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Pleak

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Everything posted by Pleak

  1. Pleak
    By the way, they started tearing the structure down yesterday or the day before. about 1/3 left. Shame - the left some nice fixtures etc, in there that could have been scrounged - you can see them now with the walls ripped open.
  2. Pleak
    Oppourtunistic cashing out I'm sure. They bought back a trophy property in 2008 when they had money and nobody else could raise money so prices were low. Now prices (especially in Houston) for trophy properties are sky-high - see the recent purchase of the Shell headquarters by the Duncans. So I think it's a case of monetizing a very nice return. I think Hines has been headquartered in the Williams tower ever since they built it. And they haven't owned it for most of the time.
  3. Pleak
    And I seem to remember reading that they bought it for somewhere around $225-250 million back in 2008. Nice little return.
  4. Pleak
    They just opened a new location in Sugarland about 2 months ago. In the parking lot of the mall between JCPenneys and the Methodist Hospital. It's in a building that appears to be cursed as arestaurant location. Ruby Tuesday first built their for their 2nd (or third) failed attempt to break into the area. Then another restaurant opened for about a year, then caught fire. Now this. I know this is a thread about the Heights - sorry for the diversion, but I had no idea who Floyd's Cajun Seafood was until I read this thread. Now I will have to go try it.
  5. Pleak
    Or just stick an icepick in your ears. Same result - massive ear ache.
  6. Pleak
    AAaacck! Where is the puke smilie? Between a ex-girlfriend's brother who thought Getty Lee walked on water and a sophomore English teacher who made us in-depth study Rush - I think I'm going to break out in hives.
  7. Pleak
    Well - considering most of the thread is a diatribe against Interfaith Ministries and their ilk, which by definition includes a lot of Christians (and presumably other faiths - such as Jewish, Muslim - not sure about IM's charter) I would say it is safe to assume that your assumption that most posting on this thread belittling the less fortunate are Christian is 180 degrees wrong. But hey - snarky comments are what HAIF is all about when you don't agree with someone right - just don't insult the trees.
  8. Pleak
    Whew! For a minute I thought you wanted to tear down the Williams Tower itself.
  9. Pleak
    If you want to live in a perfectly controlled idyllic Truman show like environment - go live in Citycentre or the Woodlands. Apparently you (or the developer) can control everything and everybody there. The city is messy. Deal with it.
  10. Pleak
    I had stopped posting in this thread because it had become the same old boring, "people that were here before us but don't look (and smell) like us don't belong here and lower our property values even though we knew they were here when we bought our house" kind of threads but I saw this article today and couldn't pass it up. http://www.khou.com/news/local/Houstons-homeless-population-declines-164589156.html So we have the people that count the homeless (and would want to inflate the number to get more federal funding) saying there are less homeless, but we have indignant Mid-towners swearing they are being invaded by hoards of out-of-state indigent. (which if they are homeless and broke - how did they get the money to drive to Houston?)
  11. Pleak
    How about a huge fan on top blowing a giant thing like used to be in front of all the cell phone stores - that large inflatable sock-think with arms. I have no idea what they were called.
  12. Pleak
    Does anybody have any current pics of what the final plans are? All the links are old and appear to be broken. (at least for me)
  13. Pleak
    Unfortunately, I think the wealthy eccentric Texans are a dying breed. Wish we still had a bunch running around - they kept things interesting. Sure a lot of the stuff they built was gaudy, and financially unsound. But it's the sort of stuff you look back on later with fond remembrance. Instead - all of our wealtlhy Texans seem to now be very sober-minded and concerned about hanging onto their fortunes instead of blowing it on some crazy-a$$ed building or project. And the crazy ones we do have move elsewhere - so we don't even get any good scandals anymore. Like the Goodman heir in Florida that adopted his girlfriend. Or Ana Nicole Smith - they all went somewhere else to go bat-crazy. Houston needs a few rich nut-jobs.
  14. Pleak
    Which has correspondingly driven tirade-posting on HAIF. Which can be entertaining after one frequents a liquor store.
  15. Pleak
    I'm thinking if the Heights had more of them, there would be less worrying about Hardiplank and Wal-mart. But then HAIF would only have 47 posts.
  16. Pleak
    Is this based upon real numbers or just observation of the Midtown neighborhood? Because of the downturn in the economy in the last few years, homelessness has gone up nationwide. That doesn't equate to Houston being a santuary city for the homeless. If you want to see what a real homeless sanctuary city looks like - go to San Diego. Downtown, Gas Lamp District, whole place is full of homeless. Every corner has someone sleeping and you will trip over them if you are not paying attention. The reason is the climate. They will never freeze there.
  17. Pleak
    But, but, but - isn't HPD the department that throws Hispanics into bayous? And arrests mouthy sign-holders for no reason? You're telling me they're afraid of a couple of homeless groups?
  18. Pleak
    I never argued about where to put any charities. I do know that one of the prevailing themes of HAIF is that Houston should become a more walkable city, and that's why Midtown is so wonderful and all, with the rail and all it's new developments is because it's one of the more walkable hoods in Houston. Maybe that's one reason it's so "sticky" for the homeless. Seeing as it was mentioned above that they can't even afford mass transit - maybe they need a walkable neighborhood also. So by creating the desired perfect neighborhood for yourself - your also creating the perfect environment for them. It was mentioned shipping them out to Katy or somewhere - but it's pretty much universally agreed on here that the burbs are not especially walkable - I think they would end up eventually migrating back to your lovely pedestrian friendly area. Y'all have just made it too darn attractive for them. In all seriousness - I think the charities and accompanying homeless will over time be driven out as the $$ continue to come in.
  19. Pleak
    I read it. And my point is you moved into a neighborhood with known problems and now want to foist those problems onto somebody else because they make you uncomfortable. But were you forced at gunpoint to move to Midtown?
  20. Pleak
    Were you born in midtown? Were you raised in midtown? They were there in the 70's-early 90's when the place was dead and nobody wanted anything to do with it. Old abandoned (very cool-looking) houses. Broken streets. No cute train. Only thing around there was the Sears store, a Fiesta which I used to shop at when I went to college and fire-sale stores. Why do you think large parts of midtown in the 70's became Little Vietnam? Because it was cheap real estate and nobody cared when the Vietnamese refugees bought it. They could afford it, and stick together and be generally left alone. Everybody was happy because nobody else wanted the property back then (except the bums). It wasn't until much later that people figured out that the Vietnamese could cook pretty good and it became a cool to go get your bacon-flavored pho. Oops. Wrong thread.
  21. Pleak
    Now that we have the important information settled - they can proceed.
  22. Pleak
    It's a free market. Outbid the charities and buy the land and put up more cheesy townhomes. What's really funny is about 20 years ago, the only people in Midtown were the homeless and the charities who took care of them. It was an unwanted wasteland that everybody quickly drove through to get to downtown. But then it became cool and hip and now the people that were living there (the homeless) are a problem.
  23. Pleak
    I like that ConocoPhillips one. Maybe Phillips 66 will bring back the design when they build their headquarters.
  24. Pleak
    Maybe even with fountains shooting up over the train. That would be kinda cool........
  25. Pleak
    Me thinks there is a bit of a typo in the third paragraph.... "The property sits on .03 acres...." I think that would be a little more than 1300 sq. feet - which seems a tad small of a footprint.
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