wilcal

Totally fair question. I would also imagine that the funds help provide the concessions about "workforce or affordable" housing. I'm not sure how much tech companies prefer to have certain types of office space and how that compares to office space in the region. Not sure what portion of their expected tax bill they are having rebated represents, either. Isn't it like .65%? So, a significant chunk of the expected tax bill with the benefit that their receiving is $600k/year for 10 years. Isn't the six million coming in the form of tax rebates after it opens? I don't think you typically count future tax costs as part of the funding.

Surely there's some deal already in place with everything else closing on that corner. Gonna be pretty disappointed if it's St. Thomas. It's a little bit bigger than the footprint of the La Colombe d'Or tower. Would be super cool to get another residential tower. That would be a fourth in like 5 years in that stretch of Montrose.

Someone on /r/Houston posted about some construction has started at Hardy Yards this week. I'm guessing it's the Red Line apartments that were platted earlier this year? Is that actually going to happen? I just assume that anything that goes over or through a rail isn't going to happen unless there is big money involved, and that would be a city project unless it was rolled into NHHIP.

That portion is maintained by TxDOT. Lower Westheimer maintained by the city

Wait.... Glass Cypress sells $160 screen printed tshirts?!?!? https://www.glasscypress.com/shop/ I'm not sure what's more farfetched. Their business model or thinking that they can buy all of the real estate on that block of Indiana. Wilson Montessori is a recently renovated Houston ISD magnet K-8 school. Good luck buying that, too!

I wish I knew! Also, they bumped back the presentation

Wasn't a fan of him at AA. Reputation as a hard cost cutter. That didn't work well with Smisek and it killed morale.

Oh man, my friends says Loro is absolutely delicious. Can't wait to try this.

Looks like we were so mean in this thread we caused Oscar to step down 😂 I'm actually pretty sad about that because he's done such a great job after $misek. Not too excited about Kirby tbh.

Thought I was gonna checkmate you by saying on a Sunday at 8pm, but turns out Simply Pho is open on Sundays until 10.

I SAID THAT A NEW FOOD HALL IS COMING... But yeah, pretty much what I thought. I'm just looking forward to potentially being able to get a banh mi after 8pm in midtown.

Committee is presenting their two ordinance recommendations to the Planning Commission on 12/19 Just got an email:

That's just for Terminal D, which United doesn't use for departures. As I kind of mentioned before, there is somewhat of a space constraint for foreign airlines flying to Europe just in the afternoon. The rest of the day it's basically NBD. IIRC, the previous plan had United giving up a portion of the old Terminal C for an expanded D, and in exchange they could use all of the Terminal D gates. Not sure if that's still the case with the current plan. Then again, I think the old plan also had terminal B getting it's old customs/immigration so the regional jets coming from Mexico wouldn't have to use D/E gates. Airlines like Spirit were having to drop international passengers at D and then pay to have their planes towed down to A.

https://houston.eater.com/2019/12/4/20994884/1-800-lucky-opening-houston-midtown

That list is in statute miles, not nautical miles, which is generally what the airline industry operates in. This list has both on it. EWR-SIN is 9,534 statute miles, but 8,285 nautical miles. Second longest, AKL-DOH (which my sister actually got to fly in biz earlier this year. I'm just a bit jealous) is 9,023/7,848. IAH-SGN is 9,269/8055. It would be about 18 hours one-way. Woof.

Fascinating list of O&D demand. 1) SGN 8,055 nmi. Would be the second longest flight in the world. Ain't gonna happen. Also, they don't even fly this from LAX or SFO, so can't imagine those being worse than IAH. 2) MNL 7,416 nmi Would be 8th longest in the world. I've read that yields are super low, so likely doesn't make biz sense. 3) BOM 7,792 nmi This one is approaching business/yield reasoning at least. Sounds like Air India might try it, but they're kind of a mess. 4) PVG 6,581 nmi Houston to Asia is kind of saturated. I can't see this one launching unless economy yields start coming up. Cargo has supposedly taken a hit with tariffs, so that hurts, too. 5) FCO 4,938 nmi Could definitely see this as a summer seasonal. I met with the Italian tourism board when they were in town a few years ago and they said Texas is their second biggest market in the US. 763ER has a 5,990 nmi range and could easily handle it or if United had some underutilized 787s,. 6) KHI 7,371 nmi Zero chance. 7) TLV 6,141 nmi. Anything is possible. Evidently biz class to behind to TLV is crazy high, so who knows. 8 ) ICN 6,138 nmi. Korea Air couldn't make it work. I guess UA could? Would rather see Asiana fly it. UA evidently sucks at marketing themselves in Asia which is why ANA operates one of the two NRT flights. 9) DEL 7,276 nmi. Same thing as BOM. Could see it, but BOM a better choice. 10) BKK 8,033 nmi Would also be the 2nd longest flight in the world. Ain't gonna happen. They care about making money. They can make more money elsewhere with their planes. United plays to the strength of their hubs, like every airline, and their strength in IAH is central and south america. Agreed. United could absolutely squeeze in more wide-body flights if they wanted to. Other foreign airlines trying to fly to/from Europe and peak times? Not so much. Off-peak times, absolutely. International wide-body destinations: Europe: LHR (2X daily, occasionally 3), AMS, FRA, MUC Asia: NRT South America: UIO, LIM, SCL, EZE, GIG, GRU Oceania: SYD 14 whole wide-body international flights per day! I believe E has 6 wide-body capable gates and C has 8, so yeah, underutilized just a bit.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/transportation/article/Christmas-ho-ho-holds-up-testing-of-Uptown-bus-14879800.php Christmas decorations causing hold up on Uptown BRT testing

I just assumed that the C9s were equal, so if there is that much of a difference, then that would be understandable.

They look to be LED, so almost nothing. https://www.christmaslightsetc.com/pages/how-many-watts-amps-do-christmas-lights-use.htm TLDR: LED lights use about 2% of the electricity of incandescent.

That's very interesting. I just spent some time looking at this solution provider: https://cityliftparking.com/solutions My thinking is that surely there would have to be significant size requirements for an automated system to work, but this may not be the case. IIRC, this site was originally rendered to have parking on the roof before some design changes, so they clearly thought that there was a shot at having some expensive/extreme parking options to add more retail. That's still a huge chunk of the lot on parking with none of it covered. I wonder how much this design could be changed to integrate more retail space even with houston's parking requirements. The only system that CityLift offers that might work is the Puzzle Mechanical Parking. Spec sheet I think this style requires you to have one open space on each level except for the pit and the top level. This is a four level with pit example, so I think you would get 10 spots in the space of 3. They offer a tandem version (double thickness) so it might even be possible to have a system that allows for tandem parking just above certain levels which would allow to to effectively park cars on the roof. You could end up with something a little bit like this. Green would be additional retail space. An increase of about 40-50%. There's 50 parking spaces I think, so lets say you need about 75: It's probably feasible (assuming you could get pickups to fit), I just wonder what the ROI would be getting one extra tenant and everyone getting some extra SF.

Got a targeted ad for the crowdsourcing campaign on Facebook and here is the post/ad about it. No new info but funny to read some of the comments https://www.facebook.com/CrowdSt/posts/3033582783337571

Some movement on site this morning. Looks like they were tearing down the old facade wall from the other site?

Logic and politics.... oil and water. And yes, the aforementioned person is no longer a rep, but it's very much a swing district.

Ok ok it's not too bad I think that we probably haven't switched to this model because the electronics would have to cost less than the space savings, and that probably only makes sense where the land is $$$. Nice to think that we're getting there in Houston

Was traveling this past week and spent some time in Bratislava and came upon a cool coffee shop called Urban House http://www.urbanhouse.sk/ I think that you could convert El Real to a similar concept. Coffee shops in Montrose tend to do pretty well and you could do alcohol/food. Urban House was a former small department store, but was still able to make it feel cosy. Keeping old theater theme would of course be required. Urban House