TheNiche

HAIF must be an agonizing place for someone who doesn't enjoy looking at renderings

I like my renderings plausible. When they're not, I'll point it out.

/pissing.match

I like the rendering because it gives a hint as to what the area could look like one day.

Then I'm sure that there's a Sim City thread somewhere on HAIF. The commercial real estate environment is not a unicorn farm.

I love professionalism. But what is the point of even having a convention center if it can't attract conventions. As someone who loves Houston, you won't hear me complaining (too much) about our corporate look. I'm not suggesting that we turn Houston into Las Vegas, but in the case of attracting business conventions, and out-of-towners, I don't think a little bling, some first-rate amenities or a convenient place to shop would hurt a convention center 'district'. Discovery Green is a great asset already in place to really make this area special. I hope city leaders run with it and utilize it to make this area of downtown as appealing as possible.

I'm not talking about affixing a strip of blinking multi-colored LED lights along the barrel of one's rifle. I'm talking about affixing a strip of blinking lights (or hopefully something much more tasteful) to give a convention center district the best chance it can get to compete with other cities who don't seem to have any problem justifying going the extra mile when it comes to giving visitors something to remember when visiting their city.

I'm sorry, but were you actually intending to respond to me? I'm not saying that I would reject any specific idea for anything that might be built downtown. I'm saying that the rendering (the document and only the document, prepared by someone external ) is sloppy, fictitious, and unrealistic; it presents ideas that aren't actual ideas.

EDIT: And for the record, you need to chill. I'm uninterested in another pissing match with you. Its a waste of time and distracting from...well, reality.

The quote that was cited from the study isn't very precise. Its hard to tell whether comparisons are made between the same population subsets. Even the Press reporter acknowledges the "rosy spin" in his article.

There's an article like this every year and the lesson is that lots of people throughout our metro area would like to trade places. What the survey doesn't ask is why or what's preventing them, probably because it'd reveal the obvious pitfalls regarding affordability, the physical characteristics of a home, and the quality of schools...or the less obvious pitfalls such as what the definition is of "the city" and its "suburbs" to the individual.

There's a big gap between what people would like to do and what is practical. Nevertheless, Kleinberg generates lots of good press for Rice University, so nobody has the guts to hold his feet to the fire on any sort of professional level.

I don't think I ever heard anyone defend mediocrity or blandness so well.

Thank you! That's quite a compliment. Only, you call it blandness and I call it professionalism. That's what I expect from my elected or appointed officials. There is a difference, btw, between not trying hard enough and simply doing it wrong. If I had "aimed high" in my math class by adding one to every solution, then I'd probably not have graduated high school and would've been stuck flipping burgers. Enthusiasm is no substitute for accuracy.

Great plan. Great rendering. How depressing it would be if city leaders didn't aim high. Imagine what you'd end up with if you didn't at least try for the best in the early stages.

One can aim high without affixing a strip of blinking multi-colored LED lights along the barrel of one's rifle. But then, I never really understood that expression. Why should anyone aim high? We should be aiming at what we intend to shoot with proper adjustments for windage and elevation. Aiming high is just a waste of ammunition. It's stupid.

Ok, thanks then...I'll just keep on slummin' it with my homies out here in the CYP.

Curious...Do you have the little Mac sticker that came with your iPhone stuck on the back of your Prius? Next to the Darwin fish?

Loser.

I'm not saying that they're slums, either. There's just aren't enough people, jobs, or traffic out that far...yet. It's not a bad thing. Enjoy it while you can! But it does mean that a site like this gets carved up for restaurant pad sites and other uncouth first-generation retail.

And...what's this, you think I'm some kind of raving hipster liberal!? Ha! For the record...my car, its fuel economy, and my driving habits are thoroughly obnoxious and wasteful, somewhere around 19 mpg. I don't own or aspire to own a single Apple product or any bumper stickers. And I only bother with smart phones as a matter of business necessity; I didn't even bother with a cell phone until 2008 when an employer forced the issue. And whenever I've been able to get away with it, I just switch over to one of those throw-away phones that keeps its charge for close to a week and that never loses reception. And what bothers me most about self-described Texas conservatives is that they aren't fiscally conservative at all and that they've been incrementally raising taxes and expenditures (adjusting for population growth and inflation) and then adding to government bloat, in the mean time spawning cottage industries to cope with the heavy hand of government (i.e. third-party management for thousands of special districts, hundreds of new economic development entities that compete among themselves, and property tax consultancies).

In the past, you've suggested that northwest Houston should incorporate as a City, a new layer of government. It seemed popular with a certain flavor of "conservative". Then I came in and shot that idea up all full of holes. And more recently, there was a study that came back to The Woodlands that suggested that taxes would increase by up to 70% if they incorporated, so I feel vindicated on my advice to you. But the point is, you're one of these heavy-handed big-government tax-and-spend in-name-only Texas conservatives; I doubt you'd care the slightest bit about paying more taxes so long as you could make a fashion statement out of the deal. So when it comes down to it, I'm far more conservative than you...and I consider myself to be a libertarian-leaning moderate.

But I'm still not going to call you a loser. That word lacks meaning or precision. Its just empty rhetoric. I have something better than rhetoric. I have substance.

/rant

Niche / Professional Troll...whatever you are...do you just post crap without even reading it? Nobody said it would be like CityCentre, obviously that's a much larger development...there was a comment made that it was nice there would be a "children's play area" (an open play area similar to what they have at CityCentre).

Yeah, so just like I said. This won't be anything like CityCentre (short of that the sky will be blue and the dirt will be more or less brown).

As for the 'vastly inferior' Demographics:

Area Demographics CYPRESS (290 @ Skinner)

2 Mile: $104,699 Avg HHI, 90.5% White, 17,372 population

3 Mile: $103,173 Avg HHI, 89.7% White, 41,833 population

5 Mile: $98,602 Avg HHI, 88.3% White, 133,066 population

Yep, vastly inferior. Just as I said. Nobody cares what is the average income or the percent of the population that is white. What matters are the sheer number of persons fitting such a description within a competitive market area. And radii are a poor facsimile for a competitive market area for such completely different types of development. Honestly, I don't even know why this sliver of land merits a thread on HAIF, its so insignificant.

If it seems that I am your troll, perhaps you should reconsider. I'm like flies on trash. Don't bother blaming the flies for their presence; blame he that generated the trash.

Well, if that's the worst problem it has, then I'd call it a success.

It's not, though. The intent and purpose of the rendering is to demonstrate the long-term expansion plans of government entities, however the rendering depicts structures that are variously barely-credible rumors or that are completely fictitious, which detracts from the rendering's credibility. Worse still, it places facades on the basic shapes of the buildings, which have yet to be designed. Many people are quite gullible and construe renderings as a sort of social contract over and over again, even though they should know better.

Since it should be so obvious that the rendering is bogus, I felt that pointing out the most laughable error was the best way to attack it from a rhetorical standpoint.

I'm looking at this photo of the economy class on Wikipedia, and it looks horribly institutional. Reminds me of waiting to get called on at some random government office, or something like that. And with such a density of passengers per compartment, the odds of a crying baby within earshot or someone that's gassy or that's become ill that is within smelling distance go way up.

I think I'm going to stick with the Gulfstream 5. Yeah, that's what I'll do...

We need a theme park. And I dont mean way out in the middle of nowhere.

And we should probably bring those NASA rockets somewhere closed to the city. perhaps midtown. in the superblock. Or next to the new theme park.

More residential towers in downtown and midtown.

If Dallas had all of those things, would it motivate you to visit Dallas? No. Of course not! It'd still be Dallas.

Traditional non-business non-family-visitation tourism is generated by an aura of rarified authenticity (as opposed to Houston's commonplace authenticity) or by immersive contrivance (as opposed to isolated contrivance, such as the beer can house or the Downtown Aquarium).

Houston does not have what it takes, not by itself. East-central Texas does, however. If you take the nightlife and eco-tourism of Austin, the history (and yes, the theme parks) of San Antonio, the multi-ethnic flavor, luxury shopping, and high culture of Houston, the beaches and cruises of Galveston, and perhaps a stop-off in downtown Brenham to provide easy access to the stereotypical rural experience of Texas...that would make an honest to goodness destination. There would be enough activites to effectively target every single tourism market segment (with the sole exception of winter sports enthusiasts).

But every city needs Houston's airport, and Houston needs every other city in general. Without a regional marketing strategy that specifically excludes Dallas (because Dallas is boring and only complicates our marketing effort with extraneous information) and a 300+ mph bullet train, my feeling on the subject is that we shouldn't even bother trying to actively lure tourists.

So it'd be Houston's version of "Mockingbird Station"??

No. It'd be our version of our city.

In that rendering, long shadows are being cast from north to south. That seems about as credible as what the rendering is depicting.

I like both of your ideas. Ideally we want find one that is in good (original) condition and can do a nice renovation on. Something someone will want to buy later like RedScare mentioned.

However, let me throw one more hypothetical at you and see what you think. Let's suppose the house is "lot value" because it has foundation issues. Despite that, the house itself is nice and livable. Would you even attempt a repair or just run away and let a McMansion gobble it up?

Depends on the severity of the foundation problem, the type of foundation, and how susceptible you think the house is to collateral damage from repair. A worst-case scenario is that your brick facade crumbles, your large panes of glass shatter, your sheet rock tears, your pipes burst, and anything installed or repaired by the prior owner after the foundation became damaged becomes off-kilter in your level house.

If you're not feeling lucky, you might require that the seller effect leveling and the repair of collateral damage prior to sale. But understand that you'll pay more because the seller is performing an economically unnecessary function and is indemnifying you from risk. Few sellers are going to want to do this at all. If the deal were to get killed along the way then they'd be the ones getting stuck with the bill for repairs that didn't increase the value of their property.

No, (aside from that the last letters in the word "Center" are transposed) it won't be anything like CityCentre.

Look at their site plan. Those restaurant pad sites reflect that the demographics surrounding that intersection are vastly inferior to the demographics that influence CityCentre. There is insufficient wealth. There is insufficient density. There is (and will be) an insufficient traffic count along the freeway. This is shadow retail, feeding from the traffic counts generated by anchor retailers at that intersection, and that is all.

There are plenty of advantages to living in a house that is valued for its land, particularly if you've got the credit to get a low-interest loan. You have to acknowledge that what comes with the house is what you should learn to live with. And that's not a terrible compromise, really. The up-side is that you can "personalize" your house. You can do things that nobody in their right mind would do. Be outlandishly creative. Trash it. Whatever. Short of pumping motor oil through your sprinklers, you can do no wrong! Let your inner redneck shine through.

Neither were Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans or San Antonio, but they do handle tourists quite well.

Maybe we can convince Beyonce to transform herself into a more tragic celebrity figure (because nobody likes their celebrities to age gracefully) with an estate that could be easily re-positioned as a sort of museum and/or shrine to her after she dies on the toilet. That wouldn't be contrived at all!

Or we could transform the Astrodome into a sort of grand ole' opry for heavy metal concerts coupled with state-sponsored rital sacrifices of individuals on death row. What, haven't you ever watched Metalocalypse? It'd be so brutal; we'd be a massive tourist draw for Germans and Scandinavians. They'd bring bizarre cultural practices along with them (yeah, y'all know what I'm talkin' bout), which would of course influence the local culture in an organic and genuine way.

Or we could get Tillman Fertitta to recreate Celebration, FL with a New Orleans flair on the former KBR site. It could be dubbed 'The Crescent', and it could be replete with waterfront, a contrived mish-mash of southern architecture, food, and entertainment activities, and it could even have a roller coaster for good measure. And backing up to 5th Ward, it'd even have an authentic sense of blues history made inaccessible by visceral danger.

And then we could create a retention pond somewhere in the city and obtain federal funding to run water taxis on it. And then we could line it with a prototypical urban environment. It'd be just like The Woodlands...but we'd outsmart them by building fake ruins nearby and by telling ghost stories about something or another. That'll show 'em to think that they're contrived like San Antonio. Suburban dumbasses. Oh, oh! And theme parks. Yes, we need theme parks for some reason. Not the ones we already have (i.e. Splash Town, Schlitterbahn, Kemah Boardwalk, or Pleasure Pier)...different ones. More like those that would exist elsewhere. Like a Schlitterbahn. ...wait, no! Like Fiesta Texas! Yeah. Suckage. That's what we need.

-------------

People...

Cities like Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans or San Antonio only became interesting through a natural and organic progression. Part of that has to do with history. Houston is a newer city, and it shows. We crafted our history and our identity in the 70's and early 80's, during a period of time that many American cities languished. Our identity is old enough that we're desensitized to it and young enough that it isn't established as the de facto vernacular. If other cities are any indicator, we probably won't fully accept it as our own until a fair bit of it has been erased.

But for now, Houston's identity just has to go through a cycle whereby it ages poorly enough to become appreciated again. Our time will come. It may take another fifty years to get there, but we'll mature and we will find our soul. It cannot be decreed or manufactured.

Perceptive, thy name is citykid. Current day Houston is the perennial underachiever.

Do my eyes deceive me? How can you be serious? Houston didn't get to be a big city by leveraging its climate or natural beauty or hip culture, and never really had a shot at that to begin with. Houston got to be a big city because we went to work, we made money, we didn't allow for excessive taxation, and we haven't historically been tolerant of corruptive influences (i.e. organized crime, labor unions, zoning advocates, or nepotistic tendencies). We're big and the fastest growing because anybody with a work ethic (and most of the folks without) can earn a decent living for themselves. It's a nice place to live, that's all. It's not spectacular, but it is a spectacular bargain.

Demography is revealed preference.

Will any of these strip centers ever be developed, or are they too expensive to buy and knock down?

Yes, probably. And yes, they are. Be patient.

I disagree with Niche on one point, however: that the appropriate tourism strategy for Houston would be founded on gambling. Yes, legalized gambling in Houston might draw people to the city, but this is likely to be a statewide lifting of gambling bans - and places like San Antonio and Austin are more likely to capitalize on it than Houston, in my opinion.

I tend to think that the legislature would be very picky about where casinos could be placed. Galveston would see the big boon, but it'd also rescue the flounderign Del Lago Resort up on Lake Conroe and could be the impetus for some new development in the Galleria area. Any of those would be appropriately situated. I'd also expect that there would be proposals for downtown San Antonio or on Lake Travis, and that's fine. Anywhere but Louisiana!

At least we'd get some air traffic off of the connecting flights and at least the State would get to recapture some gambling-related revenue.

Yes, so keeping these buildings open longer would require what...an extra security guard or a tour guide, each? And maybe the City paying a little extra for extra liability insurance coverage. And what's the economic impact of that? Seriously.

There's really only one thing that needs to be done to encourage tourism, and that is gambling. And even then, that's mostly just to keep our gambling money from hemorrhaging over to Louisiana.

There aren't any plans as of yet, it's just land that's being held in reserve for the right moment in time. Just to look at it, it would probably be a mix of things.

Wow, I only moved here a couple years ago after Ike... all I ever saw was the deserted Flagship with a giant hole in it. Apparently it looked much better intact.

No, not really. That photo just came out insanely well. And the interior was just nasty.

I was out on the seawall last week. This project is actually pretty impressive. It's far better than what was there. And besides, I think that Tillman will market the ____ out of it and draw a vast quantity of additional more people to Galveston, which will benefit the whole island.

Visited for what?? It's definitely not for tourism. If it were then we'd have a more tourist-friendly infrastructure throughout the city. This is a huge job creator that Houston continues to ignore.

A lot of tourism has something to do with visiting extended families, which is a function of sheer population, demography, and (I would speculate) religiosity. These are strengths of ours.

And sure, tourism creates jobs. But...those jobs mostly suck and have very limited potential for career development.