Chris Alexander

From today's Chron.com article:

"...Houston Chief Development Officer Andy Icken said there's plenty of available land for Amazon's campus between downtown and the Texas Medical Center, an area dense with some of the city's most innovative companies."

So where is this available land between downtown and the TMC? Are they proposing to knock down Midtown? Bulldoze Montrose? Flatten Fourth Ward?

27 minutes ago, IronTiger said:

...$100k is not going to cover much at the scale you're talking. Half of that is just for construction of parking underneath, and most of the wilder ideas that have come out are far more expensive than $100k. Just to get it up to code is going to going to be incredibly expensive...

 

Fact: the KBR site, while problematic, is probably Houston's best chance at attracting Amazon. If the Astrodome is the best chance, then guess where Amazon will be located? Not Houston.

While I strongly agree with your conclusion, I want to clarify that the $105 million (not thousands) includes the two lower levels of parking and a new street level floor with newly configured street level entrances AND getting at least those three levels up to code with visitor comfort amenities. The street level floor is actually more important for the building's future than the parking garage. It should also be noted that $10.5 million of that has already been spent on architectural and engineering design work by Kirksey Architecture, work that is now more than halfway completed. So the actual construction part will be $94.5 million, not $105 million. -- CA for Astrodome Tomorrow

9 hours ago, 102IAHexpress said:

 

Amazon could get the astrodome for practically nothing. 

 

No. They can't get the Astrodome at all, because it's not available for such use. County Judge Emmett (Harris County owns the building), has said many times that any outside developer has to pay the full cost of the redevelopment. The judge's stock quote is "show me the money." And the money to physically convert that building on that property pales compared to the money Bezos & Co. would have to put up to essentially buy out the HLSR and Texans 30-year lease contracts, because such a use violates those contracts in ways the current tenants consider unacceptable. Continued discussion of supposed viabilty of the Dome as HQ2 is an indulgent fantasy. it's not going to happen. -- CA for Astrodome Tomorrow

6 hours ago, 102IAHexpress said:

"...a wealthy private company abandoned it and other private companies have not had interest in the land is telling..."

KBR has had its own issues. Not sure its abandonment of the site has anything to do with the site. As far as ther companies lack of interest, well maybe you're right, but then again that entire area is just now on the cusp of turning into something new. I was just looking at the site on Google map. It's an awesome canvas with two existing buildings. There's more property around there that they could acquire. Freeway access is excellent and the Metro 30 runs right by it. And downtown is RIGHT THERE. If I were Bezos I would jump on this like a duck on a junebug.

Bike, bus and bayou may be an agreeable transit mix for the Amazon culture.

Choosing KBR would be visionary and disruptive in the best sense. Anybody have a sense of how visionary and disruptive Amazon is likely to be? 

Photo: a bike path along the bayou east of downtown at the silo ruins.

I've now read the entire thread and Tory Gattis's linked article. A few thoughts about the Astrodome as HQ2. First, to cut to the chase, it's not going to happen. Rodeo and NFL/Texans would veto in a nanosecond. The only way Amazon would get that building is if they purchase both RODEOHOUSTON and the Houston Texans. Then there's the complicating factor that the property is owned by Harris County, so the city can't actually submit a proposal to Amazon without full county partnership. City and county are getting along well, but I would be stunned to see that happening by October 19, two weeks from now. 

There's also another stakeholder now, the Texas Historical Commission, which has to issue a permit for any modification to the Astrodome. While my reading of the tea leaves leads me to believe THC is going to be very forgiving in their approval of modifications, I would guess that the scope and scale of modifications required to enable HQ2 are outside THC's red lines.

For several years now Astrodome Tomorrow has been advocating the building of new, multilevel structures inside the Dome, around the perimeter of the main floor. Such vertical construction is NOT part of the $105 M project now in the design stage, but we believe (partly by reading tea leaves) that the FOUNDATION PIERS and other structures needed to support such development in the future ARE being designed into the current project. We have appealed to all the decision makers and the Kirksey architects to do so. It would be tragically short-sighted if they don't, because that additional floor footage is needed if the Dome is to produce floor-lease revenue sufficient to pay for its upkeep over the long term.

The old Astroworld property would be a better fit in some ways. Plusses are access to transit (red line terminus and park/ride across the street, straight shot down Bellfort to Hobby), property size and near-core location, adjacent expansion property. But there are issues. First there's no existing campus of buildings to occupy by 2018, and also there is some occasional street flooding in that immediate neighborhood. Having Amazon across the freeway would be a great assist to success of the kind of Astrodome/NRG Stadium Park redevelopment we have proposed. -- Chris Alexander for Astrodome Tomorrow 

The $105 M project is not just for the parking under the ground level, it's mainly to create the ground level. There is no ground level now; in other words there's no street level floor. The old playing field is 25 ft below street level. Building a floor at street level is the first necessary step to make the building usable. It's not intended as the last step. The project also includes adding new visitor entrances at street level; the old public entrances were at 10 ft. above street level, up ramps. It's not accurate to say that the money is doing nothing to renovate the building.

There are no plans or serious proposals to make the Dome viable as an office building. A big part of its planned purpose is still to be an exhibition/event hall (not technically a convention center, that term was used inaccurately by news media). The reason the cost this time is half that of the previous proposal is that this one doesn't include money to renovate the upper floors. And also there was some serious decorative fru-fru in that earlier proposal, which has been stripped away.

It's a good plan that will get revenue, activity and most importantly people back into the building. Future improvements will be funded and completed separately, a marathon not a sprint.

Love this!  Sent it to Judge Emmett's office (everybody should), Lisa Gray at the Chronicle, and will be blogging about it at some point at Houston Strategies.  This could really get the public excited about the concept and more supportive!

This should be sent to the Urban Land Institute. That is the nonprofit that Judge Emmett has hired to analyze and make recommendations on his park idea. They are going to come back with a comprehensive proposal for the property, and unless the author of the proposal being discussed here (ontheotherhand ?) interacts with that process his/her ideas will be ignored.

And just to add one more comment on the ski slope idea, all you who keep pushing this are living in a privilege bubble. You imagine that snow skiing is a mass recreation activity but it is an activity of an elite that can afford to go to real mountains and therefore would not support such a venue here where they would miss out on all of the travel, social activities and landscapes of real ski resorts. There simply are not enough people in Houston or even Texas who would patronize the venue you imagine. By the way, there was an attempt to build a ski slope in Houston many years ago. It was at the southwest corner of the 610W-59S interchange near the Galleria. It failed.

Also by the way, my ASTRODOME*TOMORROW proposal has not gone away, despite some of our partners evidently having bailed on such components as a STEM center. My proposal is for a park OUTSIDE, 80 to 100 acres as opposed to 8-9 acres inside. If you've never heard of this proposal, where have you been?

Finally, I'm attaching a couple of renderings just to stir up trouble. Park with 100-foot high interior perimeter wall covered in moving projected images of Earth from space, Mars, etc. See for reference: live ISS feed from orbit online as we speak.