wilcal

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/retail/article/Luby-s-to-sell-restaurant-business-and-assets-15315357.php RIP

I felt it odd as well. I was planning on following up about it after the Elysian was rebuilt to see if anything happens first. Sometimes these things fall through the cracks and whoever is responsible doesn't know that they are. After some flooding in Kingwood, the city was going through to see which of the drainage ditches needed to be cleaned and someone had to go through the process of figuring out which were city maintained and which were county maintained. IIRC something like 10% of the system was unclaimed by either and the city voluntarily offered to maintain it while they figured out who had to.

This may be an option for you: https://www.glo.texas.gov/land/land-management/gis/aerials/1940s/harris/index3c.html These photos I saw in a Chron article about the destruction of the Lyons/Jensen area by the construction of the interstates. I asked Houston TxDOT about it on Twitter awhile back, and they said that it wasn't their bridge. Just like an hour with a weedeater would make a good bit of difference. The other issue is that it doesn't really go anywhere. No sidewalks on either side.

From my extremely limited understanding from people very much in the know, city council is not on-board with expanding market-based parking city wide... YET. It's a little much to turn the key on the city as a whole. They expanded it into Midtown, it will be expanded with TOD, and it's written into the (non-binding_ Climate Action Plan to expand it inside 610 by 2030. This is also the crux of TOD. Director Brown talked about how they are using criteria (from outside the department) to determine if streets should be secondary or primary TOD and that they are met and automatically triggered whenever the transit facilities are built. I can definitely see the more progressive Harris County easing their restrictions, but good luck with Montgomery County doing something like that up towards 99. I was pretty unimpressed by the city councilmember comments. Especially Shabazz. The whole basis of their complaints were that they didn't know what was going on. Well, this is been on the table for a pretty long time, and trying to find out what is even the difference between Walkable Places and TOD should probably have been handled up until this point. Even the guy who was presenting the Museum Park homeowner petition said that they weren't against it, but they feel that they didn't understand how it would affect their community. I'm not sure if it's a boomer vs younger generation thing, but the supporters that live in MP all understood and realize that this increases their property values. One guy even said that he owned a lot on a primary TOD corridor and he would have significantly more flexibility to develop. I do understand the plight of the MP residents who are scared, and the planning department really should have done a better job with outreach. They received the same chastising over the Bagby Spur Park boondoggle. They are definitely going to have to do some smoothing over with some council members (and some residents) before a supposed vote this summer.

Progress on Austin St in downtown:

Pretty sure that could be HAIF's motto at this point.

13 year study found that painted (non-separated bike lanes do nothing. Sharrows are actually more dangerous. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/05/29/protect-yourself-separated-bike-lanes-means-safer-streets-study-says/

If only it extended down to Hermann Park as well It'll just be "community bikeway" south of HCC with painted sharrows and wayfinding signs.

Looks great! Bring on the EaDo residents. Just a block from the Eadog Park and two blocks from 8th Wonder and then all sorts of other stuff 4-6 blocks away. Love seeing more infill in this area.

Late to this thread as well, but 63k sq ft is great! Anyone want to venture a guess when this will open? Surely by the Thanksgiving/holiday season push.

It looks pretty nice! Not bad at all.

Drove down Post Oak this morning and it really looked great. Saw about a dozen different cyclists utilizing the BRT lane as a bike lane, too.

jfc, just came across my twitter feed Edit: Full details now https://abc13.com/man-shot-killed-after-fight-between-groups-inside-galleria/6181556/

Some extra help for distracted drivers:

Any update on what this is going to be? It evidently sold and I heard a new owner is starting construction on something.

This is the arcgis map of their data btw: https://linkhouston.maps.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=15a9064f69e242809dcbb50cee11d3dd

I actually asked about them a little about this in regards to the projects that Houston city council approved recently. They said that HHA uses some transportation data, but it's not nearly this granular. Part of the reason they did this study was to develop tools to provide to people like HHA and other organizations to help make smarter investments.

Even if we have the most, it doesn't mean that there is enough or that it's distributed evenly. I would encourage all of you to read the new Affordable Housing and Sustainable Transportation report that was published by LINK Houston and the Kinder Institute last week. https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2020/05/05/affordable-housing-and-sustainable-transportation-houston Full report is on this site: https://kinder.rice.edu/research/where-affordable-housing-and-transportation-meet-houston TLDR is that large swathes of census blocks across the city do not have adequate access to affordable housing. Most of the East End actually does.

Clayton Homes opened in 1952! So that's quite a while before 59 was built. Here's another photo that looks north.

Saw this cool photo of the original Elysian Viaduct. This photo is from around 1960.

If there was a market to sell them, then they would be sold. It's about as simple as that. There's a reason why empty lots in some neighborhoods sell for completed townhomes. Density is not a bad thing, especially with the potential for easy light rail expansion. Also, there are way more standalone traditional houses in this area than townhome neighborhoods.

There are some wayfinding improvements being made as part of the new bike lanes. There is a sign on the White Oak/MKT split, although I'll admit it's not great.

What type of "actual housing" were you anticipating on a 2500 sq ft lot that isn't a townhome? Also, multifamily and townhomes are actual housing.

Haven't seen in mentioned, but they've pushed testing back until at least July I believe. Who knows when it'll open

Are you talking about a tax abatement for the landlord or for the tenants? City could refund their portion of the sales tax, but that's only 1% which probably doesn't go very far.