Jump to content

rechlin

Full Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    850

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    7

 Content Type 

Everything posted by rechlin

  1. rechlin
    Seen on reddit courtesy of /u/ImOnFire15:
  2. rechlin
    I took this photo earlier in the month and never got around to posting it, but nobody else has provided updates so it's still a good 6 weeks more current than anything else out there. This is the new parking garage and office building, mostly finished. Not the greatest photo but I was just walking by, and this was the best view I could get from the side I was on:
  3. rechlin
    The sign is now up!
  4. rechlin
    Photo from last week, but I forgot to upload it until now. Construction is going strong on the pocket park:
  5. rechlin
    Just a clarification, the "1200 units" will be the total including the existing buildings to the east and southeast (689 units in Bayou Park and 436 in Memorial Heights). This new building only adds 232 units; the garden apartments that used to be there had 120 units. So this section of land now sees twice as many housing units, plus a nearly 100,000 square foot H-E-B, plus nearly 40,000 square feet of other commercial space (mostly offices and a bit of retail). That's a nice improvement in density and should be great for this location!
  6. rechlin
    Very interesting. It looks like only a small amount of ROW acquisition would be needed and a fair amount of parking would be added. While the net number of bus stops has only decreased slightly, they've all been moved to make them just past the intersections (in a dedicated pull-off) rather than just before, so they don't block right turns on red. Yes, Westheimer loses a lane in each direction, but that lane is virtually unusable at present because the right half of the right lane as it is now can't handle cars (only trucks) due to potholes, and bigger vehicles can't stay in a lane the way it is now (because the lanes are narrow and Houston drivers are incompetent) making the lane next to them almost useless anyway. I like this. The new sidewalks will be HUGE, which is a big improvement compared to the narrow/nonexistent sidewalks right now, and for such a walkable area, that's important.
  7. rechlin
    The plywood was because people kept throwing (and breaking) glass liquor bottles into the gated entryway, and this stops that. The sign for the "VENUE" that used to be there has been painted over, too. So hopefully this means things have started!
  8. rechlin
    One of the architects behind this wrote a really interesting narrative from his perspective on WOMH on reddit yesterday:
  9. rechlin
    Actually the street is still open, at least during the day, but down to two lanes. Thick steel plates cover the excavation when the road is open so cars can still drive over it.
  10. rechlin
    I think Hearsay was also in the new wave of downtown bars, opening about 5 years ago. So there really even less prior to when you moved downtown, downtownian. 609 Main sits on a block that had a long-vacant obsolete small-footprint office tower (even the Chinese restaurant in it shut down a decade or two ago), and was otherwise a giant parking lot, though there was a weird suburban McDonald's on that block that was also torn down some years back. A block away, 811 Main was on arguably the worst (at the time) block in all of downtown, with a dumpy hotel rife with drugs and prostitution and otherwise a bunch of largely decrepit vacant buildings. Now this several block area is one of the most gleaming parts of downtown. Add the JW Marriott, which revived another decaying largely-vacant building, the Star apartments which are partially open now (though I think their parking garage should win an award for the slowest parking garage ever constructed -- I think they are building it at a rate of one floor every 6 months), two new light rail lines, and more, it's totally transformed the area. I worked downtown briefly in 2004-2005 and again since 2012, and the change has been astonishing. Even over the last 5 years I've seen so much of an improvement in street-level pedestrian presence in the area of 609 Main. Going to lunch today I was once again amazed at how many people there were outside -- this is not the downtown I know, and I love it.
  11. rechlin
    Two people on reddit got good shots, though. First, /u/AndyDwyer: Next, /u/softroxstar:
  12. rechlin
    It's all part of the big http://www.ih45northandmore.com/ project. There was an article posted recently that indicated that the timeline has been pushed up for this project, maybe as early as 2021, if I remember right. Since the freeway would then be below grade, Main and Fannin and the light rail will all be on bridges, and the Fannin exit ramp by Sears will disappear without replacement. That would probably reduce high-speed traffic in the area, making a large mixed-use district like the one proposed above even easier for pedestrians to get around.
  13. rechlin
    Everything west of Fannin was cleaned out months ago. West of Main it was completely fenced in, and between Fannin and Main there has been strong enforcement to keep it clean (sometimes one of the Metro cops even leaves his car parked there). The block east of Fannin may still have some people hanging out on occasion but it's nothing like it was, and if anyone is still there I don't even notice because it's far enough from Wheeler station. That said, I've seen a few more people under the Pierce Elevated lately than in the past. Perhaps that is an additional incentive to eliminate that then IH-45 is rerouted (along with trenching IH-69 near Wheeler) in the near future. Back to the topic at hand, once 69 is trenched by the Sears, there is sure to be some related work done at surface level, so perhaps that would be the incentive necessary to push through this redevelopment of the Sears blocks.
  14. rechlin
    This is largely out of date. They've now fenced off most of the open area under the freeway there. And Wheeler Station is heavily supervised now, with at least one HPD vehicle (and frequently multiple) there every time I go there. I agree that the multitude of largely-unused surface lots (thanks to the Sears that rarely has anyone shopping there) are not a good thing, though.
  15. rechlin
    Jury duty. I got further through the process than I've ever gotten before; this time they didn't dismiss me until the final round of dismissals, as they were making the final selection of the 12 jurors plus 2 alternates. It was actually quite interesting, hearing the attorneys on both sides giving their introductions and having the laws explained to us.
  16. rechlin
    View from the criminal courts building yesterday:
  17. rechlin
    View from the criminal courts building yesterday:
  18. rechlin
    This rendering from the HBJ article is a bit peculiar, because looking at the roof, there's no evidence that anything like this will be built: How it is right now:
  19. rechlin
    That damage was already there two weeks ago by the time the sidewalks opened. They hadn't even installed the ceiling there yet. Houston drivers never fail to amaze me.
  20. rechlin
    My neighbor took a bunch of photos to show the color changes the night before last. I keep telling him to make an account, but until then, here they are!
  21. rechlin
    Contrast to this photo I took of the skyline about 15 years ago, in December 2001. The Wedge tower even had green outlines back then!
  22. rechlin
    Nice to see it peeking over the skyline. From reddit, courtesy of /u/TronicsDota:
  23. rechlin
    The street used to be named Calhoun but was renamed St Joseph Parkway in November, 1997. http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/1997/11/24/editorial1.html
  24. rechlin
    Looks like the large Super Bowl trophy graphic is now in place. I wonder what the little cubes that have been on the pool deck for the last couple weeks are for:
  25. rechlin
    Lowell Street Market is indeed in the Heights, on 18th Street, despite what the confusing name implies:
×
×
  • Create New...