TheNiche

From Cook's article: A likely-stained shirt or pants along with a risk of being drenched with my own scalding hot coffee...neither of these things sound very fun to me, so I can only possibly conclude that the other 50% must be equally underwhelming. There aren't very many cities that have larger downtown office markets than Houston, but Philly is one of them. Their downtown area is also genuinely mixed-use, measured in neighborhoods rather than a handful of residential buildings. It's also an old city, and old cities by nature of their pre-automotive legacy are typically tourist-friendly by their very nature. A place like this Reading Terminal Market fits with the context of that environment. We are not that city, and we shouldn't pretend to don its vestiges. But perhaps more importantly, we're the city that eats prairie and poops restaurants (credit to memebag for that phrase). Having everything under one roof in Houston is for the unadventurous. SCREW THAT. If either a tourist or a resident isn't willing to drive a lot and go out of their comfort zone to experience our city then all they're going to get out of it is a very small slice of it, mostly contrived and boring. And there's absolutely nothing unauthentic we can do to change that. Don't get me wrong. We can improve downtown and it's cultural offerings, just not by offering up an imitative and derivative urban form. We should instead do what makes sense for us, given our climate, our neighborhoods, and our local culture. The downtown tunnels are a good example of that. It's not that the idea of tunnels are unique to our city, just that they make the most sense here, so we've taken them to a much further extent. We should promote them and make them more tourist-friendly. We should also promote places such as the Bellaire corridor and make tourists slog down it to select from one of dozens of anonymous little Asiatic holes-in-the-wall if they want to experience Houston's culture. That kind of experience cannot be transplanted to a glorified food court. Dare I say...you'd miss out on 'half the fun.'

The downtown sublease space competes directly with the direct lease space, however is excluded from most market data. So that's part of what makes it look like it's still OK. Vacancy is a lagging indicator, direct-lease vacancy even more so.

oh snap!

Recessions are only defined by the length of time during which the economy is contracting, so yes, I think that this one already is or will be over. But that only means that we're at the lowest point. It isn't enough that the recession is over; what matters is that that we have recovered to the extent that rental rates and vacancy rates are once again adequate to justify the relatively high cost of new construction. Also, whether or not there will be another separate 'double-dip' recession in the near term is up for debate, and I think that it's possible if not likely. So that'd be the first problem is that the fundamentals are weak. The second problem is that the terms available for debt financing are not nearly as friendly and show few signs of getting better for as long as the commercial foreclosure situation remains bleak. ...and believe me, the worst is yet to come on that front. If there's any one thing that could trigger a second financial crisis leading us into a 'double-dip' recession, it's the projected rate of commercial real estate foreclosures. Even if we avoid a financial crisis, commercial real estate transaction values are going to be suppressed by foreclosures for years to come. And that, combined with poor fundamentals, still-high hard costs, and expensive debt...well, it makes for a bleak outlook. And that sucks for me, because I used to be the guy that worked through all of these issues and got big projects to pencil out as profitable. Short of switching over to appraisal (which is kind of a dead end), my career is over.

And I'm just sayin' that the term "skyscraper" is used in McAllen to describe a pathetic and lonely 17-story building. And according to your dictionary post, that'd be correct. For downtown Houston, though, maybe 40 stories isn't enough to be considered "relatively tall".

Deport all our resident neat freaks to Dallas.

I think four years is a good minimum number, but that's being optimistic.

Aside from The Woodlands, I don't think that there's too much concern about new municipalities being formed in the ETJ. They'd have to amalgamate many different MUDs under one umbrella, but the burden of MUD bonds would be absorbed unevenly by a new municipality. And that'd create a lot of tension. What is more likely is that even now we are witnessing the rise of the Management District as a replacement for municipal annexations of residential areas. Management Districts have the authority to tax and can be tasked with essentially any of the services typically provided for by a municipality. They can be responsible for utilities, services, or both. They can even overlap with MUDs or municipalities.

Define skyscraper.

Since we're talking in platitudes about mostly-absurd subject matter, I think that the City and County should grant $10,000 to every one of its citizens, financed via the Houston/Harris County Sports Authority. By the logic of certain posters on this forum, that wouldn't constitute a tax on the citizenry even if the Sports Authority ended up at high risks of insolvency in the very near future. For the citizens, according to such a viewpoint, it would be an unmitigated win/win. Free money!

Let me be perfectly clear. Regardless of your issues with the quality of City of Houston services, Houston doesn't want to annex you. Your already-declining demographics, deteriorating infrastructure, and low taxable value are issues that disqualify you from consideration. The fact is that an attempt by the City of Houston at annexing a neighborhood in Spring would be a freakish abberation, and your constant worrying that you are a target is akin to a morbidly-obese woman worrying about getting stalked and raped. You should be far more concerned with internal matters such as a neighborhood watch or the enforcement of deed restrictions than you are with getting annexed.

No kidding. I started to formulate counterpoints...but damn, the way he explains it, there's no need. The counterpoints are just there, already embedded. I mean, seriously...is there anything more conflictd than a gay, moralistic control-freak?

False. If the county sports authority defaults on their bonds, those are guaranteed by general funds from Harris County. And, um...it's entirely plausible that that happens in the near future. Also, if you happen to own property in TIRZ #15, tpart of the taxes that you'd otherwise pay to the City of Houston are redirected to the TIRZ, which is financing much of the subsidy for the Dynamo stadium.

Pizza Hut Park is in Frisco. EDIT: And that was post #11,000. I'm a brown stripey skyscraper now instead of the art deco skyscraper. I like it.

Aside from Skanska (and pretty much only Skanska), developers have to obtain debt financing to make projects pencil out. And there is no debt financing. If anybody needs to be thinking ahead, it's bankers. But they actually are thinking ahead, already. That's why there's no debt financing.

I get the sense that local interest are just getting panicky about the stadium deal. An inmate processing facility so far removed from the courthouse complex and jails seems kind of, um...stupid.

To be clear, the new site is not in Bellaire. It is in the City of Houston and is only close to Bellaire. And if the Midway Cos. could pull off a private-sector coup along the lines of their master plan, it would end up saving both the City and the County tens of millions of dollars. In my mind, that's the biggest advantage of this site. The area right around there is also kind of ugly, so this development (if successful) could help bridge the vast socioeconomic divide between the Galleria area and Gulfton. Soccer stadia clearly don't need to be in a centralized location to make sense, as evidenced by Dallas' team...on the other hand, the new site is closer to the true population centroid of Houston, which is near the I-10/610 interchange. Having said all this, I don't think that the Midway Cos. has a serious proposal. It's merely a distraction from the only workable plan, which is to build the stadium with public-sector assistance.

That's true in some parts of downtown more than in others.

The key issue is how we should define a public place. I think that we'd all agree that an airport or a government building is a public place and that a ban on smoking in those sorts of places is reasonable enough. But is a privately-owned bar a public place? The Houston ordinance says 'yes'. I happen to disagree. I say that if you don't like that smoking is permitted in a particular bar, go to one where smoking isn't permitted or where there are overpowered ventilation systems so that it doesn't matter. The success of your proposal would be contingent on whether the number of transmitted diseases prevented by people using this database exceeded the number of new cases brought about by people who ended up having unprotected intercourse with a false negative on the list. Such rigorous measures might also foster a more lax social attitude towards risky intercourse in general. Egregious violations of the fourth amendment aside, however, I think that there probably is something to the idea of government-mandated medical checkups. If we require it for our cars, why not for our bodies?

There are plenty of others. Richmond, Addicks-Satsuma, Aldine-Westfield, Spring-Stuebner, Hufsmith-Conroe, Decker Prairie-Rosehill, Cypress-Rosehill, Barker-Cypress, Conroe-Porter, Old Houston Rd., Aldine-Bender Rd., Huffman-Cleveland...and oh so many more. What I'm most curious about is how these old routes have been incrementally realigned over the decades and centuries. And why.

Wow, that's pretty cool. I've got an interest in Thompson's Ferry because of its significance in the Texas Revolution. That's where the Mexican Army under General Cos crossed en route to San Jacinto. I just hope that the developers of Sienna Plantation did adequate archeological investigation before they started work out there. There'd no doubt be plenty of artifacts. Yet, I have to wonder whether the Thompson's Ferry that was used in the latter-19th century was at the same location as the one from the Revolution.

The difference is that patrons can clearly see where an establishment allows or disallows smoking, whereas the patrons cannot clearly see where the establishment takes appropriate health measures such as you described in comparison.

Do you guys mean agronomist?

EXCELLENT POST! This explains some of the oddities that I've encountered driving on county roads, including the senseless 90-degree curves...at least, it sort of does. Was there a method to the madness in the 19th century? It just seems like they should've been aware of the hypotenuse at that time. Do you still have all the documentation from your research? I'd really like to see the "spatial logic". I've got a collection of dozens of official state road maps, but they only go back as far as 1938. And obviously, they lack precision.

What project?