lowndes

Has anybody heard about any developments on this project.  Ever since they put the signs up it has been pretty quiet.

Can you share any names?

I'm on no witch hunt, and am probably one of the least PC people in here.

You know why I wag the finger? Because it doesn't matter how you try to spin the original statement's wording, the intent is pretty clear. Those class of people are beneath my child and ultimately me, and there's no way I'm sending my child there to be corrupted by those undesirable elements.

Mine went to Aldine after a long argument with my wife, over this very same thing. She wanted him to use her parents address so he could go to Terry in Rosenberg because Aldine was too rough for him, and he won't get the attention there that he would at Terry, and so on and so on. When it was said and done, my boy graduated a Mustang.

I'm certainly not trying to tell someone else how to raise their kids, but try having a little faith in them that they will make the right decision when faced with such adversity.

S3mh, I don't necessarily disagree with what you did. If Love's curriculum isn't up to par, then you did the best thing for your child. That's a whole different set of circumstances altogether, and I applaud you for seeing to it that your child received the finest education available to him/her. I have no qualms with that. I do have a problem, however, when someone basically walks in the front door of the school house, takes a look around, says "Oh my, look at all the Mexicans!" and walks right back out because their child would be "put at a disadvantage" by attending the same school as them.

Apparently, you moved your child for the right reasons, s3mh. Given the wording of the other poster, it seems they did not, and are trying to mask their true feelings with a bunch of fancy words such as "underprivileged" and "English deficient".

...and some people actually wonder why we white folks are hated by so many.

I think people care more about the quality of the education provided at certain HISD schools as opposed to the ethnic makeup of those schools.  We decided to send our kids to private school as we were not zoned to Harvard or Travis and are incredibly happy with the decision (although in all honestly we probably would have sent our kids to private school even if they were zoned to Harvard or Travis or any other HISD school but that is a personal choice).  The private school they attend is quite diverse which we are pleased with because part of an education is being around people of different cultures, who don't look just like us, etc.  It is actually one of the major reasons why we decided to stay living where we do instead of moving to the suburbs as exposing our kids to people of all different socio-economic backgrounds, racial backgrounds, cultures, etc. was something we highly valued.

All that being said I think it is a reasonable concern for a parent to have that if a high majority of students don't speak english, come into the school without knowing how to read, etc. that the quality of their kids education is going to take a hit.  It is certainly sad for those other kids and is part of the way our school systems are setup but one of the most important jobs I have as a parent is to give my children the best education they can and I'm not going to criticize a parent who chooses to not use their kids as guinea pigs in helping to turn a school around.

On a different note I actually attended Terry High School and thought it was a pretty bad school from an education standpoint (I'd also describe it as fairly rough).

When did Revival become not family friendly? I eat there multiple times a week and the place always has plenty of families, especially on the weekend. My son (who is 3) and I have breakfast there every Saturday morning and if our daughter who is 1 seems to be in the mood to eat out my wife and her come as well.

Any update on what might happen here?

No, my point was to ask for a source and he told me to go look for it. Why should I bother looking up something to back his claim?

You're also missing the entirety of my second paragraph. Whatever, I don't care, if he turned his life around, good for him. If not, well that sucks.

Ok, I'll help him out: source = Harris county district clerks website (which was mentioned in the persons reply). I don't care either one way or the other but it's odd that you took offense with the source that was provided. What do you consider a "source"?

Making me do the work to back up your claim doesn't help.

Also, assuming every human being on this earth is perfect and should live up to your expectations is selfish...and doesn't help.

It's actually about as good of a source as one could provide. And I think his point is a valid one whether you agree with it or not. However, I would think most businesses would be concerned about their name being associated with an individual who has been convicted of drug related felonies three times and sentenced to jail for 5 yrs, 7 yrs and most recently 4 months.

Anyways maybe he is a new person and no longer engages in these activities. I don't know. However, I think the above poster was raising a valid point.

Neighboring land owners hired an architect who designs suburban strip malls and Buccees to tell the planning commission how to develop an urban inner city project.  His big point was that the developer could do structured parking.  But he generally seemed to think that the development was too dense and would impede the right of way with door swings, etc.  Translation:  Strip malls should rule the city.

 

One person claimed that the binder company on Heights Blvd had their property on the market, but the developer would not buy.  I have not seen it on the market.  But if it is and can be bought, the developer should buy it and use it for parking. 

 

Whatever happens, the property will get developed and there will be plenty of folks in the burbs who will come and block everyone's driveway along Heights Blvd. and will still park in the right of way along 7th, forcing the poor children of Houston to have to walk an entire city block to go to the park.   

 

Some argued that granting the variance would set a precedent so that developers would line up to get parking variances.  The opposite precedent has been set.  Any creative repurposing/infill project that relies on an urban redevelopment model cannot get done in Houston.  Infill sites will either go residential (townhomes) or go with parking in front strip centers.

Agree 100%.  Also, from what I have heard this "architect" and laughable "urban land planner" were all hired by commercial business' in the area who have a commercial interest in protecting the parking around there because they themselves don't have enough parking.  And it is pretty funny (or really not) that a local business owner stands up and talks about a petition he got signed but himself doesn't provide enough parking for his customers.  Sad really.

I'm sure the developer will figure something out to still come up with an awesome development that benefits the community because listening to him speak you can tell he actually has a vested interest in the Heights and actually cares unlike most developers I've met.  Hopefully, it will be so great that no amount of parking will be sufficient and the area gets flooded with street parking (and I live in the area).  I chose to live in an urban area because I like to walk out of my house and see people milling about, etc.  

Houston is in such an exciting time of growth right now, especially inside the loop.  Hopefully, this can help raise community awareness across the city as to how silly these parking minimums are and we can start working to get rid of them.  I know I was not all that aware of their effects on good quality urban development before this.

The people who live on that block should welcome a wonderful new development and the luxury of being able to live in a single family house and be able to walk out their front door and down the street to great restaurants and shops. If they are so disgusted by having people use the public parking in front of their homes, they should at least wait until the development is finished before moving to Katy because their property values will get a significant bump if the development goes through as planned. Right now, the burdens of power transformers, I-10 noise and industrial buildings weigh heavily on residential real estate around the area of the development. Put in a world class development and you will see the benefits quickly outweigh the burdens.

If you did not want to have parking issues around your house, you should have never moved near the two busiest roads in the Heights. I made sure I was a few blocks from the commercial corridors in the Heights because I wanted a quiet street more than I wanted to be near restaurants and shops. Of course, you don't have to move to Katy. You can just move to one of the hundreds of blocks in the Heights that are not affected by commercial/retail development. Just because you made a bad decision on what part of the Heights to buy a home does not mean you get to suppress development that is beneficial to the rest of us.

I won't even go into how silly it is to claim that there are thousands of people who use a few dozen parking spaces.

I agree, I am a bit surprised by some of the backlash against the project (although my guess is the supporters would vastly outnumber the opposers but the opposition is always the loudest). The reason I moved to the Heights was because I wanted to live in a dense, urban walkable neighborhood and the Heights offered what we were looking for. I am moving to this area of the Heights and certainly hope the project goes forward as planned.

TxDOT completed a giant detention pond between Rutland, the bike path, White oak Bayou and Waverly/Warehouses. There was talk about making into a park, but City of Houston would have to pay fair TxDOT market value for it. There was also talk about adding some park amenities (trail, benches) and having the City maintain it. That never went anywhere. Where it left off was that TxDOT agreed to leave it in a "park ready" condition, meaning that they will not fence it off and will perform minimal maintenance on it. So, you can walk all the way around the detention pond, but the ground is a bit lumpy (not great for a run).

The warehouses just north of the bike trail around Tulane and Ashland are going to be torn down and replace by @50 Sullivan Brothers homes. The first few on Tulane are currently under construction.

The Freedman Distributor warehouse is supposed to be redeveloped (torn down) into a multifamily project. The City may require detention if they increase impervious cover by more than one acre. So, it might be possible that the City is going to use some of the development fees to buy some of the property and turn it into a park that includes a detention pond for the developers. That sounds like a typical City of Houston sweetheart deal.

Thanks for the information, very informative.

Go take a look. Its there now. I am unsure if it is usabl as a park... maybe

I was under the impression there is a warehouse, etc. there now that is getting torn down and some sort of redevelopment will take place. I also thought this occurred in the past six months or so. Ias that not the case?

I've heard that the City of Houston recently purchased this land and will develop it into some sort of water detention park.  Curious what this really means.  Is it a park that people can actually use to play in, etc. or is basically just land owned by the City.

Thanks.

That sounds great, excited to see what it becomes.  Are there any renderings or anything online?

I noticed that as well but no clue. Hard to imagine it would be a CVS though as there in one less than a mile away.

Thanks, I've been wondering about what blockbuster will become.  There are a few industrial buildings along there too that it seems as the area continues to appreciate in value that it would be hard to justify keeping them.  I can't wait for the day that Kroger becomes something better.  With it would become something other than Kroger but don't think that will ever happen.  Excited to see what goes in across the street on the land the baptist church sold.

Has anybody heard any plans for developments along 20th street in the Heights (thinking primarily between Studemont and Heights Blvd).  There seems to be several underutilized industrial type spots, car repair shops, etc. on that stretch.  I'd imagine something will eventually come in there kind of like what happened to White Oak but haven't heard much about it yet.

Having just attended my first HAHC meeting to voice my opinion on a CoA, I would HIGHLY recommend using a firm that is familiar with ALL the gyrations involved in getting pass this process.  I went home that evening and told my husband we would never remodel or do new construction in a historic district cause it was WAY TOO much chaos in the whole process.  Saw a lot of worn out folks dealing with this whole process. 

Thanks, I have heard the same thing.  Fortunately for us we are located about 4 houses outside of the historic district so do not have deal with that.  Just the City of Houston is my understanding.

Thanks for the message.  I just sent you a PM.  To answer a few of the questions our house is a 1940s bungalow that is a 2/2.  We are looking to expand it to a 3/2 with study and screened in back porch by mainly adding a master suite upstairs (which will include the study).  Downstairs we are mainly knocking down a few non load bearing walls and expanding the kitchen backwards and adding the screened porch to the back.  My guess is the total new square footage will be right around 1000 square feet.  Our hope is to keep this project around $200K.

We are in the early stages of deciding who to hire to expand our Heights home.  Basically adding a 2nd story master suite addition and reworking the downstairs a tad.  This is our first renovation project.  Seems like a lot of the signs I see for renovations in the Heights are design build firms (and from the looks of it they do really nice work).  Are there any benefits to going with a architect and then choosing your own general contractor over the design build route?

Thanks

Hi, hope everybody is doing great.  This past weekend I visited a couple of friends in Austin who had a craftsman bungalow with an Airstream in the backyard that they used as a guest house/office space.  Then when they want to go camping or on a road trip they would pull it out and be ready to go.  I thought it was incredible looking and they had landscaping, etc. around the trailer and just thought it added some cool character to their house.

Anyhow, this has gotten me thinking about doing something at our bungalow here in the Heights. Only concern I have is whether neighbors would think this is an eyesore.  What would you think if somebody used an Airstream as a guest house in their backyard here in the Heights?

Thanks!