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Interesting project to introduce native plants to areas across the multiple area ecoregions to help with both flood control and drought survivability. Native Seed Mix Development Project — Houston Wilderness One-pager+on+Harris+County+NSM+Development+Project+(May+2023).pdf (squarespace.com) https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/environment/article/native-seed-mix-prairie-grass-southeast-texas-18521467.php "In testing over the past two years by researchers at Texas A&M Kingsville’s Texas Native Seeds Program, the new 12-species mix “handled inundation of water, it handled drought and it looks fabulous,” she said.

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2023/11/16/beyonce-concerts-drive-hotel-bookings-houston.html?cx_testId=40&cx_testVariant=cx_27&cx_artPos=8#cxrecs_s "Hotel occupancy across the city last month came in at 59.5%, marking a 5.8% increase over September 2022. The average daily rate and revenue per available room increased 5.4% and 11.5%, respectively, over the same month last year. Houston’s hotels have maintained a steady increase in business in 2023 compared to 2022. During the first nine months of the year, hotel occupancy averaged 61.1%, up 7.8% compared with the same period in 2022. ADR and RevPAR were up 7.5% and 15.9%, respectively, so far this year compared with 2022, according to Houston First."

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2023/10/12/houston-venture-capital-activity-q3-2023.html "There were 30 deals in the Greater Houston metropolitan area, the lowest number of deals since the third quarter of 2020, according to the Q3 2023 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor report, which was released Oct. 12. However, those deals were worth an aggregate of $596.23 million in Q3. That’s the largest amount of capital invested in the region since the same quarter of last year https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2023/11/14/houston-innovation-technology-sba-deputy-admin.html?cx_testId=40&cx_testVariant=cx_27&cx_artPos=0#cxrecs_s "Houston is one of the fastest-growing startup cities in the world, according to PitchBook’s Global VC Ecosystems ranking. The region came in at No. 5 based on one-, three- and five-year growth rates for VC deal, exit and fundraising activity.

https://ig.ft.com/us-cities-index/ "Houston has taken the top slot as the best US city for foreign multinationals to do business in the second annual ranking compiled by the Financial Times and Nikkei. It gained the top spot by offering business friendly policies, excellent logistics, affordable cost of living, and a diverse community for overseas companies." https://www.ft.com/content/8854bb17-938d-4dd5-88a8-c1605a4c5bce "Ever since crude first gushed from Spindletop Hill in 1901, Houston has been an oil town — the epicentre of America’s oil and gas industry, its fortunes rising and falling with those of the sector. Today, though, America’s fourth-largest city is rapidly expanding beyond the industry on which it was built. Not only has it become a centre for green energy innovation, but other sectors, including medical technology and aerospace, now call the Texas city home."

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/houston/2023/10/26/467775/houston-621-area-code-starts-by-2025/ “Once telecommunications carriers have exhausted all telephone numbers with the current 281/346/713/832 area codes, new numbers will be assigned the new area code 621,” according to the commission. “This new code is expected to meet numbering needs for an additional nine years.”

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/real-estate/article/real-estate-merger-ember-maquina-concourse-houston-18397113.php "Concourse Development, the Houston real estate developer behind the Grand Prairie and Windrose Green master-planned communities, is merging with Maquina Holdings, which has invested in high-rises such as the Wilshire and the Lexington in River Oaks and the Hawthorne in Tanglewood. Run by Vicente Rangel, Maquina will be absorbed into the new firm with Concourse. The merger, which closed Monday, creates Ember, a name inspired by the spark of something new. Ember's principals will be Rangel and Concourse's Harry Masterson and Jordan Mack, overseeing a roster of 11 projects mostly in the Houston region."

https://parkplanning.nps.gov/projectHome.cfm?parkID=456&projectID=95793 https://texashighways.com/culture/history/remembering-migration-of-freed-slaves-emancipation-trail/ "In 2019, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, both of Texas, introduced the Emancipation National Historic Trail Study Act, which started a Park Service feasibility study of the proposed trail and its historical significance. The study’s findings, expected by the end of 2023, will be shared with Congress, which could then designate it a national historic trail. That would allow for a management plan and marking historical sites as permitted by private landowners."

https://sparkpark.org/wordpress/ "The SPARK School Park Program works with schools and neighborhoods to develop community parks on public school grounds. Since 1983, SPARK has built over 200+ community parks throughout the Houston/Harris County area. Currently, there are 150+ active SPARK Parks. Each park is unique, with its design based on ideas and needs of the school and surrounding neighborhoods. While all of the parks are different, a typical park consists of modular playground equipment, a walking trail, benches, picnic tables, trees, an outdoor classroom, and a public art component. SPARK Parks are available for public use after the school day (including after-school programs) has ended and on weekends and holidays." School/Park Locations: https://sparkpark.org/wordpress/schools/#locations https://communityimpact.com/houston/heights-river-oaks-montrose/education/2023/09/21/spark-parks-in-woodland-heights-neartown-among-those-being-upgraded-in-10m-campaign/ "As part of the $10 million campaign, Spark officials will build 20 new school parks in four years at several school districts across the Greater Houston area. In addition to that, the campaign also involves improving—or "resparking"—20 existing Spark parks. Sixteen schools were initially identified, including eight schools that will get new Spark parks and eight schools that will have existing parks improved."

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2023/08/24/mitsubishi-logisnext-americas-new-facility.html?cx_testId=40&cx_testVariant=cx_27&cx_artPos=1#cxrecs_s "A groundbreaking ceremony was held Aug. 23 for the facility, which is being built on Logisnext's Houston headquarters campus, at 2121 W. Sam Houston Parkway N. Construction is expected to be complete in the first quarter of 2024. The facility will support manufacturing of key electric warehouse products across the Jungheinrich, Cat lift trucks, Mitsubishi forklift trucks and UniCarriers Forklift product lines. It will have a total floor area of 73,000 square feet and will serve as a dedicated fabrication space for in-house welding and painting of masts and frames, Logisnext said."

https://www.unicefusa.org/what-unicef-does/respect-children/child-friendly-cities https://communityimpact.com/houston/heights-river-oaks-montrose/government/2023/08/10/houston-officially-named-nations-first-child-friendly-city/ "The Child Friendly Cities Initiative, an initiative from the United Nations Children’s Fund, aims to establish safer, more inclusive communities for children, according to the organization’s website. To gain recognition as a Child Friendly City, communities must develop action plans that promote the best interests of children."

Hello everyone! I was wondering if anyone has ANY information about the old Victory Motel that used to be on McCarty St. (It's now Centro America Truck Sales). There's an old sign that's still standing and some of the neon tubes are still hanging in there. Thanks in advance! Drew

Saw a profile of this idea in Texas Monthly. The person heading this is working on commissioning a study for development to be funded through a kickstarter page. They have surpassed their goal of $71k and are now at almost $82k. https://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/texasland-theme-park-houston/ “I realized that Texas broadly, and Houston specifically, has all the metrics that my team look[ed] for: a massive and burgeoning population, a business-friendly environment, and, from the content side of things, a unique identity.” Houston hasn’t had a theme park since Astroworld closed in 2005, a decision McGee reminded me was made because the park sat on Six Flags’ most valuable land, which the company chose to sell, not because Astroworld wasn’t profitable. Here's a broad overview of what they want to do from their kickstarter.

The recent actions from the Texas government has made it increasingly clear that the state has it out for Harris County. Not only with the suspicious state takeoever of HISD (despite an overall decent "B" grade, with plenty of worse off elsehwere in the state), but also the recent laws that have been coming out of state legislature: SB1993 grants the Secretary of State (SoS) the authority to rerun elections "under certain circumstances" for counties with at least 2.7 million people. This bill passed Senate, and is currently in House limbo. Unfortunately, two other bills have made it past House, with only the Governor's pen awaiting... SB1750 abolishes the election administrator position for "counties with 3.5 million or more," returning duties to elected county clerk and tax asscessor. Both positions are currently (D) in Houston, so not a big deal (overreach aside), right .... https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/texas-bill-abolishing-harris-county-election-position-heads-to-governor/ Not so fast! Here's the particularly egregious doozy: SB1933, which grants the SoS the power to seize election authority (administration, voter registration) from local officials, and even suspend and replace them, with nothing more than "good causes to believe in 'problems'". The dooziest part? The bill had a last minute amendment right on the spot in House just to increase the population threshhold way up 4 million... https://twitter.com/DemocracyDocket/status/1661106078518476810 So, why such specific threshholds, hmm? Want to take a guess which is the ONLY county in Texas to fulfill said population thresholds (at least, at time of bill creations)? Moreover, are the purported "election problems" in question not possible STATEWIDE, regardless of population? Oh, and the Secratery of State is actually one of the few Texas positions that is non-elected (instead, appointed by governor) ... and there is NO BURDEN OF PROOF regarding the so-called "causes to believe" in question: clearly not a conflict of interest, right? 🙄 No matter how it is sliced, this is straight up targeting baked into legislature. Way worse than the uproar concerning the "Tennessee Three". The "F-word" not only came out of hiding, it is blatant and blaring its foghorns loud and clear... Note: this thread has political relations, but I posted it here since this forum was more active/livelier, as well as the fact that the particular forum in question (Local, State, Federal politics offtopic) was missing the option to "create a thread."

https://baytownsun.com/local/bayland-island-hyatt-regency-set-to-open-this-week/article_49eb1868-f380-11ed-b5cd-cf24a0ed4dd0.html "Hyatt Regency Baytown-Houston is set to officially open its doors on Thursday and reservations are now bookable online at Hyatt.com. A ribbon-cutting ceremony is set for 10 a.m. Thursday at the hotel site on Bayland Island. The hotel will serve as Baytown’s only full-service waterfront hotel. It will have 208 guestrooms and over 18,000 square feet of meeting and event space."

I know there's been an increase in interest in what's been dubbed "lost media" in recent years - i.e.: content or materials tied to productions that either are exceptionally rare or otherwise hard to find through conventional means, for whatever reason. While I think the term has been watered down somewhat, it is still kind of cool to either see something that hasn't been seen in a long time or otherwise offers insight into some aspect of the medium. I thought it would be an interesting question to pose if anyone had any requests for rare or random things they've seen on tv locally over the years. I've gotten them over the years on my YouTube channels and it's been kind of nice to actually find or fulfill some of them when/if I can. A personal request is something I may or may not have - I just don't know any more. I'd seen the tape ages ago and now I simply can't find it. Rick's Furniture: The RIck's Furniture "Show" & Commercials - 2000-2002 Basically an infomercial for the old RIck's Furniture locations (4114 N. Freeway / 13705 E. Freeway / 5025 Jensen Dr.) that began right around the year 2000. It showed up pretty frequently at around 5 AM on Channel 39 for a while. Later that year, it picked up a near-permanent berth on Channel 55 at 4 AM - in between a rerun of Have Gun, Will Travel and First Business - so it was easy to record as it was on almost EVERY morning. It was hosted by local musician Bruce Middleton who, at various times, was either paired with a woman to talk about some of the special deals or a kid to show off the comfort of the furniture. It looked like the perfect 4 AM infomercial as well. It likely was spliced together from two halves as the first half was a bit more professionally done. The second half had some odd gaps and scenes that held a moment or two too long as well as a take where the host flubbed a line and immediately tried to pick it back up with zero editing. I seem to recall reading an article online around that time (when it was still airing) from a paper in Montgomery County or somewhere on the north side that profiled him and mentioned his work in the infomercial. He had a quote to the extent of "The music that I did for that was really special"... but from what I remember it was just a reworked version of Grover Washington Jr.'s Mister Magic and a few various clips of him playing the Rick's Furniture jingle (You'll find at Rick's Furniture / we've got prices you can live with) on the sax. The infomercial was STILL airing well into 2001. Only stopped in the late summer. Recall running into it a couple of weeks before 9/11 and then it was just pulled. Mr. Middleton was in their fantastic commercials that aired around that same time as well. I know I have a few of those. One had a version where he generally pitched the place and there was a spot where he would pause and respond to a respond to an off camera comment that said "Whoa, those are some crazy prices!" and he would say "Crazy prices yeah!". It was hastily edited in, though the version where there's only awkward silence (in place of the off camera comment) actually aired a number of times. Usually in the graveyard hours. Another one he sang and danced a bit in went something like... Whatchu gonna give me for that bedroom set? Whatchu gonna give me for that sofa set? Whatchu gonna give me for that dinette set? Hoooooh, yeah! The furniture maaannnn, is in the house! At the time, I thought it would be great to get online but we just didn't have the video sharing or streaming tech we do today. If I ever find it, it's all going up on my channel.

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2023/04/21/janis-burke-houston-international-sports-city.html?cx_testId=40&cx_testVariant=cx_27&cx_artPos=4#cxrecs_s "Houston has also been approached to host the Pan American Games, which is larger than the Olympics in terms of the number of athletes and venues, Burke said. The city would be working in unison with the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee to host the event, but it has not yet decided if it would be doing so. “Just to be asked if Houston is interested, it tells you where we are in light of how the world views us for putting on sporting events,” Burke said."

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2023/04/14/houston-coalitions-bid-doe-hydrogen-hub-funding.html "Two Houston consortiums confirmed they have submitted bids to the federal government for a piece of $8 billion in funding for regional clean hydrogen hubs. According to the Department of Energy, the money will fund six to 10 so-called H2Hubs intended to scale up the commercial production of clean hydrogen. The funding will come out of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The HyVelocity Hub bid was submitted by a consortium led by the nonprofit Center for Houston’s Future, the University of Texas at Austin and the nonprofit GTI Energy. The other group, which is led by Southern States Energy Board and includes the University of Houston among its academic partners, submitted the LIGH2T Hub bid."

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-sports-nation/general/article/astros-rockets-att-sportsnet-southwest-purchase-17838568.php "A decade after losing millions of dollars from the collapse of Comcast SportsNet Houston, the Astros and Rockets are negotiating to get back into the regional sports network business as owners of AT&T SportsNet Southwest. If negotiations proceed as planned, according to sources with knowledge of the talks, the teams will create a new business entity that will assume ownership of the network from Warner Bros. Discovery. While negotiations continue, Astros and Rockets games will still air on AT&T SportsNet Southwest, which has carried both teams since 2014."

I'd been curious about this chain of restaurants for a while but just hadn't created the thread. Does anyone know the background? I seem to recall other restaurants years ago with different names but the same logo and color scheme in their branding. Was wondering if they were owned by the same group or were named by franchisees or something else.

Yes, don’t you just LOVE Dallas’s two Mandarin Orientals, the Four Seasons, the St.Regis, the hotel at Highland Park Village . . . Oh, and that new hotel in the former Morning News building . . . 😉. (For the curious, all of the hotels I listed have been planned in central Dallas in recent years. None of them have started construction. And I’m sure I’ve missed some.)

Hi all, I am in the process of buying a home, and during the survey the title company informed me that my house, which is built on the property line, is built onto a five-foot easement that was given to Reliant. There is another five-foot easement adjacent to my house where the power pole and lines are. Basically my question is what is the risk to me? What could potentially happen? This is what is in the easement document: "The Easement herein granted is described as follows: A right of way for electric power distribution and connection to the townhomes constructed to include installation of service poles and overhead wiring and future maintenance and repair of said facilities."

I wanted to touch on a topic that has been weighing heavy on my mind recently, and I'd like to hear peoples thoughts. It's ironic that I discovered both these posts today. First, I read a somewhat encouraging article from Houston Public Media about a 5% decline in the homeless population from 2018 to 2019. You can read more in the article here: https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/city-of-houston/2019/05/15/333384/homelessness-down-5-in-houston/ . Obviously the stat on mental health spending was a little depressing, but to hear that Harris, Fort Bend, and Montgomery counties experienced a 54% decline in homelessness since 2011 was surprisingly positive news. But shortly after that I ventured over to the Houston Reddit to find a post entitled "Walked down Main St. from McGowen to Congress yesterday afternoon", which can be read here: Simply put, the post did not give me the warm fuzzies, especially since the area in question stretches all the way down Main Street. Sadly, I have seen the sights described in this thread, maybe not so much the smells, but definitely the sights. I've experienced the yelling, the drunkenness, and the tents/garbage lined up under the freeways. Downtown and Midtown are experiencing decent growth and development right now, yet the presence of the homeless continues to linger and in some cases grow. Certainly new development is helping clean some of these areas, but it seems as though these people simply relocate to other areas close by. For example, when I first moved to Houston in 2017, the entrance to 59 South from Richmond looked like any normal feeder. But for the past 6 months it has become overrun with garbage and filth, and this is right across from the Post 510 apartment complex. You can check the Yelp reviews for the place and see the problem is creating negative reviews from the tenants. This isn't the only complex experiencing the issue in the area, and I feel as though it will continue to keep people away from potentially relocating to Midtown and Downtown. But again, I want you guys to tell me your thoughts on the matter. What is the best course of action the city can take to curve this issue? Does anyone living in Midtown/Downtown echo these sentiments and have their own experiences to share? How will this impact the growth of Houston going forward?

https://product.costar.com/home/news/shared/1931708221?utm_source=costar&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=costar-market-newsletter&utm_content=p1 Thanks to Hines, we get them before the rest of Texas. But only 5 stories due to building codes.

So I am trying to find new spots in the Houston area to get great footage. I am tired of flying around the house. I have 2 recommendations. What are your favorites?? 1) Kickerillo-Mischer Preserve https://goo.gl/maps/PRHDi37czvT2 Kickerillo-Mischer Preserve 20215 Chasewood Park Dr, Houston, TX 77070 2) Bear Branch Reservoir https://goo.gl/maps/N64GDYPHmaG2 Dropped Pin

Hey everyone, hope you've all had a good Thanksgiving and year. Thought I'd share this video I put together recently of different shots around town taken by drone. I figured if any community would enjoy them it would be HAIF. Let me know what areas you'd like to see in the future as I plan on making this into an ongoing series! Bryan