H-Town Man

The reason that a residential population is so important to retail is more about evenings and weekends.  Most retail businesses do a high percentage of their volume on weekends and are generally reluctant to open in areas that they don't generate that volume.  Very difficult to be profitable as a retailer off of daytime, weekday business.

 

Look at Wall Street which has an extremely dense office population, but virtually no residential in the immediate area. It has a much lower retail presence than the rest of Manhattan and virtually all businesses located there close on weekends.

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?

I think you're right and believe that the city has been doing the right thing by focusing on residential incentives to get the population up.  The retail demand will come with the population.  I'd be really surprised though if the downtown population gets even close to 25-50k in the near ten years.  Consider that the population of Midtown isn't even 10,000 yet and that's been developing for years.

true.. i didnt really give a time frame, though id like that to be achieved sooner rather than later (20 years or so?). ive heard Dallas has like 40,000 people living downtown (though maybe they were using that dallasified stretching of boundaries to boost numbers, by including uptown and the surrounding residential areas into "downtown"). if true, id imagine a lot of that has to do with them having so much empty office space they had to convert a number of buildings over to residential.. hopefully a problem Houston never has.

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.

Well not really. The Heights is a mile or so west of Houston Ave and "Texasota" is correct, Washington Ave is the southern boundry of the Heights. Heights State Bank was on Washington Ave for decades at the southern entrance to the Heights. Think back if you were living in Houston at the turn of the century (the one before last), and you were going to visit a relative in the Heights, your journey would have been out Washington Ave, past the cemeteries and various other buildings and landscapes. As you got close to Heights Boulevard you saw a two story building up ahead, you knew you were getting close to the Heights........at last!, but wait, this was only the entrance road, you still had to travel several blocks up Heights Bouleavrd before you actually got close to your relatives house.

Aren't you glad we have freeway's now?

Indeed - those two miles must have been hell.

tracts of land this large don't just grow on trees you know.

Unless it's a giant Tanzanian Land-tract Tree, but even then, the size of this one is unusual.

This is not on the EC, this is the newly designated West Belt sub market; which has always been a collection of isolated suburban office parks.

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.

Too bad on the location. Could have attached to something Memorial/Energy Corridor like at least.

Just when you thought the energy corridor was becoming a rich urban environment, they go and ruin it all.

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

If you walk through the ground floor it actually looks even better.

More broadly, including this, I just posted in about five different threads with pictures I took of stuff going on around downtown on big projects that I walked by at lunch. 

 

Your work is appreciated.

I sort of worry about that... more in the sense that we could be this centuries Detroit when we find something to kick-start the "post oil" movement.  But then I realize its likely Exxon/Chevron/BP and others will be the leaders behind that movement... down the road 40 or more years.

Kodak developed the first digital camera, look where they are now.

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.

Actually KMart bought Sears. KMart Holdings then changed it's name to Sears Holdings. Not that it makes a difference now, they are both endangered species.

I've shopped at both this Sears and the one in Texas City. I find everything I need. It is convenient to park and pay.

I've been inside a Target a time or too. Never found anything I wanted to purchase. They don't have tools, automotive, hardware, appliances, or anything that I want to but..............except for their popcorn. So go ahead and build your Target store, so that one more middle aged guy can drive by it on his way to Sears.

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.

That's great news. All along Post Oak, the one story retail centers are doomed. That land is just too expensive for low density.

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.

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.

Couldn't AIG just be doing partial funding for a tower? Don't these things often have multiple backers?

Its not arcane. Why would you have tons if parking in a square?

I swear some of you act like you have never left Texas.

The point of the town square is for the pedestrian outdoors experience. Unlike life centers where you drive from store to store.

There is a name for squares with parking. It's called a parking lot, and downtown has dozens of those.

Enrich your lives. Take a trip. Visit other cities, feel how welcoming these tiwn squares are and how they enrich the memory of your visit.

Houston s number one attraction is the ugly AF Galleria Mall which is.... a mall. His memorable. I went to the 4th largest city in the US last week. It was fun. We went to the mall. Wow.

Llol (literally laughing out loud)

The Back Bay is an awesome neighborhood but there's no way a developer could replicate it today in Houston. Most of those buildings were built as single family homes and only later converted to condos. Several are still single family and can run $10 million plus. Heck, a nice BASEMENT studio on Commonwealth or Beacon can run you $400,000... for a studio.

Additionally, the entire neighborhood was built before cars were on the road. Today, parking is a major hassle and an expensive one at that. If you aren't lucky enough to have a dirt spot in an alley, then you're looking at paying $500+ a month in a restrictive garage (in and out policies enforced) or dealing with street parking, towing, street cleaning schedules, and hundreds if not thousands of dollars of parking tickets a year.

Of course, that neighborhood is much more pleasant to live in without a car than anywhere in Houston. Walking in Boston is a joy compared to most of Houston. Plus, all 4 T lines are within walking distance, the Back Bay/South End Station with commuter rail and AMTRAK service is right next to Copley Square, and the Charles River has hike/bike trails that make getting to the Financial District or Cambridge a breeze.

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.

Please excuse the quality, taken with my phone.

image (5).jpeg

image (4).jpeg

Tellez1984, welcome to the forum and congrats on Carl's 4 golds.

I never said I liked townhomes with front loader garages. Nor do I like Randall Davis' Renoir, Meteopolis, etc. However, many of the buildings such as the mid rises and highrises today will be ok as the city in-fills. I've walked DC, Chicago, NYC etc and they have a lot of ugly (IMHO) buildings and row houses that you don't notice as much since there are so many buildings. Look, I love Houston, and wish builders could understand that people will pay for quality. Still, Perry Homes made Bob Perry a gazillionaire, so not everyone cares about aesthetics like you or I. Some people just want location and square footage.

If you or I don't like what people are building, we either have to pony up the money and build it ourselves, or quit griping about it.

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.

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:

All the "bland" (per so many comments) townhomes, apartments and office buildings in general will disappear into the ciry fabric as a whole once Houston is completely in-filled. And in 150 years that should done. Of course, it's highly unlikely I will be around to see it!

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.

As those were being built, people probably griped about how they didn't fit in, weren't the right style, shouldn't have replaced what was there before, etc.

They were actually quite well received at the time, and what was there before was marsh.

Sad. For 75% of America, including myself, that would have been considered a dream home.

And about 99% of the world.

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.

As those were being built, people probably griped about how they didn't fit in, weren't the right style, shouldn't have replaced what was there before, etc.

Are you suggesting that in 150 years we'll look at streets lined with garage entrances as nostalgically as we look at these?

Is there any reason why something like this couldn't happen?

I mean in terms of possibility, not probability.