Luminare

Kirby is the one area of town that I'm pretty excited about. Still has its large surface parking lots and small tenant buildings, but it is certainly growing. Houston also did a smart thing early on (unlike westheimer) and repaved the whole thing and improved the walkability of it all. The only thing they need to do now is come up with some proper graphics, more street art, and large media type stuff that can really make this area stand out. Along with lots a denser buildings of course lol.

Very convenient that "Sky-guy" says that "Skyhouse" don't look alike lol. Just kiddin. They are almost exactly alike except one is a tad taller and the roofs are different...

I agree those two buildings are tacky as all hell. Historicism at its worst. However, I will say that the one right on W. Dallas street has really grown on me. It at least has decent proportions and is building that welcomes you to river oaks as drive over the Bayou. As for the center I guess we wait till we see renderings I also love the earlier posts about the flood of traffic of old people lol.

There is a difference between efficiency and convenience Yeah I know its a ways off. Curse my boundless optimism!!! I actually like the fact that they are self contained mini urban cores. Yeah some of these going up might not tickle the fancy of everyone, but it certainly is a start! Houston for a long time has struggled with creating real defined spaces that give a sense of place in a true urban context. Main thoroughfares should always be addressed and respected with good frontage almost like the whole buildings become giant marquis for the whole development. I much rather get a few of this mini cores/squares/parallelograms whatever might work and define those urban places and then everything can start connecting around them. As far as Westheimer in general. Yeah i pretty much sucks as a pedestrian space. Lots of wasted space. To much prime frontage lot space given to cars.....because they should totally be the showcase right? lol. But because that space is there it leaves a lot of room for creative ideas in the future.

Honestly, once the city has to redo all of Westheimer, you know that they will also tie the streetscape, pedestrian pathways, and possible district signage as one unit. It's just disappointing that this mentality is still there. It's not really a space issue. It has always been a staple of retail in the US to have "exclusive" frontage parking. Making your shop seem like it's "busy". This mentality was further pushed by the advent of strip malls and now large retail chains. it's a heavily outdated retail model and very inefficient. It clutters up the street environment pitting people against cars for space. The worst offender is University Place on Rice Blvd. and Kirby!

well its not just the lack of bike racks, but the current bike paths that are simply stripes painted on streets are just downright unsafe! Most don't even continue that far and terminate at awkward areas forcing them back onto the sidewalks or to just risk their lives near the fringes.

This is starting to feel like Sim City lol. Especially with these Skyhouses popping all over the place....that are exactly the same...

hmmm never got to see all the renderings until I landed on here.......front of store parking *sigh* WHY!? ughhhhhh This is the biggest problem with Westheimer is all the front of store parking! Yuck.

I think more than anything, Lake Flato Architects, is a "game-changer". They are sorta the hip architects in Texas right now and are getting national recognition. The fact them and Studio RED are investing resources in Houston is BIG (hmmm maybe another firm to drag down here ). Anyway I love this project. Very contemporary. The architecture looks Texas with a dash of industrial. This really gives this area an anchoring point for future growth!

Agree with many of your points. All completely valid. Definitely not an overnight thing. With the densification of the city its something that should be revisited. ----back on topic---- Yes underpasses wouldn't work because of the situation I stated previously not to mention the grade separation the road the slope needed to achieve this would be very disruptive to street level.

once you get a layered public transit system going and trust from the public that it will service their needs then the need for mass parking disappears.

While Freedom Tower is a good example. Its more example of oversensitive politicians who literally had to do a full redesign because of who moronic they were the first time around. Damn my boundless optimism lol. I know I'm young with a degree of naivete, but with this many projects online or close to online....its a good indicator that they will get built at some point.

I hope so because this is getting down right silly -.-

@IronTiger While your logic is sound and has been done in other cities. I would also look at those cities and data will tell you that commuter rail which is attached onto highways like that under performs because they are out of the way from people who will use them most. You need to look at this from an out of the box point of view. Commuter rail is suppose to bring people straight to the heart of the city or straight to main districts of a city not to circle it like a highway and be as far away from people who would be able to access it. Not to mention putting it next to highways is making a statement saying "yeah we are doing rail, but it still subservient to cars!" When implementing any kind of rail program you have to make it it's own distinguish entity. One thing which is going to convince people to take public transit is for the city to make a statement that they are dead serious about it! In fact there have been numerous studies on this including our own lightrail system! Currently our Redline lightrail is the best performing lightrail in the nation because it is integrated with the fabric of the urban environment and doesn't just go from park and ride to park and ride (which you still need a car to get too....so whats the point of rail at that point -.- ). There is no easy way out of this. It has to be tackled head on. Rail has to be woven into the fabric of the city not elevated or embedded in a highway. BRT can not be a replacement for commuter rail. Like everything else it is but a cog in the whole machine. An efficient well performing public transportation system has LAYERS! Its like this: High speed rail: services interstate travel or super fast (premium) intercity travel Intercity rail: services travel between cities. It is a tad slower than high speed rail and makes more stops inbetween. Regional rail: services (in our case) All of Harris county and surrounding counties and facilities travel in our region and gets people into the main areas of houston and other places for that matter Lightrail: because of the type of ground we have under us. Subway would be here but we simply can't do it unless we encase the whole dame thing in concrete and have enormous bell piers under it. LightRail should service inter-district or inter-area needs with many stops so it can service as many people as possible. Its local rail and eventually there should be many of these at least lightrail on major streets. BRT: essentially a trojan horse to bringing better transit to areas of town. BRT can be a permanent or temp solution where you are trying to build a reliable public transportation base. Buses: services neighborhoods and is gets people from the inner parts of neighborhoods, districts, or even suburbs and towns, and gets them to the options above. Layers in Transportation is important which is why we fail at it so hard! We try to find the easy quick solution and this isnt the case. You have to create an ecosystem that draws people to the service

So a great conversation in this thread! I love it It's great that I stumbled upon this forum and see people just as passionate about the built environment. I was beginning to go crazy lol. Ok anyway......westheimer. Historically, Westheimer for some strange reason has always received very little attention in regards to its overall infrastructure. It was always at the edge of two different areas and remains a demarcation between "River Oaks" and "Everything else" (till a better description comes to mind). It's a very strange case where a road is used as a main thoroughfare, but it neither reads or is treated as one by the city. Just notice how Westheimer is treated once you get inside the loop. It is neither celebrated, loved, or treated as a main thoroughfare into the city (when we all know it to be). My observation is because there are competing interests in how people think it should be handled, and I'm talking about who should be responsible for it. Now the railroad tracks themselves. It's clear it was put there because nobody at the time wanted to do the work to divert the stream or creek which runs right beside it and has become the main stream that helps divert all drainage from this part of town to Buffalo Bayou! It seems the city could have fixed this a long time ago, but again no political will or city density to both divert the stream or trench the rail line near it. Now we have this incredibly awkward condition with a road that is vastly overused/deteriorated yet is a main thoroughfare into the city (but oddly not treated as such by the city), an underground stream that is vital to draining water from this part of town that nobody was willing to fix pre-densification, and a very inefficiently used rail that would be hard for the city to take back now since the costs would be astronomical. Thats the current situation. The result will be that this current generation that is in power in all parties will not have the political will to fix this and will most likely fall on the lap of my generation or the generation after that (like most problems in this city and country) to bite the built and fix it. First you would have to divert the stream! That is very important and should be done first. You wouldn't even be able to trench the railroad or even build underpasses for the roads anyway before accomplishing this. Second, by the time this major project will HAVE to be done I would hope we are also building commuter rail or multiple layers of rail in this city and this rail line through this part of town would be a major line for a commuter rail with a central hub station probably in the area of Westheimer. You would trench the whole thing and move it below grade while also installing multiple rail tracks and stations (probably a hub at Westheimer and smaller ones at San Felipe and Richmond. Third will be to have streets at level grade passing over this new trenched rail line. With the rail line also below grade you can now build separate pedestrian bridges to improve connectivity on both sides. Fourth, will be to completely redo Westheimer from the loop till 527. You would widen it as much as possible. Have either BRT or lightrail in the middle (connected with the new hub mentioned before). Entirely re-imagined streetscape/sidewalks and clear signage/graphics creating a sense of place for that whole district kinda like how they do it in Uptown. Finally, a place where I can unload thoughts I have had circling my mind for a long time now lol. Just an opinion, but I think it could work. You have to establish some kind of political will first and most likely grab investment from the private sector as our taxes in this city are so low we would never be able to afford stuff like this as a city gov. alone!

I think they look fine. However, I think we have reached critical mass in terms of just how these parking structures effect the overall composition of an entire body of work. Honestly it shouldn't take that much more effort to bury that thing or work out some kind of deal with the city where you create one general purpose parking lot for an area in town used by all. This exclusivity of parking arrangement where EVERY building needs its own dedicated parking structure (which I know its actually code/laws more than anything else) is simply ludicrous!

Wow I'm detecting some major insecurity on this thread! Its rare that major projects ever start on time or stay on schedule. Not to mention we are looking at the beginning of a precedent here in Houston. Downtown and other areas of Houston are going to experience a lot of growing pains these next few years as this is the largest boom in construction in this area since the 1980's thats 3 decades ago!!! I'm just proud of the city for even getting the stuff we got now. Of course as an architectural intern, just like every other architect/designer, we aren't very patient people when it comes to development, but this is a major step for Houston and it will take some time. All we need is just a couple of these to get goin and that's when the real growth starts. Construction is contagious and is momentum based. I think we all need to breath and not panic! Lets all be chill. What we are seeing hasn't ever been done yet in Houston or at least in a very very long time. Not to mention we just got out of a recession not to long ago either.

I agree with you on this one. Anchoring something like an HEB, Whole Foods, or Kroger in a mix-used development with maybe the grocer on ground floor and second floor and mixed use on top would be essential to the life of downtown. However the need has to be created first. This is why Macy's and other retail stores left because there wasn't a need for it at the moment. While city planners should be more proactive in anticipating needs such as a large Grocer Anchor the need simply isn't there yet sadly. Probably wont see a development like that for a coupe more years. There are still plenty of parking lots to fill though so lets just sit back and watch everything rise for the time being.

I remember walking around this area a couple weeks again. Hanovers development next to this is already a wonderful addition to that area. Great scale and has some nice spaces. This will be an awesome addition! Can't wait to see more of it. I like the fact that it faces Morningside Dr. pointing proudly towards Rice and the medical district.