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rechlin

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Everything posted by rechlin

  1. rechlin
    The crown got value-engineered too unfortunately. Current design (I believe): Original design:
  2. rechlin
    I really like how they changed the design of the parking garage, but with the skywalk to the Marriott Marquis now removed from the rendering, I guess this means there now definitely won't be a tunnel/skywalk connection between the convention center and the rest of downtown as I had hoped (and as the earlier renderings had indicated). Too bad.
  3. rechlin
    I assume they mean "mall" like the National Mall, a big place to walk around, and not "mall" as in "shopping mall".
  4. rechlin
    It's so each unit pays for their own electricity for air conditioning. It's a lot less efficient than a central system, but it's the simplest way to make sure everyone pays for their own amount of cooling.
  5. rechlin
    I would say the opposite. Rather than being like the other Mala Sichuan restaurants (which are excellent, or at least the Chinatown location was), they had a greatly reduced menu that had too much American Chinese food and very few of the offerings that made their other locations great. There were only like 2-3 traditional dishes on the menu. I was really looking forward to them opening, because downtown had no proper Chinese food, meaning they had the potential to fill a very valuable niche, but instead all we ended up with was basically another American Chinese place but with prices far too high to compete with the others downtown. Look around town and fairly authentic Sichuan-style places are opening up everywhere -- Cooking Girl, Pepper Twins, Spicy Girl, etc -- so there is clearly a lot of demand, but so far nobody has attempted this downtown. Now that the middleman has been removed at Finn Hall we might finally see prices adjust to be more reasonable, because despite working across the street from it, I very rarely went because their prices just weren't competitive.
  6. rechlin
    There is no lockdown in Harris County anyway, and even in counties that have more strict shelter-in-place rules than the very light ones effective for us today, construction is generally still allowed. So I wouldn't see that as a concern just yet.
  7. rechlin
    I have reinstated it. I don't know why it was removed.
  8. rechlin
  9. rechlin
    Finally it's going vertical!
  10. rechlin
    I know the opera hall is getting a lot of hate on here, but I think it fits the architecture of the rest of the campus perfectly. Can't wait to see all the landscaping finished.
  11. rechlin
    Amazing how they managed to spell his name wrong every time (it's Liu, not Lui). I guess we'll have to see how POST Houston turns out, which could potentially be a major development (even though I realize it's been cut back a bit from the original design), but if he does a good job with that, maybe we can have better hopes for the Coca-Cola facility.
  12. rechlin
    I did the IAH-PEK trip last year, and it was definitely a disappointment. The IFE system was worse than what Turkish was using way back in 2013, and the food was mediocre at best (no better than United, and that says a lot). I wish we had a different nonstop option to China. The only good thing is Air China still does 9 across in coach on a 777 instead of 10 across like some of the penny-pinching carriers. The only other time I flew to PEK was on a 747 via Northwest so that's too long ago to be comparable. Hopefully we'll see a nonstop route to Shanghai in the future as an alternative, as I would take that next time I go to China.
  13. rechlin
    I used a webcam to record the construction of the existing tower, along with the other buildings nearby, from 2015 to the present. I still haven't gotten around to making the timelapse video (over 200,000 three-megapixel images). Now the Hampton/Homewood blocks most of my view of the roof of the tower, but I am expecting to relocate 3 floors higher in July, which should give a better view, so if the construction doesn't start until then I should be able to get the construction progress of the roof preparations for the hotel in my webcam.
  14. rechlin
    The rendering pretty clearly shows the W hotel on top of the tower, not the garage. The amenities deck is on top of the front part of the tower and the W hotel is on top of the back part of the tower. None appears to be on top of the garage. And I watched them build that garage; there is no way that garage is supporting a hotel like that. So no, I am pretty sure you are incorrect. Yes, a little bit of the garage is incorporated into the existing tower, but I'm not counting that since that's well below the beginning of the hotel.
  15. rechlin
    No, the article is misleading. The Houston First building is attached to a parking garage. The hotel will be on top of the Houston First building, not its attached parking garage.
  16. rechlin
    Scaffolding is now down and the sidewalk is reopened, though the slipcover is still removed from much of the "north" side:
  17. rechlin
    You're not accounting for unexpectedly high HVAC costs. It will probably look something like this when it's done:
  18. rechlin
    No shutdown of consequence would be necessary to add a new station between Wheeler and Museum District. Remember, Central Station Main was added without any significant shutdown (occasional shutdowns with bus bridges at off-peak times and that's it). That said, although the 1000 meter gap between Wheeler and Museum District is bigger than the typical 400-800 meter gaps in Midtown, Downtown, and the TMC, it's in line with the spacing of the rest of the MetroRail system. And having stops delays the already slow train, meaning you would need a lot of people getting on and off before a stop becomes more than just an annoyance. So I think a lot more than just this Museo Plaza development will have to be completed before another stop would be justified.
  19. rechlin
    And before it was called the Galleria Area, it was called the Magic Circle.
  20. rechlin
    The condition of the original façade looks better than I feared but it's still far worse than the Main Street Food Store building at 1101 Main, which was reportedly already hard to justify restoring. It appears the columns between the windowed sections were totally destroyed. But maybe we'll get lucky -- I'd love to see that 1929 façade back.
  21. rechlin
    It looks like they finished the interiors before installing the windows. Isn't that risky, in case of a storm blowing rain in?
  22. rechlin
    The building with Conservatory and Prohibition is now on the market. Wonder if the owner is wanting to get out now that it lost two of its biggest tenants? https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/1004-Prairie-St-Houston-TX/13441245/
  23. rechlin
  24. rechlin
    They took the exact same approach when renovating Buffalo Bayou west of downtown several years ago. They hammered them all the way into the ground so you can't see them anymore. I'm sure the same will be done here.
  25. rechlin
    Yes, I definitely see some very minor changes in Segment 3, but not much (I didn't look at the other segments). The ROW for IH-69 under Montrose is now narrower so they won't have to rebuilt the already-new Montrose bridge. Slightly less of the 527 spur will be rebuilt. The ramp from Hamilton to 288 southbound is reconfigured. The ramp from IH-45 southbound to IH-10 westbound is slightly shifted. The Sabine Street bridge is no longer being shown as being rebuilt. Also, the bridges over the freeways now all show wide sidewalks that weren't indicated before, which mostly doesn't seem to affect much except for a slight reconfiguration of Allen Parkway at the 45 spur, along with a new sidewalk going along the spur there too.
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