Kinglyam

Even disregarding MS2.0, this seems a lousy place for a charging station, unless they think they'll get a lot of apartment dwellers buying EVs without access to charging at home. I think that's a pretty tiny market still, because of how long it takes to charge. There's no viable access there for people on long trips, so who would use it?

6 hours ago, trymahjong said:

Any hope for this becoming Official Home of Houston Mayor?

Now that the elimination of traffic on the Pierce Elevated is inevitable, this might actually be considered a high-end residential property someone would want to live in again. I just wonder what condition it's in, structurally.

On 10/30/2023 at 6:15 PM, Texasota said:

How... how big do you think restaurants have to be?

In a car-centric city, big enough to have enough parking and tables to at least pay for overhead, or at a place with a lot of drive-through traffic? Maybe it's bigger inside than I think, though, or I'm underestimating the delivery market these days.

20 hours ago, monarch said:

^^^ actually, the smaller edifice was supposed to include a movie theater in the initial plans.  maybe, things have indeed evolved to what you are stating.  a DRIVE-IN theater would indeed be the coolest amenity...

Considering how packed that parking lot is with just EoS open, I can't imagine blocking it off for film viewing.

Sounds like with Dough Zone showing up, existing restauranteurs realized there was a cuisine opportunity they were missing. That place seems too small for a restaurant, though, unless it's a high revenue/table concept.

So now we get to go back on the "will it be mixed use or won't it" fretting.

Anyone got contacts at HEB to see if they could be interested?

2 hours ago, shasta said:

Are they opening up the garage for the gym parking? The lack of parking led me to decide not to get a gym membership there..it was a zoo

Supposed to have opened it up now, or soon. They said it would be "early September". I've seen vehicles go in and out, but they still had some cones semi-blocking the entrance, so I don't know if it's really officially open or not.

Oh, for crying out loud. Houston just keeps teasing with interesting stuff, and then throwing the most boring crap on empty lots. Another freaking storage place.

Self Storage | Keeley Properties

We walk by that every day, nearabouts. It's been on sale or lease as long as I can remember, and recently had to get boarded up because transients were living in it. My wife often comments it would be great for grocery or something retail, but it consumes the entire property. Unless there's a variance they could get, it would never meet the city requirements for off-street parking.

They have 1512 Gano across the street. Maybe they should tear down this one and use it for parking for Gano.

That neighborhood behind there has had stuff getting torn down nearly every month, so one or two more isn't anything new. I think parking is mostly Barnaby's. It's been a problem for a while, with parking on-street even before all the other places showed up. Those probably have made the on-street parking situation worse, driving this.

On 2/21/2023 at 11:01 AM, lasperrascafe said:

Hey There!

Andrea here, the previous “almost tenant” at 1005 Hogan. This project unfortunately fell through due to circumstances out of my hands. That is the bad news, the good news is we are going to have a long term pop-up in March at Idle Hands during the day and are still actively looking for a permanent space that will be even better. I would love to bring it to the Northside. I hope to see you all there and if you know of anyone that needs a coffee shop, feel free to email me. 

 

If you want to try our coffee you can find them at Little Red Box in the East End and Henderson and Kane in the Heights.

 

Happy Tuesday! 

 

 

 

Does Braun have anything you can use in their stuff down around Burnett/Hardy? Heck, they already claimed the one on McKee was going to be a coffee shop, but I don't think that's confirmed.

On 2/1/2023 at 11:05 PM, JLWM8609 said:

No other neighborhoods understandably want the hot potato that Greyhound represents. Where would it be relocated to? My money is on somewhere east of Downtown along the Green Line that could be developed similarly to what Austin has done with the new Mobility Hub that serves CapMetro, CARTS, and Greyhound. It's like METRO's old Intermodal station on a smaller scale. 

Or the same place they were talking about putting the high-speed rail, Northwest Mall? That seems like a prime choice. It's not like the municipalities are particularly interested in interconnecting mass transit. The people who tend to use Greyhound aren't exactly a very politically influential demographic, either.

I can't believe that Near Northside can't get a freaking coffee shop. Even the pop-up at Gristworkz closed down after they got their HEB cafe running.

Can't tell where they are claiming those "Parking Lot 1" and "Parking Lot 2" are that are shown on the brochure. They don't mention which of their properties those are supposed to be in.

On 11/2/2022 at 8:30 AM, Texasota said:

It's next to a light rail station 2 stops from downtown and backs up to heavy rail tracks.

Skyline views for residents of detached single family homes is the *lowest* possible priority I can imagine.

A lot of those residents were enticed there by the much-vaunted promises of mixed-use development in Hardy Yards. More single-family homes are definitely a disappointment, but putting high-rise residential that blocks all views for the existing residents would make the high-rise a giant middle finger to everyone already there.

7 minutes ago, Ross said:

When all of the redevelopment started, I hoped they would keep the railroad buildings, as they had unique looks, and were visually interesting. Failing that, the new buildings could have been designed to mimic the older structures. Instead, we got generic stuff more suited to infill development on major roads, where there's not any real opportunity to get out of the building block look and still use the available space efficiently.

When they announced this would be "affordable" housing, that pretty much put the kibosh on anything special. Even what we see now is conceptual, since they don't have an architect, builder, or consultant on board yet. Not even any investors.

Hell, this entire thing is more hopeful than planned at this stage. It's not much farther along than the big mixed-use development we were told the entire 40 acres of Hardy Yards would be. We may well be lucky if we get even the 7,500 SF of retail they're saying here. Or even that they don't change their minds and end up putting up condos instead of single-family homes. It's not like the residents of the area have the political pull that developers do.

19 hours ago, Texasota said:

Now they just need to put a residential tower on top of the bus bays.

No towers, please. We've got enough out-of-place high-rises in single-family residential areas around Houston as-is. It would be nice to keep that downtown skyline at least somewhat unobstructed for the houses farther back in the neighborhood. At least, until TxDOT forces their I-10 realignment through, and the view is bisected by the raised interstate.

Considering how big this is, I'm surprised we haven't seen it here yet. Starting on page 17, from July, the planned layout and conceptual designs for the 10 acres left in Hardy Yards that the city is turning into housing.

They've thrown a bone to the mixed-use concept, with 7,500 sf retail closest to the transit center. A central greenspace, with proposed dog park (desperately needed in the area), as well as walking trails of some sort. 201 homes proposed, with three different floor plans.

housing-dept-presentation.pdf

So, watch this space, then? Scarlet doesn't seem to be in the land investment business, so I assume they are holding on to this with a general concept idea of "we'll do something in the future", but no specifics?

Looks like it's these guys. They have a rather broad portfolio of developments, but at least a parking garage isn't amongst them.

Developments — Scarlet (scarletcapital.com)

On 7/15/2022 at 3:35 PM, hindesky said:

Cars are gone, drums of spent waste and a core drilling truck is on site. Asked the supervisor if he knew what might be built and said he heard parking garage.

What possible value could a parking garage bring to that area? There's hardly a demand for parking, and putting that up in a prime intersection would just reduce the need for future parking by removing valuable retail space.

Hopefully it's just a parking garage under a mixed use building. More likely, multi-family residential though, because Hardy Yards.

Hardy Yards may have devolved into nothing but apartments, but it looks like the brewpub scene is picking up steam. This is coming to the former Texas Screw Products building at Fulton and Burnett. Are space-themed brewpubs going to be the area's thing?

Taproom | Bad Astronaut Brewing Co. | Houston (badastronautbeer.com)

14 minutes ago, Montrose1100 said:

I'm glad they mentioned condos. It would be counter productive to put single family homes/town homes/suburban style development here next to a light rail station and bus transit center. 

That's hardly going to stop them, though. Look at what else they've put up already. This is what is easy to build and manage, I suspect.

At least the designer has experience with mixed use development.

4 hours ago, cougarpad said:

What baffles me is that HEB says that they will no longer be building HEB Central Markets. There are multiple of these stores in San Antonio and Austin area yet Houston has one. HEB just spent a lot of money expanding the one in Houston, yet they now say the stores are not profitable. Then why expand the one in Houston? Plus go into that store and see how busy it is and HEB is saying it is not profitable? They should build an HEB Central Market in the Hardy Yards. Two other locations for HEB Central Markets are the Clear Lake and Woodlands areas. An HEB in Hardy Yards or the Midway development would be nice but be even better if it was a Central Market.

I understand that they basically considered the new "upgraded" HEB experience to be sufficient, while the CM experience I guess was too expensive to develop and maintain. But since they had already developed the Houston one, adding more to it wasn't as big a deal. They just wouldn't want to spend the money to buy this land and develop an all new CM, that wouldn't be as profitable as a regular HEB.

Besides, as someone earlier said, this area has poor access to the freeways compared to other locations (though not sure that is the case compared to other EMPTY large lots), which makes CM less desirable.

36 minutes ago, wilcal said:

They actually do have a program where you can approach the Houston CLT to do a single house purchase, but remember that at least a portion of these homes will be sold (land and house) at full market rate to create a mixed-income community. The people that qualify to buy a home via the CLT model actually stand to gain (and lose) financially based on upkeep.  

You really think anyone is going to pay full market rate to live in a neighborhood where the surrounding properties have artificially limited value increases? Realtors and assessors aren't going to ignore that when they assess the market value of the house, are they? Or will there be two different valuations, one for people making <80% AMI, and another one for everyone above that? My guess is that everyone who can afford market value will look elsewhere, and this will be entirely low-income.

Frankly, I think this will be sellable to the community if and only if they build it as condos on top of one or two layers of retail. That would, I think, be very progressive and maybe even visionary (which is why it won't happen). If they build more pure residential housing, particularly with only one little kids park in the area, then nobody will mix. If, however, they have the retail that everyone wants to go to, all the different social classes will have places to mix. Which is supposed to be one of the main points behind mixed income developments, isn't it? To prevent the social stratification that comes with gentrification?