downtownian

It honestly doesnt look "bad", especially in this light.

 

I just hope something more has done to add any sort of brick that i feel like we were promised.

Let there be stick-a-brick:

Close to completing that floor:

In that picture (#384), whats the building in front of the JW Marriott, with the crown? It looks awesome. I'm still trying to learn all these different buildings

That's the Gulf Building (now the JP Morgan Chase Bank Building). It was constructed in 1929 and designed by Alfred Finn, Kenneth Franzheim and J.E.R. Carpenter. Jesse H. Jones served as developer. It is 36 stories, 450-feet tall and was tallest building in Houston from 1929-1963.

Source: AIA Houston Architectural Guide, third edition

Also, Texas Monthly named four Market Square bars to its list of the top ten best new bars in Texas.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/eat-my-words/list-where-eat-and-drink-2014

More details on the coffee shop opening up at 300 Main Street. I'm hopeful this gives downtown more of a neighborhood feel since the only existing coffee shops are Starbucks, Minuti and Ben's Beans. It will be New Orleans style so you can get coffee in the morning, a sandwich in the afternoon and a drink at night.

http://houston.culturemap.com/news/restaurants-bars/02-17-14-downtown-gets-a-new-hip-coffee-shop-is-houston-ready-for-a-new-orleans-style-cafe/

Probably tougher since there's a little bit of street parking for Kirby Lofts.

At the Main Street TIRZ meeting, they ruled out closing off the north bound side precisely because of this reason (vehicles needing access to the front of a residential building)

This picture of 806 Main was featured as part of the top story on Bloomberg today. There is nothing really about Houston in the article, I was just excited to see that corner featured in national media:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-06/hedge-funds-preparing-for-1-trillion-property-bill-mortgages.html

I went to the Main Street TIRZ meeting this evening. Largely uneventful as they only have a budget of $9mm and have to make repair and small upgrades to the entire length of downtown Main Street (although the landscaping will look nice). In this photo of their South Downtown streetscape, there is a rendering of the renovated Holiday Inn. Not sure if the actual hotel rendering is from the actual owner:

This project and others will make walking from the red line to Minute Maid Park much more enjoyable. Coming from Main Street and walking east: 806 Main, 1111 Rusk, the US Post Office Building and the upcoming High School for Performing and Visual Arts. If you make a left on Austin, you'll be at the 28-story residential then the Finger apartments then the ballpark.

As of February 2:

Here are some high definition close ups of the stars for everyone:

They added stars beneath the row of detail. Also, I'm not sure why they were able to remove the top detail after receiving $7.4mm in financing from the City.

I hope they budgeted $55mm for the Jeff Koons Balloon Dog in the first picture.

Low res pic but there are lights on in two of the units on the north side:

It's a beautiful building, the kind modern faux loft buildings try to look like. A shame about those cracks; in Chicago about 2/3 of the city is load bearing brick and they're doing fine, I wonder if the soil is different.

Who almost tore it down in 2009?

Harris County almost demolished the building to make room for 27 parking spaces, which I wish was a joke. Luckily preservationists were able to stop the County's plans. Also, there have been three failed auctions for the building with the most recent in 2010 I believe.

http://www.chron.com/business/sarnoff/article/Historic-downtown-building-can-find-no-love-1697833.php

Nothing to report here but was walking by the building today and thought it would make an excellent loft conversion (image below). 500 Crawford (apartments at ballpark development) is two blocks to the east and the downtown development map shows a 28-story residential building by Marquette Land going up one block to the east. If this building converted to lofts, it would make for three consecutive blocks of residential. The ground floor of the building looks like its perfect for retail.

However, there are major structural issues with the property and it was almost demolished in 2009:

"It could cost $4.7 million to resolve the warehouse's structural issues, according to an August 2008 engineering report. "The problem with the [Hogan-Allnoch] building is that the brick is load-bearing brick," Ellwood says. "Unfortunately, with the settling of the earth, the building basically has been compromised. There are pretty substantial cracks going all the way from the bottom to the top." http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/2009/todays-news/houston-spares-two-buildings.html

The building is four stories and 50,000 square feet. Assuming that just the top three stories are converted to residential, the structural costs would be $125 / square foot before updating and interior improvements. My estimate of the all-in 1111 Rusk conversion is ~$230 / square foot. I'm not familiar with the costs of residential conversions but am wondering if this is a viable project if Harris County gave away the building for free and Houston provided Chapter 380 incentives.

http://www.arch-ive.org/houston/texas1311/hoganallnoch.jpg

Pearl Hospitality has picked the chef for the hotel's restaurant. I'm excited because it is someone local that also has experience at Per Se and has been involved with the Clumsy Butcher group. Hope this works out because Downtown could use a flagship fine dining restaurant.

http://blog.chron.com/foodchronicles/2014/01/erin-smith-tapped-as-executive-chef-of-houstons-new-jw-marriott/

Or you could be a real estate reporter like Houston19514 suggested the other day! I mean the last HBJ weekly article I got from was a cut and paste of GHP's 2014 regional job forecast presentation. I mean it's $100 a year and that's the best they can do! You could do a much better job Urbannizer. Swamplot seems to be the bottom of the barrel now just posting whatever will get the most knee jerk reactions, and Nancy never follows up on a project so they either die and no one knows about it or they are just miraculously done(unless it's Exxon then it's aerials for days). You're information is always a lot better, Urbannizer.

Agree. Urbannizer, you should either start a blog and sell advertising similar to Swamplot or become a reporter. If you started a blog, I would read it daily.

I think there is either a typo in the table below or the Downtown District Dec 2013 Meeting Notes PDF posted in the Retail District topic. The meeting notes states that Marquette is developing residential at block 52 (over by Minute Maid Park) instead of block 42 in the table below which is by Market Square.

From page 6:

(i) approve and authorize execution of an agreement with Marquette Companies for a Chapter 380 reimbursement grant for the proposed residential development of 1400 Texas (Block 52) in an amount equal to 75% of the assessment paid to the District and 75% of the property tax paid to the City based on the delta between the HCAD value for Block 52 as of January 1, 2012 and the HCAD value upon completion of the project and thenceforward as reassessed by the District in future Service and Improvement Plans for up to 15 years;

Pretty close, we're at 2,355 units. The 463-unit project will push that total to 2,818 units, but they are looking at raising the cap.

We're also discussing the move here. There is a Houston Eater article that states the original location is closing:

http://www.houstonarchitecture.com/haif/topic/27765-market-square-return-dt-to-glory/page-2

Not on Market Square but not too far away on Main Street...

 

Bisnow reports that Prohibition Bar leased 15k SF at the McCrory Building (1008-1010 Prairie, at Main).

Prohibition is closing their Galleria location in order to make the move (http://houston.eater.com/archives/2013/12/05/the-shutter-43.php). As much as I would like to see more restaurants and bars decide to move downtown from elsewhere in Houston, I'm not thrilled about Prohibition. The rule of writing good fiction also applies to bars: "Show, don't tell." Compare Prohibition which "tells" you its concept through 1) its name; 2) having its bartenders and servers in costume; 3) having a picture of Al Capone up to much more tasteful speakeasy-style bars in NYC like PDT and Death & Co. or our best hometown speakeasy-style bar, Captain Foxheart's Bad News Bar & Spirit Lodge

Terrible. I was looking forward to walking by the station every day. The block deserves much better: BG Group Place, the new JW Marriott, the new 609 Main office and the 1929 Gulf Building all surround the station.

Bad News Bar is the second floor of 300 Main with balcony. I heard that Trigger Happy will be in the same building but a different floor.

Also: Captain Foxheart's Bad News Bar and Spirit Lounge which is my favorite bar on the block. There's still a few to come: El Big Bad is opening in November, Trigger Happy, a beer bar, is under development and there is an unnamed concept at the northeast corner of the block in a large space.

Does anyone know the plan for the building next door? I'm assuming additional rooms but not sure what it will look like. They recently started removing windows: