Parkside Residences: 43-Story Residential High-Rise For Block 98

[Avossos]

16 minutes ago, Twinsanity02 said:

5020

 

I get the joke - but any truth to a delay?

[Twinsanity02]

41 minutes ago, Twinsanity02 said:

Pushed back to 1st quarter 5020. See Doctor Who if you wish to view this building.

Not that I know of. It's just they've delayed it at least four times. 

[Twinsanity02]

29 minutes ago, Avossos said:

 

I get the joke - but any truth to a delay?

Not that I know of. It's just they've delayed it at least four times. 

[Nate99]

It’s not necessarily something, but it’s not nothing. 

[ArtNsf]

5 minutes ago, Nate99 said:

It’s not necessarily something, but it’s not nothing. 

 

Actually, this does really look encouraging to me.  Anyone else ?

[Avossos]

1 minute ago, ArtNsf said:

 

Actually, this does really look encouraging to me.  Anyone else ?

 

I am encouraged... though soil samples don't mean they are about to break ground... i thought this happened months ahead of construction start...

[Nate99]

1 hour ago, Avossos said:

 

I am encouraged... though soil samples don't mean they are about to break ground... i thought this happened months ahead of construction start...

 

I'm thinking that all it means definitively is that someone cares about what's down there enough to spend some money to have it analyzed.  That could be:

 

(a) pessimistic - it is for sale and a potential buyer wants to confirm that their is no soil contamination that they would be liable to clean up

 

or

 

(b) optimistic - someone is finalizing the design of their project and needs to verify soil characteristics for the foundation specs

 

Or somewhere in between. 

 

FWIW, I recall seeing this lot being sampled before a few years back, closer to the garage in the middle. These guys looked to be working close to the street. 

[Twinsanity02]

2 hours ago, ArtNsf said:

 

Actually, this does really look encouraging to me.  Anyone else ?

If this is just soil sampling I'm not encouraged. They did this several years ago. Then nothing.

[hindesky]

29 minutes ago, Twinsanity02 said:

If this is just soil sampling I'm not encouraged. They did this several years ago. Then nothing.

 

2 hours ago, Avossos said:

 

I am encouraged... though soil samples don't mean they are about to break ground... i thought this happened months ahead of construction start...

Looked back in recent downtown Houston history to see when another major project went from soil samples to excavation. I present 2 pics from the Hines Texas Tower.

[cspwal]

Counter point:

 

On 4/16/2014 at 3:55 PM, talltexan83 said:

It looks like there was some kind of drilling (soil samples?) being done on this site today.  Block was closed to parking.  Any idea if this is related to the high rise or part of the Convention Center hotel construction across the street?

[hindesky]

5 minutes ago, cspwal said:

Counter point:

 

Is this pertaining to the hotel on top of Houston First or somewhere else?

[cspwal]

It was a quote in this thread 

 

[hindesky]

I'm optimistic, look at the emblem on the trucks at the Texas Tower and then the truck here. Same company, they only hire this company when things are about to get built.

Case settled for Hindesky. 👨‍⚖️⚖️💰🎉😎😜

[wxman]

Can somebody please explain why soil sampling is important? I’m purely ignorant on the subject matter and would like to know. 
 

I assume that the soil sampled a block or two over (Likely sandy loam/clay) would be the same for said property. I doubt the soil changes that drastically from block to block.

[Nate99]

3 minutes ago, wxman said:

Can somebody please explain why soil sampling is important? I’m purely ignorant on the subject matter and would like to know. 
 

I assume that the soil sampled a block or two over (Likely sandy loam/clay) would be the same for said property. I doubt the soil changes that drastically from block to block.

 

You might have to get confirmation of what is down there to estimate the cost of excavation. Not sure what kind of variation might exist across downtown or block to block, but I imagine that there would be some serious marginal costs to engineer a foundation to the highest possible spec that could be mitigated by checking to see what you're actually going to be working with. 

 

Paging Purdue...

[mollusk]

Houston is built on layers of sand and clay.  How far down the transition is between a sand layer and a clay layer varies, even within a block, and different soils have different bearing capacities.  Ground water also enters into the calculations if it's there.

[Twinsanity02]

1 hour ago, hindesky said:

I'm optimistic, look at the emblem on the trucks at the Texas Tower and then the truck here. Same company, they only hire this company when things are about to get built.

Case settled for Hindesky. 👨‍⚖️⚖️💰🎉😎😜

I hope you are correct. If so I look forward to the photos you and ekdrm will post

[Houston19514]

On 12/5/2019 at 9:17 AM, Twinsanity02 said:

Not that I know of. It's just they've delayed it at least four times. 

 

Have they really?  Have "they" (meaning the people who will develop and build this building) ever actually announced any schedule or starting date?

Edited December 20, 2019 by Houston19514

[Twinsanity02]

Most of the dates from construction came from the Downtown Houston development maps

 

Here are some samples: Feb 2014:Est completion summer 2017,  Soil test 4/17/2014,  Urbannizer: 2/20/2015  Start date 2Q 2015, Later start date 1Q 2017, 

More start dates 1Q 2018, then 1Q 2019. Someone in the company is  indecisive or the Down Houston development maps are inaccurate.

[brijonmang]

6 hours ago, wxman said:

Can somebody please explain why soil sampling is important? I’m purely ignorant on the subject matter and would like to know. 
 

I assume that the soil sampled a block or two over (Likely sandy loam/clay) would be the same for said property. I doubt the soil changes that drastically from block to block.

Yes, soil can vary that much in a small area, especially when it comes to the weight of these buildings.  Sometimes literally just across the street - that's what happened with Texas Tower and The Preston.  I forget all the details but there was a big enough difference between the two subgrades that they did two totally different foundations.

[Urbannizer]

GC: Andres Construction

 

https://www.powerdesigninc.us/project/block-98-fka-discovery-tower-in-progress/

[Purdueenginerd]

On 12/20/2019 at 3:45 PM, wxman said:

Can somebody please explain why soil sampling is important? I’m purely ignorant on the subject matter and would like to know. 
 

I assume that the soil sampled a block or two over (Likely sandy loam/clay) would be the same for said property. I doubt the soil changes that drastically from block to block.

 

Anytime a building is constructed, the structural engineer needs to design the foundation. The foundation design is based off of the soil conditions at the site. The geotechnical engineer consultant will bore down in several locations at the project site and provide important information for the design team. For the structural engineer, depending on the project, the geotechnical engineer will provide test data with actual values for the structural engineer to use. For example: for a spread footing design, the geotechnical engineer will provide an "Allowable" bearing pressure at a given depth. Why does this matter?  Without it, a structural engineer is forced to design the foundation based off of prescriptive minimums denoted in the code. As you might imagine, those values are not good. For the owner, getting soil sampling can reduce construction costs and make the building more durable. 

 

The geotechnical engineer also provides recommendations to the civil engineer! For example, if the building has a slab-on-grade, but the top soils have a high-plasticity and are susceptible to movement and swelling, the geotechnical engineer might recommend removing 4-8 feet of the top soil and replacing it with select fill!

 

Quote

I doubt the soil changes that drastically from block to block.

 

You'd actually be quite surprised. I have a project right now where I'm designing four 1 story buildings all within about 200' of eachother. The geotechnical report took 8 samples. There's a limestone gravel layer with a nice allowable bearing pressure of 30,000 PSF (thats a fanastic value). The depth of that layer is 5' in one spot and 30' in another. So one building has drilled piers 35' and another building, its only 10'. In an area like Houston, with a lot of alluvial deposits soil conditions below grade can and do change drastically. Buffalo bayou has not had a static location for the majority of its existence and proto-streams and different conditions likely flowed through downtown Houston eons before even humans were on the north american continent. 

 

Now you may ask, what are normal values and was is PSF?

 

PSF stands for Pounds per Square foot, and I'm simplifying things here a bit but there are two main directions loads or energy get transmitted into the foundation, Laterally (ie, wind an seismic), and Vertically (Gravity, Dead, Live, and overturning from wind and seismic). When a building a designed, the structural engineer will size the foundation element based on the values provided by the Geotechnical engineer. Lets say he/she gave me a value of 4000 PSF at 8 feet down (which is more or less normal for Houston). Lets say I'm just designing a spread footing. A spread footing, for lack of a better terminology is a block of concrete, typically directly beneath a column or vertical member. Most of the time they are square, but technically can be any geometry. (ive had several petro-chemical projects with octagonal spread footings). Anyway, lets picture a 5'x5' (looking down, in plan) spread footing. Thats 25 square feet. I would expect that to carry 100,000 lbs load (vertical only). (25 *4000 psf = 100,000 lbs). Not bad right? Now lets picture if the owner elected not to get soil sampling done and I had a column with 100,000 lbs of force. How big would my spread footing need to be?  100,000 lbs/1000psf = 100 square feet. Or 10'x10'. It would also have to be thicker for other reasons I'm not going to touch on right now. Now, imagine a building with 50 columns, those cost savings will add up quick!

Edited December 23, 2019 by Purdueenginerd

[Purdueenginerd]

On 12/20/2019 at 3:45 PM, wxman said:

Can somebody please explain why soil sampling is important? I’m purely ignorant on the subject matter and would like to know. 
 

I assume that the soil sampled a block or two over (Likely sandy loam/clay) would be the same for said property. I doubt the soil changes that drastically from block to block.

 

I forgot another good example I had where the geotech report was handy. 

 

I have a renovation project of a two story building in Dallas. When I was able to recover the structural drawings from the city, the one kind of alarming thing we observed is that it had drilled piers 70 feet down! Which is generally excessive for a 2 story building. The first floor was also called a structural deck, in that its not directly bearing on the soil and is supported by structure. (there was a nice horrifying crawl space I had to get into to make my measurements). As part of the renovation, the owner was creating a large outdoor patio and ordered a geotechnical report to support this structure. The geotechnical engineer found that there was a landfill at the site from 1820-1880 and from 1880 to about 1950 there was cattle slaughter house. There ALSO used to be a small river running through the site which had been filled in in the 19th century. What did this mean? It meant that for about 50'--- the soil was ... actually trash. So when the building was constructed, they drilled piers right through it to native soil to get the engineering values they needed. We could have done that as well, but any soil removed from the site would need to be treated (environmental considerations) and so the owner didn't want 70' piers (lots of soil removed from site). We ended up driving micro-piles which are a different foundation system all together. (they remove less soil). Fundamentally, the geotechnical report altered the engineering of both the original building and our renovation that would not have been predicted if we assumed that soil conditions were identical to adjacent Dallas blocks. 

[H-Town Man]

9 hours ago, Urbannizer said:

GC: Andres Construction

 

https://www.powerdesigninc.us/project/block-98-fka-discovery-tower-in-progress/

 

Sounds like this is moving forward, although not clear if they have final financing if it's only at soil test stage. A HAIFy Christmas gift if it comes to pass, which it most likely will. I imagine these soil tests have a shelf life and have to be redone if a certain amount of time has elapsed. They were probably near the finish line on this in 2015 and then called it off with the energy bust.

[hindesky]

I looked around the whole parking lot for obvious new core samples. The only 2, I could find were actually on the east side sidewalk. Saw lots of old ones in the parking lot.

 

 

Edited February 10, 2020 by hindesky

[Urbannizer]

Seeing 2Q 2020 as the start date

[Howard Huge]

[jmitch94]

2 hours ago, Urbannizer said:

Seeing 2Q 2020 as the start date

 

 

If you look through this thread there are about half a dozen of these proclamations. I'll believe it when I see it until then it's just a dream.  

[H-Town Man]

11 hours ago, Urbannizer said:

Seeing 2Q 2020 as the start date

 

Seeing this where?

 

[cspwal]

I won't believe any construction starting on this site until I try to cut through the parking lot and bump into a concrete wall

[Nate99]

More not nothing. 
 

 

[hindesky]

Skid steer and mini track hoe have been tearing up parts of the sidewalk, this has to be a sign.

 

[Urbannizer]

Height: 468’

Work begins 4/20, light one up for this one 😆 

 

https://oeaaa.faa.gov/oeaaa/external/searchAction.jsp?action=displayOECase&oeCaseID=430526526&row=2

[asubrt]

Is this still getting incentives from the Downtown Living Initiative (or whatever it was called) despite taking so long to start construction? If I recall correctly, this is the second-to-last one to get underway that originally qualified for the incentives (the last being the high rise NE of MMP, though that could be way off).

[brijonmang]

1 hour ago, Urbannizer said:

Height: 468’

Work begins 4/20, light one up for this one 😆 

 

https://oeaaa.faa.gov/oeaaa/external/searchAction.jsp?action=displayOECase&oeCaseID=430526526&row=2

Jah bless! 

[Twinsanity02]

12 hours ago, asubrt said:

Is this still getting incentives from the Downtown Living Initiative (or whatever it was called) despite taking so long to start construction? If I recall correctly, this is the second-to-last one to get underway that originally qualified for the incentives (the last being the high rise NE of MMP, though that could be way off).

Isn't there another Campos residential near Toyota center that is part of the DLI? Only one Campos has been built.

[Houston19514]

14 hours ago, asubrt said:

Is this still getting incentives from the Downtown Living Initiative (or whatever it was called) despite taking so long to start construction? If I recall correctly, this is the second-to-last one to get underway that originally qualified for the incentives (the last being the high rise NE of MMP, though that could be way off).

 

They had been given an extension, but it required a temporary certificate of occupancy to be issued by May 28, 2020.  So, they would apparently have needed another extension to still get those incentives.

[cspwal]

Or build REALLY fast

[dbigtex56]

On 2/9/2020 at 4:24 PM, hindesky said:

Skid steer and mini track hoe have been tearing up parts of the sidewalk, this has to be a sign.

 

Or possibly a HLSR event?

[CREguy13]

I walked by Block 98 this morning.  Not sure what was going on, but there was certainly activity with a few workers on-site.  Maybe we begin seeing more progress in the coming weeks and this is still on schedule for 4/20 start date?

[Triton]

58 minutes ago, CREguy13 said:

I walked by Block 98 this morning.  Not sure what was going on, but there was certainly activity with a few workers on-site.  Maybe we begin seeing more progress in the coming weeks and this is still on schedule for 4/20 start date?

Will be really interesting to see if this one still goes through.... fingers crossed.

[hindesky]

I took a couple pictures but my disk is full and won't download to my computer. I talked with the guys who were repairing the tension cables on the parking garage. I asked them if they knew about the apartments to be built but they didn't have a clue. To me it appeared they were tensioning the cables and then putting new cement over the ends.

[hindesky]

Threw away a bunch of old pics to make room. Time to buy a new computer for more storage for of all my pics.

 

Those guys in the lime shirts are the ones I talked to about what they were doing. I wonder if @Purdueenginerd knows what they might have been doing to the tension cables in the parking garage ? I also wonder if it might be because the work on the apartments is about to start. 

 

Edited March 30, 2020 by hindesky

[Purdueenginerd]

@hindesky Those are post tension or prestress ports. 

 

There are three times of structural concrete construction

 

1. Traditional Reinforced concrete 

2. Post Tension Concrete

3. Pre-stress concrete

 

To understand the three, a brief cursory explainer on how structural concrete works. Concrete is very weak in tension, Great in compression! Lets talk about No. 1 first. In traditional concrete, lets imagine a simple concrete beam with no reinforcement (ie, rebar). Concrete, like every material on this planet, will bend. If you imagine a sagging beam, the bottom of the beam will be in tension, and the top of the beam will be in compression. With no rebar, the concrete will crack at the bottom and quick propagate upwards, splitting the beam in half and causing collapse. Ever see a martial artist break concrete block in half? This is exactly what is going on. Theyre impact is "flexing" the block, creating tension on the bottom face and subsequently breaking the block. In traditional reinforced concrete, rebar is added to the bottom of the beam to engage and resist those tensile forces. 

 

Above is the cross section of a typical reinforced concrete beam design. I wont go into the equations too much, but you'll see that the top of the beam is in compression, the bottom of the beam is in tension (as denoted by C and T, respectively). Now what are the limitations for this? In traditional concrete construction, the tension zone effectively always exists, this limits how long the span is. In addition the more load you have on it, the "deeper" the beam required to create a sufficiently large concrete compression zone.  For parking garages, is generally desirable to have long spans between columns because that means: more parking! 

 

So what is post tension? When the concrete is cast, they create this holes all the way through the beam/girder all the way to the other end. While the structure is shored, they'll run these high strength cables through the beam and tie them at both ends. The cables are then tightened, aka, tensioned, and locked in place. The tension in the cables in effect "compresses" the concrete. Remember concrete is great in compression. Post tension effectively put more of the concrete section into compression. Advantages include the ability to go longer spans with less depth. Disadvantages: less modifiable and more expensive to build-- Can also be dangerous if a cable fails. To answer your question, those holes are for post tension cables. 

 

Pre-stress is very similar in principle. You will most often see pre-stress concete in pre-cast garages. Prestress means that the cable was tensioned before the concrete was cast, then they poured the concrete and subsequently released the cables from tension, (which then applied a compression force on to the concrete. These are common at plant manufactured concrete shapes, that are trucked to the job site and put in place at the construction site.  The disadvantages are similar to post tension. 

As for why theyre working on an already existing garage: Not sure. unless it was to make repairs or modifications. associated with the builing that may go up next door.  This garage looks like a pre-stress/precast garage. 

Edited March 29, 2020 by Purdueenginerd

[hindesky]

Work continues on the tension cables for the parking garage next door.

[CREguy13]

I walk by this garage almost every day and it looks like they are about wrapped up.  Fingers crossed we see this existing equipment moved off site in the next day or two and immediately replaced with new equipment.

[Paco Jones]

On 4/22/2020 at 12:29 PM, CREguy13 said:

I walk by this garage almost every day and it looks like they are about wrapped up.  Fingers crossed we see this existing equipment moved off site in the next day or two and immediately replaced with new equipment.

It is moving along very quickly.  Expect groundbreaking soon.

[Avossos]

2 minutes ago, Paco Jones said:

It is moving along very quickly.  Expect groundbreaking soon.

 

Wow this would be really great. It will be wonderful to see downtown continue to grow despite the troubles.

[H-Town Man]

11 hours ago, Paco Jones said:

It is moving along very quickly.  Expect groundbreaking soon.

 

Welcome to the forum, Paco. I will smoke a cigar if this breaks ground.

[Luminare]

21 hours ago, Avossos said:

 

Wow this would be really great. It will be wonderful to see downtown continue to grow despite the troubles.

 

Literally right now is the perfect time to start a project. We haven't fully bottomed out, but with prices on everything being so low, plus interests next to zero, plus deflation, now is the time to dump money into something which will hold value longer than paper money. I say that because coming up next once the economy does start rolling is possible inflation or even hyper-inflation with all the money we are printing to get us out of this.