rechlin

The crown got value-engineered too unfortunately.  Current design (I believe):

Original design:

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.

I assume they mean "mall" like the National Mall, a big place to walk around, and not "mall" as in "shopping mall".

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.

17 hours ago, kbates2 said:

Mala was still pretty legit but a lot of people can't handle sichuan spice and so they need a lot of traffic in the place to get enough people that can.

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.

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.

15 hours ago, hindesky said:

I did but I think it was removed 

I have reinstated it.  I don't know why it was removed.

20 hours ago, hindesky said:

 

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.

On 1/27/2020 at 2:02 PM, Fortune said:

Frank Lui and major development do not go together. . .

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.

2 hours ago, wxman said:

I'm doing a 5 Asian city tour in March and I need some inside info:

 

I'll be flying IAH to NRT on United (14.5 hours)

NRT - BKK on Thai Airlines (8 hrs)

BKK - SIN on Thai Air Aisa (2.5 hrs)

SIN - KUL on Thai Air Asia (1 hour)

KUL - PEK on Air China (6.5 hours)

PEK - IAH on Air China (13.5 hours)

 

How is the flight from IAH to NRT? Is the food decent? Is it a comfortable flight?

How is Air China? I'm trying to determine if I should pack a bag with food. I'm a picky eater and would hate to think I'll be going without anything to eat on the flight from KUL to PEK to IAH.

Anybody flown Thai Air Asia or Thai Airlines? How are they? Anything I should know about any of the aforementioned airlines?

 

Thanks!

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.

18 hours ago, Luminare said:

 

The first part is correct to the best of my knowledge. The second part isn't. Per the render it will be built on top of the garage which I believe was designed to handle the load of what would be put on top. It wouldn't make since to put the hotel on the tower itself as it wasn't designed to handle that load, and that would mean ripping up the roof and the entire top deck of that building. Unless others have further info to clarify.

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.

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.

Scaffolding is now down and the sidewalk is reopened, though the slipcover is still removed from much of the "north" side:

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.

21 hours ago, samagon said:

the Galleria area is what it was called before the TIRZ existed, and I call it the Galleria area, but I know where someone is talking about when they say Uptown. 

And before it was called the Galleria Area, it was called the Magic Circle.

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.

It looks like they finished the interiors before installing the windows. Isn't that risky, in case of a storm blowing rain in?

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/

20 hours ago, Luminare said:

From Dec. 16th. The state will be doing a land swap with Mexican Consulate which will be in the path of the 59 portion that will be put underground. If anyone has a business journal sub could you please look into the story and see if there is anything more in there that is relevant?

 

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2019/12/16/texas-mexican-consulate-to-swap-land-in-houston-as.html

Quote

The Texas Transportation Commission and the Consulate of the United Mexican States in Houston have reached a deal to swap land to make way for a major highway project, according to commission documents and the Houston Chronicle.

The Mexican Consulate currently is located at 4506 Caroline St., adjacent to the San Jacinto Street entrance to Interstate 69/U.S. Highway 59 just south of Midtown. It will move to a roughly 3-acre site in Westchase currently owned by the state of Texas. That site is near the intersection of Richmond Avenue and Rogerdale Road, just outside of Beltway 8, per the documents and the Chronicle.

Consulate spokeswoman Valeria Ramirez Siller told the Chronicle the move is slated to occur next year. The consulate will have a larger building at its new location, which is within a mile or two of consulate or embassy offices for several other countries.

The Texas Department of Transportation wanted to obtain the consulate's current site in order to facilitate its massive North Houston Highway Improvement Project. The $7 billion project focuses on the downtown loop (including portions of interstates 10, 45 and 69), I-45 between downtown and the 610 Loop, and I-45 north from the 610 Loop to Beltway 8. The project is controversial — in part because TxDOT estimates it will need to acquire 162 single-family homes, 643 multifamily units and 508 public housing units, the Texas Tribune reports. The project is expected to disproportionately affect communities of color, per the Tribune.

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.

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.