TheNiche

What is the problem with the development's relationship with the street? It is scaled up enough vertically relative to the distance that its still imposing, yet isn't so far from the street that it should be off-putting to any but the most lazy and slothful of pedestrians. It's not the Target that faces San Felipe or even a CVS Pharmacy in Midtown.

"Okay, so today I'm going to talk about..." is a bad opening.

"And then there's Bayou Place, which brought some, uh, stuff downtown." That's one heck of an attribution!

"One of my ideas for downtown is that we could do something like an open house for downtown where... [nose twitches] ...where we have each residential building on one day has open apartments..." Yeah, they already do this from time to time. Except they don't shut down the street grid because it would confuse the attendees. And that would be stupid.

"Now, here's where I think I'm gonna put together the reasons why downtown living isn't growing." Weak opening. You didn't mention land prices or prevailing parcel sizes. That's why the patterns of growth are different.

There were moments where I wasn't sure whether this was a manifesto for urban developmentt, or an advertisement for tourists or exurbanites. Figure out your audience, then address them. Develop a better script. Don't indulge yourself in cliched opening lines and transitional phrases. Turn off the music and introduce it as a separate audio track later on in editing (if its appropriate in the first place). Lastly, make your points more precise, less vague. If a specific entity has done something right or wrong, call them out as a case study. And lastly, try to be more original. Develop your own unique perspective. Right now, you're just rehashing information and others' perspectives. It just isn't particularly interesting.

METRO is toning down bus routes due to their low ridership and the inefficiency of buses. If more rail is built, then some of those 1200 remaining buses will be free to serve other areas they couldn't serve previously because they were serving what the rail will now serve.

If that makes sense lol.

So...after spending beyond our means forcing undesirable tradeoffs in the level of service, then (many years later and presuming that we still have those buses or that they still run) we can spend even more beyond our means on vastly more services. No, that doesn't make any sense at all.

At only 278 apartment units and 99,000 square feet of office space, they're being way too conservative. The market will easily absorb it. They need to push this entire site plan upward by an additional story and not leave money on the table.

The Walmart is already having an effect on development in the West End. Cruddy $200-250k townhomes are going up instead of the better $300k and up townhomes that have filled in the West End neighborhood west of TC Jester (northern Rice Military).

Until the Wal-Mart had come along, townhome construction had fizzled out in the West End. The new Ainbinder development was obviously just the shot in the arm that this area needed to kick-start new residential development again.

If the development did not have a Walmart and was a walkable mixed use development with some street life like the Midtown Post Oak development, developers would flock to the adjacent West End neighborhood to do highend townhomes. Thus, with Walmart, you get a short term bump in value, but compared to a better development, a major loss of value in the neighborhood.

Also, you're probably referring to Post Midtown, not "Midtown Post Oak," which does not exist. (This indicates to me that you probably have no idea what you're talking about and are just parroting third-hand propaganda.) It is called Post Midtown because Post Properties is the owner/developer. Post had the opportunity to acquire the Wal-Mart site. They did not. The reason that they did not was that developing something of that nature, scaled up, in that location would've been thousand dollarsing stupid.

The land is still there, it is not a quarry that can be depleted. When pigs learn to fly, maybe it'll get built up with something like the Burj Dubai.

Speaking on behalf of the other drivers out there on the road, we're sooooo glad you accept that risk on our behalf.

Hey, I have to put up with bad drivers (and yourself), too. We all share the road, and even the best drivers impose an element of risk upon others. We only drive in order to get something out of it, that is to benefit personally. So if it's okay to impose risk on someone to satisfy our self interests, then...in for a penny, in for a pound.

Let us know what you drive so we can avoid your weaving, slow vehicle.

Oh, no. Don't mistake me for one of the slow (or light) vehicles.

Also never forget that the formula for kinetic energy is that it equals mass times velocity squared.

Just got home, myself. Yes.

Seriously, one can hardly argue the point in terms of safety, since everyone pretty much already knows it is extremely unsafe. If anyone is still doing it is isn't because they are ignorant of the risks, it is because they think it makes them cool individualists or whatnot. Safety arguments simply don't work with narcissists.

I don't know jack about being cool, and being an individualist by way of excessive communication with someone else just seems oxymoronic and ridiculous. I do it to multitask, save time, and better serve those that rely upon me. I understand, accept, and share in the risks to myself and others. The costs and benefits of my extra productivity are asymmetric, that's for sure. But that's life (and sometimes death) on this pathetic and inconsequential world of ours. Live with it.

No, this is stupid. Moving freight is not currently expensive. (It is a mere fraction the cost of moving people around efficiently.) When the ordering, manufacture, and delivery of something massive is critical within a one-day margin for error, that only means that a product should really just be manufactured in the same city in which it is being demanded.

I unashamedly text and e-mail while driving. My clients are deserving of a quick response to any form of communication from them.

So...it hasn't been that long since the last renovation of HPD's headquarters tower at 1200 Travis, and it is on the market for sale. This is apparently to satisfy pension holders, which have a lien on the property. I have to say, this sounds frickin' stupid. I hope that they're at least trying to structure a sale-leaseback arrangement, which should be lucrative for them since the property will remain exempt from property taxes for as long as they maintain their presence there, and given that that would result in a higher sale price.

HOWEVER...in addition, they seem to want a sprawling new campus at the corner of Houston and Washington Ave. I also think that sounds frickin' stupid. Granted, the facilities are very dated, however if anybody is going to build an expansive automotive repair facility, I'd like to suggest some less expensive dirt. The courts and the jail can go on more expensive dirt with structured parking that is engineered to accommodate additional level and offices above that in the future (in case the City should continue growing); that'll be fine if they do so compactly and sell off the residual land to a developer.

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/New-downtown-campus-on-HPD-wish-list-3615043.php

Just more bad news to pile on the plate:

http://finance.yahoo...-013013400.html

Go figure. That's what they get for keeping such an auspiciously ironic name, is disunity.

Would it be fair to say that a company that has a business unit whose marketing is driven by internet traffic and that incentivizes early bookings is managing to effect price discrimination against 'the great unwashed', a practice which feeds back on itself by increasing demand from the 'washed' as they respond to a more comfortable demography?

I couldn't help that you weren't noticing the loss of Niko Niko's, Georgia's Market, or Phoenicia Deli...because those things weren't lost, they were gained. OTOH, Scott Gertner moved in, but then Scott Gertner sucks. White people (i.e. the establishment) caught up with y'all...and it was pretty obvious what your perspective is. I only asked to be absolutely sure.

Here you go, for your enjoyment:

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/154102/flippity-floppity-floop

Anybody have a list of good standbys along Bellaire?

As 19514 mentioned above, it's an interim use. Skansa bought the block because they needed to relocate a daycare pursuant to their lease obligations with a tenant in another building. They couldn't find a suitable space in an existing building, and they thought this block was a good value. They are testing some new ideas with respect to the building, and will likely tear it down to redevelop at some point in the future. I think you will see this quadrant of downtown developed a lot sooner than you might expect.

In the long run,everything is an interim use. However...in the long run, we're all dead.

This is what TOD looks like on Bell Street. Yay, light rail...

The very first townhomes I can remember going up in Midtown were around 1998. However, the VAST majority of townhomes that have risen between downtown and the museum district went up after 2001 (when ground was broken on the light rail line).

What else rose after 2001?

Calais at Courtland Square, Camden Travis, Citiplace by Farb, The Ventana at Midtown, the Rushmore Lofts, the Ellie Lofts, the massive City Promenade townhome community, Post Midtown additions, the Venue, and so much more.

The light rail validated the early pioneers like the guy from urban lofts (metal homes) and Post Properties and made it much easier for the others to follow. The main issue with development right along the rail was speculative pricing that often meant the numbers simply wouldn't work in a city like Houston.

Sure, blame speculators instead of light rail. If we're going to attribute higher light rail ridership to rail bias (in spite of lower average velocity, less route flexibility, and huge up-front capital outlays as compared to buses) and support light rail on that basis, then we also should acknowledge that rail bias is observable in other ways...which should include land speculation that suppresses development...and then, only following a corridor that has been hollowed out by the devastating impact of the construction activity (unless METRO engages them in a cash grab).

Yup, and I agree somewhat.

Commuter rail or P&R service make downtown more attractive to companies. It matters far more that a corporate headquarters locates in the urban core (downtown, TMC, greenway, uptown, or in-between) than that suburban sprawl occurs. If 25% of employees of centrally-located companies live in central Houston, but only 5% of employees of suburban-located companies live in central Houston, then making suburban access easier is worth it if it will attract the company into the city.

Sprawl is guaranteed in either case, but it may be minimized by increasing the quality of life in the suburbs.

Screw Amtrak, screw United or Southwest. I shall exploit this.

Niche, problem is that once rail entered Midtown, property owners along it started to ask crazy amounts of money for their land (there are still plenty of hold-outs). Developers DID move to Midtown, but further away from the rail line on lots they could turn a profit with. Now that the neighborhood isn't the warzone it used to be, it's making sense to spend more along the rail (hence the Independent Arts Collective that will be built, Camden and Midtown building the Superblock this year, the Continental Club guys bought the buildings across the rail line and plan to build parking garage, retail, etc.) Yeah, Camden didn't build the super block right away... but they sure were busy building other apartments in Midtown.

Yes, I completely agree. I explained all of that.

Also, rail has helped bring more residents to the neighborhood. It was a deciding factor in why I bought on the east side of Midtown instead of over on Washington or anywhere else in the loop. My neighbors have said the same thing.

The townhome trend really took off in that neighborhood at the end of the 90's, long before the light rail would've been considered an amenity. That was true of most other inner-city neighborhoods as well, however. Then, in the mid-2000's right after light rail opened up, the momentum previously enjoyed by east Midtown abruptly shifted to the east downtown warehouse district...again, before light rail could've been considered an amenity over there. I think that there are now more townhomes over there than there are in Midtown (excluding that out-of-the-way portion of Freedmen's Town, which obviously has lots of townhome and also no rail).

So yeah, I don't doubt that there is a market for TOD. Its just that the market size, existing at this confluence of desire/product/price seems rather limited. And besides, since when are townhomes TOD? Is 20 units per acre of usually-ugly single-use residential really what we are rooting for?

Well, I'm still pretty young. But I'd be surprised if Kirby has many single-story retail left within 10-15 years.

Lets be realistic. Developers can't do very much at all with less than an acre or two. There aren't many such parcels in Rice Village.

It's be great if there were some sort of algorithm to assemble parcels based upon common ownership or high-turnover parcels or parcels owned by elderly people or entities controlled by elderly people (hint, hint, to any aspiring real estate consultants with a software engineering background), but from the looks of it, the circumstances are bleak.

Forgive me for asking, but...are you black?

FAIL.

The light rail has spurred develpment and improvement. Some of that development may have happened without the rail, but it definitely has NOT been hindered by it. It gives Houstonians another option for transportation, and you better believe that people make use of it. Venue Museum District used to be a block with a Subway and a flower shop on it, but it has yielded a significant investment in the Museum district area. Beyond just residential space, businesses have benefitted substantially from location near the light rail... today more than ever. Ask any Medical Center employee if the light rail was a good investment... they won't waste a second to let you know how much they use it daily to get to work because med center parking is so bad. Gripe all you want, but rail is an important part of Houston's infrastructure and is bringing business and investment to Midtown.

This is a thread about Midtown, so I'm going to ignore that your interpretation of successful TOD is evidently that a hospital on Fannin builds a new tower along the same block of Fannin, or that an apartment developer used one of the two or three sites large enough to build new apartments on in the Museum District (and not the Wheeler Transit Center site) to build apartments.

The largest structure to be built along light rail in Midtown is the CVS Pharmacy, whose drive-through backs up to light rail while the front entrance points toward Fannin. I declare FAIL on you.

Another datapoint is Camden Property Trust. They have owned the superblock since what, the year 2000. They've developed over 1,300 apartment units on various sites in Midtown during that time period, but not the superblock. Their basis should be low enough in the property that they've got no excuse for waiting if light rail is such a compelling amenity. (Developers didn't wait on Discovery Green, after all. All it took to get an apartment tower going was the City's commitment that it would move forward; not even completion.)

Other than that, I know that there's a ratty old Days Inn from the 60's that got repositioned as subsidized housing for homeless veterans. That's the biggest thing that's happened along light rail in Midtown and I won't deny that light rail has been critical to its success, but it certainly doesn't aid in any kind of urban renaissance for the neighborhood.

In fairness, I'd wholly expect that a new Wal-Mart would be an invaluable amenity in a part of the city that is poorly-served by other grocers or discounters due to low household incomes. For instance, I'm positive that the Northline Wal-Mart had a positive impact on that area. Since that's their sweet spot, it just sort of makes sense that home prices should rise.

I don't think that that would necessarily be true of the Heights, although...it's WAAAAAAY better than what was there before it. Nobody could argue against that with a straight face.