TheNiche

At great peril to myself, I drove across the Yale bridge and past this development yesterday. It's a vast improvement to the area. I sincerely look forward to saving money and living better. And I especially like that there is a liquor store going in right across the street. It'll make my grocery and household shopping trips far more efficient.

You can walk through the golf course on the improved paths that they've cut through it. I do so often. Also, the jogging paths along the perimeter of the golf course are very pleasant, as is the aesthetic. If I could play frisbee golf on the golf course, I'm not sure that I'd want to. It's quite isolated. You'd find me somewhere closer to where the people are in the first place. And that's my concern with intensively programming the entire golf course. It'd spread out the people and reduce its aesthetic of urban vibrancy in the core part of the park, but it would also eliminate the sense of lush serenity on its eastern periphery. It'd reduce contrasts to a middling something. Does that make sense? I can't speak to the trend, but I'll say this much. If I go to a zoo and the lions are sleeping in a little nook or cranny that isn't visible to me, that's not entertaining. If the giraffes are so distant that I need binoculars, that is not entertaining. Zoos exist for the sake of my entertainment, not so that animals can be stress-free or so that I can make-believe that they exist in a natural environment and that I'm on a research safari. If that's cruel, then it is what it is. And you know something, maybe there is something to be said for a larger enclosure. But if we're going to do this, let's do it right. Take several plots of several thousand acres each from the Barker or Addickes reservoirs and convert them to African savannah. Install large herd animals. Make it an adjunct to the zoo. When it floods, herd them into an enclosure on high ground. I'm perfectly serious about this, btw. It'd take the Houston Zoo to a completely different level. Simply taking over the golf course couldn't have the same effect (and would come at a higher opportunity cost, IMO).

Most of them went dark during the late 80's or early 90's. If the energy bust didn't get them then it was the S&L crisis that would. You have to understand that the way we look at Detroit today was the way that outsiders looked at Houston then. Abandonment resulted when the cost of running a property exceeded what they could realistically expect to generate in revenue. In many cases, the buildings then went back to the bank, were sold in REO to speculative buyers...and those buyers sat and waited for the market to come back, hoping that they could one day write their own ticket. But most of these buildings also had incurable functional obsolescence. For instance, odd floorplates, windowless walls, strange elevator and stairwell configurations, low ceilings, and other issues. They weren't the easiest to work with in the first place, much less today.

Yeah, for right now, I don't think that redeveloping the golf course as intensively-programmed park space would lure enough additional people per acre to keep the park from feeling more empty (in terms of the number of users at any given time). If I want a sense of naturalistic isolation, that's what Memorial Park is for. The part I always wonder about is the gardening center. It can be very inconvenient for someone trying to exit the park walking northbound, especially at night. And I just don't know who uses it. Seems kind of like a fuddy duddy relic of a generation that's dying out.

Oh no! It's been an entire year since METRO received $1.6 billion dollars from the federal government under the crushing leadership of a single house of congress to construct the most marginal lines being proposed! Woe is us. Surely we shall perish? Of course, it wasn't easy! Look at whose district its in and then consider that the routes themselves suck. We tried to delete them in favor of BRT at one point because that was ----ing sane. But then, the feds came in and told us we could build something stupid. And in lock step, we exclaimed, "How stupid, sir!" We weren't asking a question, merely fulfilling a destiny thrust upon us. The interstate highway system was built for the sake of civil defense, with underpasses built seemlessly with uniform clearances that could accommodate truck-mounted ballistic missiles and other military convoys. Many underpasses were capable of sheltering fighters or bombers and had long straight-aways with concrete as thick as runways because they were ----ing runways! And yes, they were originally built by taxpayers; taxpayers also paid to dismantle streetcars at the same time because the damned buses were the operationaly superior technology! After it was built, many subsequent modifications, enhancements, and maintenance functions transferred to the state. I would favor either making all roads toll roads or raising the gasoline tax. Either way, its an affordable user fee as compared to transit. It's a common fact to anyone who has matriculated beyond the third grade that opinions are not fact. ...and that in the long run, we're all dead. Too much deferred gratification is a miserable, miserable way to live. Then drive a car. It will not suck. I assure you, this is a fact. I know what I'm talking about, mfastx. I just told you so, after all, and only an idiot would question a factual statement. So be quiet and go away.

Yeah, but the Allen Creek Reservoir project would have a dam only about a half-mile upstream of the Brazos River. It could only help with downstream flooding for Richmond/Rosenberg and further downstream. None of the affected area is ecologically consistent with the Katy prairie.

Slim to none, unless its a regional stormwater detention project similar to Willow Waterhole or Art Storey Park. I'd suspect that the on-site detention requirements for new subdivisions (and infrastructure like the Grand Parkway, itself) may actually provide relief to the existing reservoirs.

METRO also receives money from the federal government to finance many of its capital outlays, however you may have noticed that the money supply is not unlimited. In fact, there have been fairly severe curtailments of federal grants in recent years. And at least METRO's tax base is healthy and grows to match the level of inflation; TXDoT's is a fixed tax per gallon of gasoline, and it barely brings in enough money to maintain the roads it has much less build new ones...which is why this road (and many like it) will be a toll facility! If you're lamenting the lack of investment in rail-based transit, then figure out a way to balance the capital and operating costs with a higher level of farebox recovery. Otherwise, quit belly-achin' and ride the damned bus.

With or without the Grand Parkway (and it's a little late to be having that discussion), sprawl is going to happen. Lets not kid ourselves. And if it has to happen anywhere in the Houston region, this is the ugliest, flattest, safest, best place that it could possibly happen. It's not in any river's floodplain, it's not covered with mixed pine forests, and its not in a coastal county where there's the potential for severe windstorm damage. If you want to see the way things were, just drive into Waller County. Realistically, it'll be many decades before your beloved prairie is swallowed up. You'll probably be dead by then. And then who will remember enough to mourn its loss, anyway?

Say that you were looking to distribute typical suburban development spanning an area approximately equal to Beltway 8 within our metro area. Let's call it about 400 square miles, which is a block of land area 20 miles long and 20 miles wide. You might be able to fill up about 15% of that with development inside of the San Jacinto River to the northeast. Crossing the river is inconvenient for lots of reasons. Aside from right up along Lake Houston, I wouldn't expect much. Maybe another 10% of that would be required to build out Cy-Fair ISD. That's pretty much effortless, and then you're right up against the Grand Parkway. Where does the other 75% go? Well...on the one hand, the area of a circle increases geometrically as the radius is increased. So the outward rate of growth should be expected to slow down. On the other hand...not all rural areas are created equal. Vast swaths of Montgomery County were divided out into very low-density acreage communities, some deed restricted and others not, but none particularly useful for a developer. They will not get denser. You can't build there. A similar pattern is evident all along the Highway 6 corridor to the south, leaving predictible swaths of developable land...but not enough. It wouldn't be terribly long before development to the south would have to leapfrog toward FM 1462, deep in Brazoria County. But... ...just where did you put your new employers relative to where you think people will live? I'm betting that you didn't cram them all into Kingwood or assume that vast new refineries were going to get built or that the refineries would revert to labor-intensive practices. I'm betting that there's a general westward movement of jobs. Some go north. Many go for central Houston. Aside from that, the pattern seems to be...west. As go the jobs, so go the people; as go the people, so go the jobs.

There are. I've seen documents and maps from Waller and Fort Bend counties that depict the "Prairie Parkway, a new freeway which would connect from Highway 6, north of Prairie View, over 290, and then south across Waller County, across I-10, across the Brazos River, skirting the west side of Rosenberg along Spur 10, and then taking an eastward jog toward where the Fort Bend Parkway would be extended across the Brazos River and past Segment C of the Grand Parkway. EDIT: Oh, and the route was most recently revised and re-approved last month. http://www.thewallertimes.com/pdf/04april/thewallertimes_04_25_12.pdf

LTAWACS is right. It won't stop. It'll only slow down when as it leap-frogs over Austin's sprawl into the hill country.

The timing actually had a lot to do with the decade of construction work that has only just begun on US 290. Beltway 8 to I-10 is already a preferred alternative just due to pre-construction congestion, but that detour is going to become much more heavily utilized in the next few years and they want an alternative to the alternative.

I'm in favor of making it explicity clear where transit lines will be and fiercely protecting those easements from development. I don't see that we should necessarily be in disagreement. School taxes fund the incarceration of our young people, serving three purposes: 1) to keep them from stealing your car's audio system and then puncturing your tires just for fun, 2) to keep them out of the labor force where they would compete with unskilled labor, and 3) to demonstrate to future employers that 'graduates' of these institutions can commit to a menial existence for more than a few weeks at a time. That children might learn anything is incidental. I don't believe you should be paying school taxes toward this dysfunctional system; I believe that you should be paying school taxes toward a reformed system that prepares young people for the real world so that they can support a more balanced and viable tax base. However, under no circumstances is school funding analogous to transit funding.

The biggest challenges and risks do not have to do with constructing or operating the line. It is getting people to and from the terminuses of the line and marketing the service. It is that the line has to be fitted to our geography, our urban landscape, our infrastructure, and our culture.

...in Japan.

That's simply not true. The benefits of transit are asymmetrical when comparing geographies and households. For instance, Sugar Land should not be interested in becoming a METRO member because there's already a Park & Ride at the county line to serve its citizens and mitigate congestion along US 59. Meanwhile, if a Sugar Land household with two workers has one commuting to Westchase and another that works for the school district locally, then there's really no practical circumstance whereby METRO will benefit them enough that they should pay taxes toward it. Likewise, when I used to live around the block from where I worked, METRO could not possibly have benefited me; I didn't need them. Before that, I was a reverse commuter; METRO didn't help. And now that I live close to a light rail line that doesn't go where I want to (and for which there are no plans to expand the system to go where I want to or as fast as I need to), I just commute during off-peak hours and rarely encounter congestion. For me, METRO does not pull its weight. Just what is the shelf life of an opportunity to invest in public transit? Why is that opportunity perishable, in your eyes? And what is this risk, you speak of? Qualify the proximate cause of the risk and quantify its impact, please.

Well damn, I've been out of the development game for too long. Whatever the case, adding a highrise would require more parking just to suit tenants' needs. And more importantly, I fail to understand why a developer seeking to add a tower would build one here. There are better blocks with fewer complications elsewhere in downtown.

Has downtown been made exempt from the City's parking requirements?

Are they not already in use? Code will require more parking. It helps the formula a little bit if the parking is shared by land uses that operate on different schedules...but then, apartment/condo tenants hate mixing with public parking and will want reserved spaces. Again. What you see is what you get. The fee developer had to compromise on density to take advantage of what I like to call 'stupid money' when it became available. Otherwise, these would just be three vacant blocks.

The ability to go vertical would've required some kind of accommodation for on-site structured parking. So...what you see is what you get.

You had to re-post this drivel on three separate threads simultaneously?

Not enough time to argue about it but still plenty of time to spread your misinformation, I see. Nah, making ironic grievances against the Heights Wal-Mart has become a sort of internet meme, like Planking, Tebowing, or Foul-Bachelor-Frogging. It'll be over soon enough, but for the moment, it's still funny. I encourage anyone who agrees with me to LIKE THIS POST!

The chef at Stella Sola must've forseen that fierce competition from the sit-down only golden arches in the new Heights Wal-Mart would spell the end for his endeavor, his reputation, and his career. It was a good call for him to make a graceful exit, but it sure is sad that yet another Heights institution has succumbed to the evil Wal-Mart plague.

It's a stretch to believe that the GHP is being bribed. Given how ridiculous United's study was, I'm inclined to doubt any threat that they may make. I'd be interested to see a copy of the agreement between United and the Houston Airport System regarding the terminal expansion. There is hopefully a clause that would address the penalties for one party or the other abandoning the project mid-way through.