wilcal

To be extra clear, the "homeowners" are only buying the house. The idea of using a Community Land Trust model is that the trust will always own the land and the homeowner will typically be purchasing a 99 year lease. The land will still be owned by a non-profit, so I would imagine the homeowners would only pay property tax based on the value of the improvement. I think that the idea of a CLT is as more about providing an affordable housing option that equity can be built with and not about gaining equity from property value growth. Future purchasers will also have to meet certain income criteria as well (likely 80% of AMI). The Houston CLT site has these requirements listed: Gross AMI < 80% ($63k for a family of four) US Citizen/Permanent Resident Take an 8 hour homebuyer class Be able to obtain a 30 year mortgage Meet their DTI requirement Have $350 out of pocket for closing costs Have >$1,000 in personal funds after closing Future buyers will have to meet those same requirements if they buy one of the units maintained by the CLT. Market rate units will of course be market rate. 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.

Agreed. Honestly, I wish they would just follow the streetscape guidelines and just build a slight reduction in parking just so I can have a project to point at, but I'm not really holding my breath.

Hopefully they don't let them set up the pricing model for parking in the garage. $1 parking + $.21 facility fee + $.39 environmental tax + .....

Another development that could potentially take advantage of the opt-in Transit Oriented Development standards. Edit: my star is a little off. It should be shifted to the left part of the block, but still would apply if they go onto Richmond frontage. If they opt-in, they would get a 50% reduction in the parking minimum requirement and they would have to follow some streetscape design guidelines. See the back half of this PDF if you want a refresher https://houstontx.gov/planning/docs_pdfs/User's Guide for WP and TOD report_2020-10-01.pdf

It is right here on their site: https://www.houstontx.gov/parks/parkrules.html The only exception I am aware of is Lake Houston Wilderness Park which allows overnight camping and I believe Memorial Park has written hours of 5am-11pm. Basically, the HPARD rep told me directly that the technical hours for Columbia Tap and Bayou Greenways were technically dawn to dusk. Two sections of the Columbia Tap are also listed as being part of the park trial system: https://www.houstontx.gov/parks/trails.html Also, evidently EaDo was going to put lights on their portion of the trail but were told to hold off because if they were going to make a change they wanted it to be consistent. Again, I think they are willing to do later hours and lighting, but there isn't funding to do the entire thing.

I've seen several Taco Bells that were demo'd just to have the new version of the current layout replaced. Honestly, my bet really would be another Taco Bell.

Image from /r/Houston Also, @Highrise Towerit appears you put this in the wrong forum.

@Triton Do you think it'll be any different with these being homes that are being sold to the public via a land trust? I'm not aware of any similar efforts in this neighborhood. I would think that there might be different community feedback considering these will be homes for sale and not "just" subsidized apartments.

Agreed. Imagine if some streets were closed from dusk until dawn (or an on-street bike lane). They just don't understand that these trails are transportation infrastructure and should be treated as such.

I know someone that has pushed on this quite a bit and y'all are going to love the response. It is considered park space (like the Bayou Greenway trails as well) and they are technically closed from dusk until dawn and adding lights would only encourage their use outside of park hours. Yes, I do think that something might be done eventually, specifically with Columbia Tap, but it is going to take a policy change. I believe local politicians/etc are on board, but it isn't funded and still technically against the rules. I was asking once about the Bayou Greenway trails and whose rules even apply (wanted to ride my electric scooter yet the signs say no motor vehicles, blah blah blah) and when I asked about the hours they said that no one is enforcing so go right ahead. I'm white, but that is the perfect situation where POC get hassled over stupid BS. If you want it to be legal, then make it legal.

Looks like roof is done.

Just got an email that everything is clear and construction will start at any time. Estimated repairs will take 60-90 days.

Yeah, my own real hesitancy is the timing/delay thing and that we usually go with another couple and that based on the timing, you kind of "waste" a day. If I was going by myself I would totally consider it though. The train there runs 12:10-9:40pm on Friday and the return train is 9am-618pm and doesn't run on Sunday, so you don't get home Monday night. My preference is to try to do a Friday morning early departure to eat a late lunch in NOLA and then come back Sunday after lunch. I actually just booked a trip for 2.5 weeks from now as there was a good price at the new Kimpton there.

Wait, you mean "King Ranch Texas Kitchen", 3 banks, and an AT&T store may not be the best use of this stretch of Post Oak?

$35-$60 for a reserved seat and $300ish for a 2 person private room. Also, I am absolutely going to ride the whole Texas Triangle in one day if it is possible. Looks like it should take about 15 hourish?

I honestly wish that there was a deeper conversation here to find out more. My guess is that it is the renovated historical home/district aspect and not the availability of Warby Parker/Lululemon/8th Row Flint/Coltivare kind of retail and restaurant experience. How often are Seabrook residents even going to the Heights? Basically, is it just some romanticized view? I would think that Galveston would be a better corollary. I also don't see any historical homes in Old Town Seabrook and new builds are all on stilts. I do agree that it is nice to see an older group of residents embracing the Live Work Play thing. There is definitely a lot of work to be done here. I don't see a single sidewalk, but city ROW clearly pretty tiny considering the width of some of the streets. Will be interesting to see what the final report says. I didn't know H-GAC had this program and it was interesting to look at some other completed ones.

Sorry, just saw this but, lol. "We just want a Heights by the water with golf carts. Is that so much to ask?"

I went and watched the public meeting on Youtube from a few months ago and it is pretty cool that HGAC helps fund these studies. This is what they end up with when the plan comes out: It is interesting to see such a small-scale rezoning proposal, mostly because you can look at the entirety of the project. The proposed "more commercial" shot above involves switching over four mostly whole blocks (SW of Main) and four partial blocks (NE of Main) to commercial. The four main blocks already already has a bunch of commercial stuff in it including a little strip center: The other side is kind of laughable. A church is 1/4 of it, 1/4 is probably owned by the USPS, 1/4 is developed, so that leaves 1/4 down on the end by the Bed & Breakfast by the water:

Never heard back from the real estate agent, so oh well. I'm moving in around the corner from here so would love to having something cool pop up.

Definitely going up fast!

Flew to Mexico City this weekend and flew from D on Volaris and was momentarily very confused when I saw a Southwest plane landing while a Sun Country was pulling up to a gate at D (incoming CUN flight) and I totally forgot that both of them had launched service since I had flown on a plane 15 months ago.

This is being delayed slightly to an estimated January opening. Construction should be starting in July now (instead of June). It was mentioned that it might be completely before the nearby bridge that burned is reopened.

This got a brief aside mention in the Bicycle Advisory Committee Infrastructure subcommittee meeting yesterday. Basically, probably not going to be open until the end of the year at the earliest. The new connector next to it has slid a month to January completion and it might be done before this reopens.

Yeah, transferring lines in downtown is actually pretty annoying. Private car drive time from Eastwood TC to Wheeler Station is about 11 minutes plus time to make the 6 or 7 bus stops between. Silver line stops are scheduled to be very quick though. From the Four Oaks Station to Galleria Station, it is a 1 mileish journey with 5 stops and is scheduled to take 8 minutes. Wheeler to Memorial Hermann station is scheduled at 6 minutes. So maybe in the range of 25-30ish for Eastwood TC to Memorial Hermann stop if you nail a connection.