rechlin

Note to the people behind The Star downtown: this is how you should build a parking garage!

Here are a couple screen grabs from KTRK last night showing them pumping the water out of the Theater District basements:

Once again there was a crew on site this morning.  Perhaps their annual "dig up some dirt and then leave for a year" exercise?

They had an excavator and several trucks and had already dug up some piles of dirt.  This is the same corner where they were working a year ago, but a much bigger operation than last time.

Canopies are now all gone and pavement is being removed.  I may have to set up a second webcam to monitor this too!

No signs of the vertical sign yet.  This photo is from last night around 7:30pm or so:

Yesterday they fenced off the parking lot.  Today they started taking down the canopies and power-washing the graffiti off the side of the building.  Looks like the garage might be about to go up!

I think I can tell where the broken window glass came from (upper left corner).  That's quite a distance for the glass to fall!

Samurai Noodle doesn't count.  It's in the Conservatory, where three of the food vendor spots are temporary locations for different places to rotate in and out, and that's been the plan since day 1.  Samurai Noodle and the Greek place next to it were both swapped out already; I'm not sure what the schedule is for the Tex-Mex/barbecue place is to be swapped out, but I'm guessing it will be soon since it's been there over a year.  Only Melange Creperie is intended to be there long-term.

I wonder if those were just mobile COWs (Cells-On-Wheels) to provide extra mobile phone coverage during the Super Bowl festivities.  They put up a whole bunch in Downtown then, and maybe Midtown got some too.

Edit: I think the lower one (with a fence) is a COW but the upper one may well be doing soil samples.

The original tiles were in really bad shape, such that I'd be surprised if they were able to repair them in place.  Perhaps they were removed from the upper floors so they can be restored?  I didn't get close enough to it today to be sure, but I did notice they finally took down the construction elevator.

Lots of active work still on the pocket park; it's hard to even photograph it all.  A bunch of trees inside, and some brickwork along the sidewalk.

Nice view of 609 Main in that last shot.  It's amazing how much more visible that is than BG Group Place despite only being a little taller.

Crane coming down May 30 - June 2.  The 3200 block of Lake Street will be closed for dismantling it.

That article says it's connected to the downtown tunnel system.  Does that mean they are reopening the tunnel between it and the Magnolia?  Unfortunately that wouldn't be very useful, because the tunnel between the Magnolia and 609 Main was filled in when 609 Main was built.

I hope the additional tower for phase 2 isn't dead.  I assume that blank space on the roof of the left side of the garage on the above photo is going to be the base for it, though that's a very different location than was shown on the early renderings.  Also I see the garage has completely changed and grown since the early renderings; see below.  I don't see how the low garage before would have provided enough parking for the whole development, so maybe that's a sign that some variation on the tower is still planned.

That's what they did on the Marriott Marquis.  Windows cover less than 1/3 of the western façade of the tower (probably the other sides, too, but that's the only side I have a good look at), with the rest just bare concrete, but they put glass over it so it looks like a glass curtain wall unless you look closely.  Look closely at this:

1 hour ago, 102IAHexpress said:

However, just off the top of my head, what about Goro & Gun which HAIF was in love with?

Goro and Gun is still around.  They just rebranded as Moving Sidewalk and got rid of the food.

As long as the clearance is at least as high as the pedestrian bridge down the road closer to downtown, it should be fine.  That seems to have survived just fine over the decades.

With the amount of detail they've put into these renderings, especially these most recent ones, I hope that means they are serious about this particular design and won't be scaling it down.  It looks great!  Definitely more something like what you'd see built in the Middle East or East Asia than the boring stuff too frequently built here.

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:

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!