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Embassy Suites By Hilton Houston Downtown At 1515 Dallas St.


ricco67

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LOL And the mad search for negative news continues apace. All is as usual at HAIF. The rooftop pool will most likely be on the roof of a shorter portion of the building. Much like 2727 Kirby, Mosaic, and others have rooftop pools...

That sounds more plausible. Incidentally, I can't imagine that all of their parking would be underground. It would be extraordinarily expensive to do that. So I'll bet that they'll build a podium of structured parking with an amenity deck on top of that and the highrise structure beside it on the podium.

In other words, it'll probably be configured similarly to OPP.

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I was thinking that the meeting space might be offset from the main building and that the pool might be atop that.

Looking back to page one, there appears to be a shorter structure extending out the rear. Who knows what this will end up looking like, but I hope it's not just another flat top.

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I think they're boring and lack character.

But imitative faux-historical styles are exciting and have character?

Does the same hold true for women? The more makeup they have on, the more character they have? What of a female clown in full costume? Or a hooker in whory regalia? Exciting? Surely. Genuine? Nope.

I like women and buildings the same way. Well-groomed, no makeup.

Edited by TheNiche
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But imitative faux-historical styles are exciting and have character?

Does the same hold true for women? The more makeup they have on, the more character they have? What of a female clown in full costume? Or a hooker in whory regalia? Exciting? Surely. Genuine? Nope.

I like women and buildings the same way. Well-groomed, no makeup.

:lol: I'm just saying that I prefer Transco, Pennzoil, BOA or even OPP towers to a flat top. I'm not sure about the women part.

Musicman - Frank Lloyd Wright is always a huge exception.

On an engineering note: Wouldn't it be wiser to put a pool atop a secondary structure as opposed to over ever how many hotel rooms? Leaks can and do happen.

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:lol: I'm just saying that I prefer Transco, Pennzoil, BOA or even OPP towers to a flat top. I'm not sure about the women part.

Pennzoil's upper floors are very inefficient as a result of the shape of its roof. The building's functionality is compromised by its style. Therefore it is a failure.

BOA is a fraud.

Transco's brilliant concept precludes consideration of its understated crown as a design flaw.

On an engineering note: Wouldn't it be wiser to put a pool atop a secondary structure as opposed to over ever how many hotel rooms? Leaks can and do happen.

Leaks are very easily containable, especially considering that highrises typically have a floor of mechanical equipment above the top floor of habitable space.

But if you look at how amenity decks are typically laid out (at OPP or Mosaic, for instance), the pool is usually on top of the parking structure as you describe, and not on top of the habitable structure.

Edited by TheNiche
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I think a better way to put it would be: In a city where most of the buildings downtown have flat roofs (with a few exceptions), it would be nice to see a few more buildings with non-flat roofs. Musicman has stated the obvious - a flat roof doesn't make a building inherently bad. I think some people on here would like to see more variety though.

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Since they're not breaking ground until March, I will hope for and expect more updates to the design. I'm just glad the financing was able to slip through the current economic lock. It is much needed for downtown to have more hotel space.

About the roof...

I agree totally. Houston's skyline is one of the tallest in the western hemisphere, but because five or six of the buildings are of similar height, and the all have flat roofs, it diminishes the height effect of the overall skyline (the Houston Center area is particularly horrible in this regard). So yeah, I'd love to see more variety, BUT I'd much rather have a 19 story building with a boring roof than the current flat surface parking lot... so I ain't gonna raise a stink. Get the thing financed, get it BUILT, and we can focus on strengthening the overall area with retail and stuff. That's way more important.

Edited by totheskies
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Agreed, anything's better than a surface lot.

Does anyone have a superimposed skyline picture of the Bank of the Southwest building that was proposed in the 80's. It was to be built on the surface lot across from One Shell. That building was one awesome design.

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I'm guessing the Embassy Suites people are far more interested in the marketability of a rooftop swimming pool than they are concerned with thier contribution to the skyline.

I would love to see them open and provide some sort of pool membership for the general public. Access to a nice (outdoor) downtown hotel pool would be awesome. Not the pretentious Vegas-style pool thing like at the San Luis in Galveston, but just a nice outdoor pool with a bar.

Edited by crunchtastic
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you're fooling yourself if you think the developers are going to put a pool on the roof of a 19-story building. atop the parking garage/meeting facilities about 3-5 floors up is much more plausible.

I'm not fooling myself, I merely read the article. See post 98. They did not specify which floor it would top. Nor did I, for that matter.

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There should be a city wide poll to ask the public how many are tired :angry: of our numerous flat roof tops downtown.

I dont care what anyone says, even Austin has more modern appearing buildings/spires than us. We need the folks that designed the buildings for the scenes in the more recent Star Wars film to come here.

Cant wait for this project to be completed by the way! This morning the news stated it would be 19 floors maybe some floors have been chopped off. Ja!

Edited by Vertigo58
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There should be a city wide poll to ask the public how many are tired :angry: of our numerous flat roof tops downtown.

I dont care what anyone says, even Austin has more modern appearing buildings/spires than us.

How about a forum-wide poll asking how many are tired of the incessant whining about flat roofs, especially in threads regarding buildings we have no reason to believe will have flat roofs? ;-)

(And I don't care what anyone says, Houston's skyline is so much better than Austin's that to even write about them in the same sentence is silliness.)

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There should be a city wide poll to ask the public how many are tired :angry: of our numerous flat roof tops downtown.

I dont care what anyone says, even Austin has more modern appearing buildings/spires than us. We need the folks that designed the buildings for the scenes in the more recent Star Wars film to come here.

I'll grant you that Austin's Frost Bank Building has a unique and interesting spire (although the clock tower effect annoys the hell out of me). It took me some time to come to terms with that, but a trip to Atlanta earlier this year illustrated how much better Frost's spire is than just about any of the boring crap in Atlanta.

Austin got lucky. But I don't want to start asking for spires in Houston. If OPP is any indicator, we'd just get a lot of crappy imitative knockoff architecture. We should be exceptionally happy with the designs we've gotten from Hines and Trammell Crow IMO.

...be careful what you wish for.

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I'll grant you that Austin's Frost Bank Building has a unique and interesting spire (although the clock tower effect annoys the hell out of me). It took me some time to come to terms with that, but a trip to Atlanta earlier this year illustrated how much better Frost's spire is than just about any of the boring crap in Atlanta.

Austin got lucky. But I don't want to start asking for spires in Houston. If OPP is any indicator, we'd just get a lot of crappy imitative knockoff architecture. We should be exceptionally happy with the designs we've gotten from Hines and Trammell Crow IMO.

...be careful what you wish for.

A) I happen to like OPP's roof, and I don't view it as crappy and imitative... rather eclectic and inspirational.

B) All planing aside, Houston lucked out with a phenomenal skyline. Everyone is envious of Austin, but that's b/c they're finally growing up. I was in Dallas just this weekend, and even with the massive impact of Victory growing right beside it, there's just no comparison. Houston has the biggest, boldest skylines in the state of Texas... hands down.

C) I love this city. It's certainly far from perfect, but the variety and diversity of Houston... whether we're discussing its architecture, its people, or its food... is just world-class. No other Texas city can claim this. I like Dallas alright, but do you know how long you have to drive around that place to find a continuous collection of black people? Hispanics? It's just shameful the way they hide their ghettos from the world like that.

Edited by totheskies
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you're fooling yourself if you think the developers are going to put a pool on the roof of a 19-story building. atop the parking garage/meeting facilities about 3-5 floors up is much more plausible.

Plenty of hotels have rooftop pools above the building itself. A good example is the rooftop pool at the Omni hotel in DT Austin, which is on the 20th floor. The only downside (aside from requiring a flat roof) is that rooftop pools tend to be smaller and not as deep.

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Plenty of hotels have rooftop pools above the building itself. A good example is the rooftop pool at the Omni hotel in DT Austin, which is on the 20th floor. The only downside (aside from requiring a flat roof) is that rooftop pools tend to be smaller and not as deep.

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You don't have to go to Austin to find a rooftop pool above the building itself... There's one two block away from this site at the Hilton Americas. Another a few more blocks away at the Magnolia. Nevertheless, in the case of the Embassy Suites project, for which we have seen renderings showing a non-flat roof (at least in part) along with a lower "pedestal" it seems likely the rooftop pool will be on the roof of the lower pedestal structure.

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So this was completely coincidental, but I managed to get these quick snapshots while walking around DT at around 11:30 this morning.

I don't know who the reporter is but the man is Nick Massad who is the president of American Liberty Hospitality, the developer of the project. The rendering doesn't look to have been updated, so take that for whatever it's worth.

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So this was completely coincidental, but I managed to get these quick snapshots while walking around DT at around 11:30 this morning.

I don't know who the reporter is but the man is Nick Massad who is the president of American Liberty Hospitality, the developer of the project. The rendering doesn't look to have been updated, so take that for whatever it's worth.

Cool. I would honestly be surprised to see huge changes. But note, everyone, that there is actually some flat space on that non-flat roof... it is possible they could surprise with a pool on the top of the tall portion. (But my money is still on the lower structure's rooftop.)

Edited by Houston19514
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