TheNiche

The buildings are all still there, I presume due to the contract with T-Mobile. Does anyone have any news about this?

Allowed? Nobody is talking about banning anybody from anywhere for any reason. The scope of the discussion has to do with which groups are the most profitable for restauranteurs, as that will shape the kind of dining experiences that restauranteurs are willing to expend resources to provide. Relative to the potential for profit, affluent parents may be an underserved or overserved demographic. I'm not sure. But I am fairly certain that the restauranteur has a strong preference as to who they cater to; and their clientele (not knowing how your kids might behave or whether your kids might be diseased or contagious or otherwise do disgusting things) probably also has an opinion on the subject. Also, if everything you're saying about your kids is true, then kudos to you...but don't start thinking that yours is the typical experience. Some parents are as bad as you are good, and I don't want to be eating anywhere in the vicinity of their children!

Compare what you have cited to the 1,100+ apartment units in the Greater Heights area over the last decade. And I have no idea how many new townhomes have been developed over that period of time, but clearly townhomes account for added housing units on net, whereas single-family homes have only replaced other single-family homes. You cannot sincerely believe that the majority of Heights residents are like yourself or will become like yourself in any reasonable time horizon. Spatial constraints and municipal ordinances will forbid it.

You're telling me, then, that you spend at least as much money eating out with children than you do without children? Sit-down meals typically entail a larger tip, alcoholic beverages, multiple courses, and will more frequently be in a finer establishment. The growth trend is to new apartments, condos, and townhomes on the peripheries...which from here on out is pretty much everwhere that the Heights preservation ordinances don't apply. Young, educated, early-career professionals (mostly singles and DINKs) may not do much for Stella Sola or Shade, but don't tell me that they aren't a core demographic for a huge number of Heights restaurants and bars. As for the fixed number of single-family homes in the Heights proper, its seems like there's merely a transition from one already-affluent demographic to another affluent demographic; I fail to see where that's adding quite the same value as does adding completely new housing units.

You have grossly misinterpreted my findings, as per usual. I was being anything but stingy with the stats. I did not warrant my analysis as perfect. I was actually trying to be reasonable if not generous (for instance by assuming that every child is an only-child with two parents). I never stated anything about a net loss of children. I did not perform a time-series analysis. I do suspect that there is a growth of the 0-18 age cohort among non-Hispanic residents of the Heights, as you claim; however, the data does not support claims by previous posters that the percentage of adult non-Hispanic residents of the Heights that are parents is 25%, a majority, or anything like that. I have stated that I am willing to re-run them however anyone (with an inkling of knowledge) suggests, however nobody has made any requests...reasonable or otherwise.

In all fairness, these anecdotes may tell a story that is ignored by the school enrollment data. Neither Marksmu's or HeightsYankee's kids are school-age. All of Marksmu's SMU buddies' kids aren't school-age. There may be a vastly disproportionate number of very young children in affluent households. (Not that it should matter that much to a restauranteur if kids of that age suppress dining out in those households, and if those households are just going to move away in another few years or exhaust their disposable income on needless private schooling.) Or...it may be that these posters are all from basically the same subculture, interact only within that subculture, and are oblivious to the demographic impact of several large and medium-sized apartment complexes on the periphery of their neighborhoods and the fact that the "Greater Heights Area" is still extremely heterogeneous.

You obviously know a great deal about the subject. I'll gladly run the numbers however you suggest. I absolutely agree, which is something that I was hoping to allude to. The Heights by itself is a very small market given the number of restaurants that serve it. Even if there is a growing population of affluent Heights-area parents, it is drowned out by the affluent populations of neighborhoods not-so-far-along as well as by commuters that travel into the big city for work or play.

I'm just going to do some quick demographic calculations based on 2011 Census and TEA data. I'll improvise some cross-tabulation to try to get a relevant indication of market size, where the only group that matters is the family status of non-Hispanic adults. It's not perfect, but it should be relevant. Adults : Children by census tract 3100:531 core houston heights 3256:714 core houston heights 3261:576 core houston heights 2330:519 core houston heights 4361:923 woodland heights 2482:519 norhill 3430:1211 brookesmith 5265:1207 sunset heights Total Population: 33,685 Hispanic Population: 13,213 Non-Hispanic Population: 20,472 Total Age 0-18 Population: 6,200 (66% non-white, non-asian @ Harvard Elem.) (88% non-white, non-asian @ Hamilton MS) (96% non-white, non-asian @ Reagan HS) Let's just say 85% of students in the Heights area are Hispanic; I think that's lower than actual, and it doesn't even factor in the dropout rate or zoning of less gentrified elementary schools. That leaves 930 students to factor out of the non-Hispanic population, leaving us with 19,542 non-Hispanic adults. To be conservative I'll assume that each individual non-Hispanic student is an only-child with two parents. That should make up for any private school effects. That means that there would be a maximum potential for 1,860 non-Hispanic parents in the Heights area, or just shy of 10% of the adult non-Hispanic population of the Houston Heights. (Also of interest: When I looked at Harvard Elementary's data on ethnicity by grade. The white student population halves between the fourth and fifth grade. It's harder to make the comparison from 5th to 6th, unfortunately, due to the school change, but I'd imagine that there's further attrition. Why should any retailer bother to build customer loyalty with people with young children if they're only likely to move away?)

Each company also has size thresholds, and some have qualitative filters as well. In many cases, there is no standard of research methodology between offices in different cities or regions. No source is perfect, but it does look like the pattern is the same in each dataset.

That's interesting. While you were doing that, I redid my calculations Grubb & Ellis' most recent inventory stats and matching BLS data. Houston was at 55 square feet of office space occupied per employee. Boston (66), Denver (75), Washington DC (87), and San Francisco (133) ranked higher. NYC and Philly bleed together, so I couldn't run them.

One of many. Don't get me started on the ease with which non-profit entities can be abused to line the pockets of their offi...oh, wait, never mind. Too late! The abuse of well-intentioned federal and state financing laws is a cottage industry run amok. It only goes to show that the powers of government (and even of the people to give to will that the government should have more power) should be curtailed, audited, and made plainly transparent for the world to see.

I apologize for being rude earlier; it seemed funny at the time but not in retrospect. In all seriousness, though...I don't doubt that you are sincere, but maybe you're strictly referring to public sector analysis. Its always just been my experience that architects don't understand the motivations of private industry. There are boutique shops that do nothing but site selection and economic consulting; and most developers have at least one person that all they do is talk to brokers, find sites, and evaluate them. To that end, these people confer with architects on a small fraction of the sites that they look at if those sites show reasonable promise, and they do this in order to fine-tune their financial model (for size, density, cost, unit mix, etc.) before pitching it to prospective investors. Although an architect's input is an important step in the process, a developer should never source the whole site selection function directly to an architecture firm. There is a disconnect between the two firms' motivations that is both financial and sociological in nature.

I ran calculations a few years back based on Grubb & Ellis market reports and BLS employment data. Dallas isn't that different. The industries are, but space requirements are not. Most people fail to realize the extent to which Dallas is a hub for distribution and transportation.

Capacity studies and test fits, YES. Site selection, NO. No! No! No! Architects are to site selection what the English are to food.

I would caution that the HGAC forecasts were largely arrived at by interview processes with local government officials, and allocations were made haphazardly. Notice how Harris County gets built out to the county lines at Waller and Liberty, and then drops off a cliff? Yeah, that's not gonna happen like that. (This is something I had asked HGAC about when they first came out with it.)

I'm afraid that Databook Houston is not a free resource, and it is the only resource that I know of that breaks things down by freeway loop. It is poor form to use construction from only two or three very chaotic years as a proxy for a secular trend. Most of what is breaking ground right now are apartment projects that have been proposed for much longer than your period of interest. Where the fundamentals are concerned, they're the leading edge of demand in a recovery, as roommates disband and young folks start moving away from home again. But it is also important to point out that apartment construction is only picking up right now because the global capital markets favor them; there's a flight to investment quality, and the financial and operating characteristics of apartments make them highly attractive as an asset class...and even then, really only in the top tier of sites. You might notice that townhome construction remains fairly stagnant; they get financed in a similar manner as suburban subdivisions, their risk profile is different, and the capital markets don't yet favor them. It doesn't mean that consumer tastes have changed, however. I'll run some Census data for you, though. Here are the results, comparing the incorporated City of Houston to the ten-county Houston-Baytown-Sugar Land CMSA. I would caution that areas within the City that are generally south, far west, and up along Lake Houston have experienced some suburban-style growth, and that the inner loop is only about one sixth of the land area in the City, but this is as close as I can get using the Census for an urban versus rural comparison. Total Occupied Housing Units Metro Area: 1,656,799 in 2000 2,072,625 in 2010 Difference: 415,826 City: 717,945 in 2000 782,643 in 2010 Difference: 64,698 Many neighborhoods around town are entering a new phase of their life cycle. Missouri City is on a particularly steep decline, similar to Spring but with a different demographic profile. Clear Lake and north Katy are also facing more difficult times. Cest la vie. It happened to Sharpstown and Sunnyside before them. There's more land, newer development, and better schools further out. Where construction is concerned, the exurbs are fairly quiet. Its much the same with inner loop townhomes, as I mentioned previously. It doesn't make a secular trend. I agree that the Exxon news is overstated. Downtown's biggest drawback is the expense of it. Class A office space leases at a premium over any other submarket, and on average is about a third more expensive. The newest buildings are far more pricey. That makes a big difference in a tenant's bottom line, making it prohibitive for most small and mid-sized firms...with exceptions being a few categories of professional service providers, particularly lawyers. The other thing about downtown is that it is an office submarket. Houston is a very blue collar city; it has a low amount of office space per employee, comparatively speaking. A lot of our jobs simply cannot be downtown, or really anywhere near it.

The source is the University of Houston's Institute for Regional Forecasting, specifically its databook. The calculation was a decadal trend, not just what is getting constructed right now...which is just as well, because there are a whole lot of vacant housing units that are still getting backfilled by new households, and that process is less visible. I calculated the population centroid of the Houston metropolitan area once, several years back. It was the 610/IH-10 interchange.

Unfortunately, I am serious. I suck at doing nothing. You see, I didn't realize that all unemployment benefits would stop the moment I enrolled for community college accounting classes with the expectation that they might at some point make me marketable to employers again (which they didn't). And because I owned real estate in the form of a half-completed money-pit, which didn't produce income and was unsellable during the financial crisis, the very thing that actually created a need for food stamps also financially disqualified me from receiving them. If only I had just sat around all day and drank beer for a year and a half, my life would've been soooo much easier.

Yeah, it turned out that I'm not very good at being a deadbeat, either. Tried that and failed.

Forgive me for being blunt, but the "design industry" does not engage in site selection. It likes to play like it does, but they are mostly just ignored by developers, who have to remind architects constantly that their job is mostly just to maximize the efficiency of a site that has been selected for them...not to play Sim City all day. ...just one of my pet peeves. It is worthwhile to remember that for every one new inner loop residence, twenty two are built elsewhere in our metropolitan area. That suburbanites are less affluent, are engrossed in the act of breeding and the raising of families, and that they consequently hire fewer (and different varieties of) design professionals seems to bias the design industry as a whole into thinking that the world is something other than it is.

It was a self-depricating joke; not particularly untrue (before or after), but nothing more. And don't get me wrong, it flatters me that y'all think that I'm a success, but you have no idea how little I get paid these days.

Wow. Isn't the person accusing someone of "an Ann Coulter moment" having "an Ann Coulter moment"? Pot, meet kettle. Maybe you could dial back the incendiary nature of your comments, just a tad, and we could focus on substance. Also, I think that you need to go back through the written record. You seem to have forgotten our earlier discussion of the merits of the case, and you also seem to be confusing the commentary of other posters with my own. ...that is, if I understand your criticisms correctly. Some of them aren't very specific. Personally, I think that transparency is a remedy for sickly democracy. People should know who is involved in the political process, particularly when organizations and their officers are authorized by the IRS to take tax-free donations in order to finance, as you see it, a limitless purpose. I happen to disagree with you on that, but intelligent people can choose for themselves.

So, what's the best, closest, unsecured vantage point to watch the implosion?

I disagree. In spite of my parents best attempts, I never did jack **** back in school, and I turned out just....oh, well never mind.

Whether they'll say it in the open or not, I can't imagine that HISD administrators are too happy with the prospect of taking in NFISD's student population.