TheNiche

Randall Davis has done this too. Lamesa is developing Sonoma, the condos at Rice Village, but Davis has his name pegged to it because he's built a good reputation.

The Inner Loop is a big place, with several submarkets worthy of note: Midtown Montrose Museum District Heights East End TMC/S. Main Questions you need to be asking yourself are 1) where do you work, 2) what do you need, 3) what do you want, 4) what is your tolerance for risk, and 5) what can you pay? Narrow it down a bit, then drive around. Just drive.

Do bear in mind, Richard Browne was the land planner for The Woodlands Town Center, not the developer. Although I'd agree that he's a got a great planning firm, his record on development is sketchy thus far. I'm not saying that it won't happen, just that development isn't where his core competencies lie.

Does anyone ever get the impression that the holidays are just the time of year when families get together and exchange viruses or otherwise injure themselves and one another? I've only had a few experiences with the ER within those years of my life that I can remember, and all four fall within a few days of Thanksgiving or Christmas. CASUALTY REPORT: Grandfather - Low red blood cell count related to chemotherapy caused anemia, spent last night at hospital getting a couple pints. Grandmother - Fell while entering the camper to turn on the heater; compound fracture of humerus just below the ball, spent the night before last in the ER. Mother - Burst a blood vessel on Wednesday in her eye; it has not healed and is still red. Father - Entered a bipolar depression cycle last weekend. Younger Niece - Toe infection from ingrown toenail; a minor proceedure was undertaken to drain the pus; she freaked out, had to be physically restrained, and ended up... TheNiche - ...attempting unsuccessfully to bite her uncle's thumb off. I had experienced the onset of a really nasty cold on Thursday morning, so it is entirely possible that she'll catch it too.

As someone that might actually have perspective on the matter, did you notice any tendencies with respect to automobile use that differed depending on whether you were a native NYC resident or a transplant? Intuitively, I'd think that the natives wouldn't appreciate what they were missing so much.

Why do you think car registration might've dropped between 2002 and 2007? Hmmm...what was going on in 2002? And what do people with stable jobs not do so frequently? And what action might closely correlate with car registration? Two data points does not a trend make. Neither do several man-on-the-street interviews, but my point being: this is a poorly written article. I already knew that different individual people had different preferences. Didn't need to be reminded.

TJ, I think you oughta string together a bit more of the story in more terms like these, then sell it to a gay porn producer in LA. You could make a lot of money.

What I've described isn't unique to Houston.

Precisely my attitude when it comes to sprawl.

Not good. Do you realize what happens in the long run as a result of that kind of local corporate welfare? A distribution center that should've gone in Houston to minimize transportation costs goes to San Antonio, a one that should've gone to San Antonio goes to Dallas, and one that should've gone in Dallas goes to Houston. Every city is forced to compete amongst themselves using tax dollars, and while most of the money will ultimately be recaptured by each community (if not the original set of taxpayers that financed the outlay), it places factors of production in less efficient locales, causing diminished productivity such that it is a burden on the whole of the economy. In most cases, I like giving political powers to localities; out of practicality, I think that this is one that ought to be taken away.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that every municipality in the same situation that has a major league sports team has at some point granted public funds to it. That doesn't necessarily mean that every municipality in the same situation has made the same mistake.

This is far worse than sprawl. It is Disnification.

Not sure if you picked up on this, but I wasn't talking law, only PR, and then I was mocking its importance or validity in the grand scheme. It was a joke...mostly. Its interesting though, that perhaps if he'd told the 911 dispatcher that he was armed and was going to perform a citizens' arrest, then shot the burglars and said that something they did spooked him and made him feel threatened, he'd probably be in decent shape, legally.

As an exterior architectural element, I really like them. ...but from the buyer's standpoint, I could see your point.

Let this serve as an example for all of us. If you're about to kill someone, don't say anything about killing or death. Don't say what it actually is because truth isn't pretty enough. Use PC buzzwords like 'attempt', 'non-lethal force', 'incapacitate', and 'oops' in that order so as to cause someone sentimental and easily swayed by subtle imagery to believe without any actual first-hand knowledge of the events leading to the 'altercation' that you kept a level head and had every intention of not killing a known scumbag that society would've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars sending through the justice system and then incarcerating for several years. But whatever you do, make the scumbag dies. Otherwise he'll just have to be rehabilitated, likely at public expense. The important thing is to give the pussified masses a nice clean story or they'll gossip about you on an internet forum, attempting to perform deep analysis of the semantics of everything you'd said while under duress.

I don't think that's concrete on the back. I'm not sure what it is, but for a long time, it was an exposed bright yellow material.

You mean the two vertical columns of deep blue lights that look like LEDs that are turned on along the east spine of the building? That's just something to draw attention. Cheap advertising that looks classy.

Increasing land prices are an indicator of future densification. It means that developers are financially able to do deals that spread out the land costs among its users. And yes, that means more demolition, and yes it means means more development in every direction.

lol, no kidding. If there were ever a building that'd validate the theory of skyscrapers as phallic symbols, I think this would take the prize. I half-expect that some genius is going to pardoy an Extenze commercial to the theme of this building, akwardly emphasizing the word larger in every sentence, and then post it on YouTube.

Big firms that take hundreds of thousands of square feet at a time have a strong tendency to prefer operating in a single building, taking entire floorplates at a time on contiguous floors of a building. Doing so provides them easier access to all of their divisions, better security, more flexibility in how they use space, lower operating costs, and oftentimes naming rights. It doesn't always work out that way, especially in tight office markets, but that's the idea. Some large firms settle with suburban campuses, but that is because it is a low-cost alternative. Besides, anyone who claims that there is "no ground shortage" clearly hasn't tried to purchase any recently. Prices would indicate otherwise.

Ours are weak, albeit yes, perceptible. But earthquakes can be engineered away in Japan, so they can be engineered away here. I've browsed through a book before called Texas Earthquakes, in which they looked not only at natural occurences, but also at those triggered by oil & gas drilling accidents, as well as just industrial explosions that registered on the richter scale. Southeast Texas had plenty of those.

Supertalls can be built here, but yes, it is somewhat less hospitable than NYC.

You can't pin it on me. I never signed it. Hell, one of my ancestors even voted against it at the constitutional convention of South Carolina in 1788. One of the other of the eleven delegates from his county voted for it against the wishes of his antifederalist constituents. That man and his family were run out of town by vigilantes. My ancestor didn't pack up and head into the western frontier in protest, though. I'd like to think that he understood as I do: that while I may not recognize the right of the government to place a particular burden on me--only to suggest it--I do recognize that it has the ability to inconvenience me if I choose not to accept that burden, just as I have the ability to escape it by removing myself from the entity's jurisdiction; the best that I can do is to live my life to the fullest in the knowledge that there is no such thing as a perfect world, only a perfect adaptation of it that can be brought about by the discriminating selection of which laws (suggestions) to follow and which to disregard in the knowledge that there may be consequences, and in all other matters that I pursue my own unique set of outcomes such that I am maximally satisfied. Should the government place such a burden upon me as that I cannot ever be satisfied with my life, then I'd gladly pay homage to my ancestry and take up a new flag. Indeed. I hope you recognize what this phrase means, beyond its application as propaganda.

Hmmm... ok. I'm still not sure how you're connecting a limited set of circumstances under which TJones might take someone's life to that some individual might ought to figure out a way to kill everybody all at once without killing themselves in the process or bringing reprisal upon themselves. It just doesn't make sense. When you put it the way you have, seems like reactive is the way to go.

I have no idea what you mean by that.