are some lights still off, apparently, but even among the ones that are "on", the timing is all screwed up. Also, the Katy's HOV lanes are closed to everything but buses for now, so that might be part of it, too.

Concrete lasts much longer than that. There are concrete sections of the Gulf Freeway feeder road from the original construction that are 60 years old and the road surface is still fine for the most part.

Oops. I'm sorry. I meant asphalt. My apologies to all who were misled by that.

I wonder what the object in the middle of the pond next to the main building is? Is it like a band shell or just a large fountain-like amenity?

Asphalt might look "prettier" when you first lay it down, but after a while it becomes unstable and even more unsighlty due to wear, cracks, divits and a number of things. Plus, as has been stated, concrete lasts longer (when done right obviously).

Now concrete is fine if you don't mind laying down a new surface every 10-12 years...

Right. They didn't waste any time either. This was a case of the Rockets front office not wanting to sign him for too high and too early or insulting Carl with a preliminary low-ball offer. $3 million is a bit more than what they (Morey and staff) would've prefered (probably somewhere around $2.2 - $2.5 mil per year if they had their way) but it's not an absurd contract either (which is why the Rockets matched the offer so quickly), and most importantly they don't have to use any kind of exemption money to pay him, which is great.

The Scola / Landry combo at PF was fun to watch the final 50 games of last year. I'm not sure they keep Hayes as well, but if so we have a lot of depth at the position.

When you sell the majority of your stock for roughly a dollar, you're likely to need a higher volume of customers buying those items than a more upscale store. Granted, you pay less on the dollar for your inventory but still. From my experience, the The 99 Cents Store seemed to have merely an okay volume of customers on a daily basis, and considering the number of competitors in this retail niche, that's not very distinguishing.

Not surprised they decided to cut out some of their inventory of stores. Sometimes, you can expand by too much and too quickly.

This will, unfortunately, create a number of big box retail vacancies across the metro at least for the short term. It'll be interesting to see what replaces them.

"Not just knee deep,

She was total-ly deep,

When she did the freak with me!"

The smaller vans that are currently visible on the lot are vehicles from Super Shuttle, which has been contracted to operate a certain amount of the Airport Direct service during the day (from what I've been told, we're talking very AM service and late evening service). The structural facility in place now includes a "trailer" to serve as a customer reception area. If the service does not make it longterm, the trailer can be lifted and move somewhere else to serve some other purpose (in theory, of course).

The buses being used are no different than many of the MCI's METRO currently operates along the Katy and Eastex Freeway corridors (for example).

Ridership has indeed been fairly low, thus far, but METRO anticipated it. It remains to be seen how much ridership will increase over the next few months.

Also, you say Metro should have been doing this 10 years ago, they were; it was called the 112 - Bush/IAH direct. It was the same 30 minute frequency and run time with a $3 round trip. It failed for whatever reason.

The vans, the concierge service, the building, the equipment inside the building, the marketing etc. etc. is a bit much for a bus route that is projected to carry 100 PEOPLE PER DAY and this is from the horse's mouth. Meanwhile, the nearly 15,000 daily riders on the 2 - Bellaire are subjected to articulated buses that have a "sunroofs" in the bellows that connect the segments. If you don't get it, that means the bellows are torn and the duct tape used to patch them up have failed as well. But that's okay, because we have an opulent airport shuttle with projected ridership of 100, and it's not even there yet.

Unfortunately, I can't disagree with a single word of this.

**Although, I will say that the 2 Bellaire is closer to 11,000 boardings a day now, given the number of alternate services implemented over time, including METRORail. In fact, the 82 Westheimer is now the busiest weekday bus route in METRO's system.

By the way, METRO would like to eventually get rid of all of the artics. They're old and the manufacturer doesn't even make that particular type anymore. From what operations people tell me, it is a pain in the butt trying to get replacement parts for when one of them breaks down.

The second residential tower in the third image looks rather specific in design, don't you think? I wonder if that's a working design.

Isn't UH-D a state-funded institution? I might see the state jumping in and pushing a name like Texas State University - Houston (similar to how California has Cal. State - Los Angeles or Cal. State - Fullerton or Cal-State Long Beach and so on).

I'm not all that opposed to Houston Metropolitan University but I believe there are similar versions of that name in other metropolises. Two that come to mind are Metropolitan State in Denver and Atlanta Metropolitan College.

I could also see something like a Texas Coastal University, like Coastal Carolina near Myrtle Beach, SC.

Without arms, this thing is incomplete.

Another fleecing of the taxpayers dollars. Why on earth did we have to foot the bill to fly her out here just so she could stand on stage and tell us they've reduced the red tape by a little bit. Talk about non information. Seriously....just send an email. We'll take the money saved and apply it towards our rail line or teachers salaries. What a joke.

Yeah, sounds like someone did nothing more than take an expenses-paid trip to Houston. I'll bet they didn't stay at a Budget Inn either.

To quote Jack Ryan in The Hunt For Red October, "Next time... send a g*****n memo!"

Yes, it's been thee for a few weeks now. I've seen them doing work on a couple of occasions, kind of like how 2727 Kirby's site would have very sporadic work taking place, to the point that some questioned whether or not it was actually taking place at all.

The project is still in a holding pattern. They are waiting on Financing. The projected start date is Jan. 09.

What a coincidence. I was riding by earlier today and was wondering what the status was. Thanks for at least making mention of it. Financing is the big issue with a lot of projects these days.

Sure it will. It'll just be a sports bar with $15 caipirinhas, and a dress code.

I bet their tvs will be the best, though.

Gee, just what a sports bar needs... uptightness and forced civility.

I've not seen any mention of this elsewhere but while doing my lunch thing today, I saw banners announcing a future bar / grill / entertainment venue called Gibson's, which is to be located at the site of the former St. Pete's Dancing Marlin. I wasn't able to read much else off the banner to get more specifics, if any.

I don't know how it will make out but it's good to see that site at least solicit interest rather than staying empty for X number of months/years.

It wouldn't surprise me a bit if the "streetscape" improvements came with the light rail expansion...which is probably 10 years away or more.

As for valets and walkability, the truly urban hipsters can take the 36 or the 85 all up and down Washington, with stops every 2 blocks. As an added bonus, the 85 goes to Downtown and Midtown, and the 36 heads through Downtown on its way to Eastwood.

Now, THATS urban!

But, but, but... aren't there NON-urban hipsters riding on those.

OMP?

I hate these abbreviations that no one knows (or at least I don't).

One Main Place

Ciao, y'all!

Put me in the Romano's camp. And Josephine's is pretty good, particularly as downtown-area Italian goes.

Instead of increasing its base fare, METRO decided to simply eliminate discounted fares, which were available via the weekly, monthly and annual passes (365-day, 52-day, etc). People were getting such a discount on fares that many were paying considerably less than the base fare and some as little as 30% of what the fare was supposed to be. Given that METRO hadn't instituted a fare change since 1994 (I believe) and operating expenses have increased signficantly since that time, they felt the need to make a change to its fare policy to help recoup some of their expenses

Personally, I'm of the opinion that most customers probably would've adapted more favorably to a change to the local base fare and even the Park & Ride base fares (there are four of them, each one based on a fare applicable to the distance of the Park & Ride lot to the rider's destination).

My thing is that it seems so isolated. It even seems isolated from the City of Irving. While I applaud them for trying to create an independent center that can cater to its residents/workers without any outside influence, it seems to also shut itself off from the rest of the Metroplex and its overall vibrancy.

For all the flack that Plano, for example, gets, it at least seems to try to include itself in its immediate surroundings. I don't know if that's intentional or not but it certainly seems to be more prevalent than Las Colinas.