TheNiche

An above- or below-grade line would seem to have made more sense in areas such as downtown and the TMC, although, admittedly the obliteration of pre-existing skywalks and tunnels would've been an issue.

AWP are like Baskin Robbin's 31 Flavors. It takes all kinds.

Surely you didn't. Socially-concious as y'all are, no Heights resident would put that kind of sentiment out there so flagrantly. Its simply not plausible because you know that a Woodlander could've picked up on the possibility that they might be able to smear you by quoting your statement out of context, knowing all the while that it wasn't your intention. Angry white people, regardless of physical configuration or political affiliation, are cannibalistic birds of a feather. They flock together, then pick each other apart, viciously.

The neighborhood is just fine, physically speaking. So is The Woodlands. What I hate are highly-insulated subcultures of similarly-obnoxious people, especially when as generational breeding cycles kick in. By my observation, affluent obnoxious people have a greater wherewithall to actualize and then mass-communicate their smug preferences, and so the criticisms that I am leveling at the Heights and The Woodlands are several orders of magnitude greater than what I might level at, say, Pasadena or even Spring. It is also notable that my 'hate-on' diminishes with distance. So right now, at this moment, I do not care about Austin or College Station, even if they are highly deserving of criticism. It is also notable that I have a respect for differently-obnoxious people, such as seem to gravitate toward the East End and Third Ward.

The cultural differences are only skin-deep, not that much greater than the difference between buying a silver car or buying a beige car. Yeah, but how many Trader Joes would get built on eleven acres? With or without a Wal-Mart, there will be something, and there will be traffic. The only differences as far as neighborhood impact or desirability are qualitative (i.e. Are the shoppers predominantly white or brown? Are the shoppers predominantly rich or poor? That kind of thing. And I for one, don't care.)

I would argue that the purpose of student athletics is primarily to enhance the brand awareness among prospective students in the short term and brand loyalty among alumni in the long term. Football is particularly effective at marketing a university to out-of-state and international students that otherwise would be completely unfamiliar with a school that has traditionally had only a regional draw and a more regionally-limited diaspora; but even a girls' volleyball team, paraded around the Chinese countryside, can drum up a surprising number of applications. These students pay higher tuition rates, which helps the school indirectly, but immediately. And from a larger pool of applicants, the student body quality will increase as well, which in turn leads to greater prestige, and prestige results in even more applications, easier hiring of better professors, a warmer reception from employers of the school's graduates, and a wealthier and more proud alumni base. In the very long term, that alumni base will reward the school with charitable donations and also with generational loyalty. To the extent that UH Football will now receive additional television air time, it is important to craft the appropriate image. When the camera tilts upward to view the stands, nobody is counting how many rows there are of seats, but they certainly notice whether those seats are occupied. And when there are empty stands (like at the TicketCity Bowl game), it communicates the wrong message. For most games, 40,000 seats is plenty. It'll probably be a long while before we can fill 60,000, even for the most highly anticipated of games; and if we need more than that for some special event, there's Reliant Stadium. UH is just starting out, really. It could increase the student population to match or even exceed that of UT-Austin, but it still wouldn't be of like-kind. It'll take a while. Perhaps, a long while. In the meantime, where very-big stadium capacities are concerned, it is better to lease than to own.

I, too, hope that the Heights (or somewhere close enough that the Heights can rhetorically annex the location) gets a Trader Joe's. Thereafter, I can mockingly congradulate them for being more Woodlands-icious than ever before.

I hope that Exxon is doing some time lapse photography of their construction site from a good vantage point. It's be crazy to watch all those cranes in action, simultaneously, at a fever pace.

Old Navy is better than this? Ugh. No wonder I've never heard of it, and thank goodness.

You heard it here first, folks! There are developers in place. It will happen. Tigereye assures us.

It is a big, malleable, long-term idea...with a nice rendering. Nothing more. Eeven the chairman of the group tasked with making it happen (Ric Campo, CEO of Camden Property Trust) struck me as being cautious in his statements.

The demand is sourced from 1) people who work downtown, 2) large energy and law firms that require corporate housing for their out-of-town visitors, and 3) people that have just recently moved here from the east or west coasts that are used to paying ridiculously high rents and that just assume that downtown is where the cool kids live.

They've got a lock on the ghetto. Yeah. Awesomeness.

I've never so much as seen a Forever 21 bag. I had figured that it was oriented to upper middle class women and was bringing the attention of monied individuals to the downtown area as an option for their shopping needs. That's the sort of foot traffic that it takes to develop a viable shopping district. But if its only attracting poor people to spend money on items that they can scarcely afford, then screw it. It serves no purpose compatible with social policy. Thank you; your comments have soured me to the prospect that a subsidy of Houston Pavilions has any redeeming qualities.

Its easy to say that in hindsight, but perceptions within the marketplace changed abruptly at various points through the development process. Developers never want to sacrifice any amount of built area (because they're getting a fee from their investors as part of the deal, and the fee is usually based on the cost to build the project), but that is what it took to get the project financed through even the least responsible of the active banks at that time (which has since failed). The mistake was to build it. But presupposing that you believe that something built is better than nothing built, it was not a mistake to make the sacrifices that they had to.

Those aren't even the ones under construction.

Yeah sure, rail to the barrio will drive sales at Houston Pavilions. Maybe the new owner can generate interest from pawn shop operators and refresquerias, and then strike it rich!

I know that Books-A-Million was struggling as an anchor and basically getting free rent. I have to wonder how well the other stores are doing and whether a new owner would have a tolerance for a legacy of lease concessions. From the article: No, that's bull. The City wanted a proof of concept. What it proved is that the market fundamentals do not exist for a critical mass of retail in the heart of downtown and along light rail to be successful.

Rut-Row! Houston Pavilions, which took $14.3 milllion in TIRZ money from the City, is now in receivership to a bank that took over a failed bank from receivership. When will Houston learn, downtown is for office buildings and hotels, not entertainment-driven retail? To quote myself from November of 2006:

Those places have fewer television ads and aren't chain restaurants. So there.

Yours is better, I know. But when you pay Randy to attach one to a 3,000-square-foot residence whose key amenity is being Carraba's adjacent (because it damned sure ain't security), yeah, apparently that's what you get.

Worst. Ad. Copy. Ever.

Institutionally-owned real estate tends to get maintained pretty well where water intrusion and vermin are concerned. If this is a wood frame building, it doesn't concern me particularly much. The biggest threats to it would either be that Houston gets built out and that this gets replaced by a highrise at some point, probably once all of us are old, decrepit, and have dementia...or that inexpensive substitutes for oil and gas are developed and that Houston goes the way of Detroit. Either way, who the hell cares?

Provided that the forestry practices are sound (which they generally are), then in what manner is wood frame construction not sustainable? It's certainly a locally available building material. The cultivation and harvesting of forests produces far fewer and less harmful emissions than the manufacturing of steel or concrete.

Perhaps it had something to do with UH's new conference affiliation with all those snowy northeastern schools. At least, that's the best I can figure...