TheNiche

Why not designate White Oak Bayou itself as a transportation corridor? People could kayak it if they wanted to. It'd be an additional option. And I know how much cyclists like to tout options, no matter how impractical.

Great, so the State of Texas administered federal funding to improve an interstate highway and you're comparing to unrelated neighborhood-level health & safety projects funded by the City of Houston. Articulate a cogent point or get back on topic.

No. Those expenditures are unrelated to public health or safety. And wasn't it TXDoT that funded the feeder roads?

When it comes to public health and safety, I absolutely disagree that expenditure should be proportionate with the tax base of a neighborhood. It should be proportionate with the geographic distribution of the city's population...REGARDLESS OF AFFLUENCE! That anonymous little brown kid that can barely speak English in the 2nd Ward is at least as deserving of safe parks and recreation as any kid of yours, but I don't hear you advocating for any capital expenditure toward their interests. Heights residents want special attention? Go advocate for a management district so that you can be taxed for it directly. The City's capital improvement budget is extremely limited and should be shared. This isn't about roadway spending versus other spending. I agree that the Woodlands Waterway was a horrible expenditure; one mistake does not justify another. Lets stay on topic.

Those parts of The Woodlands that already send most of their kids to private school have staying power. But that is all! The older parts have only been demographically buoyed by new construction, the careful attention and marketing of the Woodlands Development Corporation (which was still hugely invested in selling inconveniently-located residential lots), and shorter commute times to I-45. But with most of The Woodlands built out, what remains are mostly just commercial parcels. If it were already its own municipality, it would probably institute a de facto ban on apartments through zoning. But in this final stage of involvement by TWDC, they're,focused on selling off the parcels and pulling out. Here's an interesting statistic: there have been 4,744 apartment units built in 77380, 77381, and 77382 since 2000. Here's another interesting statistic: 1,672 apartment units are Section 8 or Tax Credit subsidized housing. These are most of your older complexes, up through the 90's. Most of them weren't built that way, but converted in the last decade. That trend is more likely to accelerate than not, IMO. Master planning urbanism was a wonderful scheme by TWDC to tell a story, enhance commercial land values, and create a distracting illusion that multifamily housing could be innocuous, but as with any dense development outside of an urban core, the improvements will age, depreciate, and drag surrounding neighborhoods into death spiral. It is inevitable. The western portions, although newer, will decline especially fast once the marketing engine has been turned off. The commute is just too extreme...and many of those newer lots were actually fairly small to begin with. In comparison, Greenspoint actually has some important things going for it that The Woodlands does not. It is the airport office submarket, it is closer-in, and it is at the confluence of two major highways. There is structural demand for that location. The desirability of The Woodlands as a commercial submarket is contingent on its prestige. When it is no longer propped up by TWDC and the death spiral begins, don't say you weren't warned.

Who told you!? It was a secret!

I'd like to state that I am in opposition to this movement on the basis that I neither live in the Heights or work in the Heights, but careen through it on a regular basis and do not wish to be slowed down. Also, it is my belief that no one neighborhood should receive a disproportionate amount of safety implements so as that Darwinism may be allowed to take place on a fair and equitable basis.

Greenspoint 2.0 But shhhhh...don't tell them about it. It's a secret.

He's right, the sidewalk right there was wider. He's right, it was wider and less encumbered by obstacles. You can see for yourself on Google Streetview. The block in question is the north side of Harrisburg, immediately east of 67th Street.

Then they should wait and save up money so that they can do it right (whether elevated or subterranean). Houston will still be here when they're ready.

Right, and those people move to the Museum District, where there is also a good selection of new and old housing stock (at better price points), a walkable urban environment, cultural amenities, fewer beggars, good proximity to all the regional destinations you just mentioned, etc. My sense is that the typical person that wants to live downtown either wants to experience the hustle and bustle of urban grit...or that they just moved here and doesn't understand Houston's geography or housing market well enough to make a better decision.

A more up-to-date fit and finish and an amenity deck on top of the parking garage probably would make this a best-in-class property. Certainly, developers are willing to get creative to one-up the last property that got built. That said, I'm still having difficulty with the location. I don't think that people who want to lease apartments downtown are generally looking for quiet and solitude; if that's their preference then affluent renters-by-choice have many options. Houston House (averaging $1.89/sf) is similarly constrained, even though it has some fantastic views, recently-redone amenities, and much smaller easier-to-lease units (averaging 665 sf). Granted, it is ugly to look at from the street, but I feel like their pricing is much closer to reality. I feel like $2.00 psf is a better place for pro forma rents. The only way I can figure that the developer would make it nice enough to support higher rents would be if they build it to condominiums specs with a conversion as their exit strategy...but that would be a bad idea, too, because 270 units would be too many condos in one place at one time. Fifty units might work at some point in an ill-defined future, but that doesn't seem like it would work here.

Thank you for posting the link to the full article. You may be right about the historical tax credit component, however some people may still see it as controversial that the City would provide subsidy to enable State-administered federal subsidy. JJxvi nailed it as to why I don't think that this project can rely upon One Park Place as a rent comp. But in addition, I'd point out that One Park Place has better view corridors, a nice large new park that seems to flow from it, and that it is within an easier walking distance to the Houston Pavilions and the Park Shops. Its probably the best single-block site in all of Houston. I'd argue that Humble Tower and Post Rice Lofts have better locations too, one fronting Main Street and across from the Pavilions, the other nearer to Market Square Park. So yeah, I think that the pro forma rents are too aggressive.

Nancy stated that a tax credit developer was backing the project. I'm not trying to imply that qualifying applicants would be "poor", but they sure aren't rich. As for $2,200/month on 1,000-square-foot units ($2.20 PSF), I'd be interested in knowing where you get that! That's very aggressive. Post Rice Lofts averages $1.51 and Humble Tower averages $1.72. The only redeveloped historic building that gets rents like you've described is 1414 Congress, which gets $2.22 PSF...but they're all 207-square-foot SRO housing units operated by a non-profit. True enough, Finger does better at One Park Place, but this is no One Park Place. Finger's market for tenants is altogether different.

What is proposed is an $82 million project of which the current taxable value is $16 million, so that any yield on investment would be the difference of the two, $66 million. However, if the project is not viable without $14 million of subsidy, then its contribution toward fair market value would be only $52 million. (Remember, the only value that is taxable is a building's fee simple fair market value, meaning that value of the building alone without any financial agreements such as leases, debt financing...or direct government subsidy, especially when that subsidy is a non-recurring event.) The City's (and thereby the TIRZ's) current property tax rate is 0.63875%, so annual tax revenue would be $332,150. It would take 43 years to recoup the dollar amount of its investment. However, that does not account for the time value of money. If the City (or more accurately, the TIRZ) were willing to give up a dollar today for a riskless dollar and three cents a year from now (which given its cash-strapped budget and the undeniable fact that HCAD's appraised values are inherently risky and chronically below actual market value, seems unlikely) then a perpetuity of $332,150 would be worth approximately $11 million. But then...perpetuities can be sold for liquid cash. Direct one-time subsidies to developers in Dallas are forever! The savvy HAIFer might rebut that the sales tax would make up a portion of the difference, however the TIRZ would be funding the subsidy and the TIRZ does not collect a sales tax. A differently-minded savvy HAIFer might also point out that 1) "workforce housing" is unlikely to spur any economic windfalls in the downtown area, and that 2) to a large extent, this expensive housing for poor people in the downtown area would only undercut the market for inexpensive housing for poor people in the rest of Houston, hurting the remainder of the City's tax base, not that the TIRZ would care, and nor should support this project in the first place for reasons previously stated.

http://blog.chron.com/primeproperty/2012/02/proposal-to-revamp-texaco-building-includes-public-funds/#3104-3 This should prove controversial. An out-of-town developer wants a $52,000 / unit subsidy from the City to redevelop a building as federally-subsidized tax credit apartments.

How far does 20% go over a period of thirty to fifty years? Will METRO use trainsets with more than two cars? What will be the use characteristics of the new line? Will METRO want to increase service frequency for the sake of system efficiency at some point? You make good points, but they're wholly speculative. So are mine, but why chance it on such a crucial long-term set of infrastructure?

I don't think that the assumptions fully accounted for where METRO had modified the bus routes to funnel people onto the Red Line or the elimination in duplication of service. It did take them a couple of years to figure all of that kind of thing out, after all. There's no especially compelling reason to think that they're any better now than they were then. How does a 20% increase in vehicle capacity translate to a 20% increase in ridership during the average 24-hour traffic count? The effect of the vehicle capacity is limited to those times during the day that vehicle occupancy is currently being maxed out. Such a small capacity upgrade hardly seems adequate for a time horizon in which we become a big gigantic 'global' city like Chicago. One might argue that the six-minute headway (which is only three minutes in between signal timing interruptions for drivers) is preferable during periods of peak use because it reduces the amount of time that people spend waiting during a transfer. Even if it was just one car...six minutes is better...and fewer is better still. I'd like for METRO to be able to enhance that aspect of the user experience without the potential for adverse external effects on other components of regional mobility.

Fair points. Does anyone have engineering specs on the length of stations along the University Line? Or know for sure whether a different make or model of vehicle will be used on different portions of the LRT system? Nope. Not going there. You've argued that LRT is worth it and will be successful. If it is, then we need to consider the externalities. And since this is a multi-decadal piece of infrastructure, we should consider those externalities in terms of what they're like at a region of 6 million people and also what they're like at a region of 9 million people. Ask yourself, would Chicago be building this like we're building this?

The University Line will be a major trunkline that branches off toward two very high ridership generators: Uptown and the Hillcroft TC. Unless METRO is able to start joining more than just two traincars together along that route, I would expect an increase in frequency during peak times of traffic congestion. Also double the frequency due to LRT vehicles travelling in both direction. If it gets to the point that there is one vehicle every three minutes or less during rush hour, then we've got a huge problem. I think that a grade separation could be achieved with minimal ROW expansion. In fact, it might reduce the amount of ROW needed if guideways for trains and/or cars get cantilevered over one another.

METRO arranged local funding for two very expensive grade separations at railroad tracks that cross Harrisburg, so in my mind, the funding is there for critical and sometimes non-critical infrastructure if constituents demand it. I would prefer that constituents think about things like this NOW, and not after the fact, once we're stuck with crappy and inadequate infrastructure and a multi-decadal traffic jam. Setting aside the number and characteristics of light rail ridership as a dispute for another day...my concern is less for the east/west traffic along Richmond than it is for the north/south traffic crossing Richmond, especially at Shepherd and at Kirby.

Nick, a second line is planned that connects the Red Line to the Northwest Transit Center via Post Oak Blvd. It might not happen immediately, but it will happen. (And actually, I'd rather that it happen later because the University Line will provide an opportunity for people to realize the critical importance of grade separation at major intersections.) And in the mean time, the University Line will connect to the Hillcroft Transit Center...which I'd argue is more important than Uptown in some respects because southwest Houston's demography, extreme density, and already-high rate of transit use will enable the light rail system to capture a tremendous number of riders and seem to the FTA (for the sake of future funding) as though it is awesome...whether it is or not. And at the end of the day, METRO must play to the screwy FTA criteria or it makes it harder for them to get additional funding for new projects...even unsexy projects.

If it were any other entity than METRO, I'd be inclined to agree that the conversation is over. They'd have done their due diligence, communicated adequately with stakeholders, and had their final engineering specs ready and available. The reality, as we found out from the East End debacle, is that METRO may very well start building the line in a middle segment before they've figured out how to connect it to either terminus. Until the tracks are in the ground, I wouldn't expect or encourage any interested party to be quiet and just live with it.

I want to see grade separations on this route at high-traffic intersections. Otherwise (never-minding the opportunity costs) I think that it'll do more harm than good to regional mobility.

Congestion occurs on and off of freeways. And even in uncongested conditions, at-grade roads are still slower than freeways, requiring repeated acceleration and deceleration, which is inefficient not only in terms of time but in terms of fuel economy and emissions.