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mrfootball

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  1. mrfootball
    Start a new thread.
  2. mrfootball
    I'm excited about the green medians project and think some thoughtful organization and/or something like a Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ) would be beneficial. Macrobro is right. I'll be happy to pull out a demographic map if you like. NW Harris County Demographics Notice, they haven't updated the areas in that big block on the south side of 290 from Barker Cypress over to Fry Rd. (ie. Bridgeland/Blackhorse/CC Lakes/Towne Lake, etc). That big area will fill in as red.
  3. mrfootball
    I grew up in Greenwood Forest, Ponderosa Forest and Champion Forest so I know the area quite well. The nice neighborhoods along 1960 are still nice, as old as they are, they still look great. Every bit as nice as their sister Kickerillo developed neighborhoods in West Memorial (though they certainly haven't appreciated like those have in the past 5 years). Champions isn't a little pocket of upscale. It's a big pocket. It hasn't shrunk, it's grown. It's filling in the last few areas with relatively expensive homes now. Right now, they're tearing down and building million dollar homes in Champions and homes from $500K to $1M in/around Champion Forest and Vintage Lakes. As for the rest of 1960...The biggest change along 1960 is the concentration of apartments. They've increased the density, traffic and interlopers. The Champions area is great and I like those centers near Champion Forest Drive. My mini-tour didn't take me past Stuebner. I do know that the stretch from Kuykendahl to I-45 has gotten pretty run-down retail-wise. FM1960 has become the Westheimer of the northwest. In fact, you have to consider that 1960 carries as much or more traffic than Westheimer today and there are a lot of stretches of Westheimer that make the worst stretches of 1960 look good in comparison. While there are well over a hundred nice neighborhoods north of FM 1960, there are a number of nice neighborhoods on the South side of FM 1960 like Greenwood Forest, Windermere Lakes, Wyndham Lakes, Heron Lakes, etc. Nonetheless, 1960 today sits on the Southeast Edge of a much, much larger NW suburban community that has grown Northward and Westward with rings like Cypresswood, Louetta, Spring Cypress...stretching all the way to Spring Creek to the North and 529 to the South. I would think it would be smart for retailers to open locations to serve those newer areas, but as I drove by the nice centers around Champions, they were all packed with cars and business looked good.
  4. mrfootball
    I went over to the Champions area tonight for dinner tonight and instantly thought about how ludicrous some of the comments on this thread are.
  5. mrfootball
    I think the Champions centers are always going to be viable and nice. The demographics are there and the demand is there. With that said, NW Harris County has grown tremendously over the past 20 years and the epicenter is moving from 1960, northward as the NW suburbs stretch from 1960 all the way to Montgomery county so it makes sense for merchants to locate on Louetta at places like the Vintage more centrally located to the demographic they serve.
  6. mrfootball
    Willowbrook's trade area is NW Harris County, the "Great Northwest"...the namesake of this, the most popular, of all HAIF Houston Metro subsections. As I've shown there are over 1 million people living in this community. Whether it incorporated (if ever) as one big 800 lb gorilla or as smaller communities of 100,000-300,000 is something for another thread. Nonetheless. I grew up here in the early 70's, graduated HS in the early 90's, came back to Houston after college, worked and lived inside the loop for about 6 years and came back home to the GNW. I think this is one of the best burbs in Houston - a city with great burbs all over. There are others that feature a nice big master-planned community here and there, but overall this is the biggest and best burb in town. It's amazing how much it has grown.
  7. mrfootball
    Here's GGP's profile for Willowbrook. 2000 - 802,367 2007 - 1,041,318 2012 - 1,185,435 (projected) Random musings: from a marketing perspective, a universe of over 1 Million people with an avg HH income over $80K is pretty remarkable. If we (UnIncNW) were our own city, we'd instantly become one of the largest cities in the state, boasting some of, if not, the best demographics in the nation for a city of over 1 million people.
  8. mrfootball
    Here's GGP's profile for Willowbrook. 2000 - 802,367 2007 - 1,041,318 2012 - 1,185,435 (projected)
  9. mrfootball
    The Chronicle can say that, but the Chronicle's figures are out of date. Demographic figures are never 100% spot on, especially in high growth areas. Houston has grown quite a bit since the 2000 census, even those figures are crap because they don't count hundreds of thousands of undocumented persons, etc residing in/around the Houston metro area. School districts are one of the more accurate indicators of recent growth and demographers generally compute total district population to be a factor between 6-7 times the enrolled student population. The school district's (CFISD) formula is that for every 6-7 people there is one school aged child. Calculate the enrollment of CFISD, KISD, SISD, TISD. 692,188 CFISD (98,884 students) 65,716 TISD (9,388 students) 226,800 SISD (32,400 students) 289,982 KISD (41,426 students) Total Enrollment = 182,098 Using these figures (which are already outdated) you get a figure between: 1,092,588 (x6) and 1,274,686 NW Harris County (x7)
  10. mrfootball
    fyi - there are a hell of a lot more people in Unincorporated Harris County than 1.4 Million people (Houston MSA has 5.4 million conservatively...more like 5.8). As for the Northwest (the largest part of unincorporated Harris County) Cy-Fair alone has 700-750,000. Add in Klein, Spring, Tomball, etc and you easily hit/surpass 1 million.
  11. mrfootball
    Looking at a crime map, an overwhelming majority of the crime that occurs in NW Harris County (an area with well over 1,000,000 people) occurs in/around Willowbrook Mall (mostly car theft). Considering the sheer number of people in the Willowbrook area, the crime isn't bad. I wouldn't go so far to say that it's gone downhill (i.e Greenspoint), but the Willowbrook area right at 1960 and 249 isn't as safe as it once was. With that said, I feel safer at Willowbrook than I do many other malls save for The Woodlands.
  12. mrfootball
    It's a great looking center and it should be a no-brainer to lease. The people at CBRE charged with leasing this property must have their heads up their asses.
  13. mrfootball
    Gringo's is the most mediocre to bad nice Tex-Mex restaurant in town. They spend all their money on decor and apparently nothing on the menu. Yuk.
  14. mrfootball
    Agreed.
  15. mrfootball
    Anyone seen the new billboard on 59 South depicting the Port of Houston 'ablaze' in an implied terror attack? Apparently we've lost the "war on terror"...Our own government is working overtime in order to keep the citizenry terrorized.
  16. mrfootball
    At least he took care not to get it on the new brick facade.
  17. mrfootball
    Noticed they're putting up those portable remote video security trailers that they use in Bridgelands and other communities where they're building new homes.
  18. mrfootball
    They ought to give them a taste of their own medicine and post up hundreds of mugs of the perps with the word "LOSER" prominently displayed underneath their pic.
  19. mrfootball
    Noticed it too. There's a bit of irony there with the graffitti artists hitting the strip centers. Locals should put both the strip center developers and the grafitti artists in the town stockade and pummel them with tomatoes.
  20. mrfootball
    Shaw Rd? Ok, so that's right up next to the CFISD border near Grant Rd. & Telge. It's good that they're building a HS up this way, because it takes a while nowadays to get all the way to Tomball from the HP Corridor neighborhoods.
  21. mrfootball
    Where's the new High School going to be located?
  22. mrfootball
    Agreed, the actual stats for Willowbrook are impressive, to polish, they should simply describe as above, stick an asterisk on it with supporting reference data in the fine print. With that said, the old girl is getting a bit long in the tooth and in need of a makeover.
  23. mrfootball
    They're talking about the MSA, the entire Metropolitan Statistical Area. First, should be no surprise is the Houston Galleria, your guess is as good as mine as to who the second is, but I think it is noteworthy to say that it Willowbrook is and has always been (for over 20 years) one of the top-performing malls in Houston and in the State of Texas.
  24. mrfootball
    People who aren't from NW Harris County don't seem to realize that most of the great neighborhoods aren't located right off the freeways, so it's always funny to hear their "view from the highway" opinions. The best neighborhoods in Spring, Klein, Champions and Cypress (for the most part) are located off the beaten path (if you're not familiar with the area.) Of course that hasn't hurt growth as this area has outpaced all other areas of town in growth over the past 10-15 years with no signs of stopping. They're still coming, traffic and all. While there are a lot of people who suffer the commute to Downtown and the Galleria, these neighborhoods are filled with people who live and work in the area at places like the HP Corridor, 290 Corridor, Beltway, Greenspoint, FM 1960, The Woodlands or the Energy Corridor. Many people I know who work in the EC, simply do not want to live in Katy. Aside from the Memorial area, this is about as close as you get to the energy corridor to still have great schools, big tall trees (North of 290), newer homes and low low crime. I'm not a big fan of treeless, sun-scorched, master-planned communities like you find South of 290, Katy, Sugar Land or Pearland, however I'd live in Bridgeland. They're creating the new template for landscape planning and have done an awesome job sculpting that landscape and accentuating the natural features like Cypress Creek. Lastly, I think in coming years there will be an office boom on the 290 corridor, especially in the area in/around Bridgeland, Towne Lake and the planned Grand Parkway. All that frontage on 290 from Fry Rd. to Becker is becoming a whole lot more valuable. Once the 2010 census is complete you're going to see an explosion in retail and Class A office space in these areas. So characteristic of how many of the other communities in NW Harris county have developed (off the beaten path), the path will be beaten to Bridgeland and beyond.
  25. mrfootball
    The development itself looks great. There's a huge underserved market here, the owners and CBRE must be absolute idiots not to be able to lease the hell out of that development. Everybody's anxious for a grand opening. Where's the good stuff? I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that I hate going to Willowbrook Mall. Further, as a sign of their lack of marketing prowess, they let HEB have the dominant signage on the Vintage Park marker at the corner of 249 and Louetta. If they had any clue about Branding they'd have put Vintage Park's logo in that premier spot with HEB below. Also, there's no landscaping on the street side facing 249. Only an ugly fence. In the process of construction, they left some concrete drainage pipes sitting in the woods on the corner by the main sign. I hope its because they're not done yet, because it looks pretty bad. They should follow The Woodlands model and draw in top-name anchors, offering incentives, everything else will follow.
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