Sparrow

Not the most detailed source, but what may be the Fidelis Realty site plan is on page 2.

www.newquest.com/Content/properties/157/2.6-acres_336_I-45.pdf

Transit investment would further the cause of those in favor of a manifest destiny of united skylines. Med Center--Downtown will likely occur long before Downtown--Uptown. The street grid from I-10 all the way down to Hermann park provides the framework for the unification. 

If the powers that be really wanted to attain a unified Medical Center to Downtown dense urban skyline, they ought to build an east side transit line (subway, light rail, BRT, monorail... whatever). The Red Line favors the west side of the districts. Run a line along Almeda/Crawford all the way from Holmes to MMP. They could even run it up Elysian too if they wanted to encourage east side of the Northside to develop in a dense urban fashion. An east side line would be highly speculative, but would provide the framework for development much in the way highway building does.

It's not so much a question of how many more high rises are needed to unify the skylines so much as a question of where do high rises need to be built to create a single skyline. A linear path of buildings solely along Main through Midtown would not be much of a skyline. 

It would be a fine idea for the Central Station platforms to be connected via the tunnel system. The two block walk between stations wouldn't be nearly adventurous as braving Houston's weather and crossing busy streets while rushing to catch a train. It's great to encourage street level activity and all, but let's be realistic, disconnected platforms blocks apart is not a central station.

Dr. Khator also mentioned in her speech a "proposed parking garage near TDECU Stadium." Any chance this proposed garage may be the mixed use transit center that has been described in the master plan literature? GFR anyone?

I'm willing to bet it will be in the Med Center - maybe even on Yellowstone.

I respectfully disagree. Dr. Khator stated in the State of the University speech that "down the road" they intend to build a "community-based" medical school. The intent is not to copy the existing medical schools, but to "focus entirely on community-based research and training."

With as many gains as the University has shown with it's ambitious master plan, it would be a disservice to build a satellite medical school. When UH comes around to building a medical school, I have high confidence it will be within the campus sphere to better serve the communities of the Third Ward and the East End--not to mention the thousands of students living on campus. 

No word yet on when and where the upcoming TCR/TxDOT public meetings will be, but surely when these happen over the next month or so we should have a much clearer picture of precise routes and potential station locations. Starting to feel like the process is taking longer than TCR intended--thought we were supposed to have more route details several months ago.

The Census Bureau has statistical methods to account for omissions, overcounting, and undercounting. Their population estimates are of the total population residing within the given region and do not need additional revision on the basis of general-population-uninformed-mass-media-bias-assumptions.

To be clear, my point is to speak to the competence of the statisticians, not a political stand one way or the other. It'd be rather callous to think the governmental body whose field of expertise is demographics and statistics would be so incredibly incompetent as to be duped into failing to consider a large portion of their survey, or lack there of. 

If the Census Bureau states the estimated Houston MSA population statistic at 6.313 million, there is no reason to add some irrational, imagined number to it. Deaths, births, and migration of all types are already factored in. 

No, the Census does include all people regardless of status.

www.census.gov/population/foreign/about/faq.html

The undercounting only comes into play when considering how many out there don't complete the survey because they irrationally fear ICE is going to knock on their door if they do send it in.

I was always under the impression the census numbers reflected counts of actual people, not just citizens.

April 4th, 2015 is the new date for beginning service. Anyone think this date will hold?

I'm not sure I understand why a broken pipe will lead to a four month delay. I know they have said that reconstruction of the rails and roadway were necessary because of this issue, but is it really the case that if this had happened after the lines were opened that they would have been out of commission for months? Did the broken pipe wash out the roadway? Has anyone published pictures of this massive damage? Surely the repairs won't take months to complete. I understand a minimum amount of testing is necessary for the trains before the go ahead can be given to initiate service, but I'm astounded that something as simple as a broken pipe can bring two rail lines to a screeching halt.

If the plan was to be running by December, and so much testing is required, shouldn't everything except this one piece of track damaged by the broken chilled water pipe be able to pass testing? Can they not complete testing all of the line save this one small segment now, and just test the repaired segment over and over again by itself?

Sounds like a scape goat argument to me.  

Talk about a schizophrenic design--this one is all over the place. Why an attempt to conceal the parking levels on the freeway side (as poor as the treatment is), but no attempt whatsoever on the neighborhood side? No attempt whatsoever to integrate the parking levels into the overall design. Not even an attempt to use the bridge characteristics as a model for the building design--if there going to name it after something they might as well incorporate said model into the design.

 One of the worst designs around these parts in a while.

Maybe a large mural can improve the large Montrose facing wall??? A great piece of public art would keep everyone from looking at the building itself.

Any chance the turnouts could be used for route flexibility?

I mean if they find after several years that a large percentage of say North Line passengers transfer to the East End line and vice versa, why not just change the green line to the East End connecting with the North Line? End the Red Line at the Central Station if such were the case.

They should have had them directed south instead of north so either the purple line or the green line could have continued south all the way to the Fannin Park and Ride to provide multiple service options to the areas that surely will be highest in demand (Downtown, Midtown, TMC, and NRG Park).

There are rumors of UH-D Housing floating around. 

While many seem to want office towers or mixed use or condos, wouldn't it be something if UHD was able to use the Hardy Yards to make an actual campus instead of being scattered about? Don't stop at just creating housing.

Any chance the Main Building can be repurposed as, oh I don't know, let's get crazy, a high speed rail station or anything like that? HSR folks finance some new buildings up at the Hardy Yards, and in doing so buy the well located building that already has a rail line running thru. Building a few more rail bridges over Travis and Milam wouldn't be difficult at all to create several platforms--assuming the building could be repurposed. It already has it's own light rail stop. Fairly decent highway access to 45, 59, and 10. Sure would have great potential for a transit terminal--especially if they plan on making a south canal touristy "riverwalk" a few decades from now. And what a great view to present of our city to arrivals.

It's a win-win for UHD and HSR.

McMansion is to suburbia as McSkyscraper is to city.

If a potential grocer Downtown wanted more than one block, would the city close a street for them much like they did for the Finger development by MMP? How about closing one block of Crawford next to the Toyota Center parking garage. Great potential location along La Branch, Leeland, Pease, and a great line of sight along Crawford coming up from Midtown. The SE side of Downtown is the least likely for office development after all, retail grocery would make the most sense where residential will grow the most. A location here would serve Downtown, Midtown, EaDo, as well as the Third Ward very nicely with the major street access.

http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2014/09/uh-to-begin-constructing-25-million-basketball-practice-facility/#26972101=0

 

http://www.myfoxhouston.com/story/26605445/uh-to-build-25m-houston-basketball-development-facility

 

 

Seeing as how this is an architecture forum, how would one characterize the style that the University of Houston has adopted for the surge of new construction we have seen over the past several years? Does the university have established design guidelines?

Well said.

Within about a five mile radius of downtown right now, today, we already have several large grocers. Fiesta, Randall's, Whole Foods, Central Market, and likely others. Many suburbanites don't have grocers this close. It seems that some folks want to live in a "dense" city but want to have a select number of suburban amenities. OK, I get that. But a grocer that takes up an entire DOWNTOWN (the point of this thread) urban block may not be the best use.

If folks want a huge grocer in EaDo, I am all for it. If folks want a huge grocer on the near Northside, terrific! If folks want a THIRD large grocer in midtown, great. But this thread is about downtown and I don't understand why downtown needs a big box grocer.

That said, I would love to have a grocer or two, in addition to Phoenica, put an urban-concept store (I.e. Smaller scale, integrated with the neighborhood around it, in downtown. Competition is good.

Legitimacy--that's why Downtown needs a "big box" grocery store. Even Manhattan has stores like Home Depot and Kmart and Whole Foods. How can Downtown Houston expect to have a legitimate residential population with only a specialty grocer? A full size grocer isn't a "suburban amenity"--not in today's commercialized America at least. With 5k apartments coming on line within the next few years it's not a matter of if a grocer will come Downtown, it's who, when, and how many.

So how do we get Metro to partner with someone like Uber to bring MetroStar to the next level? What better way for Uber or Lyft to showcase their month old carpooling features than to streamline an entire metro region's operations. Seems like the ground work is in place and is very successful, but perhaps the associated tech and marketing haven't caught up yet.

Is "STAR" an acronym?

"We don't want our involvement in this project to be clouded by rail versus bus".......therefore I will make you declare that this will not someday, somehow be changed from one mode of transit to another....

I don't get it Mr. Moseley. Does METRO need to pinky swear that they won't make them into bike lanes one day as well? How about a blood oath that the lanes won't be fashioned as pedestrian sidewalks if the whole transit thing doesn't work out?

Just an off-the-wall, rambling, passing thought, but I thought I'd mention it anyhow...

Would it be practical, and I suppose would it be legal, for a ridesharing start up like these to develop bus service? Or at least a more vanpool-like service.

I'm not sure precisely what the business model would be, perhaps more of a prior planning sort of thing (4 days a week I need to leave from X location and be at Y location by z-o'clock), but I can't help but think with all the METRO gripes, that perhaps the private sector could handle mass transit/commuters in a better manner much as both Uber and Lyft are trying to do for Taxi service.

METRO has had great success with its Park and Ride bus routes. Vanpooling is an option that METRO provides. Does METRO have an app or any other means to match people up for vanpooling, or is it just more of a "if y'all get a group together, we'll rent you the van"? If it is the latter, there's a huge opportunity being missed for people that don't vanpool because they may not even know there are other people commuting in a manner similar to themselves. Maybe there's not a Park and Ride bus from the Kuykendahl P&R to where you work, but by using social networking/app/Big Data, METRO could in addition to the bus route downtown add vanpool routes to Uptown, Westchase, the Energy Corridor, the Medical Center, UH, etc.

If enough people say they want to park their car at the P&R and ride to blank blank location, make a vanpool route. If enough vanpool routes are established between the P&R and blank blank location, then you upgrade to bus service. Once bus service reaches a certain level of demand, then you would upgrade to rail service. Just as buses are more flexible than rail, vans are more flexible than buses.

Perhaps even diversify the van pool offerings by allowing people commit to driving in-bound and out-bound at certain times to allow for van hopping. Perhaps a rider needs to go in at 6a and leave at 8p, but no one else has the same schedule--but someone else goes in at 6a, and another person leaves at 8p. You would sign up as a vanpooler for each leg you wish to ride. Let the drivers use the service free of charge (it's the perk for being a pseudo-employee).

Maybe I even skipped a step--if you don't have enough people for a van set up a carpool. Even before that I suppose, a ZipCar/Uber/Taxi sort of service, for when nobody wants to go where you are going anytime close to when you are going.

Carshare/Rideshare/Taxi. Carpool. Vanpool. Bus. Rail. Never without an option, always the most efficient means of getting there.

My apologies for the rambling.

I believe grocery will help lead to the next signature tower in Houston.

Big Oil won't build it because the poor PR it would reflect upon them for how they spend their multitudes of profits. Modest design will continue to dominate the Energy sector to avoid the negative feedback.

On the other hand, the grocery business in Houston is ultra competitive right now. HEB, Kroger, Whole Foods, Sprouts, Aldi, Fresh Market, Fiesta, Randalls, Food Town, and don't forget Target and Wal-Mart. These companies are all jostling for market share. Billboards are everywhere and you can't turn on the TV without seeing Kroger or HEB advertising their sales. What better way to advertise their brand image than by triumphing over the skyline?

Grocery investing in a Downtown location requires more investment and planning than that industry is accustomed too. Parking is key to a large format grocer venturing into the market. The challenge is giving the same big basket experience to shoppers without sacrificing convenience or unnecessarily reducing profits.

When we get a full format downtown, I would like to see a full block ground and second floor with several levels of parking either above or connected via skywalk to an adjacent block. Provide checkout on both levels for the convenience of the pedestrian and vehicular customer--downtown "big box" won't flourish without catering to both. My thinking is, if they're going to invest that much already, they ought to partner with hotel, office, and/or residential not only to ensure their daily customer base, but also to gain the image of success with the tower above. Think Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle.

Why does there need to be vehicle lanes on the bridge?

A typical non Marketplace Kroger is ~60K. Non Plus or Market HEB is 80k+. Whole Foods on Dallas is just under 40k. 

It would work if it were similar to the Randalls in Midtown, though even that has more surface parking than would be ideal.

 

Nevertheless, Whole Foods, Target, Trader Joe's, and a number of regional grocers have successfully built large grocery stores in urban areas. It can be done, but its expensive because you can't (and shouldn't) cheap out and do surface parking. But if you take up an entire downtown block with grocery store you end up with around 80,000-90,000 square feet, which is plenty of space for a major full service grocery store.

A downtown block is 62,500 SF to be precise.

If that's not big enough build two floors. I've seen a Whole Foods with escalators--one for humans, one for shopping carts--to go from one floor to another.

I don't know what school district would be Springwoods Village (KISD)?, but like most people working at the Exxon Campus they would probably move to the Woodlands (CISD).

 

She did point out a constant fear that stresses me out. Every day I religiously watch the weather reports for fears of a Hurricane striking the far most northern reaches of our metropolitan area. 70 miles from the coast? You are not safe.

 

Seriously what happens in the Spring/Woodlands area during a hurricane that doesn't happen when a big thunderstorm rolls in?

The western third of SWV is Klein ISD. The eastern two thirds--including EM and CityPlace--is Spring ISD. Parts of The Woodlands are Tomball ISD and Magnolia ISD as well.

Ike did do quite a bit of damage to the pines up there. Entergy didn't get power back to some folks for over two weeks. That said, I get the humor.