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Market Square Tower: 40-Story High-Rise At 777 Preston St.


Urbannizer

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i hope we get a big tower on that side of downtown. This project has already extended the width of downtown in alot of views and having a 45+ office building would be awesome

That's my dream! For our downtown to really grow into something that competes with the big boys it needs to grow outward, with more skyscrapers north of Chase tower and south of the Pierce elevated.

Once the Pierce is torn down, we could effectively DOUBLE the size of our downtown if you start building skyward in midtown. It's all the same street grid pattern!!

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That's my dream! For our downtown to really grow into something that competes with the big boys it needs to grow outward, with more skyscrapers north of Chase tower and south of the Pierce elevated.

Once the Pierce is torn down, we could effectively DOUBLE the size of our downtown if you start building skyward in midtown. It's all the same street grid pattern!!

 

I'd like to see the east side get filled in first but yea pretty much agree with this. 

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That's my dream! For our downtown to really grow into something that competes with the big boys it needs to grow outward, with more skyscrapers north of Chase tower and south of the Pierce elevated.

Once the Pierce is torn down, we could effectively DOUBLE the size of our downtown if you start building skyward in midtown. It's all the same street grid pattern!!

Don't forget that they're also planning on burying 59 effectively removing the barrier between midtown and the museum district... It's not hard to envision one continuous dense skyline bookened by downtown to the north and the medical center to the south.

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Then again, you could double downtown's office space without even having to go beyond the traditional freeway encirclement. Considering that most of these buildings want tunnel connections, that seems much more likely.

 

Which is fine with me... skyscrapers tend to bring parking lots, garages, and dead zones in their wake. I love them, but I don't want them everywhere. I'm hoping Midtown becomes a great residential neighborhood in the vein of Greenwich Village or London's West End, i.e. short dense buildings with a thriving street life between them.

 

Edited by H-Town Man
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Don't forget that they're also planning on burying 59 effectively removing the barrier between midtown and the museum district... It's not hard to envision one continuous dense skyline bookened by downtown to the north and the medical center to the south.

 

Need a Mapster to overlay Chicago's DT Streetgrid over Houston for comparison. 

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Here is a basic outline of downtown Chicago over downtown Houston.  "The Loop" is the loop of elevated trains that forms the core of the CBD of Chicago, while the outlined box to the right (with the bean in the NW corner) is a large park on Lake Michigan.  I didn't include the actual street grid because that got too messy.

 

It looks like the core of Chicago is similarly sized to downtown, though with almost no parking lots.  The magnificent mile (not shown; again messy) is right about where N main street is on this map.  The outlined area seems to be the main area of large buildings.  

 

I couldn't get the overlay to turn to align with Houston's grid

 

 

21031709852_8ce9b46963_b.jpg

Chicago over Downtown HOU by Christopher Hisle, on Flickr

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Yeah the western boundary appears to be the interstate, but it's only 5 blocks west of the river/canal.  What makes Chicago seem huge is they have many more high rises and they extend much further; we were all the way out at Wrigley, and there was solid chain of high rise buildings going back to the city

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The bulk of Chicago's office space is in the Loop (a bit larger than the inmost box in the diagram, bounded by the river to the north and west and Grant Park to the east).  Going north of the river you increasingly have residential towers instead of office towers, and beyond the northern end of Michigan Ave. it's pretty much all residential, which extends in a thin line up through Lincoln Park towards Evanston.

 

Chicago's CBD has a total of around 130 million square feet of office space, of which 50-75% is in the Loop, depending on how strict your definition of the Loop is. Houston's CBD by comparison has about 45 million square feet.

 

Another useful comparison is Lower Manhattan, which last time I checked had around 70 million square feet.

 

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After checking out the street view, the ugly parking garage is only half the block facing this development. The other is a nice older building. No doubt that garage will be redeveloped one day.

 

Also, does anyone know what the ballet has planned for their property just to the west of this development? What kind of expansion plans could they possibly want/need? 

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After checking out the street view, the ugly parking garage is only half the block facing this development. The other is a nice older building. No doubt that garage will be redeveloped one day.

That ugly garage is the Houston Chronicle garage, which Hines just bought along with the Chronicle building with the intention of redevelopment, so hopefully!

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