H-Town Man

19 hours ago, MidCenturyMoldy said:

In late August of 2019 I decided to go check out Understory for lunch. I was walking along the building on the Rusk Street side wondering what-the-eff is wrong with this city that no one builds arcades or some sort of shade devices to protect pedestrians from the killer sun. This building is a welcome change. But is it the beginning of a trend? I personally just can't muster that much optimism. 

The Discovery West tower by Skanska has the retail entrances recessed from the above facade, so that pedestrians have shade cover as they walk along Lamar Street.

46 minutes ago, nate4l1f3 said:

How in the world was this allowed to happen? I still don’t understand it. 

Well, there's no design review or zoning so up to the developer and possibly the tenant. I think Hines made it optional for the tenant to open to the exterior and Frost Bank didn't want to. Hines did envision that building as an attempt to revitalize central downtown, but it was more like, "We shall grace them with the presence of our expensive building" rather than really embracing the place architecturally. They saved the Stowers Building, though, and put a nice lobby on Rusk, so baby steps. The urban renaissance hadn't happened in Houston at that point, although people on here were trying to awaken understanding and the city and Metro were doing all they could with things like the Main Street rebuild, Cotswold Project, etc.

12 hours ago, Fortune said:

The article says mixed use development, so I'm not sure why that is being questioned. 

Good point. I guess I'm wondering, will it just be a low, mostly retail development, or will there be a high rise (likely residential) component above it?

On 5/4/2021 at 10:30 AM, tangledwoods said:

For everyone worried, there is about a 99% chance this will end up as a Texas Live! or equal.  It's helpful to remember that companies like Live Nation and Cordish (folks behind the Live! brand) have been absolutely hosed by the pandemic.  Project financing is just not all that simple right now and mixed use projects like this one take time to get organized. 

For now just enjoyed the asphalt paved paradise.

 

Rereading this, I think you must have been referring to the Crane-owned site. I had thought you wrote it in reference to Block 100 (next to Marriott).

Not sure if this will be mixed-use or just retail.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-sports-nation/astros/amp/Astros-Jim-Crane-expansion-Minute-Maid-Park-16596664.php

4 minutes ago, Houston19514 said:

Interestingly, that Neiman Marcus building was very recently put up for sale (it's not now, and I don't think has ever been, owned by Neiman Marcus; they just have a lease).  The Olympia Centre model is one which could be done with the Post Oak Dillards without demolishing the current building, because the Neiman Marcus building is not really in the base of the tower; it's more like a separate building adjoining the base of the tower.

 

Is Dillard's still utilizing the full building? Lots of department stores have shrunk within their buildings and filled space with back offices or storage.

23 minutes ago, Ross said:

Why would we want 4 50 story towers there? 

Didn't say we wanted it, said it's something that could happen at that location, given what's happening at Richmond/Post Oak. Developer will build whatever is feasible that can give the highest return to the land. 4x50 may be a bit aggressive, but maybe 50+2x30.

17 hours ago, houstontexasjack said:

Actually, as it turns out, the title history on this one is convoluted.  I pulled a deed in 1991 to “R. U. Corporation,” which is listed as the present owner in HCAD. That deed is subject to the 1961 Joske’s ground lease. The ground lease (Vol. 1402, page 240 of the Harris County Real Property Records) provides for an initial lease term of 35 years and two 20 year renewal periods. That would put the lease expiration in the 2030’s, not in the 2040’s as I thought. 
 

It would be tough for Dillard’s to recoup investment in any towers in that timeframe. 

 

If there's this much money involved, it opens the door to creative thinking. The landlord goes to Dillard's and says, "Look, I have this opportunity to put towers on the site, it would help your foot traffic, let's do a lease modification." Dillard's says, "Towers don't really help me, sorry." Landlord says, "Does a lease extension to 2065 help you?" Dillard's says, "Ok, tell me your idea." Landlord says, "You get this footprint in which to rebuild your store and x number of spaces in a parking garage, plus a covered driveway for dropoffs and a nice monument sign on the street." Dillard's says, "I wanna sign that's visible from 610." Landlord says, "Alright." Lease modification is drafted and signed, bulldozers roll in...

47 minutes ago, Houston19514 said:

Remind me, please... where was this building?

Next to Le Meridien, behind 1 Houston Center.

On 8/31/2021 at 11:13 AM, Montrose1100 said:

You and maybe others might enjoy this piece of history on Heritage Plaza. I've never seen a rendering for a previous design, but I think I'll take the pyramid over whatever KPF thinks this is.

Anyway, found it while trying to nail a construction date on the building. 

Edit: And to steer completely off-topic, in the link, it mentions a project on 1212 Main which is what bankrupted the original developer - not this project.

Oh my.

15 hours ago, X.R. said:

Yeah, even if they didn't have such a great least I don't think corporate Dillards would want to let that space go. Free advertising b/c of proximity to the highway, it was sporadically busy during COVID (maybe people didn't want to go into the actual mall), and it has easily accessible parking. You'd prolly have to pry it from their cold dead hands (given how brick and mortar retail has been tho...). When I worked at Macy's a while back, they internally would say that Galleria Macy's was at least a top 5 earner in the country. I'm sure Dillard's has similar internal numbers for that site. 

Dillard's doesn't have to let the space go. They could partner with a developer to redevelop with four 50-story towers and a Dillard's at the bottom.

On 10/29/2021 at 1:00 PM, Urbannizer said:

If they are building this at the corner of Post Oak and Richmond, think what could be done with the Dillard's site, which is at least twice as desirable, without the freeway interchange stigma and dingy Richmond Ave. surroundings. I think we are going to see a lot of redevelopment along Post Oak Blvd. in the next 10 years.

4 hours ago, IntheKnowHouston said:

Midway also announed another retail tenant: Urbn Dental.

Here's the Bisnow article with other details pertaining to East River.

 

Urbn Dental also will open around the same time as Broham. The three storefronts are among the first retailers advertised for the space, which previously announced Houston-based architecture firm Method Architecture and Teal, a Houston firm that creates hot water systems. Owners of wedding venue The Astorian will open a 20K SF event space and rooftop bar around the same time.

The entire East River development includes 250K SF of Class-A office space, 110K SF of retail, multifamily and single-family residential, and 13K SF of green space. Set within the historic Fifth Ward, near the East End District, it is poised to be among the largest developments in Houston’s Inner Loop, according to Midway.

East River’s groundbreaking was delayed due to Covid-19 and supply chain issues, including the skyrocketing costs of lumber. Midway Executive Vice President of Development David Hightower previously told Bisnow that timeline adjustments were made due to supply delays, though there wasn’t a significant overall impact.

Limestone Commercial Real Estate’s Brandi McDonald Sikes and Sobi Qazi serve as exclusive leasing agents for East River’s office spaces, with Lacee Jacobs and Laura Harness of Midway handling retail.

 

https://www.bisnow.com/houston/news/retail/grocery-from-acclaimed-houston-chef-one-of-first-announced-retail-tenants-in-25b-east-river-project-110679

I will never in a million years understand why someone would go to a dentist in a high rent location. They do not pay that rent bill by charging you less, they do so by charging you more and performing work you don't need. 

It is amazing how an incurable disease has blessed our city.

I don't understand all the "tell us how you really feel" posts. Brittanie cited ample evidence to support her opinion of the guy. The discussion we should probably be having is, how did he climb so high? His career should have ended with the revenge porn incident (and that was in the days before cell phones... this guy was like a pioneer of the art). What is it about the image this guy presents or his loudmouth way of making ridiculous, polarizing statements that made cities want to keep hiring him as a public steward?

2 hours ago, texan said:

The bill passed early this morning and is on its way to Gov. Abbott's desk for approval! The amounts for the TMC3 projects are listed below.

Texas A&M: $69,897,111

MD Anderson: $69,897,111

UT Health Houston: $69,897,111

I believe these projects were already fully funded before so this will mean either larger buildings or (more likely) new projects elsewhere.

https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/873/billtext/pdf/SB00052F.pdf#navpanes=0

Thank you for bringing this to light for us. 

1 hour ago, bobruss said:

I was driving around this part of downtown this morning, and south of the convention center and to the east every street in that area has 72" pipe parked on both sides of the street for countless blocks. Obviously this is staging for a major water project. I haven't found anything on this and thought someone could enlighten.

Thanks

I think they found evidence of oil and gas at the construction site and are going to go ahead and frack the site before proceeding further with construction.

17 hours ago, Highrise Tower said:

My friend did good! Got all the Hines buildings between Capitol and Prairie, west of Travis in one picture.

FIFY

2 hours ago, Houston19514 said:

So today's Chronicle has a story about Compass Real Estate opening a new office or two in the metro area. The story is accompanied by a picture of a BBVA Compass sign (BBVA Compass is a completely unrelated bank).  It seems one would almost have to try to be this bad.

Was the photo in the print edition? Not that it matters much.

42 minutes ago, mkultra25 said:

The Greenspoint area has been depressed for so long that many people don't have any memories of it ever thriving. It used to be very nice when the mall first opened in 1976, and all the development that followed (multiple hotels that made the most of their proximity to IAH, as well as all of the office buildings) seemed to be the harbinger of a  sustained regional boom. Unfortunately, the oil bust kicked in a few years later, and the area never recovered (although if your only frame of reference was Facebook, you'd be led to believe that the proximate cause of all of Greenspoint's problems was Metro extending bus routes out to the area, thus bringing in the "riff-raff" that destroyed everything that was Good and Decent). 

Having grown up nearby, I'd love to see Greenspoint undergo a renaissance, but it probably will take something significant happening with the mall for any sort of revitalization to gain serious traction. 

Exxon added its last highrise there in 1994 and it was a nice one, so the office district still had legs into the 90's. For the mall, the "Gunspoint" reputation had already set in by the early 90's. Whoever thought of that little nickname really did a number on the place, let me tell you. It said something when even your parents knew the slang term. The blame I've always heard is on all the cheap apartment complexes that were built around the office district. That's what brought the bus routes.

I was in Greenspoint over the weekend and thought a little about this forgotten area. Driving in I noticed how nice all the lawns were around the office buildings with trees lining the roadways. My wife commented, "Houston really does have nice trees." It occurred to me what a shame it was that all of this was going to waste. Office occupancy for that submarket is about 45%. A group of office buildings sold there a couple of years ago for around $30/SF - they would have been worth more in Amarillo. The whole area kind of said "80's" to me, and of course, the 80's is pretty down right now. But it won't be forever. In 10 or 15 years, people are going to say "Ahh! The 80's!" the same way that 15 or 20 years ago they started to say, "Ahh! Mid-century!" And then Greenspoint will be a really hot commodity, assuming it's still there and hasn't been totally disfigured by renovations. The place has a pretty decent skyline for a suburban office complex, taller than most suburban skylines, thanks to the money and power of oil. If Houston could just find some office user that would look on these buildings as the gems that they are.

No one has mentioned The Book Collector in Rice Village, which back in the 1990's filled the little house at the southeast corner of Morningside and University. They specialized in first editions, Civil War, and Napoleonic history, as well as very expensive toy soldiers. All over the main room were first editions of books like The Great Gatsby, The Sound and the Fury, Catch-22, Rebecca, The Old Man and the Sea, etc., priced at thousands apiece, enticingly displayed, but if you touched one of them, an alarm went off. The owner was a heavyset man named James Taylor (IIRC) who would talk your ear off if you looked like you had money and pretty much ignore you if you didn't. If you were the well-dressed wife of one of his toy soldier collectors (these miniatures ran $500-$1,000 apiece) coming to buy a gift for her husband, he would lick the bottoms of your shoes. It was difficult to browse and focus on what you were looking at with the sound of his sycophancy bellowing through the store. Then there were his declarations that he had "the best selection in the South," that he'd "pay more for your books than anyone in the South." I will give him this much credit: he was a unique person in a unique place, of a type that was disappearing from the world.

I look at Google Earth and am surprised to see 1/4 Price Books still in the same location on South Shepherd that I remember visiting 20 years ago. I would not go there again but I do credit the owner for staying in business. We chatted a bit about books and then I brought to the counter a copy of The Savage Mind by Claude Levi-Strauss. He loudly remarked, "Levi-Strauss! The good stuff!" with a look of mockery, as though to question the caliber of my reading. I think he thought I was getting a book about the maker of blue jeans rather than the French anthropologist. 

Becker's Books is another one where my one or two visits 15-20 years ago will have to do, I have no desire to ever go back. Decent selection though, and perhaps time has mellowed the owner? There is something about running a used book shop in Houston that brings out the "big fish in a small pond" syndrome to an unbearable degree.

The one place whose owner was congenial was Copperfield's on Louetta at Champion Forest Dr. He had the kindly demeanor and quiet manner that one envisions in a used book shop owner. The selection wasn't anything special - I suppose he was dependent on what people brought in - but his character sticks in my memory. The shop is long gone now; hope he came out well in the end. 

On 9/14/2021 at 10:47 PM, j_cuevas713 said:

And word on this? It’s all tagged up

Since Hindesky's photo was taken, depicting a property that had been searching for a tenant for a couple years already, the pandemic landed a gutpunch to the office market and the aspirational multi-block development that was to partially surround this building declared bankruptcy.