Jeebus

I agree completely, I think with a little creativity both the Town Center, Town Square and the Mall's outdoor forum could be seamlessly joined with more residential over commerical structures, and all served by a new parking garage in the Town Center parking lot.

Possibly not. As you go backwards in time and replace high-rise residencies with low-rise and even single family dwellings, the number would probably still decrease.

Only if there has been new residential open up since then. Has that been the case?

Hey, if you think about, the joke's on her.

No, but it's a good conception of what is wanted: a low-slung, smaller capacity stadium. Even though I don't live inside the city, and thus couldn't vote, I would still love to see what the citizens of Houston would vote.

They want something like this: Pizza Hut Park

What's it matter if no one knows about it? You know the old saying: "If a tree falls in the forest.." My thoughts exactly. Compare the size of the parade thrown when the Rockets last won the championship over ten years ago compared to the Dynamo's most recent championship victory. Look how excited the city got over the Astros just making it to their championship series - without even winning it. I don't remember lines wrapped around the Academy's all over the city to get a their piece of sports history when the Dynamo made it to any of their championships - much less people skipping work to go celebrate the Dynamo's championship victory. MLS is just not on the same tier as MLB, NFL, or NBA.

buh-bye

As long as the city whores the zoo out for it's P.R. tourism machine, then yes, they are to blame. I agree. My daughter loves it and we have a family membership as well.

It's kind of hard to recreate what Brownsville has when you're landlocked. I have no clue why we have no Gorillas.

Lunch and lunchtime errands are always the biggest issue with these type buildings. You're so isolated that you either have to bring a lunch, buy something from the typical cafe on the first floor, or burn 2 hours driving to a "near-by" restaurant.

Great fish-eye. Is this a lens or photoshop? I drove by there last night and thought it would make for some great pictures or even stock video footage for a later project. Good eye!

Well, you get what you pay for, right?

Well, now that you've called me out, no.

Yeah right.. After the ribbon cutting you'll never see him in there again. He'll probably only go back there to use it to host private functions. Ultimately however, it will go belly-up a la Planet Hollywood and become some other token chain restaurant, probably in a buy/bail-out from Landry's no less.

It can't be that scary - no local rapper has yet to mention hanging out there in any of their songs.

The news did a report about the current fire station turning the wrong way on Travis (southbound) as well about 2 years ago. The signal is probably to warn motorists about to make a left turn that fire trucks are pulling out of the station and on to the street, headed northbound.

It's got 8 double bays. So you could fit 8 heavy apparatus, 16 light apparatus, or a combination of both. The current fire station 8 has 2 fire trucks, 2 ambulances, and 1 chief.

Try Ranchester at Bellaire. This is where I see the most foot traffic. I see a lot of Asian bus traffic in this area too. I can agree with that. The thing is that Rice Village and Montrose are the only two organic areas that have seemed to thrive and survive.I would love to see Midtown create a synthetic urban environment that would do the same. I guess I'm just a doubting-Thomas.

There are hardly and drive-thrus on Bellaire (in the Asian area). Most Asian businesses don't have them. As for the parking lots, the Asian business owners are just dealing with what comes with their lease. Besides, without those parking lots, how did you plan on getting to those shops? Compared to Westheimer or any other commercial street in Houston and you'll find some of the most vibrant pedestrian traffic.Besides just walking for the enlightenment, why would you want to walk up and down Chinatown anyway? It's probably 70% restaurants. It's not going to be like any other shopping district where you can shop from store to store. Most of the commercial goods you would think to find on Bellaire are actually on Harwin, in the warehouse district. And there always will be. That's why the Asians left the downtown area - because there was no where to live. Asians are very unlikely to move back just for a few small strip centers that have slowly been transformed into hip overpriced eateries with bland recipes for non-Asian food eaters.The Asians in those communities you mentioned built their neighborhoods out of necessity. Don't you think they would have done just as they have in Houston had the opportunity been there? I can't think of one business owner that would want a crapped, 100 year old dingy brick sublet with no parking or back alley space over a nice spacious lot like offered here in Houston - and for quadruple the value they pay half the price. There's a reason why the Vietnamese are leaving Westminster and coming to Alief. They're no dummies, they're all about the American Dream of making money too. Maybe in construction - but definitely not in foot traffic. Bellaire Chinatown serves a crowd who is still more pedestrian friendly. Sure most Asians have cars, but you will still see more Asians walking up and down the feeder streets from their apartments & houses to Bellaire. You still see more people at the Bellaire bus stops who have travelled only a few miles from the Beechnut/Bissonnet/Kirkwood/Dairy Ashford area to go shopping.I don't see that in Midtown, and I'm in both areas at least 3 times a week. Bellaire is trying to be suburban and its mostly vehicle-less populace are naturally going against it. Midtown is doing the opposite - trying to be urban, but it's it's populace is still trying to figure out where to park their cars. The closest thing to San Francisco's urban setting (or any other US city's pre-WW2 development) is our Montrose or Rice Village area. Other than that, we're not going to see a natural urban area develop ORGANICALLY for another 50 to 100 years.Don't get me wrong, I would love more pedestrian friendly areas in Houston - but I at least want them to make sense. For as urban as Midtown is supposed to be. I still never see any foot-traffic - except the homeless.

Not to the thousands that live in the apartment complexes on Bellaire, Ranchester, and Town Park. I see Asians walking and biking all the time all along Bellaire.

I would rather someone be entertained by a scripted reality show than a stage set sit-com, complete with canned laugh-track to que what is supposed to be funny and when to laugh.

Man, you skip over a thread for two days in this town... Are you kidding me? Let me guess, you're a journalism major and are hoping to land a job at the "Chron" one day? Racism and socialism are two different monsters - don't confuse the two. Dr. King was about "hand-ups" and not "hand-outs". Any decent person, regardless of political affiliation would respect that. You meant "too", right? I'd like to think if we (Houston) were judged by nothing else than our airport (IAH), that we would be viewed favorably.

Wow... after some digging, you are absolutely right. I misread this map when I had posted this originally. I guess it was just wishful thinking. Looking at the map though, nothing on the Westside of FM1464 is in Richmond's ETJ - It's 100% Houston.

The parking lot is behind the station, with the front facing Louisiana so that when the fire trucks pull out, they will be pulling out in to one-way traffic into downtown. It looks like it will be a "pull-through" station, which is very popular in the south and west where space is readily available. All the newer fire stations here in Houston, as with most other cities, are of this design. It's actually better for traffic as the fire trucks don't have to take up all the traffic lanes in front of the station, then back into the station. Instead, they can make the block and pull in from behind. Having a large parking area behind the station allows for daily maintenance and cleaning of the fire trucks, helicopters to land, stage other fire trucks during emergency operations, and to perform various training activities at the station. My only complaint has been with the Jiffy Lube design. I'm fine with it taking up a whole block, as being downtown, it's most likely to never have the space to perform the above said tasks otherwise.