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H-Town Man

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Everything posted by H-Town Man

  1. H-Town Man
    I agree, and I believe that this consideration is factored into the 1/100th estimate. Surely the 150,000 people who work downtown must contribute something toward the success of retail? Not very much, but something?
  2. H-Town Man
    Dallas doesn't have anywhere near that, unless they're casting the net really large for "downtown." Using the center of each downtown as the focal point, Houston has higher pop. than Dallas at the 1 mile, 3 mile, and 5 mile radii, as of 2010 census. Try it yourself: http://mcdc2.missouri.edu/websas/caps.html For this magic number of 10,000, I would think the office worker population must contribute something to helping retail, if only a little. Let's say an office worker equals 1/100th of an actual resident (very conservative estimate), since the resident is there 24 hours and the office worker is a typical Houston fuddy-duddy who just goes from car to office to car each day and crawls in the tunnels for lunch. Take the downtown worker population of ~150,000 and that gives you approximately 1,500 souls who occasionally emerge from the HVAC environment and chance a street-level retail experience. Another phenomenon that must be considered is that as there are more downtown residents walking around, more office workers are likely to be lured outside. Right now the downtown worker sees mostly just homeless people from the tinted windows of his car as he drives in and leaves; once he starts seeing a few thousand people-that-look-like-him about, he is more likely to risk fresh air and sun exposure and step outside. So from 1/100th of a resident he soon becomes 1/50th, 1/25th, maybe even someday 1/10th of a resident in his ability to support street retail. Something like this phenomenon is happening in Austin and has happened in Atlanta. And 1/10th would mean 15,000 downtown workers walking our streets.
  3. H-Town Man
    Indeed - those two miles must have been hell.
  4. H-Town Man
    Unless it's a giant Tanzanian Land-tract Tree, but even then, the size of this one is unusual.
  5. H-Town Man
    My post was sarcastic. I was responding to arche_757's complain that this wasn't built in the Energy Corridor, adding to the synergy of buildings over there.
  6. H-Town Man
    Just when you thought the energy corridor was becoming a rich urban environment, they go and ruin it all.
  7. H-Town Man
    If you walk through the ground floor it actually looks even better.
  8. H-Town Man
    Your work is appreciated.
  9. H-Town Man
    Kodak developed the first digital camera, look where they are now.
  10. H-Town Man
    Looks like there's 18 floors left, from 21 floors on Jan. 30th. At this rate it looks like they should be done by July or so.
  11. H-Town Man
    Folks like you are what always made Sears tick - practical, not swayed by image or advertising campaigns. If they had played their cards right I think they might have benefitted from the recession. Look how it helped Dollar General and other discounters. Sad story - I registered at Sears for my wedding a few years ago and got almost nothing from there. Everyone flocked to the other places we registered like Crate & Barrel. We had relatives saying "You're not supposed to register at Sears." Why? Because, well, it's just not, you know, we want the best for you, etc., etc.
  12. H-Town Man
    I wonder when the one on the northeast corner of Westheimer and Post Oak will bite the dust? That is one I would love to see go away.
  13. H-Town Man
    Goes very well with original St. Thomas campus and Menil Collection. Reminds me of Philip Johnson's 1947 Glass House, very crisp homage to the high modern era with some touches to bring it up to date.
  14. H-Town Man
    Couldn't AIG just be doing partial funding for a tower? Don't these things often have multiple backers?
  15. H-Town Man
    Llol (literally laughing out loud)
  16. H-Town Man
    Some of these differences are beside the point. I'd imagine these would be single family homes rather than condos, and it wouldn't be so expensive because it's not so famous. The parking problem could be solved by alleys with garages. No they didn't have cars when it was built, but they didn't have the T either. And Buffalo Bayou will have the hike and bike trails. I think the comparison is apt because, just like Back Bay started, you have this vast tract of land that has opened up near the center of the city, a huge blank slate. If someone has the vision to do it right, it could be similarly renowned someday.
  17. H-Town Man
    Tellez1984, welcome to the forum and congrats on Carl's 4 golds.
  18. H-Town Man
    I'm glad you can sort of admit that the garage front homes don't look very good. The point of my posting the original picture was to make people think about what the KBR site could look like if done right. It's my conviction that many people who buy townhomes lacking in aesthetics in this town do so because they don't have a quality alternative. There is no neighborhood where all the townhomes are done in such a way as to really make a quality street atmosphere like you have in Back Bay, and so it's a case of not knowing what you're missing. This is Houston's weakness - we don't have great historical precedents for townhomes, so we're willing to accept crap, just because it's close and convenient. The KBR site presents a chance for a developer to do it the right way on a massive scale, and really show the rest of Houston what it's been missing. I don't have the money to "pony up" and do it myself, but I'm definitely going to talk about what I think would look good.
  19. H-Town Man
    It's a question between do you want something like this, with human entrances, or this, with car entrances And just so people don't think I only like things that are old, or that I have some bias against Houston's townhome builders, I do think this is somewhat attractive:
  20. H-Town Man
    You're dodging my points and changing what you said. You suggested that the townhomes in Back Bay were probably received the same way today's Houston townhomes are at the time when they were built, as though it's only the passing of time which can make townhomes seem beautiful to the present crowd of critics. I countered that no, the townhomes in Back Bay were not received this way at the time they were built, and that there is an objective aesthetic difference between homes that front the street with garage doors, and homes that front the street as the Back Bay homes do, with human entrances. The former will always create a more hostile and less attractive street environment, all else being equal. You are welcome to try to refute these points, but the practice of simply requoting my question without answering it leaves me to assume that you aren't able to.
  21. H-Town Man
    They were actually quite well received at the time, and what was there before was marsh.
  22. H-Town Man
    And about 99% of the world.
  23. H-Town Man
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like they're removing about a floor a week. I wonder if this delays the March excavation start.
  24. H-Town Man
    Are you suggesting that in 150 years we'll look at streets lined with garage entrances as nostalgically as we look at these?
  25. H-Town Man
    Is there any reason why something like this couldn't happen? I mean in terms of possibility, not probability.
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