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Office Tower In Downtown At 1111 Travis St.


burgower4

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Good lord that parking garage on the right is hideous.

Should be interesting to see what 1110 Main Partners LP does with the Macy's Garage/Americana Bldng site once work finishes on 1111 Travis. They own both blocks

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Downtown is filled with hedious garages. There is one on both sides of the tower at market square. Southern downtown has a lot.

There are some that are decently disguised, such as the Y, chase, the one that got demoed to build commerce tower want bad, but for the most part they are hedious

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ill play..

- for the sake of having our own little slice of NYC, 212 Milam.. the northwest corner of Market Square Park where the single story Chase bank is. it would be to Market Square what 432 Park Ave or Nordstrom Tower are to Central Park, but without blocking any of the sunlight.

- on a portion of the Bayou Place plot if/when they tear that down/redevelop it for the Theater District Master Plan.

- unlikely, as Houston likes to use full blocks for large skyscrapers, but something like a Nordstrom Tower on the Sakowitz site. it would make for an amazing anchor to the Retail District.

- the block between the Texaco Building, and HSPVA, between Capital and Rusk. google maps shows its some sort of Post Office and military entrance processing station. seems pretty underutilized for a downtown block.. especially one straddled by two light rail lines, right next door to the Central Station East/West stations. and i would imagine they could possibly get a tunnel connection by means of the Texaco building or another neighbor to the west..

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There is a huge chunk of the street missing next to this building, works that be related to the tunnels?

 

They are tearing the heck out of Dallas Street nearly down to Disco Green to get to something underground, I presumed utility work of some sort.

 

Macy's/Foley's had a tunnel connection to both the old Foley's garage across Travis and to 1000 Main, I presume that these will open back up once the building is open for business. The old tunnel entrances were retained during all of the foundation work.

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What that cube like building in front of 1111 travis?

 

Travis Place garage. It has 2 floors of office space on the top with a gym taking up part of one of them. It may have a big chunk of its space committed to Kinder Morgan, but I don't think they own it outright.

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^^^^^ An iconic tower would be awesome right there on that parking lot ^^^^^

Your wish almost came true ...decades ago. That parking lot pic was taken from was the Bank of the Southwest Tower site.

BSW-Houston-1982PRINT_large.jpg

Edited by tigereye
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I believe that rendering is misleading. The winning entry to the bank of the Southwest Tower building competition, which was designed

by Helmut Jahn was supposed to be 82 stories high, if I remember correctly, which would only be 7 stories taller than the Chase Tower. That does not include the antennae on top, but if you look at the rendering it looks a lot taller than seven stories. If anything the

70 story building just in front and to the right of the Helmut Jahn tower should almost look taller due to its location in front of the 82 story tower but it looks like it just barely reaches the second to the last setback. With that in mind the perspective is not right considering the height of the three buildings I discussed.

This is the project that got the ruling by the FAA about height restrictions due to the proximity to Hobby's landing

flight patterns.

By the way Kohn Pederson Fox had a very nice looking entry in the competition also.

Time Magazine did a cover story about the competition and featured many images of the different towers and the

story about the competition and compared it to the Chicago Tribune competition. It was an amazing bit of

publicity for all of the new skyscrapers that were being built in Houston at the time.

Edited by bobruss
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That does not include the antennae on top, but if This is the project that got the ruling by the FAA about height restrictions due to the proximity to Hobby's landing

flight patterns.

By the way Kohn Pederson Fox had a very nice looking entry in the competition also.

Source (for the FAA)?

It is the winning design, there's another rendering from the south side that is very cartoonish looking and not an accurate representation.

However, there are a few "realistic" renderings that show the tower and it looks quite tall. Wasn't the design set for 1,200ft? Based on this west side rendering it seems a bit taller but don't forget from that angle the Chase Tower also appears shorter than Wells Fargo.

Sorry for the high jacking.

I quite like some of the other designs Jahn had, very progressive, and could have passed for towers going up 20 years after the debuted.

Edited by Montrose1100
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^^^^^ An iconic tower would be awesome right there on that parking lot ^^^^^

 

I always thought this lot would be the best for a 90+ iconic tower. You would have a huge central tower with smaller ones "cascading" down  around it:

 

skyscraper_zps3jkjfpft.jpg

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Wish Gerald Hines would buy that land and give Houston the ultimate expression from the home town boy done good with Transco Tower 2.0 but bigger.

Hines would be my pick too. I hate seeing those old renderings, and thinking how amazing this could've looked. I think downtown does need a tower that resembles this though. Whether it's as tall or about the same height as Chase tower doesn't matter to me, just the overall style.

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Who owns the land now?

 

Hines would be my pick too. I hate seeing those old renderings, and thinking how amazing this could've looked. I think downtown does need a tower that resembles this though. Whether it's as tall or about the same height as Chase tower doesn't matter to me, just the overall style.

 

 

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Who owns the land now?

 

Probably Rice University.  Don't they own everything inside the Loop?  ;-)

 

Actually, it appears that it is probably owned by the family of the late German billionaire Hugo Mann.  (I think they also own Pennzoil Place.)

Edited by Houston19514
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  • 2 weeks later...

I was just thinking that we're due for a hindesky photo extravaganza. Thanks for all the great pics. I really like the way this one is turning out... RIP Foley's but this is a great addition to the area. Can't wait to see the finished product.

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I was just thinking that we're due for a hindesky photo extravaganza. Thanks for all the great pics. I really like the way this one is turning out... RIP Foley's but this is a great addition to the area. Can't wait to see the finished product.

Free Press Summer Fest and a rain filled weekend shut down my bicycle/photo opps for 2 weekends in a row so I had to hit all my regular construction projects today.

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Their numbers have definitely increased.  The low-rise building on the corner of Milam and Rusk just removed a nice awning because a large number would sleep under it every night and would not clear out until 7:30 or so. Not the kind of thing the short-term officing folks that just renovated the space would want to show potential clients. Tranquility park is actually crowded with homeless on nice days.

 

I kind of figured their numbers would be proportional with Houston's growth overall.

 

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  • The title was changed to Office Tower In Downtown At 1111 Travis St.

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