Astralis

I'm not sure if this has been updated on other threads but thought I should chime in.

In 2007 I moved into the area after I bought a foreclosure property. Shortly after I bought it the foreclosure crisis kicked in and construction began at this intersection. But since the construction completed over a year (or has it been two years) ago, it is Jan., 2011 as I write this, none of the businesses have returned and in fact many more have closed down SINCE it's been built.

The 1960 area (45 to 249) is dying and could even be considered dead at this point.

There are not enough homes with enough income to sustain middle to high income businesses along FM 1960. If an area that isn't vacant has businesses, you can be sure that they are only cell phone and check-cashing businesses or even massage parlors. There isn't a national chain around that area for miles anymore. Businesses from golf courses and grocery chains have packed up and left and found no reason to return.

Additionally, the intersection has done nothing for traffic. Traffic continues to back-up just as before and the waiting time at the light has actually increased. But traffic since 2007 along this area has actually decreased -- it may be that fewer people who live in the area commute to jobs in other parts of Houston (a bad sign for the economy of a neighborhood in Houston).

It seems like the construction for 1960 was designed by planners who wore rose-colored glasses for the development of the area and fistfuls of cash. But unfortunately, Northwest Houston has become blighted and almost exclusively the domain of low-income housing. There is very little hope that the area will revive as crime increases and properties cease to be developed and updated.

Holy Rosary Church, built in the 1930s, is a traditional stone church in the Romantic style in down/mid-town. It's beautiful, unassuming, and when you walk in, you'll find the unexpected in Houston; iyou've traveled to Europe and visited the old churches, Holy Rosary will take you there. There's also some new construction to some of the auxiliary buildings that were torn down and built in the style of the church with stone. The aux buildings were originally brick buildings that lacked character themselves, no preservationist would miss them. What's taking their place, though, is something that will be worthy to preserve.

The church, though, is not built in the old style. Although they look like stone churches, and they are stone, the frame is steel and there is also insulation, except for perhaps the church which might just be steel and stone. The aux. buildings may have gypsum board in the interior, I'm not sure because they're not finished.

This makes the second of the two small churches in Mid-down that were recently renovated. The other similar-sized Methodist stone church had the stone cleaned on the outside and it's creamy white again - truly a beauty.

The ugliest building by far is the new Houston Federal Reserve. It is so cheap looking and certainly doesn't look like any temple of finance to me. That building should be imploded and they just built it.

I lived in China and when you wanted to build a new concrete structure, you make it modern by placing white tile with patterned tiles on the outside. It looks cheap like putting chrome on a Ford Festiva. The new Houston Federal Reserve building looks like the cheap buildings in China, only worse.

Who is responsible for that piece of crap?