rechlin

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.

Only four more days left on the grace period for your car's registration, cloud713.

Click for a bigger, close-up view of the "mud-mat".  I too wonder what it is!

The white primary lights on the poles are always on at night.  Depending on the phase of the moon, a decorational blue light on the top of the poles may also light up.  Where the path goes under Memorial just west of the bend in the bayou, the lighting attached to the bridge is either white or blue depending on the moon phase.

This should be about the same as BG Group Place, as both include a two story garage and probably need a similar foundation, but I don't know officially.  I have no idea how thick the concrete mat will be, but again it should probably be similar to BG Group Place due to a similar building size and composition.

They have put a lot of dirt back in the hole from the old Texas building to shore up the walls (its foundation is still in place) while they put in the outer wall for the new building just outside the old foundation.  I've been watching them use a giant auger to take dirt out from just outside the old foundation, and then they put rebar and concrete deep in there.  My guess is once the new wall is in place, they will probably dig up that dirt and remove the old walls.

Thanks, Howard Huge.  I now see the link (where your quote came from) that I was looking for on page 1 of this thread, with the story behind this block:

http://www.downtownhouston.org/news/article/back-future/

Amazing that it took almost 30 years for the bulldozing of the historic buildings on that lot to be (almost) redeemed, but I'm glad it's finally happening.  It's such a shame that after they were illegally turn down, it sat for so long as an empty lot.

I've been out of town for most of the last month, so I haven't been able to follow any of these developments in person lately.  However, I have been watching the construction camera.

I noticed yesterday they started digging what looks like a hole in the side of the wall towards the Magnolia Hotel.  Might this be a tunnel connection?  Has anyone who's been on top of the Binz Garage been able to see what they might be doing there?

See the indicated area here:

Speaking of Boston, Boston doesn't even have rail to their airport yet -- they are still running BRT for that line.  So I can't see them doing rail to even Hobby anytime soon (though Hobby would be a lot cheaper to get to than Intercontinental).  Someday, sure.

Old apartments: 240 units on 2 stories with surface parking

New apartments: 378 units on 5 stories with a parking garage

Does this mean they are only using part of the space?  Or how did the number of units only go up by a bit over 50% even though it got significantly denser?  Are the units much bigger?

And tonight around 8:30 I caught them disassembling the construction elevator.  They had to take breaks whenever a train came nearby, because the forklift had to go onto the tracks to get at the elevator.  Getting really close to being able to finish the façade!

I haven't provided any updates lately since there hasn't been much to update on, but finally we're seeing a little more progress so I figured I'd share another photo.

Today they started taking down the main construction elevator, now that the mast climbers have been gone for a couple weeks.  This photo taken in the morning shows it down about a quarter of the way; by late afternoon it was down about half way.

Also, they put a giant tank on the roof, and then built a frame around it, and then put panels on it and painted it beige; you can see it right in front of the Esperson cupula in this photo.

You can't see it in this photo, but the first floor of the penthouse has now been painted beige to match the upper two floors (which were painted months ago).

They're now almost done installing windows, too.  As of mid afternoon, they had installed window frames all the way down to the eighth floor in the unfinished section on the right side of this photo.

Curtains and bathtubs are visible in some of the windows in this photo, too.

Digressing from the topic here, but...

Basements are always expensive.  People don't have basements unless there is a good reason.  In the north, you need the foundation of the house to be below the freeze point, to avoid problems with the foundation shifting, so you have to dig.  If you're going to dig down, you might as well have a basement, even if it's only halfway undergound (in North Dakota, where I am from, basements are typically at least 3/4 below the ground to ensure stability of the foundation).  Also, the basement provides better insulation from the cold, so you have reduced heating expenses if you can have more of your house underground.

In northern cities of Texas like Dallas, you can't easily get a basement because the bedrock is so close, meaning expensive blasting would be required.  My parents went through this in Arkansas -- when they built their house they spent something like $20,000 on blasting just to get only a third of their lower floor below ground.  So basements are actually even less feasible there.  In Houston, we don't have that problem, but the cost of digging the basement still makes it not worth it for most residential homes, since there's no real need for one aside from slightly better insulation in the summer (though a lot of commercial construction uses basements).  No, the water table is not much more of a concern than in other places -- even in places like North Dakota, most modern homes have sump pumps to keep water out of the basement, and people still get flooding occasionally.

Right now the golf cart guards are mostly staying on the completed section (north bank east of Montrose).  I've been seeing them most days over the last couple weeks.  Presumably they will roam the entire park once the construction is complete.  All they seem to do now is get in the way, though; I've noticed no change in the number of homeless (basically just one guy) over the last year.

Speaking of traffic lights, I see that they are replacing a bunch of the traffic lights downtown.  While I like that they are more visible, no longer just being at the right side of the street, I am perplexed at the arrangement.  All over Texas and Houston, all traffic lights are horizontally arranged, which is different from most places in the US.  However, these new lights are vertically arranged!  Does anyone know if this is a new trend, or if they are just doing this downtown, or what's going on?

Here's what Hines had to tell us about the new tunnel amenities under 806 Main, which will be closed for 2 months starting Monday, May 19 for the renovations:

In case you didn't notice in the photos that I see were just posted, when I walked by earlier today the crane was coming down.  Not surprised, since they didn't even use the crane Thursday or Friday.  Time to finish digging the basement!

Just when I thought they were almost done tearing down the Texas Tower, it appears there is one more floor to go -- the basement!  You can kind of see it from the construction camera.

I thought the building would be gone this week, but if they have to excavate the basement, that may take until next week.  The first floor is about 3/4 gone now.

I'm curious: has any housing stock come online downtown since the completion of the census in 2010?

I think the City View Lofts opened in 2011.  Also, it's possible some of the last units of the Commerce Towers opened since then.  I know that was a gradual process over quite a few years.

According to HCAD, the Melrose building is owned by "GULF APARTMENT INVESTORS LP", so maybe there's some hope that it could be turned into residences.

The Melrose Building is really the only building left near 609 Main that badly needs to be addressed.  It smells awful and has been vacant for as long as I can remember.  Now that they totally renovated the old Texaco garage next to it, with the Texaco building behind it in the process of being renovated, and with 6HC supposed to go in across the street, it seems like it is time to finish addressing this block (the other half of the block is surface parking).  Yet I have not heard a word anywhere about any plans for the building, either tearing it down or renovating it.

I vaguely remember reading somewhere that 609 Main is supposed to have "unparalleled" access to the tunnel system.  I know some have said there were rumors it would be connected to the JP Morgan Chase Center Garage across Main.  But I also read that it was going to be connected to BG Group Place.  The only way I could see that working would be to go from BG Group Place diagonally across Fannin/Rusk through the renovated Texaco building, under the garage that will be built for it, into the Sak's garage (which already has an abandoned tunnel connection to it across Capital, I believe), and then across Fannin to 609 Main.  Perhaps "unparalleled" means they will have both for 609 Main?  Has there been any update on this?

If the latter connection is made, that would mean that the block with the Melrose building will then have easy tunnel access (via the tunnel diagonally between BG Group Place and the Texaco building), so perhaps that empty half block could be put to use.

Battlestein's is nearby, too, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do ground level renovations as part of the 806 Main project (the sidewalk has been closed off for well over a year anyway), and it's nowhere near the eyesore that the Melrose Building is.