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Downtown Skyline Update


DaTrain

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The lights are largely off at 4 am. Late workers and cleaning crews will keep them on until midnite or so, but once people are gone, the buildings go dark. I suppose those who have never had to keep a budget may complain that they want lights for their amusement, but building owners trying to keep tenants in the building must deal with real life issues, such as common area fees. Since forum posters do not pay the bills, it is easy to see why their pleas fall on deaf ears.

Now, an owner with an empty building might look at it differently. Building owners in Miami, Atlanta and Dallas, where vacancy rates are far higher, may add some lights in an effort to lure a new tenant. It may work for some. But, having rented a few offices in my day, I can safely say that not once have I ever made a choice on a building's lighting scheme. In fact, none of my offices were ever lit at night.

I honestly think the building owners can afford to keep ample lighting on, as evidenced by the pre-Ike lighting schemes. I think Hurricane Ike destroyed some lighting, and the issue is just that the owners don't want to spend the time to fix it. I just would like the city to look nice, is that such a bad thing to ask? And I guess these "real life issues" occur only in Houston? Please post a picture of a major city that has no building lighting, such as our own? Because I can't seem to find such a picture, I'm sure there's one though.

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Can you substantiate that hypothesis at all? It seems far-fetched.

Wells Fargo Bank Plaza used to have a greenish light surrounding the top, but after Hurricane Ike, the greenish light was only on a small section of the top. I'm not sure if that small section is still on today however, but it was obvious something happenend to it. Compare these two pics:

916685694_1bacfd69c6.jpg

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The first picture was taken before Ike, the second after. In the second one, you can see a small strip of the greenish lighting above the Wells Fargo Bank Plaza still illuminated, of course later they turned it off.

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I posted several in another post complaining about lighting. Perhaps you can search for it. It was quite illuminating. While you are searching, look for articles about the lending crisis for commercial buildings. You'll find that buildings owners don't have as much cash as you think. 'Pre-Ike' is also known as 'pre-recession' in financial circles.

I did a search on downtown lighting, and I'm not about to go through the hundreds of pages of threads to find a few of your pictures. And sorry, I just can't take your word for it, either. :) The darkest downtown I've seen in any other big city at this time is San Diego, but they have company lighting on almost all of their buildings, to be honest I don't think downtown's lack of lighting is due to the recession, it' just that I think that the owners don't give a shit about lighting. Sure downtown lighting doesn't matter, blah, blah, blah but I'm sure you'll find that many people think downtown Houston is boring at night, and why not light it up to make it less boring?

The top 5 cities in the US's downtown lighting:

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2957757326_3042a12456.jpg

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Now you would think that since Houston has supposedly fared better than others during the reccesion, they wouldn't be so broke as to not afford lighting. So I just can't see how that is the case. I think it is simply the "I don't care how my building looks, I just want to make as much money possible" attitude, which is fine, but is doesn't make the city any better IMO.

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i actually do recall a chron article about hurricane damage taking out several buildings exterior lights.... could have been Ike.

That being said... Ike may have taken some out, but it seems more likely the recession is keeping them out.

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300' Oil derrick with 50' Jeff Bagwell at the top and the retired shuttle Discovery mounted on to the side..... all bronzed....

Yes.

Before I even got to this post I was planning to search for this awesome rendering of yours. I'll just link to the post rather than confuse innocent googlers searching for Discovery Tower info.

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But really, I do care about tacky or not, that's why I said that's a valid argument. I'm definitely not for flashy neon lights, but the simple Continental Airlines blue light at the top was good and it'd be nice to see that simple style lighting across more buildings.

But let's face it, in Houston money talks and that's why we don't see an extravagent night skyline... I wouldn't mind if that changed though.

I am not really a fan of colored lights. If anything was to be done, I'd only be a fan of limited white lights, which I think could look more classy, which is one way to describe Houston's skyline.

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Many people on here seem to think that when I brought up the idea that downtown Houston could use more lighting, I meant Vegas-style lighting. Not at all, Houston should have more classy lighting than Vegas. A perfect example would be the new Methodist building, they just completed the exterior lighting and it looks great. No neon, but a more classy type of lighting, which enhances the building's architecture.

There is such as thing as tasteful exterior lighting, would Williams Tower be as iconic without the rotating beacon at night? Houston has some great examples of architecture, why keep them hidden at night?

I'm glad Discovery Tower has the top/windmill structure lit up at night, it makes the building stand out. I'm beginning to think that some posters are embarrassed by our architecture, and do not want anyone to see our beautiful buildings at night. I've never seen anyone so adamantly opposed to lighting, it can be beautiful if done right.

Edited by mfastx
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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 years later...

Here's a really rough update adding the Hines building and just for fun I threw in a filler building basically in the location of the Stream/Linbeck tower.  If Lockmat would like to provide me with a teaser look again I could draw something up a little closer but I also don't want to get him in trouble.  

 

http://s7.photobucket.com/user/brijonmang/media/DtownSkyline_zpsfc4a0b55.jpg.html'>DtownSkyline_zpsfc4a0b55.jpg

 

Edited to include 5 Allen Center as per Urbannizer's post.  I didn't include it because it seems pretty unlikely to happen at this point (my opinion) But it could at least be included in this fantasy portrayal anyway.

 

Edited by brijonmang
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I like the updated skyline picture with Five Allen Center covering Three Allen Center. The blue with all the other new glass buildings gives the skyline a more modern feel. Linbeck's building looks goofy over there all by itself though.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Here's a really rough update adding the Hines building and just for fun I threw in a filler building basically in the location of the Stream/Linbeck tower.  If Lockmat would like to provide me with a teaser look again I could draw something up a little closer but I also don't want to get him in trouble.  

 

DtownSkyline_zpsfc4a0b55.jpg

 

Edited to include 5 Allen Center as per Urbannizer's post.  I didn't include it because it seems pretty unlikely to happen at this point (my opinion) But it could at least be included in this fantasy portrayal anyway.

 

great job! thanks for making this.. i suck at photoshop and was curious how the new towers would effect the skyline. 

any chance you could make the Hines tower taller to reflect the new supposed official height? also IMO the new Chevron tower may be a little short since according to the renders its about equivalent in height to a 58 story building if you count each floor and consider the double high floors as 2 stories.

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Here is a very crude attempt at updating this with what we have for the International tower.

 

DtownSkyline_zps33e272e2.jpg

 

I love how awful the original quality of this picture is before the photoshopped additions. As grainy as all the existing buildings are, the whole thing looks like it is photoshopped together haha

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I love how awful the original quality of this picture is before the photoshopped additions. As grainy as all the existing buildings are, the whole thing looks like it is photoshopped together haha

 

If I use another picture and start over will you forgive me??

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Haha, the idea was just to see how the skyline would look with the proposed buildings. You did great.

 

Thanks, I was thinking it might be worth doing something from the north where you could basically see all of these minus the Chevron building.

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