richfish

Vertical posts on the 'crown' are up today on the southwest side. Adds a LOT of height! Sorry for the shitty picture but one can only draw the iphone so quickly.

Can't understand why anyone would wanna live that close to I10. 

What's going on on the top of Williams Tower? There's a bunch of scaffolding up top clearly visible from the ground.

Houston's soon-to-be first casino

WTF is with how they're color/texturing the exterior panels? Wouldn't it be more efficient to have them finished on the ground and just put them in place, rather than go through several iterations of applying coatings once they're already in place?

I know literally nothing about construction, but comparing this build out to the Astoria, this is an amazingly well put together operation. Given the price tag on these units and how quickly built/standardized this building is the developers must be making a killer margin on this project.

Something has changed on the last two floors that have been poured.  They are taller, and have a reinforced corner (south-east end).  I remember reading that some of the condo's were going to have soaking pools... wonder if that's what it is.

Penthouse ceilings are 2' higher than the other floors and they do have the optional pools on the south east end. Not sure how great that will be for the guys that have balconies above their pool, but the top floor pool (if they put one in) would be really legit. Will be interested to see hcad update to see who ended up snagging these.

They're putting white paneling over the green wall on the south side. I'm wondering if that's going to really be the final covering. Imagining the whole thing like that and it's going to look like a giant shiny plastic building.

I noticed they repainted the Mercer the other day.

I'm still trying to figure out who the heck is paying for that. They redid all the windows and it's taken nearly a year of work repainting the thing. It must be costing a fortune, yet a few units have been up for sale and sold quickly with reasonable HOA fees and seemingly no special assessments. 

Even though I can walk, I drove there this morning to do some shopping (unsure of how much I'd be lugging back home). The underground garage is pretty cool. There's a light above every space that is green when the space is empty and red when it's occupied. Really easy to visually locate a spot an go for it. Definitely something that should catch on elsewhere.

They put a large (permanent) 'Hanover Post Oak' sign at the top of the garage running parallel to Post Oak. It's a Times New Roman-ish font that looks really odd and ugly. Also a two story 'Now Leasing' banner from the bottom of the 30th floor to the top of the 28th

It looks okay from that angle, but the project was constructed incredibly cheaply and most of the building looks awful and of poor quality. 

This is quickly becoming a very serious question with all of the development uptown and suburban style street grid that is already gridlocked. It seems like something will have to change with the streets at some point.

I live in Uptown and really don't think the traffic situation actually within Uptown is really that bad. It's mostly getting out of Uptown (San Felipe and Westheimer eastbound toward 610) in the afternoons that is insane. 610 backs up and then all the feeders to it back up as well and it starts to affect the roads in Uptown. It amazes me how well the Uptown district has managed do traffic management consider what a giant cluster it all is. At the end of the day, the only real options are 1. to make more road segments in uptown one way to reduce traffic light cycles (i.e. west alabama between sage and post oak) and 2. reduce/remove cutout in the median on post oak/westheimer that allow left turns at non-traffic lights (this will happen on post oak in conjunction with the BRT)

Is that target here to stay? That's some valuable land...

One day...

That's not WHole Food's fault, more so the contractor. I'm sure they're just as mad

I'm sure it's Wulfe's fault. I heard rumors some high end restaurents declined to move to BLVD place due to the extremely slow construction progress.

Astoria is almost as tall as a crane now. Should be adding some segments in the next few days

I went to True Food Kitchen for brunch Sunday (really great place) and explored the BLVD Place building a bit. Holy cow they still have a lot of work to do, both on the Whole Foods and all the other surrounding stores. The enclosed area to the far left (as looking straight at the building from Post Oak; where the proposed Verizon is to go) still has dirt floors on the first level. I have no idea why they're taking so incredibly long to finish this place up, Wolfe is really dropping the ball.

Looks just like the BBVA Compass building

I wonder how long it'll take before the Cosmo owners file a Ashby like lawsuit

Looks like they're going to use the crane itself to lower him down. Crazy. 

Heard from a friends they had on the news they're rescuing some guy from the crane at the Astoria?

That PAC is such a total joke. The only reason the PAC was even formed is because the Cosmo guys don't want their property values to get chopped in half when something tall inevitably goes up on the AmREIT lot. 

I feel really bad for the people living in the cosmopolitan that are going to have this right outside their windows.

Just wait til AmREIT sells the land the verizon is on and the other side of the building's view gets destroyed. That building is doomed to a sandwiched future.

Another good pic of the pour on swamplot today: http://swamplot.com/hearsay-doubling-up-downtown-touring-the-inner-loops-second-cheapest-rent-house/2014-05-07/

Anyone know what the platform jutting out from the second story is for? Saw it today and thought it was odd.