H-Town Man

On 5/9/2022 at 9:18 AM, texan said:

http://www.downtowntirz.com/downtownhouston/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Board-Book-4-12-22.pdf

Cost information has been added to the original document packet sent to the FHWA. Additionally, two more exhibits were added that discuss the future of Pierce Elevated and effects on parks on the west side of downtown. 

Starts off pretty well but I can't believe they really want to keep the Pierce Elevated structure. Thinking of cities around the world, I can't think of any great neighborhood where multiple levels are anything but detrimental, whether they be transportation levels, park levels, etc. You invariably ruin the ground level when you build levels above it, and you may or may not get something nice above it (usually not). Something thin like the Highline (NY) or the Katy Trail (Dallas) is one thing, but a large structure that casts a shadow below it is a whole different animal. It has proven so difficult for Houston to learn how to just activate the street level environment that it boggles my mind that they think they're going to activate the street and also activate an old freeway structure above it and somehow integrate the two in a vibrant way. That is like trying to do quantum mechanics before you have mastered Newton's laws of motion.

Also, the plans for Buffalo Bayou on the West side seem similarly misguided. Building a signature bridge for the downtown connector should be a no-brainer. Expecting people to go to a market plaza underneath the downtown connector with all its traffic noise... I just can't believe it.

1 hour ago, samagon said:

I'm thinking the grass is the right answer. especially since original listings for permits were for "hotel invasive ground cover that mimics grass" that was before the marketing folks stepped in.

in a bit more seriousness (but not really), isn't the grass named after the city in Florida, which is named after Augustine of Hippo? so whether the hotel is named after the grass, the town in Florida, or the Saint, since they are all named after each other, isn't it all the same?

In my last post I mentioned that I thought the grass was indeed named after the city in Florida. Also the city of Austin, Texas, is named after Stephen F. Austin, whose distant ancestor probably got his name from being raised in an orphanage run by Austin monks, otherwise known as Augustinian monks, who took their name from St. Augustine (of Hippo).

2 hours ago, august948 said:

You may be right, and I'd certainly vote for St Augustine grass, but I don't usually credit developers/businesses for putting deep thought into things like this.  So, theologians yes, but I suspect due entirely to the presence of the university and not one iota due to the impact St Augustine made.  I'd bet that they considered calling it the St Thomas originally but backed off to avoid any fights with the university.

Well... you can't really separate anything named "Augustine" from the impact that St. Augustine made. That impact is why things are still being named after him 16 centuries later. Or named after things that were named after him (like the grass is probably named after St. Augustine, Florida, which was named after him). Plus all the things named "Austin" are named after him or someone/something named after him (Austin was the medieval English shortening of Augustine).

My posts here are a little tongue-in-cheek. I don't think the developers of this hotel are having seminar discussions on City of God, etc.

According to some players in the industry, yes.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/new-texas-oil-boom/

Question is, how long will it take for debts to be paid off, etc., before things really ramp up? I'm guessing the first effects will be in retail and high-end residential sectors as current execs get more money in their pockets, while significant employment growth (and effects on office sector) don't start until next year.

11 hours ago, august948 said:

You may have overthought this one...apparently Hotel St Cecilia was named so because she is the patron saint of music. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/travel/02checkin.html

I would guess, then, that Hotel St. Augustine is being named for a similar reason.  St Augustine is the patron saint of brewers, printers, and theologians.  Make of that what you will...😉

Since there is no brewery or large printing press nearby, but there is a university with theologians nearby, I'm guessing it's theologians... which pretty much dovetails with what I said before. St. Thomas and St. Augustine are the two greatest theologians in the Catholic tradition.

It COULD still be St. Augustine grass, but I'm not seeing much of that in the renderings....

16 hours ago, Big E said:

What every one is missing here is that, even if we switched to nothing but clean energy tomorrow, oil would still still be the most important resource in the world, because nearly everything we have was made with oil. Anything with plastic or rubber in it? Oil. Paint? Oil. it would be easier to name the things not an ounce of oil went into than to name thing that have oil involved in its creation. Oil companies like ExxonMobil will be fine.

All true, the only thing though is that the main driver of crude oil consumption is the need for gasoline, and even if we went to only 80% of our current oil usage, the price would collapse and it would effectively kill the industry. Prices are set on the margins, they spike when demand exceeds supply just by a percentage point or two, and they drop sharply when supply exceeds demand. During the pandemic, global demand for oil fell from about 100 million barrels per day to around 82 million barrels per day, and this caused the price for oil to actually go negative, massive layoffs, and companies incurring billions of dollars in debt, which they are slowly paying off now with the huge profits.

10 minutes ago, samagon said:

it's all in how you look at it.

shifting from comic books to blockbuster movies is a paradigm shift. 

I'll grant the others (even though most would agree that Apple, IBM and others fully changed their core business), but comics to movies isn't a natural step.

energy companies shifting from oil gas to other forms of energy is also a paradigm shift, no doubt. some will fail to evolve, or not make the right evolution, and they will be the Kodak we look at and say "wasn't it obvious?"

oddly, my news feed popped up an article that the largest camera manufacturer in the world, is Fujifilm. how did Fuji get it so right and Kodak so wrong? I suppose in 20 years we may be looking at 2 large oil companies, one of which had succeeded in transitioning to other energy, and one that didn't and asking the same questions.

https://petapixel.com/2022/04/26/the-biggest-camera-manufacturer-in-the-world-is-fujifilm/

to your last point, agreed fully. California I think has committed to not allowing any more sales of ICE after 2035, which is a foolhardy thing to do (I guess it's great for greenwashing, and they can shake each other's hands and say they solved climate change), but whatever, let's presume that this actually happens, that means that for the next 13 years we're still able to buy (in CA) ICE cars, and then as the last one rolls out of the showroom floor, it's still going to have 10 or more years of service before going away.

pretty much every O&G company out there is spending more money on developing alternatives and synthetic fuels than they are on exploration. part by reading the room, but also because banks aren't giving as much money for exploration as they used to. banks figure that there are enough known reserves to satiate our O&G needs until we transition to whatever's actually next.

anyway, sorry, OT, and I think we're on the same page, I didn't intend for this to be this long.

Part of the difference with Fuji is likely that, in other countries, large companies like that have strong ties to government and the government makes sure that they don't fail. This is true of many familiar Japanese and German companies, which also get large regular infusions of research funding from their governments. Whereas in America, for the most part, we believe in "creative destruction" and the government takes a hands-off approach, with rare exceptions like GM and the airlines.

Good points all in all.

1 hour ago, samagon said:

disagree. Kodak failed because the leadership was unwilling to accept the future, and by the time they tried, it was too late. Blockbuster Video failed for not adapting quick enough.

if you look at companies that re-invented themselves, you'd say 'they evolved' which is how any successful company will operate and continue to be successful as the world changes.

Apple, Amazon, Amex, IBM, Netflix, Marvel, Fujifilm, every restaurant in business. all of these companies evolved from their core business model to embrace the future.

• Apple a computer company to a device company.
• Amazon an online bookstore to an everything store to cloud hosting servers.
• Amex from freight to money orders credit cards.
• IBM hardware to services.
• Netflix DVD to streaming.
• Marvel comics to cinema.
• Fujifilm film to digital and instant
• every restaurant evolved to allow more online ordering capability in addition to in restaurant seating.

that's just off the top of my head. companies fail because they are unwilling, or too slow to change as the future progresses.

there will be energy companies that fail, no doubt about it, but many more will adapt, they are adapting now.

I don't disagree, fair points, but some of the examples you mention aren't really paradigm shifts. So Apple went from devices to... different devices. Marvel found a cinema outlet for their comic creations. IBM got out of hardware but kept their services, which they had been developing all along. A parallel for oil and gas companies might be the shift from land-based oil exploration to deep sea in the 1970's-80's, to fracking in the 2000's-2010's. Pretty big shifts, but their core business was still getting fossil fuels out of the ground, refining them, and selling them to people. Asking them to "evolve" to a future without fossil fuels is a rather larger leap. It is much more likely that the big energy companies in a world without fossil fuels will be totally different companies.

But for the other reasons I mentioned, I think it is more likely that technological solutions will be found for the problems inherent in fossil fuels than that there will be a world without fossil fuels. Too much energy just sitting there.

On 4/16/2022 at 9:07 AM, Amlaham said:

 

 

 

This is the most exciting thing I've seen on HAIF in years.

2 hours ago, gene said:

is it wrong to like this original rendering way more?

Way better and more crisp, would look killer on Montrose Blvd as an homage to Philip Johnson's University of St. Thomas campus. Just donate the design to Skanska for their Montrose/Westheimer project. It does pay a slight homage to Philip's Post Oak Central buildings next door.

But if we're griping about dated architecture, the shade-providing fins (or whatever they're called, louvers? help me out) on this are dated, considering that sometime in the 1960's they found a way to coat glass so as to accomplish the same effect without blocking tenants' views of the street below. But it is still cool the way a fully-restored late 50's Euro sportscar is cool.

On 4/11/2022 at 10:59 AM, Andrew Ewert said:

I agree. Houston is so well situated to dominate the energy and medicine sectors for the next 50 years. It's just going to take some of these huge legacy industries realizing they need to embrace the future and stop looking backward. I think Ion is a great first step toward making that happen. We'll see...

It is much easier for new companies to be created than for existing companies to transform themselves. Think of Kodak. Kodak actually invented the digital camera. But Kodak was, at bottom, a film company. It was not going to be a leader in the digital age. A company represents the crystallization of an idea, the fleshing out of an idea into the realities of production, distribution, marketing, etc. Crystals are not flexible.

I think if oil and gas are doomed, Houston is going to suffer a pretty hard fall. We are going to have to fall back on our only other natural advantage, our port, but that will be a pretty big fall because, you know, there are a lot of ports.

But I'm not so sure oil and gas are doomed. They still hold more energy than any other substances (with the exception of nuclear energy). Gasoline holds about 100 times the energy of the same weight of lithium ion battery. And the energy is just sitting there in the ground, waiting to be used. It's not like film vs. digital where, at a certain point, the only advantage that film really has is nostalgia. The advantages of oil and gas are still very real. There's just this problem with emissions. But just as technology can improve renewables, technology can also help solve the emissions problem. 

9 hours ago, monarch said:

^^^ from the looks of it, this particular prospective edifice is one BIG 1980'S BLAH!  i have decided that i shall await DEISO MOSS to hurry up and inject their badly needed "EXCITEMENT INTO UPTOWN HOUSTON"...

I respectfully disagree with you. I think this is a big 1990's blah.

But it does fit the neighborhood and it is exciting to see stacked three-way mixed use going up in Houston, which puts us right in the 2010's.

18 hours ago, Paco Jones said:

Project:

Montrose Medical Office Building

 

Address:

1732 Richmond Avenue
Houston, Texas

 

Architect:

Kirksey

 

Owner:

Med-REIS, LLC
 

Information:

13-story medical office building to be located on Richmond Avenue, across the street from The Fairmont Museum District.  The project will be a podium type building with 5 levels of office space over 8 levels of above-grade parking. The 5th level of the building will be a conference/terrace level. The office levels will provide approximately 94,800 gross square
feet. The parking garage contains approximately 299 parking spaces. Level 1 will be designed to accommodate an Urgent Care and an Medical Imaging tenant.
 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the "vibrancy" that people claim Houston benefits from by not having zoning.

On 2/16/2022 at 12:14 PM, j_cuevas713 said:

HUGE!!! 

4,200 SF, to be exact...

17 hours ago, Luminare said:

Oh the days when we all thought this was never going to get built. So much drama. So much speculation. We have certainly come a long way haven't we.

What's the next building we are all irrationally impatient about that has not started yet?

It only took 6 years from proposal to groundbreaking. I can't believe there were any doubts.

On 2/10/2022 at 4:12 PM, hindesky said:

Has anyone heard anything about this project? Doesn't seem like a lot of money if the plan is to convert the whole building.

https://www.arc-3.com

 

 

 

Sounds like this is just an entrance and lobby conversion. They must be converting the actual living spaces separately.

1 minute ago, SMU1213 said:

I'm pretty sure that Related Group is the one buying the site, not Related Companies. Related Companies isn't looking in Texas to my knowledge.

You're saying the two entities are unrelated?

36 minutes ago, Houston19514 said:

Fencing might have something to do with the perceived safety of the bike trail.  (see thread regarding repeated attacks on this bike trail about 1/2 mile from these apartments . . .)

Yeah, if apartment dwellers almost universally prefer to have fences and gates in suburban settings, the same is going to be true when you have a bayou trail that leads under a giant freeway a few hundred feet away. Plus the occasional alligator. As long as there is a good sidewalk connection from the apartment entrance to the bayou trail, I'm happy.

1 hour ago, dbigtex56 said:

A few years ago ordinances were passed requiring developers to confine run-off from construction sites, which reduced the amount of silt going into the bayou. 
To me, Buffalo Bayou looks a little less murky than it used to. 
I've read historical accounts of what the bayou looked like in Houston's early days and at one time the water was fairly clear. Much of the silt came from natural erosion of its banks, which was minimal due to dense plant growth.

I suppose the best way to determine what the bayou is capable of is to visit another bayou in an undeveloped area of southeast Texas or southern Louisiana. I don't think any of them are especially clear. Translucent, maybe to some degree. I think Frederick Law Olmsted said that the first clear river going westward across Texas was the Colorado, and all the ones before that were muddy.

17 hours ago, Andrew Ewert said:

This is maybe the dumbest question ever asked by anyone, but... could it? Not that we ever would, but if the city decided that having the bayou look nice was important, is there any way you could do it? Put a giant Brita filter in the Galleria?

One of the main points of present day environmentalism as well as landscape design is to be true and honest to what naturally exists and not try to enhance or improve upon it. Do not "teach the river a better course," or a better shade or color, for that matter. So I think this would fall into that category. Although the BBP has said that if we have better, more natural drainages leading into the bayou, much of the sediments that wash into it will be filtered out, and the water will be consequently less murky. More like black tea than chocolate milk, if you will.

3 hours ago, innerloop said:

I vote to excavate the entire plaza down to bayou level and have a bayou spur run under the street and come up to the front of the building like the San Antonio Convention Center.

Obligatory "the bayou won't look like that."

13 hours ago, Highrise Tower said:

The website says the campus has 9 properties.

MD Anderson is selling an old Research Campus in Smithville, TX that has 9 buildings.

Nice work. But only 160,748 SF according to Costar.

42 minutes ago, Houston19514 said:

Perhaps so.  But if that's what it is, it doesn't seem very noteworthy.  Just a change of ownership of an existing biotech campus. Hopefully, it's in Houston, but for the sake of Texas, wherever it is in Texas, I hope it's a new biotech campus, not just a change of ownership of an existing one.

FWIW, Levit Green's website says 4 Million square feet (and pretty unlikely Hines would be selling at this stage).  TMC3 totals 5 Million (and even less likely to be sold). 

Well, it represents an investment of outside capital into biotech industry within the state. Somewhat noteworthy, and I'd like to know where it was. But I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

51 minutes ago, mattyt36 said:

H-Town, we're talking past each other.  Either that or you're selectively choosing things to respond to.  I'm not sure why you think the fact that the oil and gas industry is a primary driver of commercial real estate demand in Houston is up for debate.  That's absurd.  Again, you either misread what I wrote or you're being deliberately obtuse.  (Equally absurd is the fact that you seem to gloss over the fact that, as an example, the world has changed for Pittsburgh in the 2020s versus what it was in the 1950s and that maybe--just maybe--the same could happen here.)

You've pretty much stated your belief that with oil prices at this level we'll get office development in line with historical patterns.

I questioned whether that was a sound assumption.

You have not come anywhere close to convincing me otherwise thus far, but maybe the consensus view in the industry is more along the lines of your thinking and I'm, as they say, talking out of my arse.

I'd love to hear others' thoughts.  It's fair to say HTM is on the record: "This time, it's not different."

Lol, here was my original statement:

"$90 oil, folks! I imagine Skanska is already pushing forward on planning for these."

Most people on here took it for what it was: a good-natured expression of optimism. You've subjected it to the level of analysis that a theologian might give to a sentence in the Gospel of John, and gotten bent out of shape over something I didn't say about Pittsburgh. Have a good weekend...

14 minutes ago, mattyt36 said:

Sure.  But things change, don'tcha think?  It's like saying there's a relationship between the price of steel and Pittsburgh's economy . . . until there isn't.  The world isn't exactly bullish on the long-term role of oil as a supply of energy, is it?  Which makes it arguably more difficult to attract capital, no?  So why would you assume historical patterns would play out again, especially with (1) a glut of vacant space; (2) a new trend of working remotely, which, while it may be "pulled back" in the future, probably isn't going to go back to what it was before?

As for flex space, I'm not using jargon.  I'm saying if Chevron needs 500K square feet to accommodate relocated HQ personnel, do you think their first step will be to dust off plans from 2013?  Or do you think they would be more likely to access the available space in the market?  

I'm just interested in the "theory of the case" here . . . as I said, I don't work in commercial real estate.  I never would've expected Skanska to proceed with their development.  Maybe what you're saying is that there is increased likelihood of an oil company signing an anchor tenant lease in a new building simply because the "price is right" and the 1980s era skyscrapers can't match the amenities . . . I've heard that explanation before for BofA, Texas Tower, and Skanska Disco.  But that's a lot different than saying that the market will naturally add a lot more office space simply because the price of oil is $90 today.

No, they haven't changed. The price of oil is the major driver of office space occupancy in Houston. There are non-energy tenants such as banks and law firms but they primarily serve the oil industry. Go walk around the Class A buildings in Houston and look at their tenant rosters.