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rechlin

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Everything posted by rechlin

  1. rechlin
    It doesn't seem like anyone is suggesting the government should force anyone to develop something. The idea of property taxes being shifted to more land-based and less improvement-based is not a new concept, or an illiberal concept. Land is scarce and finite; improvement is not. Because taxes can be seen as a discouragement to do certain things, it makes sense that it's in the public interest to focus more on taxing the land than the improvement. The Economist newspaper has advocated for this, too, as I recall. To avoid vacant properties from increasing sprawl, which makes costs go up for everyone, some jurisdictions charge higher taxes for some vacant properties, too. This is all a system of encouragement; nobody is forcing anything. The Regent Square property has been a blight on central Houston for a long time now -- a giant fenced off field that is serving no use to anybody, aside from a small amount of vacant-land property taxes being paid. Perhaps it would make sense for Texas to charge higher property tax rates on vacant or unused urban properties (like Regent Square and the old Holiday Inn downtown) to minimize blight and encourage investment.
  2. rechlin
    Original story which avoids paywall here: https://www.khou.com/article/traffic/another-lane-closure-expect-even-more-delays-on-the-610-west-loop-for-the-next-six-weeks/285-de942a27-ec4f-4985-b1c9-8d517a82c8b9
  3. rechlin
    The blank walls on the parking garage podiums look like Randall Davis's contributions to the project.
  4. rechlin
    And there will be almost no need for a pedestrian bridge here if they ever finish building the White Oak Bayou trail from the east to connect with the M-K-T/Heights trail. That one little gap in the trail for so many years has perplexed me.
  5. rechlin
    Dirt work is finally almost done. Over the last month, they excavated under where the foundation will be, filled in with new dirt, and hauled away the old dirt. I'm guessing foundation work will start soon. Photos taken this morning and Tuesday evening from bus 65:
  6. rechlin
    I was browsing the web and came across this beautiful 1951 photo of the Petroleum Building:
  7. rechlin
    No, that's Block 95. Block 97 is between the Hess Garage and the Fulbright Garage.
  8. rechlin
    I have a white TPO roof on my house, and all it really takes to keep clean is about once a year during a heavy rainstorm, go up there and sponge the dirt loose and let the rain wash it away. Or haul a hose up there and wash it off. You could pressure wash it, but you'd want the pressure set low so you don't damage the membrane.
  9. rechlin
    From this afternoon:
  10. rechlin
    From this afternoon:
  11. rechlin
    After slowly laying bricks for what seems like a year, it looks like they've finally pretty much finished the brickwork around the fountains. Not pictured -- the concrete for the sidewalk along Main has finally mostly been poured:
  12. rechlin
    Escalator wing now totally gone:
  13. rechlin
    Windows have now been removed from the south side:
  14. rechlin
    15-25 years ago it was considered bad form, yes, but not illegal. Bandwidth was expensive back then so that made sense. But now bandwidth is dirt cheap. Back in the early 2000s I used to spend $1000/month, just in bandwidth costs alone, hosting my web site. Now I get more bandwidth than I could ever need (plus hosting!) for $10/month. Web etiquette has changed, and avoiding infringing on copyrights is now more important than the obsolete 1990s ideas of netiquette.
  15. rechlin
    If you "hotlink" images (a direct link to the original source that is serving the images with the copyright holder's permission, without rehosting the images) in your post, to continue the earlier analogy, it's like leaving a copy of Houstonia magazine out in public, open to a particular page, and telling people to look at that page. If you rehost images (copying them to another site for serving the image, like imgur.com) and link those instead in your post, it's like photocopying the copy of Houstonia magazine and telling people to look at that. I believe the former case is not in any way a copyright violation, since you've copied nothing. The only exception would be if the original source is hosting them illegally, in which case there might be a problem with linking to illegal content, but then the copyright holder should be shutting it down at the source instead. The latter case could possibly be considered fair use, but it's a gray area and may indeed be a copyright violation. That's why, if you want to avoid copyright concerns, you should hotlink. But because sites frequently go down, causing the images to no longer be made available even though the copyright holder is fine with them being shared, rehosting can be a better option if it can be considered fair use. In the Drewery Place example, some images were hotlinked, which should be legal since they were pointing to the original source published by the copyright holder, and some images were rehosted, which the copyright holder said was illegal (though might have actually been fair use -- but that's up for debate and would need a court to decide). But all images were removed, probably in the interest in avoiding any conflict rather than just trying to satisfy any legal requirements. I am not a lawyer, though, so take this with a grain of salt.
  16. rechlin
    From 4/20:
  17. rechlin
    From 4/20:
  18. rechlin
    To be fair, a BRT bus is indeed almost as good as light rail. In fact, a lot of subway systems (I've seen it in Mexico City and I think Paris, too) use rubber-tired vehicles for their subways. The main advantage of rail is bigger vehicles than BRT allows, but we are limited by block lengths here so even our double-car rail isn't a whole lot bigger than BRT buses. The other main advantages of rail are theoretically lower maintenance costs and usually a smoother ride.
  19. rechlin
    From https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2019/04/22/houston-developer-to-buy-land-near-washington-ave.html:
  20. rechlin
    Hopefully this means they'll finally replace the two broken windows on one of the upper floors that have been broken for 1.5 years (since October 2017).
  21. rechlin
    Wrong forum. This is near the Rice Village, not the West Loop. I already made a thread for this development here:
  22. rechlin
    Well, I also was very, very disappointed by what Hines did to 811 Louisiana (former Two Shell). It used to be a somewhat architecturally interesting building, with an arch-like appearance to the windows on the second floor that gradually disappeared over the next several floors. But then they replaced almost all of it with black cladding, leaving just one floor (the fifth, I believe) with slight variations in window sizes, which now looks out of place. Once again, a modernization that did more harm than good. Though I will admit I like what they did to the interior.
  23. rechlin
    "Dated" at one point becomes historical not long later. Calling it "dated" is the same kind of thinking that led to the modernization of the Carter building a couple blocks from here in the 1960s, thankfully undone (though in styrofoam) to restore the building for the JW Marriott. I for one am disappointed to see this example of architecture demolished. Sure, it looked old, but at least it was interesting with all the circles. Now the building will be a disjoint combination of distinctive 1970s architecture and generic 2010s architecture. My only complaint about the escalators at the Houston Center complex is that they are either always full of disrespectful people who would stand two-abreast, preventing anyone from getting around them, or they are so narrow that only one person can stand so there is no possibility of standing. I always wished they had a stairwell in the middle, because it's quicker to walk up stairs than to wait for the slow escalator ride when nobody lets you pass.
  24. rechlin
    Central Station Main to Museum District station on the Metrorail will take you about 14 minutes, almost triple the 5 you mention. And you won't get to the Kirby area from the middle of downtown in a 5 minute Uber. At least 15, and more like 25 if there's any traffic.
  25. rechlin
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