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Mixed-Use Parking Garage At 820 Main St.


MontroseNeighborhoodCafe

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  • 3 months later...

Well, yeah, it's better than a surface lot. It's better than an open sewer, too, but that doesn't mean it's the best use of the space, especially what could be a prime spot on Main. It's not like surface lots are the default state of downtown land to which all other uses should be compared. We could set the bar a little higher than that.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Maybe this has been discussed and I just missed it.

What is going on at Main and Walker ?

I barely caught it out of the corner of my eye as I was driving past but it looked like half the block had been excavated quite a bit.

Is something going up here that I haven't heard about ? Or did something just get razed there ?

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  • 7 months later...
Yes, there will be retail there and supposedly the design will be worthy of acclaim. Hines is developing the garage so it should be at least halfway decent.

I haven't made it downtown for a while now, but this should be well under construction. Updates on this? What's the verdict? Is it "architecturally significant"?

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This parking garage is interesting. Because at the time, Pennzoil Tower was not close to being nearly 90 per cent leased. I guess a little planning goes a long way because Pennzoil Tower is almost totally leased at this writing. I would be interested in seeing how they are going to make a parking garage pretty. Haven't seen any renderings on this one. Tunnel connected will be great though.

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  • 3 months later...
This parking garage is interesting. Because at the time, Pennzoil Tower was not close to being nearly 90 per cent leased. I guess a little planning goes a long way because Pennzoil Tower is almost totally leased at this writing. I would be interested in seeing how they are going to make a parking garage pretty. Haven't seen any renderings on this one. Tunnel connected will be great though.

Leasing at Pennzoil is probably more attibutable to a strong local economy than this.

I haven't been downtown for a long time. So is this "architecturally significant" parking garage completed, or nearly so? Is it truly "architecturally significant" as Hines promised?

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Leasing at Pennzoil is probably more attibutable to a strong local economy than this.

I haven't been downtown for a long time. So is this "architecturally significant" parking garage completed, or nearly so? Is it truly "architecturally significant" as Hines promised?

The parking garage isn't finished -- I don't think they've topped out.

It's a Hines garage being built for Sunbelt, the owner of Pennzoil and the parking lot in front of 1 Shell and 2 Shell. Hines never released renderings of the garage, but it was supposed to be sleek, and one of those garages that typically gets written up in Cite. Just like the Catholic Co-Cathedral, it has been value-engineered, and they're going in the direction of not including a skin -- just the metal cables going across, with maybe 3' of coverage on each floor. Ouch. Ugly buildings aren't illegal, unfortunately.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 months later...

How many of you actually thought that the Hines-developed parking garage would truly be "architecturally significant?" Well, the garage is complete...and it looks and smells like a parking garage! Complete w/ tons of concrete and parallel wiring (ooh, ahh!). What a slap in the face for the residents and visitors of Downtown Houston! The Hines corp. completely swindled the public into believing that a beautiful structure (initially told to be a 11-story building, that is really a 14 story mammoth) would be a built on the same site as a 95 year old historic building. I am here to say that it is an extravagant eyesore that expands from Travis to Main (ironically, grossly overshadowing the light rail) and right on Walker. There is no skin on it, and so sits a concrete skeletal nightmare.

Not only is this grotesque structure visually nauseating, it also is a seizure-inducing brightly-lit nightmare! The structure is fleshed out with intensely BRIGHT floodlights on each of its 14 floors, including the roof, that release their ungodly glow (24/7) without obstruction into the living and bedroom units of the Commerce Towers Condominiums! Despite complaints and frustrations by its residents, Hines and its supposed foreign financier refuse to place a skin on this thing as it was initially proposed. If you look along the Main Street corridor at night, you can see muted, soft lighting on most of the buildings (pleasing to the eye). Not so with this sorry excuse for existence!

I myself am a resident of Commerce. I bought my unit just for the spectacular views of the Esperson buildings, and the Chase (spire) buildings. I live just above this pathetic excuse of development, and the beautiful soft glows and contours of these historic buildings, are now completely washed out by the unobstructed lights of this garage. The blinding lights of the garage stream miserably into my unit, and my current window treatments do a miserable job in snuffing out this crazy light. I feel sorry for those below me, as i've heard that the headlights of the cars, when turned on, shoot straight and hot into the units' windows below.

That this abysmal piece of concrete even attempts to outshine these beautiful architectural masterpieces of Houston's history (the Espersons, Commerce Towers, and Chase (Spire) Buildings). Such hubris is an example of greed and deceipt at its worst. This is a slap in the face not only to Downtown residents but to Houstonians and city visitors.

How can the Downtown District even hope to draw potential residents when their livelihood and properties are thrown aside for the corporate evil.

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How many of you actually thought that the Hines-developed parking garage would truly be "architecturally significant?" Well, the garage is complete...and it looks and smells like a parking garage! Complete w/ tons of concrete and parallel wiring (ooh, ahh!). What a slap in the face for the residents and visitors of Downtown Houston! The Hines corp. completely swindled the public into believing that a beautiful structure (initially told to be a 11-story building, that is really a 14 story mammoth) would be a built on the same site as a 95 year old historic building. I am here to say that it is an extravagant eyesore that expands from Travis to Main (ironically, grossly overshadowing the light rail) and right on Walker. There is no skin on it, and so sits a concrete skeletal nightmare.

Not only is this grotesque structure visually nauseating, it also is a seizure-inducing brightly-lit nightmare! The structure is fleshed out with intensely BRIGHT floodlights on each of its 14 floors, including the roof, that release their ungodly glow (24/7) without obstruction into the living and bedroom units of the Commerce Towers Condominiums! Despite complaints and frustrations by its residents, Hines and its supposed foreign financier refuse to place a skin on this thing as it was initially proposed. If you look along the Main Street corridor at night, you can see muted, soft lighting on most of the buildings (pleasing to the eye). Not so with this sorry excuse for existence!

I myself am a resident of Commerce. I bought my unit just for the spectacular views of the Esperson buildings, and the Chase (spire) buildings. I live just above this pathetic excuse of development, and the beautiful soft glows and contours of these historic buildings, are now completely washed out by the unobstructed lights of this garage. The blinding lights of the garage stream miserably into my unit, and my current window treatments do a miserable job in snuffing out this crazy light. I feel sorry for those below me, as i've heard that the headlights of the cars, when turned on, shoot straight and hot into the units' windows below.

That this abysmal piece of concrete even attempts to outshine these beautiful architectural masterpieces of Houston's history (the Espersons, Commerce Towers, and Chase (Spire) Buildings). Such hubris is an example of greed and deceipt at its worst. This is a slap in the face not only to Downtown residents but to Houstonians and city visitors.

How can the Downtown District even hope to draw potential residents when their livelihood and properties are thrown aside for the corporate evil.

Can you provide photos?

Perhaps your condo association could contact them about the matter or a letter-writing campaign could be organized. I don't imagine that it'd be too difficult to modify the garage by adding some form of a shading system or another that would shield you from direct line-of-sight exposure to the glow or to headlights. Ultimately, your association might have to chip in to get modifications done if they're possible, but it it's worth that much to you...

Oh, and you might want to tone down the rhetoric. Companies take people that sound serious in a serious way, and "corporate evil" isn't the kind of accusatory phrase that would compel me to give a **** about you if I were them.

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I had the same thought last weekend when I walked by it - wasn't this place supposed to be architecturally significant? It looks like crap. AT LEAST there's street level retail. I wonder if that will turn into anything nice or just stay abandoned. I know that doesn't solve your problems but at least there's something slightly positive about it.

Is it completely finished now? It looked like they were still doing some work last weekend, but I could be wrong.

I took some photos of it last weekend that I was thinking of posting, but I couldn't find the thread right away and they looked so damn ugly I think I deleted them.

Edited by Jax
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Well I get a big "I told you so" on this one. I was dubious about Hines commitment to "architecturally significant" parking from the start. It was just some PR garbage they threw out to justify tearing down a century-old building on Main Street.

Oh, and you might want to tone down the rhetoric. Companies take people that sound serious in a serious way, and "corporate evil" isn't the kind of accusatory phrase that would compel me to give a **** about you if I were them.

Hines couldn't care less about any of our opinions here. What, are we supposed to worry about hurting their feelings? If she can't vent here, where can she?

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Downtown got swindled on this one.

and the rhetoric could be toned down to attempt to suck up to someone, but ultimately Hines probably wouldn't give a *** either way. If the company did, we wouldn't have this crappy end result in the first place.

Edited by sevfiv
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Oh, and you might want to tone down the rhetoric. Companies take people that sound serious in a serious way, and "corporate evil" isn't the kind of accusatory phrase that would compel me to give a **** about you if I were them.

Oh, violet, please do not make disparaging remarks about developers. Developers are messengers, sent by God himself, to make your life complete, without interference from Lucifer, also known as the government. To disparage a developer is to smite God Almighty.

Besides, as a mere downtown resident, what do you know about "architecturally significant" parking garages anyway? Why, if you only knew the joys of value engineered structures, you would marvel at this edifice. I am quite sure that the developers of this building, after a careful cost benefit analysis, only made as much profit as they needed. In fact, with knowledge gleaned from a class I took in college, I have calculated that a butt-ugly parking garage is the highest and best use of this block of Main Street.

You should send a letter of thanks to Mr. Hines, not indignation.

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Hines couldn't care less about any of our opinions here. What, are we supposed to worry about hurting their feelings? If she can't vent here, where can she?

I don't think my comments were fully understood. My suggestion is to try to work things out in a constructive manner, and at the most fundamental level, I can assure everyone that nothing will happen without at least feigned respect. If it becomes a PR hubub with lots of whiny citizens complaining about bad design, then Hines will get themselves in a position where they can't do anything without signaling defeat. As a business that is B2B-oriented, that's not the face that they'd like to put forward. More likely, that a few whiny self-interested folks worried about the view from their condos start spouting a bunch of rhetorically-loaded crap at them is just going to convince them that it isn't a matter that they should bother with. If let your dog out in the yard to do his business and he poops on the neighbor's yard in plain sight of the neighbor, and the neighbor calls you a [fill in the blank], then are you more likely to make your dog use a litter box inside or are you just going to be more careful to make sure that the neighbor isn't outside when you let the dog out to do his business? What if the neighbor asked you politely, perhaps even with good humor, to please keep your dog in your own yard? I can tell you which approach I'd respond to...

And I'm not telling her that she can't vent. I don't know where you got that idea. Hell, I want her to post images to see just how bad it is and I then offered a serious suggestion on how the problem might be remedied. Jeez man, what's yours and Red's beef?

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I guess I should retract my foul language (?) and the use of the term "corporate evil." Although, how else would you describe a corporation that slides into the City of Houston permit and planning meetings w/ a killer plan and slick marketing, and then pull the rug out from under everyone's feet (including all various Downtown Planning associations and Downtown District) and lastly the residents of downtown, and when they're doing the minimum tell everyone "Psych!"

We have separately written formal letters, and our residential building manager and developer have had formal meetings with Hines and offered incentives to have the skin placed, the various Downtown Associations that were created to prevent this kind of thing from happening have pleaded with Hines to do something....no dice. We are now planning a major, collective effort that, if effective, will hopefully secure the rest of downtown's residents from having their livelihood and properties completely compromised by the very obvious short-sightedness of a few individuals. This structure will be there for decades to come. These are our homes, bottom line. This is where we live. I think any one would fight tooth and nail to secure our right for this.

Furthermore, we do not live in a black-out society. It is not enough to tell us that we should get black-out shades. Again, if there are any hopes of drawing future residents into downtown to thrive and flourish, they need to be protected from this type of event.

I regret that I can not put my photos on at this time, but hopefully some of the other folks in the building can oblige. In the meantime, just close your eyes and picture......a giant parking garage. No more, no less.

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The "beef", as it were, is this:

Back in November 2005, Hines sent Nancy Sarnof one of those bragadocious press releases, trumpeting their new parking garage. No one forced them to type up and send out this self-serving garbage...it is what developers do. In the process of bragging about their new garage, Hines...unsolicited...stated that the garage would be "architecurally significant". In other words, they KNEW putting a garage on Main Street was a sensitive issue, and they attempted to defuse the situation by claiming they would make it fit in. Ms. Sarnov dutifully reported the contents of the press release.

Hines then proceed to build your everyday, run-of-the-mill DUMP of a parking garage. In other words, THEY LIED. Now that we see that not only is it not significant, but the missing skin that was promised negatively affects owners of adjacent property, you suggest that they would be easily swayed by a nice letter, or better yet, they should offer to pay for the skin themselves. All this, AFTER Hines promised to do this in the first place.

If Hines were a government, you'd be up in arms. Since they are a developer, they must be great guys. My "beef" is that Hines should deliver what they promised. If not, then their reneging on promises should be published where others can see it....like maybe on an architecture forum. Better yet, since there are likely a Hines employee or two who read this forum, maybe they'll get word to Clark Davis, VP of Hines, to come on the forum and explain what is "architecturally significant" about the garage. I'd love to hear it.

On a brighter note, apparently it is connected to the tunnels, so you won't muss your hair.

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Violet-

That totally sucks for you and the other residents at Commerce Towers. Hines has really let his "home" city down. Back in 2003 when I thought I might be moving back home, I toured the C.T. project and FELL IN LOVE with the views and the building. I was told at the time about the "architectural garage" and "upscale retail" that was going to replace the old San Jac building. I would be PISSED if it wasn't delivered. I hope you give them hell and cause a bunch of trouble. It's amazing that this garage was built for the Pennzoil Towers too. What a slap in the face to those beauties. At least the office workers wont have to look at it since it's 2 blocks away!

Red-

LOL.

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