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On 4/14/2018 at 0:54 PM, dbigtex56 said:

 

Full disclosure: I cribbed the following from the comments section of that other website:

From a 2006 Cite article by architect Barry Moore:
http://offcite.org/from-the-cite-archives-when-good-buildings-go-bad-by-barry-moore/
.
“it was the threat of race riots. In the tumultuous aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr.”s assassination in l968, local Black Panther activist Lee Otis Johnson organized an 8,000-person strong memorial march, which unsettled much of the business community. Sears, watching from a Chicago torn apart the same summer, reacted by bricking up almost all the Houston store’s show windows and cladding the elegant upper stones with beige metal. And so Fort Sears has remained ever since, hiding from an evolving international city and culture, and wondering where all the shoppers went.”

 

Looks like this story is urban legend

 

https://www.chron.com/entertainment/article/Lisa-Gray-Sears-eyesore-hides-an-Art-Deco-delight-1763773.php

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5 hours ago, thatguysly said:

I was just signing in to post the same link after seeing a post on Facebook from Houston Preservation. If Lisa Gray says that news of the update appeared in the Chronicle in 1962, I tend to believe her.
I wonder what Barry Moore's source(s) were. Strange how these urban legends get started.

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On 4/13/2018 at 2:08 PM, H-Town Man said:

This will also help drive demand for Midtown's apartments and breathe energy into the MidMain-area retail. And the image of Midtown seen by passersby on 59 should be enhanced considerably.

 

This is why I am sad to lose the fiesta. Wish they can create room for it in a future building before they demolish the current fiesta building. Kinda like a transition to a new store. Fiesta is quite different from whole foods and appreciate the option

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2 hours ago, HoustonIsHome said:

This is why I am sad to lose the fiesta. Wish they can create room for it in a future building before they demolish the current fiesta building. Kinda like a transition to a new store. Fiesta is quite different from whole foods and appreciate the option

 

Do we know that we are losing Fiesta?

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1 minute ago, Sanjorade said:

 

I believe their lease was bought out by Rice. 

 

From the Rice Thresher:

 

" Rice’s property also includes the Fiesta Mart store located at 4200 San Jacinto St., but the store is not expected to be affected by this sale during the two-year remainder of its lease, according to the statement. "

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14 hours ago, dbigtex56 said:

I was just signing in to post the same link after seeing a post on Facebook from Houston Preservation. If Lisa Gray says that news of the update appeared in the Chronicle in 1962, I tend to believe her.

 

More to the point, her article also says the windows were not bricked up until the 1980s.

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While it's a shame to potentially lose the Fiesta, we are gaining a Whole Foods like 10-12 blocks away and the museum district HEB about 1.5 miles to the south. 

 

While density doesn't have enough demand at the moment, it'll likely be coming soon as midtown densifies more and it having a prime spot just one block from a light rail stop. 

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On 4/16/2018 at 4:25 PM, H-Town Man said:

 

Changing the grade of the train would be massively expensive, require a long approach on both sides, and involve numerous problems, including the presence of the freeway for starters. And I can't imagine they would raise it just for this building, when it runs at grade past several million square feet of office space downtown. I have to think he is referring to roads, but why would you change the grade of any of those streets? Grade separations are blighty and anti-urban. Street grids are usually efficient enough for just about anything, although it does get a little wonky in that area with the train and the freeway.

Edwin is talking about a Metro rail grade change, or at least that's the point of exploration.  The Wheeler/Main intersection is already a clusterfk, add in the BRT running Richmond/Wheeler and it will be untenable.  The question is, are we just kicking the can down the road by not doing a grade separation now, where we'll have to perform some expensive engineering feat tomorrow instead of today.  The Sears building is merely the tip of the development being considered; when complete the impact will be exponential for the immediate area as well as the region.  

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6 minutes ago, Diaspora said:

Edwin is talking about a Metro rail grade change, or at least that's the point of exploration.  The Wheeler/Main intersection is already a clusterfk, add in the BRT running Richmond/Wheeler and it will be untenable.  The question is, are we just kicking the can down the road by not doing a grade separation now, where we'll have to perform some expensive engineering feat tomorrow instead of today.  The Sears building is merely the tip of the development being considered; when complete the impact will be exponential for the immediate area as well as the region.  

 

Very interesting. If you put the train below grade, then the block south of Sears is opened up as prime development land. Might not cost too much as long as there isn't an underground station. Maybe Wheeler Station could migrate north to between Eagle and Cleburne, but then you need to keep a transfer point at Main and Wheeler for the Universities line. If you put the train above grade, you improve traffic but stigmatize everything in its shadow.

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You could make the station still be at Wheeler but be a sunken plaza style - but you would still have major construction to bring the tracks below grade, and they would have to be at grade again before crossing the newly trenched freeway (unless they want to trench the freeway even more)

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Just because it will flood in extreme weather doesn't mean it's a bad idea.  All three metro rail lines have at least one place that is affected by flooding to one degree or another, so another location won't be the tipping point that closes the system.  59 and 288 are already trenched in places, so trenching them in midtown won't change their usability in a storm.  As long as houses and businesses are above the flood plain, as well as the surface streets being relatively passable, it doesn't matter as much how the underpasses will flood...as long as they're designed for it.

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Below grade infrastructure makes lots of sense in Houston.  That way the floodwaters are kept on the roads, when nobody should be driving, and away from the buildings, and then within hours the water is pumped out and everything is passable again with no damage.

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39 minutes ago, rechlin said:

Below grade infrastructure makes lots of sense in Houston.  That way the floodwaters are kept on the roads, when nobody should be driving, and away from the buildings, and then within hours the water is pumped out and everything is passable again with no damage.

 That's what I've never gotten about Houstonians. I'd rather the streets flood, than my home flood. 

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If the Red Line rail went below grade for crossing under Wheeler/Main, I don't think there's enough room for it to get back up to grade level to go over IH-69, unless the station is partially trenched at an incline also; I'd guess they'd need about 500 feet to rise up from below grade, which is approximately the distance from Richmond/Wheeler to IH-69.  And they aren't going to trench IH-69 deep enough to have the rail cross over it below grade (clearance below at-grade tracks for the Red Line will only be 16'5" per the current plan).

 

I suppose the rail could go above grade, but the extra noise from that might not make the tenants of the Sears building happy.

 

Another possibility would be to make Richmond/Wheeler, including the University Line, below grade under Main, to minimize interference.  The Wheeler University Line station could then be below-grade, with a tunnel for pedestrians to cross over to the Wheeler Red Line station.  And if they succeed in making Main pedestrian/bicycle-only in Midtown as some have proposed, then there would be no real concern about the Red Line maintaining an at-grade crossing over Main.  For northbound Main traffic, the left turn lane would continue to bypass the tracks, and the right turn lane could be trenched below grade.

 

This would all be very expensive, of course, but it would minimize interference between the Red Line and the University Line, plus it would allow Richmond/Wheeler traffic to avoid crossing the Red Line, which always holds up traffic.

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This is from a multi-voiced conversation among stakeholders, planners, and decision-makers focused on the many issues and opportunities that need resolving in that area as TxDOT will begin its trench-work there(confusedly labeled stage 3, I believe), as Metro looks to the lines and land it has to work with, as Rice starts to frame what it hopes to accomplish, and as the neighborhood management groups seek to responsibly revitalize.

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I believe the plan is to first do the part of Segment 3 that is west of SH-288, then they will do Segment 1, then Segment 2, and finally the rest of Segment 3.

 

This is very good for this innovation district because it means there will be no possibility of a nearby homeless encampment on Wheeler under IH-69 pretty much from day 1 (assuming freeway construction starts within 2 years as planned), instead of having to wait a decade for everything else to be finished first.

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On ‎4‎/‎18‎/‎2018 at 0:20 PM, cspwal said:

 

BRT?  Is the university line back on as a BRT?

 

On ‎4‎/‎18‎/‎2018 at 0:27 PM, Diaspora said:

Yes, that's the current conversation; that's the least ambitious (but probably most realistic) scenario for e/w public transit.

Have our friends in Afton Oaks weighed in on this option?

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1 hour ago, Diaspora said:

This is from a multi-voiced conversation among stakeholders, planners, and decision-makers focused on the many issues and opportunities that need resolving in that area as TxDOT will begin its trench-work there(confusedly labeled stage 3, I believe), as Metro looks to the lines and land it has to work with, as Rice starts to frame what it hopes to accomplish, and as the neighborhood management groups seek to responsibly revitalize.

 

It's part of Segment 3.  The segments are simply numbered from north to south.  Not that confusing.  ;-)

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