Kinglyam

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?

14 hours ago, KinkaidAlum said:

Very similar to the affordable housing that replaced the public housing along Allen Parkway. It also discourages schemers from buying and flipping.

What affordable housing is that? The only thing I'm aware of is the gang-infested crime hub at Allen Parkway Villages, but I thought that is all public housing.

1 minute ago, phillip_white said:

Capping the property tax valuation will absolutely help low income homeowners build equity by reducing their annual tax bill. This is the same idea behind homestead exemptions, over 65, disabled, etc. The properties are still appraised at market value, but the increase on taxable valuation is limited. Also, there is usually a 10 year waiting period before they can be sold at full market value without having to return some portion of the profit to the city. There was a similar program in 3rd Ward a few years ago and those houses are probably worth $100k more by now. Because the tax valuation is limited, the homeowner isn't forced out of their home due to their income not increasing as fast as gentrification.

 

That being said, I definitely don't think Hardy Yards is the right places for this type of development scheme. They should be targeting the area northeast of St Arnold's or 5th Ward where there are more vacant lots than houses.

What my neighbor heard was that they couldn't SELL the house for more than 1.5% per year they lived in the house. It had nothing to do with the tax valuation. When asked about it, the city representative said it was intended to keep the houses available for low income people, meaning they will never sell at market value. Perhaps my neighbor misunderstood, but it doesn't sound like it based on that response.

I spoke to some neighbors yesterday who attended the first meeting. They reported the first round of comments were uniformly negative.

Supposedly the plan is to sell the homes below $90,000, then artificially cap the property value increases on these homes at 1.5% per annum (less than the Fed's target inflation rate), which I expect would have the effect of depressing neighborhood property value growth, too. I'm not an economist, but it seems to me that having an artificial cap below the annual inflation rate is NOT going to help lower income homeowners build capital?

16 hours ago, Texasota said:

Who's they? The City? I don't think they have before, but this would be a great opportunity to do something more interesting. I just don't know what else "higher density" could mean if they're planning all single family, unless only the market rate stuff is single family and the affordable stuff is condos. Even then, I would think the single family stuff would at least be semi-detached (twins) rather than all detached. 

"They" is a general developer "they." I haven't seen an attached home under development anywhere for years. Developers seem to go out of their way to be able to claim it's a detached property, even if the houses are so close you could literally knock on your neighbor's window from your own window.

Since a lot of it is supposed to be income-limited, clearly that seems like a cheaper option. But it's not all limited, and the developers will still want to appeal to whomever has the money to pay market rate. Not that I think there is going to be a lot of demand for houses in a mixed-income neighborhood with no amenities nearby, when you've got places like East River with real mixed used and plenty of pure gentrification going on.

18 minutes ago, iah77 said:

It's interesting they are saying "higher density" but will be single family homes? 

It says they're considering all sorts of things, including condos. Which could still be built as part of a mixed-use development. I think that would be a really good option for lower-income people to buy into instead of renting. That would build value quickly, and I suspect have more resale options than a single-family home.

6 minutes ago, Texasota said:

A fully built out rowhouse neighborhood would be great, and pretty easy to integrate multiple affordability levels into.

Do they even build rowhouses anymore? I can't see that happening. If it were single-family homes, I bet it would be row after row of the stuff CRV is building there, at best. Probably even with a suburban layout with cul-de-sacs and the whole nine yards. At least that would fit in with the outside-parking apartments that Prose appears to be doing.

Which I anticipate will have about as much effect on the end result as any other backlash against development in a non-rich neighborhood. 

So the City bought that ten acres for yet more mixed-income housing. At least they're asking for input from the community.

New Homes for the Near Northside | Housing and Community Development Department (houstontx.gov)

Here's hoping residents can get together and convince HEB to buy that last 10 acres and do something with a bit of retail in there. Seems like the perfect place for an HEB, given all the units nearby, and the only grocery store within a 1-mile radius is that little Fiesta on Fulton.

1 hour ago, CREguy13 said:

This doesn't bother me all that much and I actually welcome it.  I always felt this project was not highest and best use being this close to CBD and on the Red line.  There have been several quality mixed use projects completed, are under construction or have been proposed since the initial Hardy Yards plans were released.  Also consider the amount of added density to the core, and I would think a number of big time developers would be very anxious to bid on this.  It may sit on the drawing board for the near future with the amount of developments in the pipeline, but I'd expect a much larger project than the one it is potentially replacing.

Your lips to developer's ears. I'd love to see HEB grab this. It's a second chance, but I'm no longer sanguine about anything but apartments coming in here once they announced they were infilling with that Prose East and Prose West. It sure seems like the perfect place for a new grocery store, which can capture both the new apartment dwellers in Hardy Yards, as well as the apartment dwellers in north downtown around Market Square.

Plot twist! It looks like the Red Line Apartments have been axed, and Hardy Yards C/V is selling the property.

Yeah, don’t tell me about turning Burnett all retail. We’re building our house right there! 😛

The real question is, now that we know nothing interesting is going up there, is this thread dead?

That is extremely disappointing. All this tax money spent on utilities and the road, and now Hardy Yards means squat.

10 minutes ago, hindesky said:

One of the biggest developers currently building mid rise apartments in the Houston area. I count 2 in the Heights, 1 in the Museum district, 1 in Eado,  2 going up in the lower Heights area around Washington Ave. Alliance Broadstone is an Aggie Alumni led company building lots of places around Houston and around the southern USA.

Should we be concerned if their portfolio is all mid-rise apartments? Hardy Yards has been developing on the promise of mixed use. If the infill with all apartments, there will be no easy space for retail, and the development boom will likely bust hard.

2 hours ago, Urbannizer said:

Are these the two remaining tracts? Prose Hardy Yards East & West by Alliance Residential.

 

SubdivisionPlatPDF_Prose Hardy Yards East-2020.01.27.pdf 612.88 kB · 3 downloads

 

SubdivisionPlatPDF_Prose Hardy Yards West-2020.01.27.pdf 621.17 kB · 2 downloads

Yes, definitely them. Who is Alliance Residential, though?

Just saw this blurb from last week on a RealtyNews. Looks like the other one is coming pretty soon, too.

"PGIM Real Estate Finance has arranged a $48 million Freddie Mac unfunded forward commitment to provide permanent financing for Red Line Station,a planned 300-unit mixed-income apartment complex in Houston. PGIM is the commercial mortgage finance arm of PGIM Inc., the $1 trillion global investment management business of Prudential Financial, Inc. Red Line Station is in the Near Northside neighborhood. The site is part of the proposed 43-acre Hardy Yards master-planned mixed-use community."

14 hours ago, Big E said:

 

While I'm sure a high freeway is not optimal for the apartment views, they've been talking about this freeway project for what, half a decade? Its not like anyone should be going into this blindfolded. I mean, the freeway isn't that faraway now, and the apartments are already right next to a rail yard; not sure the people living there are worried about sound. Trust me; I'm from a rail town with a large rail yard; you can hear those trains a coming at night miles away. You just get used to it and don't even notice it after awhile. And Houston already has a crap ton of apartments literally right next to the freeways. Doubt this will be any different.

It's not just the apartments. The residences across Burnett that have "only" dealt with the train will now get that monstrosity cutting across their skyline view and adding noise. Why should they need to get used to it? Poor Local Group has been advertising their skyline views. Of course, those will be gone long before this boondoggle of a freeway is built, once the rest of the Hardy Yards goes up.  Also, just because you "get used to it" doesn't mean it's not there, and health studies are beginning to show evidence that noise like that can have negative health impacts (beyond hearing loss, which this won't be loud enough to cause).

11 hours ago, Big E said:

 

Honestly don't see what anyone is complaining about. That bend in I-10 always felt unnecessary and dangerous to me and the freeway construction is taking out nothing important or anywhere anyone is living in. Win-win as far as I can see it.

Big E, because it's going to have a multi-lane freeway jacked up 80 or so feet in the air, right next to all this new development? Have you heard how loud those freeways are? These won't have anything to buffer the noise except summer humidity. The bend in I-10, to my knowledge, has had no impact on accidents, so I question how dangerous it is.

Two, they're probably going to start the Red Line Apartments (I think someone here called them) soon as well, so they may be needing laydown areas for both. Maybe even do a bit of site prep for the future promised mixed-use stuff. But none of us have heard anything about that part of the project getting underway.

5 minutes ago, TOMIKA! said:

Yes, this is the lot on Burnett between Chapman and Hardy. They dug several holes and then covered them up. 

That's too shallow for any real structural geotech, but would be a sufficient depth to check surface soil to see if it can handle heavy equipment like cranes. It's also what you'd do if you suspected petroleum contamination in the near subsurface, but since this place is a brownfields, it's been poked and prodded enough that there shouldn't be any risk of that. I don't know what other reasons there would be, unless someone found a treasure map.

14 hours ago, TOMIKA! said:

Some intense soil sampling? This is a different site than the apt building construction. 

That's one of the interior lots on Burnett, isn't it? Were they digging with the excavator? Maybe they're prepping the site to use as a laydown yard for the apartment construction. 

First quarter 2021 move-in? Dang, that's ambitious. It was more than 2 years for the Residences, I believe.

On 1/1/2020 at 4:00 PM, hindesky said:

Lots of civil dirt work going on west of the apartments, anyone know what is next?

 

See a page or so earlier, before the I-45 debate. It's the first of the actual Hardy Yards CV developments, a wrap apartment like the Residences.

37 minutes ago, Avossos said:

Houston will have its 'big dig' when TXDoT digs down the entire East side. It will be a terrible process, but it will be good for the area... in fact, it will be trans-formative. We are lucky they are going to sink the highway instead of have it above ground. Just think our downtown will not be surrounded by above ground freeway lanes. I can't wait.

Um, did you miss my comment just a bit earlier about this new I-10/I-45 being way up in the air along the southern edge of Hardy Yards? I was wrong about the 120 feet. That's I-45 where it crosses Hogan. It's "only" 100 feet in the air right behind the new apartments that are supposed to go up next to the light rail line. You can't see the numbers in the attached cross-section, but you can see the crossing relative to the already-elevated light rail.

Edit: I may be reading the fine print wrong. It may only be about 50 feet. I think the 100 feet is MSL, not AGL.

51 minutes ago, cspwal said:

What's wrong with this section in particular?  It looks to me to be going through parking lots and "Acre in a Box - Houston's first urban based hydroponic farm".  I understand it's pertty bad elsewhere - especially demolishing Clayton homes - but what is wrong with this segment?

Not only is it moving hundreds of feet farther north towards the residential areas, it's moving UP. It has to cross the light rail, which already has to cross the UPRR rail line. The cross-section shows I-10/I-45 is something like 120 feet in the air here. So, nothing to absorb or deflect sound away. Not to mention this area currently has a great downtown view that's going to be a selling point for the apartments they're building right now. But how much value are those apartments (and then, the rest of Hardy Yards) going to have when they are literally in the shadow of a major freeway?