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rechlin

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Everything posted by rechlin

  1. rechlin
    You can easily see the camera from the ground, so I can tell just by looking up there that the camera we've been watching (which looks to the southeast) is down for the window washers. However, while walking by the other day I noticed they also had a camera mounted on the other side of the Chase Tower, facing to the northeast. That should give a perfect view of the two Market Square towers once they start, plus the International Tower if anything ever comes out of that. I wonder if anyone can guess the URL of that camera? I tried a few things but couldn't figure it out, but maybe it's not published online yet. I figure since the Market Square residential tower is also a Hines project that they'll probably pay for the camera for that one, too.
  2. rechlin
    Unless they've changed it since this plan was posted here in September, the leg facing Main will be a pocket park. The leg facing Prairie will be a loading dock:
  3. rechlin
    They've clearly been digging a pit in the south corner of the block for a while now, I think since early last week. There's been a steady stream of dump trucks all week, hauling out dirt rather than just debris from the tower deconstruction.
  4. rechlin
    I think it's vacant. I checked the other day, and not a single tenant is listed on the board in the lobby. After all the money that was spent renovating it less than a decade ago, it's been sad to see it empty, but it'll probably cost quite a lot more to turn it into a hotel. Glad to see it finally put to use!
  5. rechlin
    Thankfully they rescued the only guy who they believe was caught in the building: Here's another photo I found on the Internet:
  6. rechlin
    It wouldn't surprise me if Hines paid for the movers as well as whatever expenses were involved in terminating his lease. That's a lot cheaper than a lawsuit -- I bet their cost was less than a lawyer working on a case for just a few days.
  7. rechlin
    They did a lot more painting today. Relief is done everywhere except between floors 15 and 16. Unfortunately the texture still looks really bad, so you can see many of the individual foam pieces that make up the fake stone, especially below the 15th floor in the middle of the building (click for a better view):
  8. rechlin
    Excuse my crude drawing, but based on the above photo I placed outlines of where all the buildings planned for the next 3 years (from the March Downtown Houston Development Map) will go. It's amazing how much will be filled in!
  9. rechlin
    I think the incline in the drawing is facing the wrong direction for it to be the Milam elevation. Doesn't Milam go downhill as you go north?
  10. rechlin
    According to Swamplot they have closed off the parking lot already for this: http://swamplot.com/hines-market-square-takes-over-a-surface-parking-lot-downtown/2014-03-17/
  11. rechlin
    The Stowers building is as close to Class A as it's going to get without tearing it down and rebuilding. It was completely redone, interior and exterior, less than 10 years ago, and it has tunnel access. I don't see what else could be done. The Wilson building had the same treatment but obviously has no tunnel access. I'd be very surprised if there's a boutique hotel in the Stowers building. The tenant directory sign in the lobby doesn't mention a hotel, and I don't think it's configured for the plumbing one would want for a hotel. I hope the rumor of exciting things being about to happen is true! I'm hoping to see some ground floor retail at the very least, as it's set up perfectly for that.
  12. rechlin
    Unfortunately, the situation is the same with the Stowers Building at 820 Fannin. It was totally renovated around 2005-2006, yet today it remains almost completely vacant. I think there's one tenant on the 10th floor, but that's it. It's great that developers are willing to save old buildings, but it seems like there is little demand from companies to then use them as office space. This means much less of an incentive to save buildings in the future.
  13. rechlin
    No, sidewalks are completely blocked off at both of those places. There were some temporarily-covered sidewalks near GreenStreet recently, not sure if they are still covered. Also they recently added a little bit of sidewalk covering around the Texaco building, too, but the existing arcades do a good job of covering most of it so they didn't need much.
  14. rechlin
    Last week they finally reopened the old Texaco garage, and it's already mostly full of cars. This should give some much needed relief to the other garages and surface lots in the area, which have been a lot more full the last 6 months due to this garage being closed. As I suspected, they reconfigured the garage entrance to the San Jacinto side, because the Rusk side is blocked by the new light rail station. I wonder if Metro helped pay for this. They've also restriped most of the spots (except the top floor or so), and put up a new fence on the Fannin side. Click for a bigger view:
  15. rechlin
    They've now started to add some relief to the 16th floor. They also started painting a little on the lower floors (click for larger view): Closeup:
  16. rechlin
    Yes. My hope is that they are removing pieces that are loose or damaged and replacing them after repair. Guess we'll see!
  17. rechlin
    It was hard to see in my last photo, but they've removed some big chunks out of the historic façade. Hopefully this is to restore them off-site rather than replace them with styrofoam à la 806 Main. Click for a bigger view:
  18. rechlin
    Triton, Nice find. Remove the red box before extracting it like this, and the chart is even easier to read (click for the full 1854x1106 image):
  19. rechlin
    Yesterday morning, Mayor Parker had a podium set up at the completed portion of the park by the skate park, and she gave a speech about the progress of this project, as well as cycling culture and stuff like that. http://www.myfoxhouston.com/story/24908168/2014/03/06/mayor-parker-cycling-culture-houston I didn't see the talk, but I happened to bike by there while they were setting it up.
  20. rechlin
    They're doing a massive concrete pour now, with a constant stream of cement trucks driving in and out all day today. While I was taking this photo (click for a bigger view), I saw identical trucks driving by on both Lamar and McKinney, too, so they have at least half a dozen cement trucks around there at any point.
  21. rechlin
    No activity yesterday. The crane never moved, and the Bobcats and other equipment were just left at ground level with nothing on the roof. Looks like they are down to 15 stories now. No evidence of ground having broken; I don't know where that rumor came from (click for larger view):
  22. rechlin
    They've now removed a bunch more windows from the southwest side of the shorter building (click for detail, note the boards for safety and the plastic sheeting over where the windows were):
  23. rechlin
    Yes, it looks like they've cut a couple more floors of it since my last update. They've experimented with different tools on the Bobcat; for a while this week they were using the jackhammer instead of the shovel. Also it's been amusing to see a porta-potty on the roof of the building. Here's a photo of them hard at work on Wednesday (click for full size): And here's a photo (again, click for high resolution) of what it looked like late Friday afternoon:
  24. rechlin
    I figure since it has been a couple weeks since my last update, I'd update you guys again. Unfortunately, there hasn't been a whole lot of visible progress lately. They finally took down the scaffolding around the penthouse. Also, they put another coat of paint on floors 18 through 20, so those look a lot less splotchy now. Then they shortened the mast climbers/scaffolvators down to the 17th floor. Most recently, they added a little more trim around the 17th floor windows, troweled on the gray stuff, and put a coat of white paint on it. Also I saw a guy putting a little bit of the gray stuff on the right side of the area behind the right elevator, below floors 18, 19, and 20. Here's a photo from late Friday afternoon, and as usual, click for higher resolution:
  25. rechlin
    Yes, Nate99, it appears that they are just pushing everything down the elevator shaft. They cut a hole in the side of the building by that excavator, and they have water jets spraying down on it (which increase in intensity when debris comes down) to minimize the dust cloud. They are using a wheeled Bobcat loader (built in the state where I grew up, North Dakota!) on the top of the building to carry the debris to the shaft, where it's dropped down and then moved to a dump truck by the excavator. Here's a photo of the loader that they are using, when they were using the crane to lift it:
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