Pearl Marketplace At Midtown: Multifamily At 3120 Smith St.

[samagon]

On 6/16/2017 at 7:50 PM, UtterlyUrban said:

Well, assuming that the deal closes.  Keep in mind that It might not.......

 

Generally though, when one of the most valuable companies announces they are partnering/buying/mergering with another company, it's pretty much a guarantee, and shareholders can feel safe that their stock prices aren't going to drop in value. You're right though, there are some pretty good examples of these things falling through at the last minute, usually pushed by outside forces.

 

I absolutely like the idea of an Amazon locker though, that would be awesome!

Edited June 19, 2017 by samagon

[thatguysly]

Whole Foods is a smart purchase for Amazon. It gives them instant access to upper income areas for quicker distribution. This demographic is the most likely target for grocery delivery.

[UtterlyUrban]

On 6/19/2017 at 10:27 AM, thatguysly said:

Whole Foods is a smart purchase for Amazon. It gives them instant access to upper income areas for quicker distribution. This demographic is the most likely target for grocery delivery.

This confuses me a bit.  Are you saying that you think that Amazon will be using their WF retail stores as food delivery distribution locations?  Or, said another way, you envision that there will be "pickers" roaming the isles picking orders for home delivery?

 

 

Edited June 26, 2017 by UtterlyUrban

[thatguysly]

2 hours ago, UtterlyUrban said:

This confuses me a bit.  Are you saying that you think that Amazon will be using their WF retail stores as food delivery distribution locations?  Or, said another way, you envision that there will be "pickers" roaming the isles picking orders for home delivery?

 

 

 

At first it may be pickers but long term distribution centers if home delivery takes off. But this would be the market for it to take off first in. I think Amazon is currently about 1% in the grocery market. Whole foods isn't that much bigger but now they acquire the knowledge of how to run a retail chain. We will see.

[Tumbleweed_Tx]

Rode by this site today in the passenger's seat of a wrecker. Man, that's a deep hole. Are they doing 3 levels of underground parking?

[gene]

12 hours ago, Tumbleweed_Tx said:

Rode by this site today in the passenger's seat of a wrecker. Man, that's a deep hole. Are they doing 3 levels of underground parking?

 

this was from the original post:

The building will be 8 stories tall consisting of two levels forWholeFoods, 260 apartments, 2 levels for residentparking, and two levels ofundergroundparking forWholeFoods customers. 

 

So i am not sure that has changed... 

[UtterlyUrban]

7 hours ago, gene said:

 

this was from the original post:

The building will be 8 stories tall consisting of two levels forWholeFoods, 260 apartments, 2 levels for residentparking, and two levels ofundergroundparking forWholeFoods customers. 

 

So i am not sure that has changed... 

Two levels of resident parking for 260 apartments?  Man, that doesn't seem like enough?  That new market square tower has what?  350 units and has, what? 8 levels of parking?  OPP has 325 units or so and has 4 levels of residential parking?

 

 

[MarathonMan]

The footprint of the building is roughly a block and a half.  That's huge.  You can fit a lot of cars per level with that kind of base square footage.  The buildings you reference as comparisons have many floors and a smaller footprint, which would require more levels of parking to accommodate the same number of cars.

[UtterlyUrban]

13 minutes ago, MarathonMan said:

The footprint of the building is roughly a block and a half.  That's huge.  You can fit a lot of cars per level with that kind of base square footage.  The buildings you reference as comparisons have many floors and a smaller footprint, which would require more levels of parking to accommodate the same number of cars.

OPP is a block.

 

i didn't realize that this apartment building was a block and a half.  Thank you.

[MarathonMan]

58 minutes ago, UtterlyUrban said:

OPP is a block.

 

i didn't realize that this apartment building was a block and a half.  Thank you.

But OPP's four parking levels include resident and Phoenicia parking, too.

[KinkaidAlum]

Correction, OPP's podium is a full block. The tower is not. 

[UtterlyUrban]

1 hour ago, MarathonMan said:

But OPP's four parking levels include resident and Phoenicia parking, too.

I don't live there but I am told that OPP has two levels of parking for Phoenicia and guests and then 4 levels on top of that for residents.  And the parking garage is a full block wide.

[Texasota]

The city requires between 1.25 and 2 spaces per apartment. http://www.houstontx.gov/planning/DevelopRegs/docs_pdfs/parking_req.pdf

 

This project will have plenty of parking. 

[hindesky]

[hindesky]

[slcowart416]

Is there a webcam for this project? There looks like a camera possibly on a mast on the roof of the adjacent apartment bldg.

How does one find these webcams generally?  It doesn't seem possible to search Oxblue, etc. without knowing the exact link.

 

[hindesky]

Southern portion is going above grade now.

[hindesky]

Damage to the southern portion.

 

 

[tigereye]

 

 

[hindesky]

The damage was to the floor jig and to the electrical panel. The electrical is going to be more critical to fix because it probably feeds the tower crane and many other things.

[hindesky]

[hindesky]

Crews working on Sunday, I guess the infusion of Amazon money helps to get this built quicker.

 

[Gary]

As I've said before. I look forward to your updates on Sundays. Keep up the great work.

[hindesky]

I spotted the mock up of the facade at the Helena St. Morgan site.

 

[samagon]

nice, is every balcony going to receive pumpkins?

[hindesky]

Northeast corner.

[j_cuevas713]

I should be updating this thread more often. I work across the street. 

[hindesky]

[Urbannizer]

 

[HoustonMidtown]

[cspwal]

Looks like they're starting on the elevator?

[hindesky]

[AnTonY]

The less parking garages, the better.

[cspwal]

Personally, I'm fine with parking garages, as long as they still have some interaction at the street level (ground floor retail, offices, nice lobby area) and don't look butt ugly.

One 5 story parking garage frees up 4 other blocks from parking lot duty

[Angostura]

2 hours ago, cspwal said:

Personally, I'm fine with parking garages, as long as they still have some interaction at the street level (ground floor retail, offices, nice lobby area) and don't look butt ugly.

One 5 story parking garage frees up 4 other blocks from parking lot duty

 

This.

As long as most people drive most places, the market will demand a significant amount of parking (whether city-mandated or not). And the #1 predictor of how many people arrive at a given destination by private vehicle is activity density (the number of residents + jobs in a given area). As long as 1/2 to 3/4 of the land area of even the most valuable parts of our city are dedicated to automobiles, the activity density will never be high enough to result in people choosing other forms of transportation. 

 

So every s.f. of structured parking is a s.f. of land freed up for other development. We need to build more parking garages so that, someday, we won't need so many parking garages.

[AnTonY]

On 4/3/2018 at 11:27 AM, Angostura said:

 

This.

As long as most people drive most places, the market will demand a significant amount of parking (whether city-mandated or not). And the #1 predictor of how many people arrive at a given destination by private vehicle is activity density (the number of residents + jobs in a given area). As long as 1/2 to 3/4 of the land area of even the most valuable parts of our city are dedicated to automobiles, the activity density will never be high enough to result in people choosing other forms of transportation. 

 

So every s.f. of structured parking is a s.f. of land freed up for other development. We need to build more parking garages so that, someday, we won't need so many parking garages.

 

Or just end parking minimums city wide.

[cspwal]

I would say "end parking minimums in select neighborhoods and around transit stops"

[Angostura]

17 hours ago, AnTonY said:

 

Or just end parking minimums city wide.

 

I'm in favor of this, but I don't think eliminating parking minimums will actually have that big an impact on the amount of surface parking. Tenants will still want their customers to have a place to park. Zero minimums would probably allocate parking more efficiently (since locations wouldn't have to have exclusive access to parking during the entirety of their open hours).

 

I would also support a special levy on land devoted to parking, with an exemption for structured parking, so as to discourage large surface lots in favor of shared parking structures. 

[urbanize713]

So back to Whole Foods/Pearl, when do we believe this will be done? end of year? Would the store open even if the apartments above are still under construction?

[Texasota]

The opposite is more likely. I don't think I've ever seen a building where the retail component opens before residential.

Edited April 5, 2018 by Texasota

[gene]

Yet the opposite would make more sense as you would think it would be better for the stores to have to suffer construction noise rather than the tenants... 

[Chi-Char-Hou-Dal]

This one is getting very tall. It was tough to predict how big it would look because the lower floors blended and couldn't get a good count. I will send a pic from my driveway but this one is going to stand out big time in the neighborhood!

[hindesky]

[hindesky]

Looks like just one more floor to go based on the elevator shafts.

[BigFootsSocks]

Maybe it’s the perspective but it looks like there’s two more to go

[MarathonMan]

The drawings show only one more residential level to go.  Four total over the market and two levels of parking.

[hindesky]

Coming down Bagby it looks like one to go, not sure about other sides.

[samagon]

that photo makes it look like there's only 3 levels of residential currently (notice balconies only on the top 3 floors). If there's going to be 4 levels of residential that makes it easy for someone like me that is a musician at heart to count the number of floors, and there's one missing.  

[Twitter1]

From today

[bobruss]

So this is coming in off the spur.  

Seeing that image offers a whole new perspective and scale  to  the thought of coming into downtown. Ten years ago, this  image  would've been closer to the Webster, or W. Gray intersection, and way before you encountered any thing like this. And this density starts back at Herman Park.

It's amazing how much massing has occurred in such a short time. Midtown has almost filled in.

It will be interesting to see how  density numbers have changed in Midtown over the last 15 years. I think at some point in the not distant future, the Downtown/Midtown's, density levels will necessitate, and expedite +, the creation of a new congressional district.  I've always maintained that our Midtown, would become a smaller version of Manhattan's.

I see some similarities in the way our Downtown, Midtown, Hermann park, and Texas Med Center are laid out, in comparison to that of Manhattan's. I realize there's no comparison in scale, size, or sheer numbers.  I haven't checked to see what the size and scale difference is, in sq. miles, and park acreage. Or from tip to tip. 

 

It appears that most of Midtown will be  in the 5-8 story range residential blocks, with some mid rises and a few high rises.

A Williams Tower, height building would be a skyline Game Changer!

Can you imagine the view from one of those extremely high overpasses out on the beltway coming into 59, that allows you to see all three skylines in one sweeping panorama.

It's best to be a passenger, so you can take it all in, and not end up doing a high dive off the barrier.

Now picture that 65 story building smack dab in the middle of Midtown. It would become that central piece that would be like a beacon connecting Downtown to the Med Center. That skyline shot would be pretty spectacular, and rival just about any.

Speaking of our med center. It's turned into quite a  jewel box full of wonderful gems.

If you haven't driven up Bertner from O.S.T., all the way to Baylor you'll be in for a treat.

At OST,  just before turning onto Bertner your view of the southern end of the med center gives you a great spot to see how TMC3, will fit into the grid. Once  TMC3, is built TMC, will be solid to OST, with several U.T. and M.D. Anderson, buildings south. 

The first thing you'll notice is how expansive it's become, and  how modern and new everything is. Except for the imposing fortress like garage at Holcombe, which is probably the most stifling edifice in TMC, everything else is fresh and reflective. The landscaping, lighting, and water features provide a cohesive, public realm with nice sidewalks and abundant shade trees. 

A walk through the area is calming and recuperative. Flowers are abundant

The new Methodist is pretty much finished and it has some beautiful lines.

The architects did an excellent job of transitioning into the new Methodist, with the continuation of the dark glazing and undulating walls. The new Methodist has a very Modern look and I like the top. Something about the top of the building reminds me of the old Prudential building. Sure miss it and the Shamrock.  

 

+  Brooklyn 173

Edited May 12, 2018 by bobruss