Discovery West: Mixed-Use Development Downtown By Skanska

[cityliving]

[hindesky]

[Nate99]

[hindesky]

[sapo2367]

[Triton]

I actually do find it cool that the massive oak trees are able to still hide this development:

 

Discovery Green by Marc longoria, on Flickr

[hindesky]

I wonder where Skanska plans to add the giant oak tree in the parking lot across La Branch. Supposedly Skanska will spend $150,000 to move it. All of the ones in @Triton's pic are on Discovery Green's property.

[hindesky]

[cityliving]

Edited May 10, 2022 by cityliving

[hindesky]

[Amlaham]

Shop Company is in charge of leasing this property. The link has a lot of interesting FAQs about the property/ area. 

https://shopcompanies.com/sites/default/files/1550 on the Green Retail V17.pdf?v=1653061813

Edited May 24, 2022 by Amlaham

[sapo2367]

Pouring some concrete

[cityliving]

[hindesky]

[Highrise Tower]

Rising from Discovery Green.

[cityliving]

That was a good rally. I saw someone there flying a drone also. 😊

Edited June 7, 2022 by cityliving

[enriquewx91]

This is by far my favorite project aside for the year

[Nate99]

[scarface]

This is probably one of the projects that is really set to really transform downtown.

And most of all, the best part of it, we finally get a chance to hand the Embassy Suites hotel's ass back to them. Literally! 😁

Edited June 10, 2022 by scarface

[mattyt36]

1 hour ago, scarface said:

This is probably one of the projects that is really set to really transform downtown.

And most of all, the best part of it, we finally get a chance to hand the Embassy Suites hotel's ass back to them. Literally! 😁

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, that is among the nicest Embassy Suites in the system! (We Houstonians know not to judge a book by its cover!) Or at least it was the last time I stayed there 10 years ago. How time has flied. Or flew, as the case may be.

Edited June 10, 2022 by mattyt36

[Nate99]

10 hours ago, mattyt36 said:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, that is among the nicest Embassy Suites in the system! (We Houstonians know not to judge a book by its cover!) Or at least it was the last time I stayed there 10 years ago. How time has flied. Or flew, as the case may be.

They built a new one in downtown Amarillo across from their minor league ball park, it's actually way nicer than what you would expect from what they built the brand up to be from the beginning. The worst ES has to be Charleston, WV. Like seemingly everything in that town, it hasn't been touched since construction was completed. 

This one looks dumb, and way dumber than the rendering we got at the outset, but all's well as it's exterior is going away for all practical purposes. 

[hindesky]

[toxtethogrady]

On 6/10/2022 at 9:37 AM, Nate99 said:

They built a new one in downtown Amarillo across from their minor league ball park, it's actually way nicer than what you would expect from what they built the brand up to be from the beginning. The worst ES has to be Charleston, WV. Like seemingly everything in that town, it hasn't been touched since construction was completed. 

This one looks dumb, and way dumber than the rendering we got at the outset, but all's well as it's exterior is going away for all practical purposes. 

Since Covid, Embassy Suites seems to have taken some of the cheese off the pizza. Among other things, the omelet bar is limited to certain days of the week and the business centers have been removed. And like a lot of other hotel chains, they will only do the rooms if you request it. At least they have breakfast...

[talltexan83]

In it's own way, I do want to thank the Embassy Suites for not developing the entire block.  By leaving the curved parcel we eventually got this nice development from Skanska.  The Hess Tower across the park is fine, but it is an example of what would of been here if a developer had purchased the entire block.  

[Nate99]

On 6/15/2022 at 7:57 AM, toxtethogrady said:

Since Covid, Embassy Suites seems to have taken some of the cheese off the pizza. Among other things, the omelet bar is limited to certain days of the week and the business centers have been removed. And like a lot of other hotel chains, they will only do the rooms if you request it. At least they have breakfast...

Not that I'd go to the ES for lunch, If someone made a decent omelette downtown not at gouge the travel budget hotel prices I'd be all over it. There was a place in the Aris food hall (Bravery?) that made good ones, but that operator either flipped concepts or moved out. 

[downtownian]

2 hours ago, Nate99 said:

Not that I'd go to the ES for lunch, If someone made a decent omelette downtown not at gouge the travel budget hotel prices I'd be all over it. There was a place in the Aris food hall (Bravery?) that made good ones, but that operator either flipped concepts or moved out. 

Atlas Diner. I was super bummed that it closed. Need an upscale diner place downtown. Richard Knight was the chef and he is very good 

[mattyt36]

On 6/15/2022 at 7:57 AM, toxtethogrady said:

And like a lot of other hotel chains, they will only do the rooms if you request it. 

Pretty much every hotel these days

[sapo2367]

[scarface]

On 6/9/2022 at 10:25 PM, mattyt36 said:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, that is among the nicest Embassy Suites in the system! (We Houstonians know not to judge a book by its cover!) Or at least it was the last time I stayed there 10 years ago. How time has flied. Or flew, as the case may be.

It's not even about the niceness of the hotel that I was speaking of. It was the fact that they messed up the urban continuity of Discovery Green by having the butt end of that blank back wall facing the park. That was bad planning to have the back of the structure facing an urban park. 

This Skanska development seems to be minimizing the whole E/S development and all of the design flaws that came with it.

Edited June 18, 2022 by scarface

[hindesky]

8 floors.

[mattyt36]

On 6/17/2022 at 8:51 PM, scarface said:

It's not even about the niceness of the hotel that I was speaking of. It was the fact that they messed up the urban continuity of Discovery Green by having the butt end of that blank back wall facing the park. That was bad planning to have the back of the structure facing an urban park. 

This Skanska development seems to be minimizing the whole E/S development and all of the design flaws that came with it.

I'm no architect, but it seems like at the end of the day they made a reasonable decision considering they didn't own the entire block.  I believe those windows are at the end of the hallway/corridor between the rooms.  Sure you could've wrapped windows around the entire building to create "corner rooms," but those windows are now not going to have much of a view anyway now.  At least on the southeast face of the building, you do have the pool deck creating space between the hotel and the new building.  But I'm probably giving them too much credit that they even thought about it.  It somewhat makes sense that when they may have been (oh who are we kidding?  I'm sure it's "certainly did" versus "may have been") value engineering that was the logical side to do it on.

Regardless, my point is not to defend the architecture--it's agreeably awful--just saying what's on the inside isn't bad, which should count for something.  I guess the Hampton Inn/Homewood Suites is a bit less awful, but similarly not very inspiring.

[Houston19514]

On 12/30/2021 at 9:54 AM, editor said:

It's about the same as L.A., when adjusted for size.  It's slower than Chicago, again when adjusted for size.  Chicago has been issuing permits for three to five new buildings in the 25 to 115-story range each month of the pandemic.

I read the Chicago permits each month, and this is the first month in a very very long time when there hasn't been a filing for a new skyscraper.  If you'd like to keep up on the Chicago action, this is a good place to start.

Here's what's been moving through the permit process since October:

• 28 story residential   Still Proposed
• 73-story residential   Under construction (as it was when first discussed) 
• 38-story residential   Still Proposed
• 30-story residential   Still Proposed
• 45- and 38-story residential    Still Proposed
• 21-story residential   Still Proposed 
• 26-story office   Major lease signed (for offices relocating from a riverfront location at 300 N LaSalle).  Construction expected to start this summer.

Most of the development in Chicago is residential these days because the city has spent the last decade-and-a-half luring corporate headquarters to town.  A bunch of big-name companies that left the city in the 60's through 80's have moved back, (McDonald's, Caterpillar moving to Texas, Walgreens, Hormel) and it's also bringing in corporate headquarters from other cities (Boeing from Seattle moving to Northern Virginia ).

The influx of corporate headquarters spans multiple mayoral administrations.  It's the result of efforts by quangos with 30-year plans.

About six months in, I thought an update might be in order.   See updates in blue, above.

[hindesky]

[Nate99]

Beginning to get the feel for how DG will look once the ES is obscured. 

[bobruss]

From this angle it will look great!

[Nate99]

17 hours ago, bobruss said:

From this angle it will look great!

 

Agree. It will make a great backdrop when facing south.  The ES was very boring, but being set back as far as it was, you had the gap of the parking lot providing the frame for that side of the park as much or more than the ugly box when you were over there. This parcel and the others immediately across the street really add to the atmosphere of the park. The Avenida promenade, The Hilton, Marriott, Hess, OPP and the new Parkside tower give us a nice scope and scale to round out the field of view.

[hindesky]

[hindesky]

I think is the lobby area.

[Nate99]

[Nate99]

[arche_757]

Some thoughts:

1) the Embassy Suites was absolutely V.E.’d.  The original design wasn’t architectural magic, but it was better than what it became.

2) Don’t thank the developers for not buying the whole block because they foresaw a nice future development taking the other 2/3 of the block.  They simply could not afford it or they would have.  And, if they had, there would have been one of two outcomes: a) a more impressive hotel constructed - think Marriott Marquis or Hilton Americas-esque; or b) a surface parking lot for the current hotel in lieu of parking structure.

3) Don’t hate the rinky-dink hotels too much.  Not every hotel can be a Ritz or Waldorf Astoria.  As great as those brands are, they’re not affordable to most folks, and lacking some more business/family scale pricing helps to draw more people into Downtown.

 

I will wager the big oak will get moved into the location (near) the southern most tower crane?  Seems like a big corner and that makes sense.  I could be mistaken, since the base for the crane is a hefty construct itself and removing that might be cost prohibitive?

Edited July 5, 2022 by arche_757

[cityliving]

[hindesky]

[phillip_white]

22 minutes ago, hindesky said:

That pool deck has to be constantly covered in a layer of cement dust.

[j_cuevas713]

On 7/7/2022 at 11:32 AM, cityliving said:

Wow great shot of a lot of the change that has happened over the past few years. I count 13 buildings that have been added downtown in this pic. 

[urbanize713]

[hindesky]

[tangledwoods]

I was not expecting Skanska to bring out curtain wall with that much detail, depth and down right beauty!!!  Their past projects have all been a fairly conservative and simple facade designs but this is amazing.  It looks like they finally decided to build themselves a trophy tower.

[samagon]

On 7/7/2022 at 11:32 AM, cityliving said:

4.5 blocks of surface parking lots in this photo. I wonder how long they last, and what will go in their place?

[X.R.]

2 hours ago, tangledwoods said:

I was not expecting Skanska to bring out curtain wall with that much detail, depth and down right beauty!!!  Their past projects have all been a fairly conservative and simple facade designs but this is amazing.  It looks like they finally decided to build themselves a trophy tower.

Tangled, I think I've seen you reply to construction questions in the past:

Don't they typically test the glass before putting it on the building? It seems like they are moving fast, doesn't it?