Jump to content

zaphod

Full Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    660

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by zaphod

  1. zaphod
    Where is this at? Article doesn't say.
  2. zaphod
    I don't think that church was that new. From Google Earth's historic imagery slider you can see it as far back as 2002. The next available year is 1995 and doesn't appear to be built yet. So it's anywhere between 18 to 25 years old. Anyways, this tower is pretty plain but it will also look impressive as there aren't any other tall buildings around it.
  3. zaphod
    Whether or not the property owner and developer were in the right, can we all just agree for once that building a multistory self-storage warehouse on top of what had been one of the last historic movie theaters on a sidewalk fronting lot in the city is just like dropping a massive wet turd and why Houston can't be nice like other cities? Call me a NIMBY if you want, but you know people do vote with their dollars and feet when it comes to where they prefer to live and work. It's why people from other cities look down on us. If Houston preserved its historic commercial buildings and streetscapes better it would have higher property values and attract the people who would pay for that.
  4. zaphod
    Interesting development, this is good infill for a suburban location. Not all the units have garage parking, but it sounds like the ones that do would have it almost attached to the building then?
  5. zaphod
    So the Horizon tower is... on the Horizon :P I love seeing this much development near a MetroRail station
  6. zaphod
    This development was well underway when I drove by it. I wasn't in a position to snap any pictures however. Whatever's on the NW corner of the property nearest Six Pines is about 3 or 4 stories high now, and there is a big tower crane now(its a green one)
  7. zaphod
    It was a very nice day so I decided to take a walk around Springwoods Village to see the new HP campus and also the state of it so far. I found a lot of people walking around, enjoying the various trails and park space in the crisp fall air. The small urban center section had a couple of businesses open, including a Chipotle. This area is coming along, I think it needs much more permanent residential units to create more activity. (All photos taken by myself) This is the new HP Enterprise headquarters building, looks to be making a lot of progress: Looking up the street past the American Bureau of Shipping office. To the left is Common Bond Bistro and Bakery. I think they were still getting ready to open. The central plaza area, with the residential buildings behind it. There was Christmas music playing and there was a family with kids there doing something. View towards the Marriot with the small lake out in front. So which one of you other HAIF people was out taking photos at the same time? Lol A bridge over the lake. Not pictured, but below it is actually a dam/spillway that's a good 20 feet tall. The lakes pour over into one another. A closer view of the HP Inc. Campus, as seen from the walking trail:
  8. zaphod
    Is the new Maritime Museum now cancelled for good or will it emerge again in the future? I feel like that would be an interesting anchor for regional tourism, like people from Conroe or Katy would have an occasion to come down to this area and then they would eat out and pay for parking and whatever.
  9. zaphod
    Maybe depending on how this works out something similar could be done to the other forgotten landfills in Houston. For example at Kirkwood and Bisonnett in Alief there is the old Doty landfill. They tried turning it into a golf course but that never worked out.
  10. zaphod
    I'm good with it. It's iconic at this point. I don't care for KHOU's current look and feel which is flat and consists of large color regions. That's kind of the same design as mobile apps and social media websites, so its current and trendy, but also it just doesn't look great. I think with 4K and good CGI being available now they should keep the skueomorphic look instead and just clean it up a lot with higher quality renders and whatever.
  11. zaphod
    I guess someone decided to spend a lot of money building a landmark and then decided that nobody is allowed to appreciate it as such. Oh well. Sucks to be them, sitting on a gazillion square feet of tarted up office space nobody wants. Love the spiral staircase, but this will just meet the same fate as the mall that was there.
  12. zaphod
    Houston can always use more brick buildings, IMO.
  13. zaphod
    A while back I made a thread in the transportation forum: Silly idea - realign red line to serve TMC 3 With this scale of development it's not right that the closest Red Line stop is between a half to 3/4 mile way away at Smith Lands. It wouldn't be that impossible IMO to shift the line over to Fannin for that brief stretch and then implement a station midway between OST and Braeswood (and spruce up one of the cross streets going east like St Agnes or Swanson into a pedestrian and bike friendly corridor). That would put all development in a comfortable quarter-mile walk from a future LRT station AND it would actually shorten the total length of the red line by several hundred feet.
  14. zaphod
    I wonder if the tunnel will have lighting inside of it
  15. zaphod
    That building honestly looks like a greatly scaled up version of the elementary school I attended in the early 1990s. IMO that sort of architecture is sort of okay when it's obvious that the goal is to turn a utilitarian building(like a public school) into something that's at least somewhat architecturally pleasing. Like with post modernism, you could take a box with square windows, then add some brick and awnings or whatever and change the window tint color and voila now its "architecture". But its just weird to design a monumental structure like that.
  16. zaphod
    Yes, HPE makes servers and server-room gear and owns some companies that make networking stuff you'd find in a large office or school campus setting. The side of HP that made personal computers and printers is now called HP Inc and is separate. I'd assume they employ a ton of (well paid) engineers who are sort to like living way out in the burbs and working from home whenever possible. It seems like tech has always been really suburban in their location preferences, with a few like Facebook and Amazon being exceptions. Back in the 1960s IBM built campuses and plants in locations which were practically rural (but near college towns or the edge of cities) like Armonk, NY or Essex Junction, VT. Also IBM was one of the first companies to really push telecommuting, and that was way way back when the internet barely existed. I think what's missed are the smaller software or IT services companies that seem to locate in downtown or urban office locations because such locations are cool. Also in some cities there are some really huge data centers in the lower floors of many skyscrapers. Sometimes these companies do fun stuff for customers, like you can go in person to events or whatever and they send goody boxes full of yogurt pretzels or RC powered drone toys to the IT office
  17. zaphod
    My theory, as a millenial who was never actually part of the "weird" Austin or Portland or whatever, is that maybe the "weird" actually referred to your standard liberal college town stuff as judged by the abrasive, chain smoking WW2 vet generation who hated the hippies? I can see how maybe when Austin was small and more dominated by the UT and the state government it probably would have been a lot more liberal and a lot more open minded than surrounding parts of Texas especially back in the day. Anyways the new HPE facility is underwhelming. I guess in reality a lot of the employees will work remotely and the HQ title just implies a few dozen big wigs will be based out of it. Like how Exxon is still technically in Irving while the Houston office is a behemoth.
  18. zaphod
    I like both Best Buy and Micro Center. I'd hate to see Best Buy vanish, though I from what I have read they have actually been doing okay. Also they are opening new stores again for the first time in a decade. Maybe this and the Bingle location were just weak performers? The Meyerland store was close to other locations while inner NW Houston has only gotten sketchier over the last few years. I noticed the big one by the Galleria and the ones in The Woodlands, Sugar Land, etc have more stuff like kitchen appliances while the oldest and smallest stores don't or that part of the store is really narrow. Also the stores in the suburbs have been remodeled to a new design scheme, so maybe that's a sign too.
  19. zaphod
    I'm digging this new pop-up mud wrestling venue
  20. zaphod
    This thing really looks best at night and the way the glow reflects on the trees....The glass tubes were a risk but it really is very beautiful.
  21. zaphod
    That's hot. Wish there was a less exposed version. Also the colors seem a bit cold and unnatural. But I hate critiquing someone's hard work, it looks good.
  22. zaphod
    I guess its still good to see underutilized buildings get replaced with something newer and larger in a part of town that hasn't seen much development in decades.
  23. zaphod
    Looks like the office component was axed.
  24. zaphod
    It could be interesting to see what goes here and how it could change that area. But this also down the road from that other huge empty lot east of the Beltway at Westheimer. Is that ever going to get developed?
  25. zaphod
    I don't disagree, but sometimes perfect the enemy of good. I'd rather have something that's pretty good go there than nothing go there. To be honest a major landmark skyscraper would at street level probably not be the kind of thing you want fronting a public square anyways. It's guaranteed to have featureless and austere parking podium with some glass atrium with a security checkpoint. It wouldn't contribute to the urban feel for the person on the sidewalk. What would be ideal in my opinion would be a hotel or residential that doesn't have an obvious parking podium, that has street fronting GFR facing the square, and has nice architectural features at the small scale like being warm colored brick, having some kind of interesting awning, you get the idea.
×
×
  • Create New...