mollusk

There is still a bunch of digging out of very massive concrete foundation pieces and crunching them to rubble.  We are now past the Satisfying Large Easy Things.

Trust me, if you're nearby you have no illusions whatsoever.  Work is going on.

Layoffs occur in most mergers, regardless of the external economic conditions.  Many of the non revenue functions don't require the full staff that both of the merging entities would otherwise bring with them because a lot of that work gets consolidated.

Regardless, a boom by definition can't last forever.  Absent some tectonic change (i.e., the steel mills leaving for overseas), neither do the busts.

I have to agree with Utterly Urban.

With a few brief exceptions here and there, I've worked downtown pretty much continuously since the late '70s.  Back then, you just did not park east of Caroline after dark, unless you were going to Liberty Hall.  It wasn't panhandling that was the concern, it was getting mugged.

Having more and more people out and about has helped make things much safer, as has a larger and more visible police presence.  No, I'm not going to leave anything visible in my parked car downtown (a rule I also follow pretty much everywhere, including in my own dang driveway), and I'm not going to park in a dark, secluded place at night (nor would I do so at the suburban mall/shopping center of your choice), but all in all, downtown's tons better than it used to be.

Ross and arche are correct.

If memory serves, the city's default height and setback restrictions are driven primarily by fire issues.  Unless there's a deed restriction against it, one can build up to the property line so long as the wall has a fire rating.  Likewise, occupied space over x height and/or level (I forget which and what the values are) triggers a fire sprinkler system requirement.

That said, the permitting office doesn't always communicate with the land use folks all that well.  I've seen a number of situations where permits were issued for construction that didn't even begin to comply with deed restrictions or other land use requirements.  Once the appropriate dime gets dropped, red tags start flying - and yes, the'll even require stuff to be torn out.

OHMOG.  A Villages real estate agent, who is marketing this solely as a teardown - as in, exactly one picture of the house itself.

Bless her little Memorial soul.

In that case, it would've been previously compromised by the earthquake, which they did emergency repairs on back in 1989-90 and why they were building the replacement span to begin with.

Not quite.  The section that failed during the Loma Prieta earthquake was at the transition out of the truss section.  The 2009 failure was, IIRC, a linking member with cracks that got picked up during evaluation check; a patch was applied because that section was going to be history within a couple years.  And then the patch failed, again IIRC, because of a metallurgical issue.

That entire 2/3 +/- of the bridge was found to be seismically inadequate.  The suspension bridge section from Angel/Treasure Island to the City, grounded on bedrock, could be reinforced (and was); the eastern part was on redwood pilings pounded into the mud of the bay.  Some projections had it that if the Loma Prieta quake had lasted about thirty seconds longer, pretty much all of the eastern section would have failed (a la the Cypress Structure in Oakland).

- The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge partially collapsed in 2009 and was the result of a botched 70-hour emergency repair from a component that was already failing (in a NEW bridge, natch)

 

Actually, the Bay Bridge problems were in the old cantilever truss bridge portion.

It wasn't that long ago that the Heights and Montrose were pretty skeevy neighborhoods.  

I can at least address the shift from 84 units to seven single family houses.  The tl;dr version is that it's a very difficult tract to build on.

Access to this tract is down a very narrow street, causing concerns about access by fire trucks and ambulances.  On top of that, much of this tract is in the White Oak Bayou flood plain, if not floodway, and unlike the Graystar project just a bit downstream it's not taking the place of existing structures.  

Surge (or its investor) won't get as big a profit, but I suspect that at that price point and with how long they've owned the land, they won't lose their shirts, either.

There has to be a balance between what a client wants and what an architect wants, design wise.

I'm not so sure about that... there's a condo developer I can think of whose architectural (**cough**) style (**cough**) routinely gets bashed in these quarters, but who also sells them out quickly (I suppose so that the owners can see them from the inside).

Whether you can or can't build a deck up to the property line is an easement and deed restriction issue.  You should have gotten a copy of your deed restrictions when you closed.

Another thing - make sure you know exactly where the property line is.  Fewer things can get ordinarily mild people more riled up than someone else building on their property (essentially trying to swipe it).

(edited for clarity)

But it might be worth pointing out that if residents didn't care about how a building looks on the outside, these would all look like concrete communist bloc buildings, because it would save money.

 

Isn't that called Brutalist?  IIRC, it was quite the thing in the late 60s and into the 70s.

An article on how much it costs to buy all the stuff in the Christmas songs...

Construction for Hotel Alessandra is still posed to begin early next year.

You damn southerner

The true term is "fixin' to."  

One thing to keep in mind this time of year is that while the Bay Area and the immediate coast have pretty stable temperatures, as you go inland (particularly to the north) things get a whole lot more wintery real fast.  The couple that got snowbound on Bear Camp Road in far southwest Oregon a few years ago were only about 30 miles +/- from the Pacific as the crow flies.  Some roads get closed as near as Mendocino County, and even highways might have chain restrictions further north as the weather demands.

Just in typical fashion there's some moron driver going the wrong way on a one way downtown. Very accurate rendering.

In a non-US market Audi, no less... (***sigh...***) tourists...  

Besides, there's a certain elegance to the old guy...

Oh my, but there is a lot going on there... 

(was that more gentle?)

For the last couple of decades, my pal in Berkeley reliably warns me immediately upon arrival that the street people are aggressive.  I then remind him that I've worked in the less new areas of downtown Houston for all that time and longer, and that our street people really aren't any different.  I think there's some local pride there that the the term "panhandler" originated with the annoying folk in the skinny section of Golden Gate Park that extends east between Oak and Fell - the "Panhandle."

Then again, we have this posted in the lobby of BG Place for the tender flowers that work there:

So, if my count is right, you've got five under construction projects in view without so much as turning your head, all of which will be well along if/when Six Houston shows up to block the view of a couple of them.  

Cool.  

Fall weather in the Bay Area is reliably pretty decent.  However, it doesn't really rain much there anyway; when it does, it's generally in the range of what we would consider humidity.  A friend in Berkeley describes Gulf Coast weather as "Biblical" in order to adequately convey the concept to others out there.

You will walk a lot.  The Haight really isn't the gayborhood so much anymore, just like Montrose isn't.  If you're in the city a car is far more trouble than it's worth; if you must have one, get something small because parking is a bear.

At the risk of stating the obvious, BART and MUNI aren't the same thing.  BART is the regional heavy rail system, MUNI runs San Franciso's busses, trolley busses, light rail, and street cars; other parts of the area have their own local transit systems (such as AC Transit in Alameda County - Oakland, Berkeley, etc.).  Tickets for one don't generally work on the others.

Don't forget the Gourmet Ghetto in Berkeley (Shattuck north of UC - home of Chez Panisse, etc.).

If you're a gearhead, the Blackhawk Museum in Danville has a fabulous car collection with the lighting designed as if it were jewelry (though for all intents and purposes inaccessible by public transportation).

Alcatraz is definitely worth the boat ride.

Oh okay. So their swanky highrise downtown, and the weird tan building by Memorial/Houston Ave (other side of the aquarium), with the tall broadcast tower.

That's right... though it also includes the municipal courts building, a parking garage, a property "room" (actually, warehouse building), and a few other structures that don't immediately spring to mind all clustered around immediately east of Houston Avenue.

Side note - what is now the HPD headquarters building on Travis was once the Houston Natural Gas building, one of the companies that became Enron.

I thought a burrito the size of your head was an attraction to stoners.

Drunk, impoverished student and stoner are not mutually exclusive.      Nevertheless, those burritos the size of your head for next to nothing were still killer long after I left my student days (or at least the actual going to a school days).

Thanks for the link.  It certainly helps - particularly if you hit its link to the project manual.