HarryMoto

From what I've read on some Houston sites (like the Chronicle's), some seem to be blaming Houston itself for the failure of the Angelika, as if the audience for what they were doing didn't exist. But if either of the North Texas Angelikas had been located in downtown Dallas, they probably wouldn't have survived either. It just so happened that the locations in Dallas and Plano are: in highly-trafficked malls (Mockingbird Station, The Shops at Legacy) that are right off either Central Expressway or the Tollway; have plenty of parking, and are near the yupscale demographic such an enterprise requires. (Mockingbird Station is also a light-rail stop.) If Angelika can find a similar location in Houston -- Rice Village, Midtown, and Montrose are obvious choices; what about the Heights or is that considered off the beaten path? -- I'm sure it would be similarly successful. I went to the Greenway Plaza theater once and found it hard to find and was disheartened but not surprised when it closed.

FWIW, Dallas might find itself with too much of a good thing shortly. Landmark bought and is rehabbing the Highland Park Regent Theater for re-opening sometime this fall and the old Texas Theater, of Lee Harvey Oswald fame, is being turned into an arthouse/repertory theater that will open by year's end.

http://oakcliffblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/09/local-filmmakers-to-take-oak-c.html

We'll see if there's enough of an audience for these plus the Inwood (which has been showing more mainstream movies as of late), Magnolia, and two Angelikas.

Back on point: Someone's going to figure out how to serve this audience in Houston and whoever does it, I think, will find themselves tapping into a comparatively small (comparing to AMC megaplexes) but possibly profitable niche.

Check out the Nasher Sculpture Center as well, a significant collection of modern sculpture. It's in the Arts District, across from the Dallas Museum of Art.

If you're around downtown on a Friday or Saturday night, there's actually starting to be a crowd on a rejuvenated Main Street these days. In Victory Park, catch a show or a meal at the House of Blues.

For something a little more outdoorsy, hang out at White Rock Lake, if it's not too blazing hot.

Slate has taken notice of what's going on in Houston:

http://www.slate.com/id/2193959/

Here's the top:

Houston, We Have No Problems

In the midst of a stagnant economy, an oil star shines in Texas.

By Daniel Gross

Posted Saturday, June 21, 2008, at 9:13 AM ET

The former corporate headquarters of Enron in Houston

To find a hot spot where soaring oil and commodity prices and the booming economies of the developing world are keeping cash registers ringing and construction crews fully employed, you don't have to trek to Dubai or Moscow. You need travel only as far as Houston. In May, the unemployment rate in the nation's sixth-largest metropolitan area was a measly 3.8 percent. In the past year, Houston-based companies, which include 26 Fortune 500 firms, added 71,000 jobs to their payrolls. The local United Way closed out its fiscal year with a record $76.1 million in donations. At the Galleria, a high-end shopping oasis, Bridgette Bottone, manager of the De Beers store, notes, "We're still selling the big guys": three-carat-plus diamonds that retail for more than $50,000. Pessimists are as rare as Birkenstock sandals or Obama '08 stickers in ExxonMobil's parking garage.

This LA Times story is about Southern California Vietnamese Moving to Houston in Large Numbers. Here's the link and the top few graphs of the story: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ho...1,2088008.story

Vietnamese Americans are lured to the Texas city by cheap real estate, a lower cost of living and a burgeoning cultural enclave.

By My-Thuan Tran, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

December 21, 2007

HOUSTON -- Lan Nguyen had dreamed of owning a house since she immigrated to Southern California from Vietnam 11 years ago. But she and her husband could never scrounge up enough money for a down payment, spending most of their paychecks on rent for a cramped Garden Grove apartment.

Now, Nguyen has moved to a suburb of this Gulf Coast city, where the 28-year-old owns a new four-bedroom house with a spacious game room and access to a pool with a water slide -- all for $200,000.

Nguyen is one of many Vietnamese Americans from California who have flocked to Houston, lured by cheap real estate, a lower cost of living, bountiful business opportunities and a thriving, growing Vietnamese community.

Houston offers a slice of the American Dream to Vietnamese Americans who couldn't find it in California.

Houston is No. 4 and Dallas No. 6 on Black Enterprise magazine's list. Though they seem to be adding cities to the list piecemeal on line, the full list is in the print edition.

In order, they are: D.C, Atlanta, Raleigh-Durham, Houston, Nashville, Dallas, Charlotte, Indianapolis, Columbus, and Jacksonville.

www.blackenterprise.com

Because you can never have too many articles about which cities in the South are the best for shopping

.This is from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (registration required unfortunately)

http://www.ajc.com/living/content/living/f...amp;UrAuth=%60N]NUOcNXUbTTUWUXUVUZT[uUUWUcUbUZUaU_UcTYWYWZV&urcm=y

Gucci

Tiffanys

Cartier

Bentley

Rolls Royce

Chanel

Maybach

Baccarat

Lalique

Versace

Vera Wang

Harry Winston

etc...

Harry Winston is in Highland Park Village. Gucci's in the Galleria. Cartier and Tiffany are in NorthPark and the Galleria. None of those other retailers have been mentioned in connection with Victory as far as I know. Most of the businesses slated for Victory may be expensive but are skewed slightly more yuppie youthful and less old-school -- as in the W Hotel, G Star (clothes), Haven (houseware), headquarters for the upcoming AFI Dallas Film Festival, the Oakville gourmet grocery out of Northern California and clubs like Liquid Sky (with a retractable roof) and Ghostbar.

More on Victory during the All-Star game:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dw...n1.2993796.html

NorthPark mall's bid for more exposure:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dw...on.1cb9257.html

Editorial linking the new UNT Dallas campus and the port as key to the southern sector's development:

http://www.peoplenewspapers.com/ME2/Audien...E75FD51480D8A7D

Well I'm back. I think the one thing that stood out to me was the idea of sand and rocks. Man, you better like sand and rocks, with random placement of cactus to add some character. Not even weeds survive there! But I will say this, they have MOUNTAINS all around. About the closest thing we have here to that are bridges and speed bumps.

So did you like Phoenix? Did you get to see much of the city? Did you visit Snottsdale? (My favorite put-down of Scottsdale I heard from Arizonans though I spent little time there myself). How would you compare Phoenix to Houston or Dallas?

You Say Dubai, I Say Hello

http://www.slate.com/id/2156989/entry/2157043/

Check out the Heard Museum, one of the nation's premier museums devoted to Native American culture.

www.heard.org

USA

Honolulu

Los Angeles

Orange County

San Diego

Bakersfield

Santa Barbara

San Francisco

Sacramento

Portland

Seattle

Denver

Las Vegas

Tucson

Phoenix

Albuquerque

Santa Fe

El Paso

Houston

Austin

Dallas-Fort Worth

San Antonio

New Orleans

Birmingham

Tampa-St. Petersburg

Orlando

Fort Myers

Miami

Fort Lauderdale

Jacksonville

Key West

Atlanta

Washington DC

New York City

Boston

Chicago

Minneapolis-St. Paul

Madison

Iowa City

CANADA

Vancouver

Toronto

Montreal

Quebec City

MEXICO

Guadalajara

Guanajuato

San Miguel de Allende

AUSTRALIA

Sydney

Melbourne

Darwin

Alice Springs

NEW ZEALAND

Auckland

SOUTH AFRICA

Johannesburg

Cape Town

Durban

ENGLAND

London

Next time you're up here, you should make you're here on a weekend and check out:

1) Victory Park -- It should be fully open within the next few weeks. The ABC affiliate begins broadcasting their news and morning show from their window-on-the-world facility there Monday. Originally, everything was supposed to be up and going by the NHL playoffs Jan. 24 but don't know if that's happening.

2) Uptown/West Village -- As retail expands beyond the boundaries of the original West Village at the north end of Uptown on McKinney, there's starting to be some actual foot traffic, especially on weekends. You can take DART from downtown to the uptown station or the trolley from Lower McKinney Avenue.

3) Lower Greenville -- With the fire that destroyed the Arcadia Theater (which had been set to re-open as a dance club) leading to what will probably be more mixed-use retail, the announcement that Whole Foods is closing its Greenville Ave. store (in order to open a larger, 50,000-square foot store on Abrams in East Dallas) and my guess is that property will go mixed-use as well, and the recent opening of the Cityville mixed-use building, the nightlife emphasis on Greenville may be fading. Still, there are plenty of places to hang out, from Zubar to the Polyphonic Spree's Good Records store. You just have to avoid the drunk louts who either have been, or will be, on either "Cops" or "Cheaters."

4) Knox-Henderson -- From the Katy Trail on its western border to a few blocks east of N. Central Expressway, the Knox-Henderson corridor is turning into a yuppie playground for shopping and eating. And you'll get good-sized crowds out on weekends. There are some really good restaurants in this area, either on Knox-Henderson itself or on Travis, McKinney or Cole. Try Fireside Pies (pizza), Kozy Kitchen (for breakfast, a little piece of Austin in Dallas), The Old Monk (a very popular pub), Abacus (very expensive), Cuba Libre or Samba Room (Latin American) or Cafe Madrid (tapas). But there are many others to choose from and after eating you can shop at the Apple Store or the huge Crate & Barrel.

5) Bishop Arts District -- Off-the-beaten path for most tourists but one of Dallas' more unique areas. Located in Oak Cliff, the mix of quirky shops (The Soda Gallery, Bishop Street Market) and interesting eateries (Tillman's Corner, Hattie's) is starting to attract visitors from all over the Metroplex.

6) South Lamar/The Cedars -- This area south of the convention center downtown is really on the rise. South Lamar is or will be the home to the happening bar Absinthe, the Opening Bell coffeehouse, the new Bill's Records (the North Dallas location has closed), a revamped Gilley's that's now called The Palladium and booking name rock/pop bands now (Scissor Sisters, Los Lonely Boys), the jazz club Brooklyn, and a couple of well-reviewed relatively high-end restaurants. A ton of lofts/condos are starting to get built, which may put one of Dallas' best bars, Lee Harvey's, on the chopping block as they have an outdoor stage and roaring bonfires for those coolish North Texas night. Can't imagine whoever buys those condos going up down the street are going to want to hear alt-rock at 1 a.m.

I'm not sure actual coolness matters as much as perception of cool, at least as seen by tastemakers, publishers, filmmakers, ad agencies, bloggers, etc. If you teleported back to the late '70s and asked the average Manhattanite, Londoner or San Franciscan if Miami, Sydney, Seattle, Minneapolis, or Athens, GA were cool, you would have gotten a resounding "no." Miami Beach was "God's waiting room" and basically had closed up shop when "The Jackie Gleason Show'" folded. Seattle's fortunes rested on the back of aerospace and was full of "Will the last person in Seattle turn off the lights" bumper stickers. Sydney was a second-rate London with more sun and better surf.

In less than a generation, everything changed -- and it wasn't because there were suddenly millions more cool people there, but that the cool people already there or cool elements about the cities began to get noticed by the tastemakers elsewhere. (And city officials took note of this and began marketing themselves accordingly.)

For Miami, it was "Miami Vice." For Seattle, it was Microsoft, Starbucks and grunge bands. For Australia, it was a wave of film directors/actors (Russell Crowe, Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman, blah blah blah), rock bands, and a damn savvy tourist campaign and, of course, the very successful Olympics in 2000. Now, Sydney always ranks in the top 5 of those favorite-city polls, something that would have been unthinkable 30 years ago.

For a short time in the '80s, Minneapolis and Athens also benefitted from a spotlight on their respective music scenes. New Zealand is now considered cool because of "The Lord of the Rings." One of the reasons Austin gets to keep its perpetual cool card is because its viewed globally as having a dynamic music scene. (Though you certainly can't dismiss its political reputation as Texas' "blue-state" region as having appeal to East and West Coasters.)

While these pop-culture milestones might seem frivolous, anyone who has sat in traffic fuming in the last decade in Seattle, Miami or Sydney knows, they do work in bringing media attention and, for better or worse, increased tourism, immigration and more dollars into the local economy.

With as vibrant an economy and population as Houston has, there's no reason why something couldn't pop up that could make the media world stand up and notice Houston. The hip-hop scene has done that to a certain extent already.

The one thing I'm surprised they didn't bring up was Katrina and its aftermath. I'm not saying it's a good or bad thing but since Houston made headlines around the world for that, I'm a little surprised there wasn't at least a reference to its impact, good and bad.

Then what?

I'd heard they were doing Sydney, Australia after Atlanta. Sydney's a great city with a phenomenal party/club scene but it doesn't really matter where they shoot The Real World. No longer do the roommates engage the local culture; they just find a bar that allows them to get drunk, pick fights, and have one-night stands with local starry-eyed famewhores. It could be Sydney or Selma, Houston or Hilo, makes no difference.

Hey guys, check it out. Much respect:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...eadlines-nation

Beseder,

No offense to my Houston brothers, but you probably should post on the Dallas (www.dallasmetropolis.com) though you should get some equally valid answers here.

There are many reasons for the spread northward but a lot of it has to do with the class/racial history of Dallas. To oversimplify, whites and the upper-middle-class moved north, and development moved with them. The Trinity River area and south remains underdeveloped and much of it is largely minority (Hispanic, African-American).

Today, Dallas can't spread northward anymore; that's all built out. So, finally, attention is being paid to the southern sector. If all goes according to the plan, over the next generation, the southern sector should see an explosion of development. The combination of the Trinity River Project, the Calatrava bridges, the new University of North Texas campus, the "agile port" (yes, I can hear the laughter of the Houstonians now), the desire of some former suburbanites to live closer to the heart of the city, and the attention of developers who only previously worked in North Dallas should mean a new life for the long beleaguered southern sector.

Some corporate relocations would be nice but that's probably only going to happen if the Dallas school system could improve to the point where middle-class families of all stripes/colors would have faith in it. Then the area could really prosper. Of course, all this comes with a giant asterisk. I said "if" all goes to plan and that could be a very big "if."

Oh, and if you have any Fort Worth questions, you should try www.fortwortharchiteture.com

This was posted on the Dallas board and it's not about Victory directly but it does discuss downtown Dallas retail and the number of people who live downtown. You guys might find it interesting:

Jos. A. Bank is trying on downtown Dallas for size

Men's clothier is first national apparel chain in district since 1990s

10:36 PM CST on Friday, December 1, 2006

By MARIA HALKIAS / The Dallas Morning News

Men's clothier Jos. A. Bank thinks it's been missing out on some business by not being in downtown Dallas. So it opened a store there Friday, a rare occurrence for the central business district, which is still struggling to support shopping.

Being an urban pioneer feels right in this case, said Terry Hillgartner, regional sales director for the chain of 370 stores, based near Baltimore. "We'll grow our market share by being downtown."

The store is the first national clothing chain, besides Neiman Marcus, to operate downtown since the 1990s.

"We're very positive. No offense to Neiman Marcus, but not everyone can shop there, and we think men like to shop during the day, at lunch or on the way home from work," he said. "Once men get home, they don't want to go out again."

Hours of operation are more generous than standard urban street times in major U.S. cities

Here's the link to Steve Brown today:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dw...n1.31c3f25.html

I found this red/blue electoral map of the US from 2004. Dallas County was red while several other Texas counties were blue:

http://alt.cimedia.com/ajc/pdf/elect_results_uscounty.pdf