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H-Town Man

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Everything posted by H-Town Man

  1. H-Town Man
    Their rents are probably low due to the pandemic and will go up afterwards, if it ever ends.
  2. H-Town Man
    In most cities, a park like DG would support 20-30 eateries within walking distance, assuming there's any tourism at all. When Block 100 gets developed, it goes from layup to slam dunk.
  3. H-Town Man
    Pretty sure there's something, otherwise it wouldn't have qualified for the DLI incentive.
  4. H-Town Man
    He expanded the boundaries of highrise development in Midtown and future development will be made easier because of it. What he was trying to do - build a bunch of towers between Main and Fannin as if it were Post Oak Boulevard, in an area where solitary figures roam carrying paper bags of who-knows-what - would have been close to a miracle. Doing this during the pandemic when virtually every urban highrise is becoming a distressed property no matter how well located proved to be impossible.
  5. H-Town Man
    Combined with the foreclosure on the rest of their property though?
  6. H-Town Man
    Does Biv really know something or is he just regurgitating old information?
  7. H-Town Man
    That low muttering you hear right now is a bunch of Houston developers saying, "Hope you enjoyed your time in America. Rook."
  8. H-Town Man
    The Rustic is not even comparable to this in land value. Land over there is worth maybe $40-50/SF, a tenth of this. That is why the Rustic is located where it is, in the back of everything, because you couldn't put something like that anywhere else downtown. It is not a question of whether something will do well here. Anything would do well. It's a question of whether it will do well enough to return the cost of the land plus the cost of whatever you build on it. At this location, it will take a very tall building to do that.
  9. H-Town Man
    Hahaha, but only as a plural noun...
  10. H-Town Man
    Here's a little perspective on how far we've come. Photo taken August 2001. Minute Maid Park (then Enron Field) is in its first season, 5 Houston Center and 1000 Main are under construction. Enron, the city's biggest corporation, will start imploding in a month. The city's hopes for a rail system have been dealt another setback with Tom DeLay refusing to allow federal funding for a starter line, although Metro has vowed to build it all with its own funds. Mayor Lee Brown is hoping to build a hotel for the convention center but such ambitions have been tried before and failed to get off the ground. HAIF is about a year from getting started.
  11. H-Town Man
    It's insane that the Burj dwarfs the Eiffel tower by that much.
  12. H-Town Man
    If we get something like Texas Live!, it would be at the bottom of a very tall building. There is no way something like that would be feasible on $400-500/SF land.
  13. H-Town Man
    They don't own the bodega building, which is also a hint that they won't be demolishing it.
  14. H-Town Man
    Like I said, it took public entities to get the ball rolling, as was the case with the convention center, its hotels, and the park. But public entities had a lot to do with the Embassy Suites, because the tax incentives given out made it feasible to construct a building for which the land value was otherwise too high. If no tax incentives were given out, it would have required a bigger, nicer building to make the project feasible given the land cost. That's the tradeoff when you push development forward with tax incentives, rebates, etc. It makes buildings with a lower return feasible, so you get lesser buildings.
  15. H-Town Man
    The best way to ensure that this gets developed to its highest and best use is for it to remain in private hands. He will sell it when he believes its value is maximized, and when that happens, a developer will be forced to build something very big in order to get an adequate return to the land. When public entities get involved is when you end up with stuff like the Embassy Suites, although it did require public investment to get the ball rolling in this neighborhood (but we are past that stage).
  16. H-Town Man
    HCAD shows it owned by Louis Macey (who goes under the name "Current Owner") since I think around 2011. It may have been the city's before that, didn't dig into the sales history of all the parcels. They still may have been in a position to issue an RFP if they had a ground lease agreement, although it would be unusual for the city to be the lessee on a ground lease.
  17. H-Town Man
    If you mean Block 100, that is owned by Louis Macey. He'll sell it when he's good and ready.
  18. H-Town Man
    That may be the case but you always have to take this with a grain of salt. The normal Houston mentality is that anything old is "in bad shape, falling apart." Up in the Northeast there are brick warehouses all over the place that have heavy wooden beams and they are in use, not dried out and falling apart. You would think a humid climate like in Houston would help this sort of thing. Then again, we do have formosan termites that could have gotten to those beams. But it's just hard to trust when this excuse has been used so many times, and our city has a really low IQ in general when it comes to historic building methods.
  19. H-Town Man
    Glad they are finally recognizing the Jawas and all they have contributed to student diversity.
  20. H-Town Man
    Timbers like that have not lost any strength and could easily be used in another building. There are timber framers in Texas who would love something like that.
  21. H-Town Man
    It is just east of where their plan ends... and the historical value of those buildings is pretty considerable, as that is the only place where the Port of Houston resembled something of a traditional port post-ship channel. Those buildings and the bars for the workers along 75th Street (all demolished) figured into Sig Byrd's writings about "port characters." But you are right that it is pretty active Port of Houston property.
  22. H-Town Man
    Has BBP ever said anything about trying to do something with the few remaining wharf buildings around the Turning Basin? The ones on the right bank along Peavey Drive and Foster Street were all demolished over the past 20 years or so but there are still a few remaining on the left bank. I imagine this is insanely expensive land though since it is on the ship channel.
  23. H-Town Man
    Highlights: Nonprofit Buffalo Bayou Partnership and Brinshore Development are planning the first phase of what is to be a 350-unit residential community in the city's East End off of Lockwood Drive near Tony Marron Park. The project, called Lockwood South, would include a mix of multifamily and single-family homes with market-rate and some affordably priced units as well as senior housing. Groundbreaking on the 80-unit first phase is slated for the third quarter, with completion at the end of 2022. Since revealing its master plan in late 2019, the nonprofit group has been busy planning several projects and raising funds for development, including designing improvements for Japhet Creek, Turkey Bend and Tony Marron Park and starting work on the residential portion of Lockwood South. Buffalo Bayou Partnership and Brinshore Development received a green light from the city of Houston’s planning commission April 15 on a variance request needed to move forward with the first phase of Lockwood South, which includes building 80 residential units. About 10% to 15% of those units could be market-rate apartments, Rosenberg said, but it depends on funding rules. Surrounding the residential project, Buffalo Bayou Partnership is adding 9 acres of green space and expanding Tony Marron Park to 43 acres — putting the park just 600 feet away from Lockwood South residences, Rosenberg said. Those expanded parks are expected to be open with phase one of the residential units in December 2022. The second phase of the project, with additional residences and senior living, could open six to 12 months later, he added, so sometime in 2023 or thereafter. Buffalo Bayou Partnership has also earmarked a section of the project for a small mixed-use commercial site such as a clinic or co-op grocery store, Rosenberg said. The partnership is constructing a new street to connect Lockwood Drive to Drenner Street. Elsewhere in the East End, the Houston City Council on April 13 approved a 400-unit affordable housing project at 800 Middle St. near the bayou, the Houston Chronicle reported. The project, a partnership between the city and NRP Group, would replace Clayton Homes, a housing complex the Texas Department of Transportation plans to demolish to make way for its expansion of Interstate 45. Eventually the city, in partnership with NRP Group, envisions having market-rate apartments on-site for a total of 900 units, according to media reports.
  24. H-Town Man
    That is great, Houston has hardly any heavy timber warehouse buildings, which are all over the Northeast. But if they add three floors to this building as shown in the rendering, I'm not sure if that internal structure will be kept.
  25. H-Town Man
    Yes, people are ready to get out and enjoy life. So what? There are still way fewer people than normal out and enjoying life, although Texas is close to normal due to lax restrictions. The fact that the economy is better than it was prior to the pandemic is due to the volume of cash added. You showed me a bunch of graphs that should indicate an economy getting back to where it was, not soaring past it. Certain political views? I don't see this as a political issue.
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