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WestMont: Mixed-Use Development Coming To Montrose


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14 hours ago, zaphod said:

What I see the in the rendering is a big stairway that will probably be value engineered out of existence, and a big interior courtyard with all the current trendy stuff like wood siding that will look goofy in 10 years. People ain't going up there with their dogs, not to visit the one super expensive creperie or designer purse store that goes out of business 6 months later.

 

I've visited developments like this in person and they are usually really disappointing. Like Seaholm in Austin. There's nothing interesting there and it seemed like current tenants were struggling, and the whole time I was walking around people were staring at me like I was trespassing. Uptown Dallas has a lot of overbearing weird glassy towers hulking over dead streets with too much car traffic too. Compare the vibrancy of more traditionally urban streetscapes and there is no comparison.

 

I wouldn't mind if they just built a wide tree-lined sidewalk, then did some mixed-use with GFR and hotel/office/residential above, and put a parking garage behind it all or underground. No opening up to an interior courtyard. The best urban environments in the world are just big sidewalks with zero-setback mixed-use buildings and no interior plazas (most of Paris, London, New York, etc.). The intersection is your plaza.

 

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15 hours ago, zaphod said:

Does anyone think this thing embodies bad urban planning principals?

 

 

 

I think pretty much the exact opposite.

 

Like most American cities, Houston suffers from overly wide rights of way. Distance between facades near this project on both Westheimer and Montrose is 90 feet or more. It's very difficult to create a low-stress pedestrian-focused environment when the RoW is so wide. One of the very few ways to create human-scale pedestrian areas, therefore, is within large blocks. (See the Laneways development in Midtown, for example.) 

 

The other thing you see with this layout is that the central courtyard is much more like a traditional European square than it is an American park, since it's surrounded on all sides with buildings, not streets. This gives it a much more intimate, quiet feel. And the grade separation from the two busy roadways should help.

 

Finally, all of this doesn't come at the expense of a hostile streetscape. The outside-facing facades appear to be transparent and activated, and the setbacks are right up against the pedestrian realm. And at this address, they should be able to find tenants for the retail. Even the parking is underground or otherwise hidden from view. 

 

Some of the materials and massing might not be entirely to my taste, but from an urbanism standpoint, it's pretty outstanding.

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15 minutes ago, Angostura said:

 

 

I think pretty much the exact opposite.

 

Like most American cities, Houston suffers from overly wide rights of way. Distance between facades near this project on both Westheimer and Montrose is 90 feet or more. It's very difficult to create a low-stress pedestrian-focused environment when the RoW is so wide. One of the very few ways to create human-scale pedestrian areas, therefore, is within large blocks. (See the Laneways development in Midtown, for example.) 

 

The other thing you see with this layout is that the central courtyard is much more like a traditional European square than it is an American park, since it's surrounded on all sides with buildings, not streets. This gives it a much more intimate, quiet feel. And the grade separation from the two busy roadways should help.

 

Finally, all of this doesn't come at the expense of a hostile streetscape. The outside-facing facades appear to be transparent and activated, and the setbacks are right up against the pedestrian realm. And at this address, they should be able to find tenants for the retail. Even the parking is underground or otherwise hidden from view. 

 

Some of the materials and massing might not be entirely to my taste, but from an urbanism standpoint, it's pretty outstanding.

 

I think this is an interesting post but I don't see why a façade distance of 90 feet is a problem in this context. Montrose and Westheimer are major boulevards, hence one would expect "grand boulevard" urbanism rather than "intimate neighborhood" urbanism. Façade distances on Parisian boulevards are often well in excess of 90 feet, with Boulevard St. Germain at 100 feet and Champs d'Elysees at 210 feet.

 

It is true that Houston developers are primarily turning inward (or an outward/inward hybrid) in their urban developments as with Laneways as well as the Zadok jewelers building and Montrose Collective. I think this is partially due to a lingering "fear of the street" that is exacerbated by our lack of zoning. But it also seems like a mini-version of the larger all-in-one urban environments built by a single developer that try to provide everything and end up as false, self-contained bubbles.

 

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1 hour ago, H-Town Man said:

 

I wouldn't mind if they just built a wide tree-lined sidewalk, then did some mixed-use with GFR and hotel/office/residential above, and put a parking garage behind it all or underground. No opening up to an interior courtyard. The best urban environments in the world are just big sidewalks with zero-setback mixed-use buildings and no interior plazas (most of Paris, London, New York, etc.). The intersection is your plaza.

 

 

Agree with the general premise, but interior courtyards are one of the more fun urban conditions in cities, at least the ones I've visited from Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, to London, Paris, and Rome. There is a special kind of feeling when you stumble into an interior courtyard that is a refreshing refugee from all the noise on the street (and I'm a guy that loves the noise of city streets). Theres a unique sense of discovery when you walk into spaces like these. Houston has moments like this as well, but just with low rise residential and commerical, so its not out of the realm of possiblity, and these spaces are successful. What makes this property unique more than others is the fact that people do actually walk this intersection/area of Montrose. Its one of the few areas in the city with some elements of foot traffic in the traditional sense. Once again, completely agree with the general premise, but interior courtyards shouldn't be dismissed.

 

36 minutes ago, Angostura said:

 

 

I think pretty much the exact opposite.

 

Like most American cities, Houston suffers from overly wide rights of way. Distance between facades near this project on both Westheimer and Montrose is 90 feet or more. It's very difficult to create a low-stress pedestrian-focused environment when the RoW is so wide. One of the very few ways to create human-scale pedestrian areas, therefore, is within large blocks. (See the Laneways development in Midtown, for example.) 

 

The other thing you see with this layout is that the central courtyard is much more like a traditional European square than it is an American park, since it's surrounded on all sides with buildings, not streets. This gives it a much more intimate, quiet feel. And the grade separation from the two busy roadways should help.

 

Finally, all of this doesn't come at the expense of a hostile streetscape. The outside-facing facades appear to be transparent and activated, and the setbacks are right up against the pedestrian realm. And at this address, they should be able to find tenants for the retail. Even the parking is underground or otherwise hidden from view. 

 

Some of the materials and massing might not be entirely to my taste, but from an urbanism standpoint, it's pretty outstanding.

 

Again agree with the general premise, but will say this is more akin to traditional european interior court yards than squares, but they are both very similar. The concept of the interior courtyard or atrium would actually work with the climate here very well too.

 

17 hours ago, architeckton said:

 

Well said. I also agree with what you've said. This is most likely at the end of their SD phase. It's most likely going through a round of schematic pricing to see roughly where the cost is. Then it'll more through value engineering. I expect to see another round of renderings after this that have a little more realism to the materials and structural realities (looking at you 50 ft cantilever).

 

Depends on the architect, right? I don't know this architects work very well so I don't know if they know how to do these kinds of cantilevers as well as the curvy glass within the cantilever (looks very Thomas Heatherwick or Herzog de Meuron). Again, agree with you as well, even if they just built the first 4-5 stories this would be a success. With this being such prime real estate though I can imagine something marquee with cantilevers going here.

Edited by Luminare
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4 minutes ago, Luminare said:

 

Agree with the general premise, but interior courtyards are one of the more fun urban conditions in cities, at least the ones I've visited from Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, to London, Paris, and Rome. There is a special kind of feeling when you stumble into an interior courtyard that is a refreshing refugee from all the noise on the street (and I'm a guy that loves the noise of city streets). Theres a unique sense of discovery when you walk into spaces like these.

 

I agree - these tend to be like a "quiet from the storm" when there are busy pedestrian thoroughfares outside. We don't really have the storm yet, but we are building these inner plazas right and left (see my last post). You could end up with a similar phenomenon to that of back yards sucking the life out of front yards and the street. Houston is transitioning from a city of private environments to the slow emergence of a public environment, but we are hesitant to fully make that transition.

 

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20 hours ago, H-Town Man said:

 

I think this is an interesting post but I don't see why a façade distance of 90 feet is a problem in this context. Montrose and Westheimer are major boulevards, hence one would expect "grand boulevard" urbanism rather than "intimate neighborhood" urbanism. Façade distances on Parisian boulevards are often well in excess of 90 feet, with Boulevard St. Germain at 100 feet and Champs d'Elysees at 210 feet.

 

 

 

Yes, there are wide streets in these places, and one would expect streets like Westheimer and Montrose to be relatively wide, but if you take a few steps off of one of the grand avenues in Paris, and you'll find yourself on streets that are 30 feet or less between facades. There are no such streets in most American cities. 

 

Take rapidly-densifying EaDo: all the streets are 70-ft ROW, plus a 5-ft building line (mininum), which means the distance between facades is never much less than 80 feet, almost 3X that of a typical pre-19th century side street. So the ONLY place you can put this kind of space is internal to a development.

 

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3 hours ago, Angostura said:

 

 

Yes, there are wide streets in these places, and one would expect streets like Westheimer and Montrose to be relatively wide, but if you take a few steps off of one of the grand avenues in Paris, and you'll find yourself on streets that are 30 feet or less between facades. There are no such streets in most American cities. 

 

Take rapidly-densifying EaDo: all the streets are 70-ft ROW, plus a 5-ft building line (mininum), which means the distance between facades is never much less than 80 feet, almost 3X that of a typical pre-19th century side street. So the ONLY place you can put this kind of space is internal to a development.

 

 

This is a fair point although I'm not sure if a plaza that mostly exists to draw patrons to expensive shops will effectively take the place of the narrow medieval side streets of Paris with their proletarian feel. Perhaps in a hundred years the side streets of Montrose will be densely built with short façade distances. But I see that there is a need for respite from a busy boulevard. I just worry that this development will turn its best face inward (retailers typically hate having multiple entrances due to security concerns) and it will end up like Houston Pavilions.

 

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47 minutes ago, HoustonIsHome said:

I understand fully what you mean by the quiet from the storm having recently visited New Orleans. Those courtyard restaurants and stores are a welcomed reprive from the jubilant atmosphere on Royal and Bourbon streets. 

 

For such a dirty, smelly and wild neighborhood, the intimacy In the design is magical

 

Good point, although those are even more intimate than this will be. If we can get some genuine courtyard restaurants with outdoor seating, they can build plazas all day long as far as I'm concerned. Of note, the French Quarter is one of those few American places that has the 30' distance between facades that Ango is talking about. A far cry from the downtown Houston historic district's 75'. Those French...

 

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  • 5 months later...
  • The title was changed to WestMont: Mixed-Use Development Coming to Montrose (1001 Westheimer)

From the Chronicle article today

Quote

The 44,000-square-foot shopping center at 1001 Westheimer dates back to 1937 when it was the Tower Community Center, according to Preservation Houston. Houston City Hall architect Joseph Finger designed the center to complement the adjacent Tower Theater. In the 1980s, its Art Deco facade was covered by stucco.

 

Why do we insist on covering all interesting architecture up?

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I wonder what is going to happen to the tenants that are there now and their leases? I agree about covering up original facades with unattractive coverings, maybe the architects will incorporate some of the old Art Deco design into their new development?

Edited by cityliving
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I am beyond excited about this corner of houston getting the attention it deserves! I vote for no mattress store to reopen and for Half Price Books to take over that kooky building between Smoothie King and Snooze...(or somewhere else cool as i love Half Price Books and want it to have a cool new home)

 

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55 minutes ago, gene said:

I am beyond excited about this corner of houston getting the attention it deserves! I vote for no mattress store to reopen and for Half Price Books to take over that kooky building between Smoothie King and Snooze...(or somewhere else cool as i love Half Price Books and want it to have a cool new home)

 

I saw a sign for another medical Emergency Room coming to that spot between Smoothie King and Snooze.

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15 minutes ago, clutchcity94 said:

I saw a sign for another medical Emergency Room coming to that spot between Smoothie King and Snooze.

 

I hope it is the existing one in the mentioned center relocating since their lease is up...

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I hope Skanska puts A LOT more thought into the pedestrian experience and overall design than they did at Capitol Tower (not that whatever this becomes will be at the scale of a Downtown Tower). They REALLY need to step it up to Hines, Midway, Hanover, and Radom levels of thought and design.

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20 minutes ago, J.A. said:

I hope Skanska puts A LOT more thought into the pedestrian experience and overall design than they did at Capitol Tower (not that whatever this becomes will be at the scale of a Downtown Tower). They REALLY need to step it up to Hines, Midway, Hanover, and Radom levels of thought and design.

Exactly recognize you have a opportunity to do something that could define Montrose for the next 50 years . The goal should be something bold that stands out.

Edited by Moore713
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19 minutes ago, J.A. said:

I hope Skanska puts A LOT more thought into the pedestrian experience and overall design than they did at Capitol Tower (not that whatever this becomes will be at the scale of a Downtown Tower). They REALLY need to step it up to Hines, Midway, Hanover, and Radom levels of thought and design.

I think the Capitol Tower is actually quite nice in terms of pedestrian experience.  The opening into Understory is clear and quite inviting.  It lacks the same opportunities for ground floor tenants as 609 Main, but I think the design was mean to engage the surface with the tunnel space below.  Skanska's "tunnel space" connects with the ground level in a way that I haven't seen with other structures Downtown.  I would not peg the Capitol Tower design as lacking thought. It just engages the ground level differently than more traditional retail rings.

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30 minutes ago, KinkaidAlum said:

Just googled Skanska residential. Mostly midrise but a new mixed-use high rise in Seattle is going up. Their projects look safe. Nothing bad but nothing great.

 

Capitol Tower is pretty damn safe too. I'm not expecting too much. Not Radom caliber.

Edited by H-Town Man
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