rechlin

I agree throwing up a tower their makes no sense..it would block alot of people view..if they want a tower apt..thier is still plenty of available space in the incentives zone.. That area would be better as a pocket park

We already know something will be built there, so it couldn't be a pocket park.  The initial phase of the project still has a garage of around 6-7 stories (so about a third of the height of the building being renovated) going in that place.  There will be a pad on the top of the garage where the highrise could potentially be built.

Those fortress-like columns were poured months ago.  Only now are they finally removing the old walls from the Texas Tower in front of them.

It has to be the former, based on the numbers, because it says in the linked article that the daytime population is 577,301, and further says it is 47% higher in the daytime than outside daytime, which implies the evening population is about 393,000, which obviously isn't the CBD population.  That's close to the population of the whole 610 loop, which is somewhere around half a million.

Glass is going up, but it looks like someone already managed to smash a couple of the windows!  (click for larger view)

Actually that scaffolding has been there for weeks.  Also, early last week I saw a hanging platform (like that typically used for window washers, or like those they have been using on the Texaco building) on the southwest wall with men inspecting that wall.  So work has been going on for a little while already.

Note: the above photo was actually taken under 801 Travis, whose tunnel level is also being renovated as a part of this project.  The tunnel here has been open off and on in recent weeks, but today it was closed again.

There's a new bird in the sky -- they finally put the boom up:

A bunch of segments already queued up!

If Chevron had started on the original date, they'd be paying for the workers now at the peak of costs.  Perhaps they are the smart ones -- if the "crash" happens, then construction labor will certainly become much cheaper if they start in 2016.

My parents ran into this, too.  They are building a house (almost done), and for various reasons the construction took far longer than expected (currently at 17 months), and partially due to rising costs, it's over 40% over budget.

Looks like the Chronicle has answered our question about how much rebar (4000 tons):

http://blog.chron.com/primeproperty/2014/08/609-main-by-the-numbers/

• 21 1/2 hours: Time it took to pour the mat. The pour started at 7 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 23, and finished at 4:30 p.m. Sunday.
• 180 trucks: The trucks worked in continuous rotation to deliver nearly 1,400 loads of concrete.
• 10 minutes: The approximate time it took for each truck to unload.
• 6 pumper trucks: Used to distribute the concrete.
• 13,810 cubic yards: Total amount of concrete.
• 9-feet: Depth of the concrete mat.
• 4,000 tons:  Amount of rebar used.

I've been holding off on posting this because I've been hoping they'd go back and fix it, but I guess it's hopeless so I might as well post it.  While the lower floors are beautiful indeed, the screwup they made at the top is a real travesty.

First a full image of the upper floors -- see if you can spot the flaw (it's pretty obvious).  Click for a bigger view:

Here's what you should be looking at.  Take a look at the cornice at the roof level.  In the middle, where they previously had the construction elevator mounted, you can see a rust spot where they didn't repaint after filling in the hole where it was bracketed.  That's unfortunate, but not the worst of it.  Now look at the section right above the rust where it has been painted a slightly lighter color than the rest.  Again, unfortunate, but not the worst of it.  Now notice have they have beveling that is more-or-less equally spaced on the cornice.  Now look right above the rust -- there should be a vertical groove there, but there isn't, so now you have one "panel" that is twice the width of the rest.  It really annoys me and I can't believe they screwed this up.

Just got back from downtown.  Click on any of the photos for a bigger view.

First, from the Sak's garage:

Another angle:

From the Binz garage:

Another angle:

Not sure what they have here, but they seem to be putting these cylinders into a wheelbarrow that the crane lifts down to where they are pouring:

Closeup of a pump truck:

Refueling a pump truck while it's running:

Two concrete trucks feeding each pump:

Tent with bottled water, ground level view:

Concrete trucks lined up on Capitol:

Concrete trucks lined up on Texas:

 

It has begun! From a coworker currently in the Binz garage (click for larger view):

Scaffolding coming down (click for bigger image):

A guy on site said 25,000 tons of rebar, but I'm guessing that's for the entire building and not just what has been placed for the mat foundation.

According to a construction worker on the site, the mat pour starts Saturday noon, will continue on to Sunday, and will involve eight pumper trucks.

They're still working 7 days a week on this, starting at 7:30am or so.  When I walked by this afternoon (a Sunday!) I counted 36 people on the site.  It's astonishing how thick the rebar is -- if you look closely, you can see workers walking around underneath/inside the rebar.  Looks like they are getting close to finishing the rebar placement, so I'd think the mat pour can't be far away.  It's going to be an insanely long pour, I am sure.  (click for higher resolution)

Looks like they are finally building the mast climbers to work on the northeast wall of the taller building:

It's hard to tell from my vantage point, but to me it looks like they are getting ready to move the locomotive, because they have a crane right by it and a bunch of guys walking around it.

Turning Main into a bike lane really isn't ideal.  The trains totally mess up the lights, so cyclists would have to stop every few blocks and wait for a light since they turn the lights red when a train is coming up behind you.  Trains are spaced 5 minutes apart, and because they are coming both directions, that means 2.5 minutes between trains.  And with how overly conservative they are with lights, you're stopped a lot of the time.

I prefer biking down roads like Travis.  The lights are timed well enough that you can go a long way without hitting a red (I've made it all the way across Midtown on Travis, starting where it comes from Spur 527, all the way to 45, without hitting a single red light before, and in downtown I rarely catch more than a couple reds all the way from 45 to Rusk).

That said, I'm all in favor of closing off Main to traffic by the Hilcorp tower.  Having more pedestrian areas is a good thing.

Because 609 Main is using false floors to support a fancy floor-based HVAC system, I wonder if they will have slightly larger floor spacing.  2 floors is 28 feet, and a 5 story crown would add another 70 feet, so you make a good point -- that's still about 30 feet that's unaccounted for.

Strangely, there's still a real estate available sign on this lot:

Looks like they did something very similar when building BG Group Place (scroll about 3/4 of the way down):

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=136738&page=10

I'd rather link to the forum from this site, but unfortunately the photos posted here weren't as good.

I was wondering the same about those pits.  Elevator pit sounds very likely.

If it's anything like 811 Main (Hines' last similar project), the square pit is probably for the service elevator, since it's near the middle of the tower.  I don't know about the other pit.  In 811 Main, none of the three elevator banks in the tower go down to the garage; the garage elevator bank, which does go to B1 and B2, is separate and on the non-tower portion of the block (in the case of 609 Main, that would be on the currently-unexcavated part of the block).

Maybe they are doing a different elevator layout here, though.  Has a full stack plan been shown yet?  I've seen the top few floors posted recently but don't recall seeing a stack plan showing anything below.

That red brick building already was restored about a decade ago.  It's the Club Quarters hotel.