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The Allen: Mixed-Use Development At Allen Parkway & Gillette St.


jmontrose

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1 hour ago, cloud713 said:

 

 

Honestly, I never even knew the condo/hotel tower was supposed to “twist”.. it just looked like they flipped a parallelogram over for each stack, to mirror the one below it and stagger the angle of the balconies/views.

 

When can Houston start expecting to get some projects like that epic Gang tower? ...50 years? Houston is so far behind in architecture/design, it’s sad, especially after being at the top in the 70s.

Once tenants are willing to pay the rents that are necessary to build them. THE RO is getting redesigned right now because the building was overdesigned and they would need rents 30% over market to make the construction numbers work. Companies/people aren't willing to pay that just to be in a pretty building unfortunately. 

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1 hour ago, SMU1213 said:

Once tenants are willing to pay the rents that are necessary to build them. THE RO is getting redesigned right now because the building was overdesigned and they would need rents 30% over market to make the construction numbers work. Companies/people aren't willing to pay that just to be in a pretty building unfortunately. 

 

Thats correct. From my own knowledge base you only get the really high-end / super-fine / "epic" projects when they either have an iconic name attached to the project that warrants a particular pricetag / design (example being Frank Gehry who puts titanium on everything and one that hires him knows they have to put that in there initial pricing), real estate starts to crunch up a bit in terms of availability or there is a large stock of "generic" building types that warrants approaching the high end to stand out, and finally when you have a large speculative market with LOTS of $$$$. The only reason we have the buildings we have from the 70's was due to the latter option. Oil Companies with lots and lots of money to drive a high-end speculative market. Do we really want that again folks? That kinda crashed hard the last time. We will get there, but it won't get there quick. We want the first two options to get the fancy stuff, but it takes some leg work to get there first. We are heading in that direction. We have really gotten a glorious amount of different/interesting/necessary projects for Houston. Its not a matter of if anymore, but a matter of when.

Edited by Luminare
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9 hours ago, Luminare said:

 

Thats correct. From my own knowledge base you only get the really high-end / super-fine / "epic" projects when they either have an iconic name attached to the project that warrants a particular pricetag / design (example being Frank Gehry who puts titanium on everything and one that hires him knows they have to put that in there initial pricing), real estate starts to crunch up a bit in terms of availability or there is a large stock of "generic" building types that warrants approaching the high end to stand out, and finally when you have a large speculative market with LOTS of $$$$. The only reason we have the buildings we have from the 70's was due to the latter option. Oil Companies with lots and lots of money to drive a high-end speculative market. Do we really want that again folks? That kinda crashed hard the last time. We will get there, but it won't get there quick. We want the first two options to get the fancy stuff, but it takes some leg work to get there first. We are heading in that direction. We have really gotten a glorious amount of different/interesting/necessary projects for Houston. Its not a matter of if anymore, but a matter of when.

 

Thats a good point about “the only reason we have the buildings we have from the ‘70s”..

Speaking of Gehry.. I just got back from DC, and I’m still not sure what to think of his Eisenhower Memorial design.

 

Hopefully the rescheduled meeting for this project won’t be pushed back again.

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1 hour ago, Lectro said:

Isn’t the new rendering here? http://dcpartnersusa.com/properties/the-allen/

The middle section isn’t at an angle anymore and the roof looks simpler.

 

Ah, now I see it...if this is the redesign it isn't very drastic at all. But I do see what looks like a pedestrian bridge and I thought that was scrapped.

Allen.jpg

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2 hours ago, CaptainJilliams said:

 

Ah, now I see it...if this is the redesign it isn't very drastic at all. But I do see what looks like a pedestrian bridge and I thought that was scrapped.

Allen.jpg

Here's the one from 2017. I don't see that much difference.

 

0a13d62a-6bc7-47a7-8e52-2068006a58ba-ori

 

Closer:

 

95cq6Gk.jpg

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2 hours ago, CaptainJilliams said:

 

Ah, now I see it...if this is the redesign it isn't very drastic at all. But I do see what looks like a pedestrian bridge and I thought that was scrapped.

Allen.jpg

 

I still think that's the old rendering. If you do the 3D interactive view, you get this view instead (Sorry, I can't remove the overlays).

 

 

theallen.jpg

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Just now, Triton said:

 

I still think that's the old rendering. If you do the 3D interactive view, you get this view instead (Sorry, I can't remove the overlays).

 

 

theallen.jpg

 

Darn, thanks for pointing that out. Here's hoping they make minimal changes to what we've already seen.

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2 minutes ago, Triton said:

 

I still think that's the old rendering. If you do the 3D interactive view, you get this view instead (Sorry, I can't remove the overlays).

 

 

theallen.jpg

 

The blank walls on the parking garage podiums look like Randall Davis's contributions to the project.

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No doubt the debbie downers are going to have a field day tearing into this 'value engineered' design and everything about the current state of Houston architecture. But no matter, it's still a nice building, great height for the area and we could have done a lot worse. Jenga style buildings aren't everything.

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Doesn't really look value engineered at all, and overall it looks sleeker. Honestly I like it better than the previous rendering. I'm glad this is being built in the first place, and would of been content with the big tower by itself. The development as a whole is gonna be an anchor for this area, and will greatly expand the ever growing skyline. 

 

Looking at the jenga feature of the original render, it really wasn't that noticeable. Hard to tell that there was a jenga feature half the time anyway. Overall, I think the new render is a better choice. 

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I count approx 40 floors in the jenga-style design and 33 floors in the sales office advertising board. In both cases I counted one floor for the penthouse, which appears to be as high as 3 regular floors in the jenga design and two regular floors in the sales office design.

 

So assuming the sales office depiction is correct, the height appears to be downsized. Even considering the penthouse and several floors with high ceilings, the sales office design appears to have a height around 400 feet.

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This design looks a lot better. The current term my boss likes to use a lot is "too architecty" which I've come to roughly translate as "this building or design is trying to hard". I would say the previous design was way too "architecty". This seems better fleshed out and knows what it is, and what it wants to be. I also like how it seems to grow bigger as its getting taller instead of the multiple twists and shifts in the previous design which seemed less confident and insecure.

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This building will be about half way up when Texas Tower and Preston Tower downtown are topping out. It’ll be pretty slick to see that many cranes in the downtown area at one time!

Maybe my math is fuzzy, but I’m only counting 33 floors. Where are you guys seeing the 40 story figure at?

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7 minutes ago, wxman said:

This building will be about half way up when Texas Tower and Preston Tower downtown are topping out. It’ll be pretty slick to see that many cranes in the downtown area at one time!

Maybe my math is fuzzy, but I’m only counting 33 floors. Where are you guys seeing the 40 story figure at?

Thats what I counted too. But still love it.

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12 hours ago, wxman said:

This building will be about half way up when Texas Tower and Preston Tower downtown are topping out. It’ll be pretty slick to see that many cranes in the downtown area at one time!

Maybe my math is fuzzy, but I’m only counting 33 floors. Where are you guys seeing the 40 story figure at?

 

The only 40 I see mentioned was a count of the floors in the prior "jenga-style" design.

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i count 33 as well but the top floor of the podium and the penthouse floors look to be double height so this should have the scale of a 35-story tower, give or take. although i still preferred the original jenga-style design, this turned out better than what i was expecting. fences are up so hopefully they break ground soon.

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  • The title was changed to The Allen: Mixed-Use Development At Allen Parkway & Gillette St.

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