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wilcal

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Everything posted by wilcal

  1. wilcal
    I know this would never be apples to apples, but the Ivy Lofts project that didn't work out that used "micro units" was 550 units in 28 stories. The tower was only on half of the lot (other half was a parking deck). No idea on lot size differences.
  2. wilcal
    Open House for the Bagby redesign happening on Thursday, December 6 1730-1900 Program begins at 1800 Julia Ideson Building Reading Room 550 McKinney St https://i.imgur.com/0OHhtRH.jpg Pretty sure I'm gonna go, so I'll report back to y'all what is said.
  3. wilcal
    Yep, and the land in question is currently between 3 different parks and they would be "linked" together (albeit with two large roads still there).
  4. wilcal
    I did ask about a timeline and they said "over the horizon" so don't get too excited :/
  5. wilcal
    Asked a city engineer and CoH planning employee about the redesign of Waugh and the integration of bike lanes in that area. They said that the project is currently looking at a price tag > $80 million and has no funding. They intend for this to be a signature CoH project and that hopefully some form of bike lane would be integrated. With a whole bridge reconstruction necessary, maybe we'll see something a la the third ward bridge reconstruction that has been proposed with separated bike lanes, which would be great.
  6. wilcal
    I guess I didn't remember that! That's one of those things that sounds like it makes sense, but I can't imagine the city planning so many intersection improvements. Would take forever!
  7. wilcal
    No. Midtown Authority told me it was unfunded with an indefinite timeline. The planning has been at 76% for a long time as the status on their website. The Houston Bike Plan was not developed specifically with Midtown being a part of the input, and a lack of harmony resulted. With that being said, I have no idea how dedicated the Midtown Authority is to doing this. One of their versions kept the southbound half of Main open to cars, but the northbound version converted to bike/pedestrian use only. I've been thinking more, and that may be the best way to handle it. All of the "major" issues I listed above would be fixed by this solution. HBP site has some info about Phase 1 (start by April '19) and Phase 2 (not feasible to start with the funding) in the midtown/third ward area here: http://houstonbikeplan.org/implementation/infrastructure/third-ward/ It says design/construction should have already been announced, but there's nothing, so I emailed them to find out. I didn't realize that they are planning on Austin to go as far south as Blodgett, which would be great, but there is nothing planned west of Main that I know of into Montrose/that half of Midtown which sucks.
  8. wilcal
    Any update on the Caroline construction? I need to ride by and check it out. Also, I've been thinking a lot more about the potential plan to turn Main into a greenway/bike/pedestrian space. I talked to a few people involved with the creation of the Houston Bike Plan to ask how far Main got in the process of being considered, and they said that some consultants recommended that as an option, but basically nobody felt strongly enough to make that a priority. I think that they should make it bike/pedestrian only from Richmond all of the way to the north side of downtown at Commerce. It should certainly be connected to the museum district, but I don't see an easy way of doing that. I'm no expert, but I believe that 2 bollards per driving lane (per half of an intersection) would be adequate to protect while also letting bikers/pedestrians through. Side streets would need some form of concrete barrier. Across the entire 2.5 mile stretch, you would need 185 bollards and 23 concrete barriers to block half streets. Surprisingly, you lose only 25 parking spots across the entire street, with 15/25 being north of Prairie. Major issues: 1) There would be a landlocked parking lot between Congress and Franklin. 2) The JW Marriott would be plenty unhappy with no street access to their only entrance (and no real chance at the side street because of the light rail on Rusk). No idea how you would handle this. 3) South Main Baptist would lose one of their two exits. Maybe turn Isabella into a cross-street? Open only on Sundays or something like that. 4) Central Houston Cadillac has aligned their parking lot so as to not have any entrances along McGowen or Travis St (and only on Main). For as bad as those issues are, this is such a great opportunity at relatively low cost (bollards and paint and some signal swaps) to add 2.5 miles of dedicated on-street pedestrian and bikeway.
  9. wilcal
    Went by last night on my bike and the new drawing institute was beautiful! Really nice structure.
  10. wilcal
    I personally don't think that DL would be knocking down doors to add competing service on heavily-trafficked routes, but they might. Then again, DL is moving IAH-LGA to all Airbus 220 service, which should be quite interesting as it offers quite a bit better experience than the normal A320/737 does (in economy). I'm a big fan of Spirit, and I could see them growing IAH to something like DTW (with a maintenance and pilot base even!) but they've seem to hit a bit of a wall and I don't know where else makes sense for them. MCI didn't work out and I doubt that they would launch intra-Texas service. Maybe Colombia service? SFO/OAK? I don't know!
  11. wilcal
    Houston Airport Systems knows who butters their bread at IAH. And I believe that UA has a long-term lease on their "three" A gates because they paid for the extension of A3 into 8 sub-gates. Although I do think that the smaller gates are only usable by regional jets. And as I mentioned before, United has so few flights at A, that instead of operating a check-in counter, they instruct passengers to take the train to terminal B and check-in their luggage there. Same thing with retrieving luggage on arrivals. You should see how upset some of those customers are.
  12. wilcal
    That place looks like some BS for out of towners a la the Riverwalk in San Antonio.
  13. wilcal
    Drove by the south end of the complex on Richmond, and they've completely cleaned the lot where the former apartments were and put in a green chain link fence the entire length of the south side of the property. I think that their plan is still to develop residential/commercial combo along Richmond. Have to think that they'll take a bit of a breather after this rash of current activity.
  14. wilcal
    United can F right off. They are only using the gates in A to block growth of other airlines. They don't even offer baggage claim or check-in services in A!
  15. wilcal
    Waugh is on the bike plan to have protected bike lanes all of the way from Gray to I-10. I wonder if they can start the integration when they do this bridge!
  16. wilcal
    It's by city ordinance. For what it's worth, they did end the ban on rollerblades.
  17. wilcal
    I asked and it will be streamed here: http://houstontx.city.swagit.com/
  18. wilcal
    I specifically asked about the skywalk connecting GRB on the southern end and they said it would only be developed if there was a hotel that was built. There are plans for one to be built on the old Kim Hung supermarket site but I think it would be a while before it actually gets built.
  19. wilcal
    They own at least the block where the CoH Parking Management office is. I saw that they added meters all around the sides. And now that I think about it, I wonder if the county owns the land for the Astros parking lots since they own the land under the stadiums and lease it.
  20. wilcal
    Evidently, the City of Houston owns a lot of the land that they will need to do the highway expansion on the east side of downtown and the plan is to do a land swap with the state. Land is sold at market value if TxDOT were to sell part of it. No idea if CoH gets preferential bids or anything.
  21. wilcal
    Pretty sure there was talk of them building a tower at one point.
  22. wilcal
    I just upload to imgur.com and then copy and paste the photo URL. Sometimes it works to put the image itself in the post, sometimes it is just the link.
  23. wilcal
    @nomohoutx Your thoughts? They're going to cover the garage at least and do some walkability stuff with the sidewalks.
  24. wilcal
    https://houston.eater.com/2018/9/20/17883368/dantons-seafood-montrose-relocating-mockingbird-bistro Do we know of anything "cooking" at this site? I could easily see a mid/high rise going in at this site.
  25. wilcal
    View from Dallas/Bagby exit off of 45-South. Starting to look really good!!! http://i.imgur.com/cZJuL0l.jpg
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