TheNiche

I waited tables for 10+ years. There are a lot of tables waiters tend to hate. If what waiters stereotypically hated kept people home, women not accompanied by men, old people and certain minorities would not be allowed to eat out, either.

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!

I agree with you on the outskirts, townhomes and condos, but not for the fixed number of single family homes...the trend there, is for an older or far more economically disadvantaged resident to move out, and for the homes to be replaced with a nice new $400-$600,000 home. The historic ordinance has curtailed that significantly within its boundaries, but there is still an enormous section of property from Shepherd to Ashland, and in various places in between that are not included in the historic ordinance.

Just in the 2 blocks from Waverly at 11th to Nicholson and 13th and back down Waverly there have been 7 new builds started in the last few months, and 3 new builds completed since I moved into that area in 2007....the historic ordinance certainly curtailed the influx of more affluent residents within its boundaries, but it has created a market outside of its boundaries but still within the Heights that is doing quite well. A quick search for lots or homes on HAR from Shepherd to Studemont and 11th to 20th with a min lotsize of 6000sq ft (what most of the larger builders are looking for) and a max price of $300,000 shows only 5 listings, one on Yale, which should really be more commercial and 2 of them must be purchased together...Sullivan builders at 15th and Ashland have a new section that they are building that is huge, probably 20 or more homes and those homes are quite expensive as well....so within the fixed home community I think the trend outside of the historic ordinance area is certainly still to raze and rebuild, and those people doing that are not coming back with small bungalows...they are building large nice new homes in the $500-$800K range.

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.

The disposable income we have, and that of many of our friends, enables us to eat out frequently...even with private school tuition, we can afford to eat out. We eat many meals out b/c both parents in our house work and there is not always enough time to cook and clean when we are already tired from work, and just want to enjoy our family time.

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.

Also were not oblivious to the apartments in the area, or the multitude of children living in them - one need only drive by them to realize how populated they are - but the restaurants that have been opening in the area generally are not trying to draw that demographic....they are pricing the food to attract the increasing demographic, not the decreasing one....I have seen many a run down rental torn to the ground to be replaced by a nice house...the trend in home building is toward the nicer more expensive homes in the $400-$600,000 price range....that is not changing despite the influence the apartments have on the area.

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.

So, while you can be stingy with statistics and show that there may be a net loss of children in the Heights as the demographic moves from the old population demographic to the newcomers families, I think there is definitely real growth amongst the newcomers that will continue.

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.

You are correct, but coming to the wrong conclusion. Increasing home values are driving out the large hispanic families with limited income, only to be replaced by singles, couples and some upper income families with one or two children. This may cause an increase in children whose parents have disposable income, but the number of children overall are dropping, as is the percentage of children and families. But, keep using anecdotes to prove your point. I love cute stories during the holidays.

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.

NIche, Harvard isn't really a good analog for the Heights, as something like half the students are zoned to other schools.

You obviously know a great deal about the subject. I'll gladly run the numbers however you suggest.

Overall, keep in mind that the Heights restaurants pull in folks from Timbergrove, Garden Oaks, Oak Forest, etc, and lots of us have kids.

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?)

I would not use Grubb & Ellis numbers for this purpose because, IIRC, they do not include owner occupied or single tenant properties.

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.

You have piqued my interest in this topic. Compared to what cities is Houston "very blue collar"? Using Transwestern's office inventory numbers and BLS employment numbers, and your (the Niche's) office space per employee as a proxy for white collar employment, it would appear that, far from being "very blue collar", Houston may just be more white collar than most cities. In this sampling of cities, only Denver appears to be more white collar than Houston.

Houston:

2,605,800 employees in 219,064,500 square feet of occupied office space = 84.068 square feet per employee

DFW:

2,922,700 employees in 237,246,970 square feet of occupied office space = 81.174 square feet per employee

Atlanta:

2,235,000 employees in 109,865,000 square feet of occupied office space = 49.157 square feet per employee.

Chicago:

4,296,600 employees in 333,961,000 square feet of occupied office space = 77.727 square feet per employee.

Denver:

1,202,300 employees in 123,613,000 square feet of occupied office space = 102.805 square feet per employee.

LA:

5,140,800 employees in 130,398,000 square feet of occupied office space = 25.365 square feet per employee

Minneapolis St. Paul:

1,715,800 employees in 62,105,000 square feet of occupied office space = 36.196 square feet per employee

Baltimore:

1,280,200 employees in 82,041,000 square feet of occupied office space = 64.085 square feet per employee

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.

I would be suprised if cronyism isn't codified in there, this just being one of its manifestations.

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.

If this is what you believe, then you don't know or understand the role of architects in the industry. Good luck to you.

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.

At the risk of side-tracking the discussion, isn't the view of Houston as a "very blue collar city" a couple decades out of date? Would be interested to see stats. Office space per employee is an interesting stand-in for a count of white-collar employment, as you suggested. I did a quick comparison to DFW (commonly and I believe outdatedly perceived to be much more of a white collar metro area):

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.

Blunt or not, pet peeve or not; you are incorrect. Architects are engaged by developers to identify sites, capacity studies, test fits... etc. to aid their decision on site selection. Architecture firms aid in site selection, have in-house urban planners, or bring on urban planners as consultants. I'd understand if you are thinking of interiors, landscape, small residential architects, but for us architects at larger firms its a common practice we are part of.

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

See page 11: http://www.h-gac.com/community/socioeconomic/forecasts/archive/documents/2035_regional_growth_forecast.pdf

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.)

OK - thanks. Is there something online?

I still think that this 4% figure may have been accurate in the past as Houston built outward, but since the recession and going forward it just does not appear to be the case. There is plenty of infill development and densification going on all around town.

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

I have heard that certain exurban neighborhoods in the Sugar Land area are not doing so hot these days.

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.

Of course Exxon will create a healthy demand for housing in Spring or wherever they are locating, and reverse-commuting is way better than commuting - at least if you are driving solo - so maybe corporations moving out to Energy Corridor and such is not a big deal. I do think this also reflects a failure of mass transit successfully getting people downtown, because otherwise downtown makes more sense for corporate locations in terms of being able to draw talent from all parts of the metro area.

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.

Stat / link for the 22 built elsewhere? There are a whole bunch of huge multi-family projects being built either inside the loop or in the Galleria areas - so I'd be surprised if only 4% of new residents are expected to be within the loop or near it. Personally I consider the entire West side from downtown to Beltway 8 to be "urban" versus the exurban communities that you are discussing. I'd be curious what the residential / business center of the city is - but I would think that both are somewhat west of downtown - maybe near the Galleria area.

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.

So what you are saying is you even failed at being ironic.

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.

The article is stating something that we in the design industry have been seeing since the mid to late 90's, but now it has taken hold more so. There is a limit of about 10-15 miles that one lives from work when the lower cost of housing is offset by the time spent in a car and traveling costs. Back in the day our parents (the ones who grew up in the 50's and 60's) saw the 10-15 mile commute as 10-15 minute drive. That same drive could take 45mins to an hour nowadays because of the shear number of people on the roads today compared to the 70's - 80's when they were mid-career.

What we are seeing more and more is the younger generation (below 40) turning to living situations that put them closer to work.

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.

You had your chance. I am still here and you are still wrong. The fact of the matter is that you concocted a strawman argument about RUDH in order to come up with an ad hominem attack when you had nothing of value to contribute about the merits of the lawsuit. Instead of discussing whether the largest corporation in the US and a wealthy developer are legally entitled to take 6 mil in tax dollars to pad their profit margin, you chose to make a cowardly attack on people you do not know and completely crossed the line by suggesting that people go to their homes and tell them they are hypocrites for buying new or recent construction. It is an Ann Coulter-esque argument. It is not meant to discuss the merits of the issues, but to kick sand in people's eyes and get people made at you for doing it. It is what sells Ann Coulter's books and is what cripples our democracy from functioning.

And the mission statement is broad in order to allow the organization to chart its own course without having to go back and have a special board meeting to amend the mission statement. RUDH has clearly charted a course and has pages and pages of statements about urban development on their website. You ignore all of it and chart a course for them based on your subjective interpretation of a broad mission statement in order to have your little Ann Coulter moment. But you have never had anything to say on the merits. You just call concerned citizens snobs and attack and try to intimidate people for having the guts to stand up against powerful interests based on a phony argument. It is cowardly and intellectually dishonest.

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.

http://arch-ive.org/news/?p=58

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

if their parents are not going to force them to work hard and behave the school certainly is not going to be able to do so.

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.

Turns out there are actually people who are campaigning to keep North Forest open. Sheila Jackson Lee is one of them http://www.chron.com...ave-2267606.php

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.

They weren't motivated by racism. They were motivated by their anger at the free states for not returning their slaves, property that they had paid good money for. They also feared that slavery would be outlawed, and felt secession would allow them to continue the institution. Racism may have fueled the belief that Africans were property to be bought and sold, but money fueled secession. They wanted to keep their slaves. The free states threatened that. To suggest otherwise is to attempt to rewrite history. Yes, the politicians had their reasons for drafting those documents...to put in writing why they were seceding. And the documents clearly state that the reasons were slavery, and the refusal of the free states and the federal government to force the return of runaway slaves. As for the 70% illiterate soldiers, it has been shown throughout history that the populace can be convinced to go to war. One need only look back to Germany to see how effectively the populace can be brainwashed. The confederate soldiers fought because they were convinced they were under attack.

The secession documents are readily available on the internet. My response comes straight from those documents. The political correctness comes from the confederate apologists.

I don't think that I disagree with anything you just said (even if you did put a rhetorical spin on what I've said). However you are still zeroing in on the single most prominent issue even though there are a myriad of other factors that fueled the discord.

But if we can agree that the Southerners believed (rightly or wrongly) that the North was usurping states' rights, property rights, the lawful administration of interstate commerce, and was acting punitively toward them in a variety of unrelated matters, and that they were materially harmed by that relationship...then that rationale does not strike me as inherently offensive. It's more like a jilted business partner that wants to spin off and form a new company; and it's easy to see how he'd have thought that he had a right to do just that. When their right of secession was also usurped, the Southerners came to view themselves as rebels proudly fighting for a noble cause.