editor

If Embarcadero Center gets to be counted as one building, then Houston Center should be too. That's my position is that frankly, this list needs better quality control.

If you start considering entire districts on the basis of tunnels or skywalks, then downtown and the TMC probably would make a good show, as would downtown Minneapolis. Not sure about how we might stack up against international cities, though.

Probably not well. Some of the subway stations I've seen in Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore connect to 20 or 30 different skyscrapers, and then have sky bridges that go beyond.

Also, Chicago has a pedestrian tunnel system like Houston's called the Pedway. I'm not sure which is larger linearly, but Chicago's buildings in general are taller than Houston's.

FWIW, New York has multiple non-subway tunnel systems, as well. Cincinnati has a skywalk system similar to Minneapolis.

How do you get photos of so many? Walking or driving?

It's a combination of walking and driving. I pick a few spots and drive to them, then walk.

For example, the impetus for this trip was a $9 flight I managed to book on Spirit Air (it was around $35 round trip with taxes).

Flew into LGB early in the early afternoon, rented a car and immediately drove downtown. I'd looked earlier on Google Earth and noticed that almost all of the big architectural activity was along one strip (it usually is in western U.S. cities). So I found a parking garage on the western edge of the strip, and started walking east. When I got to the end of my target zone, I moved in a couple of blocks and walked back, taking the occasional detour to pick up something interesting along the way.

I left Long Beach just as it was starting to get dark, stopped at a Ralph's to pick up dinner and snacks for the next day, and booked myself into a fleabag motel on the Sunset Strip (think Warren Zevon's "Desperadoes Under the Eaves") in Hollywood.

4:00am, I woke up, hopped in my car and drove up to the Griffith Observatory to see if I could do anything with a Los Angeles sunrise. About 6:00am I drove down to the Wilshire neighborhood, another skyscraper corridor I identified on Google Earth, and did the east-west-east thing again. Drove back to the motel, took a shower, packed up, and went to downtown L.A for some more photos. I'd already done a photo safari in downtown L.A. a few months earlier, so this was just picking up some items I'd missed that time. Had lunch, jumped in the car, and drove back to the Long Beach airport for the flight home.

30 hours. 1,000 photos shot. Probably 800 keepers. Since it's the digital age, I overshoot tremendously to make it easier to identify what I'm shooting later on. I always try to get the building's name or address sign in at least one photo. When that's not enough, I can rely on the GPS unit that I velcro to my camera. I also never leave the house without 20 gigs of flash memory in my wallet.

I ended up with 185 keepers in Long Beach. You can see them all on the Southland Architecture (a HAIF sister site) Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Southland-Architecture/39504185879

I recently completed the final treatment with a local Houston area doctor and would reccomend him to anyone in town because of the outstanding service and attention to detail.

It would be kind of nice to have an area of HAIF someone could go to read up on a doctor, car dealer, painter, etc...

Perhaps to avoid any liability with phoney bad reviews written out of spite only allow postings of positive experiences so those businesses and people can get more business from HAIFers who know will know where to go for good service.

The bad things kind of tend to weed out themselves if people know about the good and go there.

Let me know what you all think. I came up with the classifieds section idea and it has worked out pretty well.

I started a thread exactly along those lines once because I was pleased with some consumer product (Woolite spray carpet cleaner with Oxy Power, I think). A bunch of people chimed in with things they were happy with.

I like your idea, but I'm not sure it warrants an entire section. For now, feel free to post your positive reviews in the Houston Retail section. Also, if you are the sort of person who posts reviews on Yelp, let me know and I can link your Yelp and HAIF accounts so that your Yelp reviews are automatically posted to HAIF for everyone here to see.

The Basement Geographer blog clued me in to this video that's been making the rounds lately of Six Flags New Orleans.

SFNO is/was the old Jazzland, and hasn't reopened since Katrina because of a legal dispute over who's responsible for the cleanup (Six Flags owns the park, the city of New Orleans owns the land).

Here's a FEMA photo of the park a couple of weeks after Katrina cleared:

Here's a couple of videos:

Here are some snaps I took in Long Beach, California (south of Los Angeles, on the coast, for those of you unfamiliar with it). They'll pop up on our sister site, Southland Architecture in the next couple of weeks.

http://www.realert.com/headlines.php?hid=74248

"Goddard tried to sell Heritage Plaza three years ago. Market pros thought the property might command as much as $430 million, or $374/sf - a valuation that would have shattered pricing records for Houston office properties. But the market turned down, and Goddard pulled the listing."

DA Seeks First Anti-Gang Injunction in Harris County

(Houston, Tx) - District Attorney Patricia Lykos on Wednesday announced the filing of the first-ever civil injunction action against gang activity in Harris County, as part of a coordinated new offensive to restore public safety in a gang-infested northeast county community.

The public nuisance lawsuit seeks court orders to equip law enforcement officers with special authority to prevent crimes and disrupt organized criminal operations in a 57-acre "safety zone" around the 700-unit Haverstock Hills apartment complex. Defendants are 33 known members of the Crips and Blood gangs.

"The Haverstock Hills neighborhood is a low-income community that has been terrorized by gang members, dope dealers and pimps," Lykos said. "We are sending a message to all criminal gangs to get out of Harris County - we are after you."

Legal action is sought to bar gang members from entering or staying in the designated zone. They would also be banned from associating among themselves or with other gang members. Defendants would not be allowed to display gang "colors" or flash hand signs, or have graffiti-marking items or weapons of any type. They would be prohibited from disrupting traffic or building access, harassing residents, or carrying cell phones or similar devices. The full list of banned items or actions spans nearly three pages of the lawsuit.

Lykos began coordinating a project in January to provide sweeping changes, upgraded services and security for the 2,400 residents there. Haverstock Hills is an attractive and well maintained complex and its management has been active in cooperative crime reduction efforts.

"This has been an amazing collaboration of law enforcement, community leaders, churches, schools and apartment management to tackle a problem in an innovative, creative way," said Kim Ogg, a lawyer who is heading the project for the District Attorney's Office. "Through this process, we are shining a light on the Bloods and the Crips and exposing their actual impact on this community for what it is. They commit more crimes with greater impunity than ordinary criminals. Our lawsuit seeks to protect the law-abiding residents who have been held hostage by criminal gangs for far too long."

Appellate courts have consistently upheld the special sanctions against known criminal gangs targeted by nuisance actions. The lawsuits rely on evidentiary hearings for temporary injunctions until there can be full trials to decide if injunctions should be permanent. Defendants found to be in violation can be punished by up to one year in jail and fine of up to $4,000.

The requested safety zone covers the complex and 11 listed businesses. That area is east of the Eastex Freeway, in the area of Aldine Bender at Lee Road. About 700 children live in the complex, and some of them attend the nearby Aldine ISD elementary school.

Lykos said this lawsuit is just one of the tactics that will be utilized in the strategy to disrupt and dismantle organized crime in the Harris County region.

Announcement of the civil action came at a news conference that included representatives of the Harris County Sheriff's Office, Police Department of Aldine ISD, Office of Congressman Gene Green, and several community organizations and schools.

http://www.globest.com/news/1786_1786/houston/304155-1.html

919 Milam has been sold for almost $60 million.

Houston named 7th most affordable city by Forbes

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39957282/ns/business-forbescom/

San Antonio is #6, Austin #10, OKC #1.

Houston TranStar Introduces Mobile Route Builder

Feature offers smart phone users new option

Houston TranStar has added a version of the Route Builder to its mobile Website to inform commuters about conditions along their routes to work or play.

Smart phone users can now create their routes and view real-time travel times and traffic conditions on Web pages designed for their mobile devices (Windows phones, Blackberries, Android-enabled phones and iPhones). Route Builder uses information collected from sensors along roadways to give motorists travel times and speeds.

"Houston TranStar's Route Builder was a national leader in providing personalized travel information," said David Fink, Assistant Manager of Transportation Management Systems at Houston TranStar. "It started as an option on our Website, and now we've made it available on any smart phone."

To build a route, a smart phone owner starts at http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/mobile and selects a main roadway and cross street as the starting point. The owner continues choosing roads until the destination is reached. The most commonly-traveled routes can be saved for quick access later. Like all TranStar web tools, the Route Builder is a free service for those with a data plan from their Internet or mobile phone provider.

Route Builder is part of TranStar's suite of traffic management services. In 2009, Houston TranStar reduced travel time in the region by more than 11.3 million vehicle hours, saving commuters $47 million in lost fuel costs and a total of $227 million.

Other tools on TranStar's mobile Website include a map with travel times and speeds, camera snapshots, incident information, construction zones, road closures and freeway message signs. Android and iPhone users also can view weather radar on the mobile map.

Houston TranStar is a collaboration between four government agencies that coordinate and enhance transportation and emergency management services in Southeast Texas. The agencies include the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), Harris County, Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County (METRO) and the City of Houston.

Sounds like they want to make it into something like Teterboro (TEB) in the New York area, or Chicago Executive Airport (PWK - formerly Palwaukee Airport). Cater to the business jets that can afford to pay, insted of the airlines that are all tetering on bankruptcy.

I wonder if anyone's contacted TPL Draughon-Miller Central Texas Regional Airport about changing its name.

I wonder why. Do we have more police? Lower temperatures this year?

It sounds likehe's crediting Neighborhood Watch-style groups.

Did anyone else have a poor turnout and you are now faced with the arduous task of eating all the candy?

No turnout at all, so I get to eat it all. Like other posters, I only get the good stuff.

I blame the management of the building I'm in. There's easily a hundred kids of trick-or-treating age, a few of them are even American. Something should have been organized. Other apartment buildings I've lived in before have had organized trick-or-treating followed by a party for the children. Not this place. And from what I've heard, it's not uncommon in the rest of the Seattle area, too.

Yet another example of why even people in San Francisco think of Seattleites as lazy slackers.

Citywide, violent crime in Houston is down more than 12 percent overall for the first three quarters of 2010 when compared to the same time period one year ago. For the first nine months of this year, Murders are down 9.7%, Rapes are down 13.5%, Robberies are down 15.6% and Aggravated Assaults are down 9.2%. In non-violent crime categories during the same time period, Burglaries showed a .6% decrease, Thefts 1.6% and Auto Thefts 13.6%.

Houston Police Chief Charles A. McClelland, Jr. praised the efforts of officers and citizens for the reductions. "With all the challenges we face as a department in tough economic times, to realize a reduction in every major category of violent and non-violent crime is something the officers and citizens should be very proud of," said Chief McClelland. "This is what can occur when citizens in the community work cooperatively with the men and women of HPD. I am convinced we are building trust and forming meaningful partnerships in neighborhoods. There are a number of factors we do not control, but better use of technology, increased police-community relations and strategic deployment of resources has aided us in achieving these results."

The Chief was pleased to report significant strides in the average time it took officers to respond to the highest priority calls for service. The average time to respond to a code 1 emergency call was 4.1 minutes in September, well below the targeted time of 5 minutes.

But I must ask... who the heck listens to the drivel that is called Houston radio?

92% of Americans listen to the radio at least once a week. Only 8% don't listen to radio.

Radio listnership is actually up from 2008 to 2009 by three million people.

There are certain groups of people who claim they don't listen to the radio, but for the most part they're lying because they think it makes them sound cool. To wit, 94% of college students listen to radio in a given week -- more than the national average of 213 million people.

Why would they need a translator?

Because KPHT's signal is marginal in Galveston and Brazoria Counties.

I must ask... do you think this a good thing or a bad thing... in the long run... say... 10 - 20 years from now... do you think this would enhance or detract from our general population's overall IQ.

I think it's kind of pointless. The people who don't like TV news have already left. Newsfix is an attempt to re-gain viewers that never existed. The money would be better spent catering to those people remaining who actually want to get their news from TV.

In addition to it being a bad idea, and the people who were almost solely responsible for pushing this project being fired, I've heard that the lawyers won't give it a green light.

You see, the people who thought this was a good idea are from the "shock jock" school of radio, and have zero experience in television. Well, on the radio you can sample other people's audio with almost no reprocussions. However, translating their shock jock vision to TV means lots of video clips from copyrighted sources. And people WILL sue over those. Every time.

I think 20 years from now there will be, hopefully, fewer options for news. But those options will be better quality. Instead of having dozens of television news channels, we'll have one or two, plus a small group of general-purpose news web sites (or the equivalent). These will be supplemented by many smaller organizations that cater to specific niches or geographic areas.

I think (or rather hope) that in 20 years there will be less distinction between tv/radio/newspaper. Most major news organizations are working hard to make this happen. "The Chronicle" won't be a newspaper, it will be a brand. And you'll get the Chronicle-branded news in your car, on your tablet, or your mobile device. Whatever is most convenient for you.

20 years ago there was a serious mental distinction between broadcast and cable channels in most people's minds. Today that doesn't exist for more than half the population. They don't think of KTRK as a "local" channel and Discovery as a "national" channel. They just know they're two channels with different content streams. I think the same blurring will happen between televison, radio, and newspaper. In fact, I don't understand why the whole tv/radio division still exists today. It's slowly going away in some markets, but not fast enough.

I would like to see newspapers go away. I hope that the revolution the iPad started will be sustained and instead of newspaper boxes dispensing physical papers, we will be able to plonk 50-cents into one and download the day's paper into our mobile device. I know of a number of newspapers that are gearing up for this eventuality, but they're keeping their plans and infrastructure in the background because it would give the unions skidmarks.

A lot of people don't understand that the majority of what holds back the future isn't the media companies. It's legacy deals that they're stuck in, or contracts that they are legally obligated to uphold long after their usefullness is gone. For example, that's the biggest thing that held the full New York Times back from being on the iPad. It wasn't because the editorial side of the company didn't want to provide the content, or make the app successful -- it was the printing side, and the printers unions. The editorial side's philosophy was that the iPad version of the Times should be cheap to encourage lots of people to subscribe to it. The print side of the paper balked at this, and insisted that the electronic version should cost almost the same as the print version for no reason other than to keep up its revenue stream.

Many companies are locked into internal divisions like this, just because they're old, or because the people at the very top are used to doing things a certain way and change doesn't benefit them. When I worked at KHOU, the biggest complaint I heard repeated from management over and over wasn't about the station or the company not wanting to progress, it was that the people at the very top were all still newspaper people, who didn't understand television, and tried to run the television side of the company like it was a newspaper. (KHOU is legally owned by the Belo company, but

effectively owned by the Dallas Morning News.)

Another company I worked for owned dozens of television stations across the country, a huge television production studio in Hollywood, had its own satellite transponders, and a television operation in the nation's capital for beaming news across the country in an instant. When it started a 24-hhour regional cable news channel, was it run by the company's local TV station, which had the #2 news in the market, and was carried on satellite to 72 million households across America? No. The cable news channel was run by the newspaper. And when the company started an internet division with clients like the Oscars, was it placed in the Hollywood studio? No. It was run by a newspaper in the midwest.

It's going to take a half a generation for the bad decision makers at the top of these large media companies to retire and be replaced by people who understand the changes going on. It's not fast enough for technology. It's not fast enough for the general public. But it's the current reality, and just something we will have to deal with. The only thing worse is putting news and media in the hands of the tech companies. Every time this has been tried, it has failed. Living in the heart of dot-com-ville, I know a lot of people in the tech industry. They just don't understand media. They think they do. They think they can reinvent media by writing code that "democratizes" content. But that's now how things work. They try to apply mathematical formulas to people. People are sqishy and wet. They don't usually make sense. Media is about people. And if you can't manage people, whether they're reporters or audiences, then you can't be the media.

I'm sorry... what was the question?

hehe

Anyway, I'm renting and keep buying nice things and thinking I should really finally get renter's insurance. It wasn't a big deal when I was poor and just had a $50 TV, but I'm thinking I'm leaving myself open to a big hit. I think my building is relatively secure, but I have this interior patio that a neighboring unit could just climb onto, and I think it would be pretty easy to discreetly break in through the windows.

There's no reason not to get renter's insurance. I have a ton of renter's insurance, including volcano ("pyroclastic event") coverage, and it's still only $15/month.

Both stations are running 100,000 watts. Obviously, KHPT could use a translator in Lake Jackson.

KTBZ-FM/Houston:

KHPT/Conroe:

I don't know, something just don't look quite right about these photos

It's like the heads were switched.

I'm all in favor of doing science experiments for the sake of science, but certain things I don't understand the point of. This is one of them.

I wrote an article about this a couple of months ago for another pubilcation. I've also talked to a bunch of people involved in the process about it.

The good news is that it probably won't happen. The two people who were backing this are no longer with the company, as part of a much larger, much messier corporate implosion. I don't see it moving forward anymore. Not until the Tribune Company gets things straightened out at its corporate headquarters. That could take a year.

The expansion of the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth is starting:

http://archrecord.construction.com/yb/ar/article.aspx?story_id=151190061

The pastoral lawns around the Kimbell Art Museum are surrounded by signs of construction. Postholes are being dug, trees have been tagged for removal, construction trailers are taking up residence on the Darnell Street parking lot, and the sidewalks are striped in orange and pink spray paint marking utility lines.

Work is about to begin on the $125 million addition designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano.

Renzo Piano did the recently-opened expansion of the Art Institute of Chicago, too. Hopefully Fort Worth will fare better. The modern wing in Chicago is widely regarded as something between a nightmare and a disaster. It's very pretty, but functionally, it just doesn't work.

H&M opening first Texas store at Dallas' NorthPark Center

07:04 PM CDT on Tuesday, October 26, 2010

By MARIA HALKIAS mhalkias@dallasnews.com

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/102710dnbushm.154fc0d.html

It's finally official. NorthPark Center is getting Texas' first H&M store.

The Swedish fast-fashion retailer plans to open a 24,000-square-foot store at NorthPark in the second half of 2011.

...

It's likely that NorthPark won't be the only store H&M opens in Dallas over the next few years. It has about 200 stores in the U.S., including 10 in both Manhattan and Chicago, five in Atlanta and three in St. Louis.

...

In Dallas, it could be moving into the space vacated in January by upscale furniture retailer Robb & Stucky. That two-level furniture store opened in 2006 as part of NorthPark's $225 million expansion.

Known for its low prices, H&M isn't exactly the upscale coup that NorthPark brags about scoring, as it does with its recent Gucci opening. But it battles with Galleria Dallas and a plethora of regional malls and shopping centers in the market to secure the first-in-the market stores, especially if the concept has the cool factor associated with H&M.

...

Great news. And if H&M lands in Dallas, expect TopShop to follow (the British version of H&M).

TopShop has been trying for a long time to open a bunch of locations in New York, but keeps getting the run around from greedy landlords. So it finally got sick of being taken advantage of, and instead of expanding in New York it's looking for other American cities to open stores in. It's already found a place in Chicago. Either Dallas or Houston would seem to be next.