KinkaidAlum

Oxymoron.

The best Starbucks is the one you avoided on your way to the Inversion/Brasil/Empire Cafe/Rice Coffee House/etc...

Legalize X again and I might make a few live music acts again!

Times Square was better with porn. Bubba Gump isn't nearly as cool as the Gaiety...

Is Spanish Village still open? It's looked closed lately.

The Third Ward is beautiful.

Check in with Project Row Houses. They have movie nights and gallery openings all the time. As for eats, Frenchy's is an institution (on Scott St). I also like Alfreda's on Almeda, pork ribs at BBQ Blues on Almeda, Luigi's Pizza on Almeda (better to eat there) and I haven't tried it yet, but the folks at Breakfast Klub have opened a Jamaican place on Almeda too although that will compete with my all-time favorite restaurant name just a block away, Jamaican Me Hungry! People love Thelma's but I don't like it as much in the new location.

There's plenty of chain stuff near the corner of Scott and Old Spanish Trail although I prefer to grocery shop on Holcombe on the other side of 288 and the TMC (Randall's, Rice Epicurean).

Starting on Nov 1st, Emirates will offer a second non-stop flight out of IAH to Dubai. The early schedule shows a 777-300 on Mondays and a 777LR on Tuesdays thru Sunday. This one is set to arrive in the morning and depart just before noon back to Dubai. This will compliment the existing service which arrives and departs with the European heavies.

All they are trying to do is lease 64,000 square feet of office space. The rest of the building will have a restaurant space and an art gallery.

This isn't a huge building. That space could easily be gobbled up just like the series of buildings in the Campanile (about 6 office buildings on both sides of Montrose @ Richmond). A small law firm, doctor's offices, spillover from UST or any number of museums, architectural firms, medical supply firms, etc... might all be attracted to that area.

I've been back in Houston for just over a year now and am loving it. I truly don't miss Boston at all. People always assume the grass is greener, but Houston is a great place to call home. Life is easier here and that includes these dog days of summer. Give me a sweaty forehead over having to scrape ice off of stoops any day. Additionally, after being stuck in a terrible condo situation (crazy-assed neighbor who would rather the building fall down than make repairs), it's nice to live close in but also to have a small lawn and a FENCE.

I use 288 daily and the traffic is hardly unbearable. At peak rush hour, the interchanges for 59 and 45 can get backed up, but again, the additionally lanes really aren't needed. Plus, I'd hate to see them tear out the vegetation that was recently planted in the median. The areas with the trees looks so much nicer than the barren parts.

The Campanile collection of office buildings on Montrose near Richmond have been fairly successful. If this gets buit, it will have several things going for it. It'll have great visibility. With only 74,000 square feet but within close proximity to UST, Rice, the museums, Park Plaza Hospital, and the TMC, they could very well just fill the space with smaller local firms. Additionally, within about .5 miles, you can get on the Spur, US 59 at Shepherd or onto 288.

The building is going to be super slender too. If all floors are the same, floor plates will only be around 12,150 sq feet per floor.

I flew on VirginA-merica from BOS to SFO a few months ago. It was nifty. Houston isn't cool enough to get VirginA-merica here because we aren't hip. We also don't have a Ritz. We lack a W too. Guess we'll just have to live with our no-frills airlines like Singapore, Emirates, and Qatar.

DEN is very much a hub for Southwest. Don't let the Southwest lingo fool you about them not having "hubs." Southwest has expanded DEN like wildfire. In fact, I am pretty certain Southwest offers more flights now at DEN than they do at Hobby. Southwest has declared a fare war at DEN against United (hub) and Frontier (hub) and increased service like mad on routes that are highly competitive.

There's a BIG difference between heavy rail and light rail though and that difference is SPEED. Light rail to the far-flung suburbs isn't going to cut it if the top speed is lower than the average driving speed and there are multiple stops along the way. That simply wont entice people to give up their cars. Additionally, the TOD's in Maryland and NoVa are also surrounded by dense and largely pre-WWII communities. Heck, Bethesda makes the densest parts of DFW look barren.

It's a great airline with an even better livery. Love the "whole different animal" tagline.

That said, I am sad to see them leave IAH and I find it VERY interesting that they decided to move to Hobby to take on Southwest head-on. Southwest has made a major move and expansion into Denver, which is Frontier's home base. Frontier had a niche market at IAH as one of the few lower fare airlines and they were a great alternative to Continental's outrageous walkup fares on that route. Now, they'll move to Hobby and join other lower cost carriers like Southwest, Air Tran, and Jet Blue.

I suspect that house is a goner on the NE corner. That bldg is gonna have fly views!

I like the right of way that DART has and some of the stations look nice, but it's easy to see from these pictures why METRO has much higher ridership numbers per mile of track. The majority of these stations look like they are built in the middle of friggin' nowhere, even in the so-called "downtown" stations. I guess that is why every station is surrounded by concrete parking slabs? Now, I know these are suburban locations, but still, wouldn't these places be better served by commuter rail than light rail?

It's a pretty system and all, but damn, that thing is going to drain money for decades.

The thing is, what kind of lease terms are they getting. Last time I checked, the rents at One Park Place were shattering records for the Houston market that were set by another Finger property, The Museum Tower. The Museum Tower, One Park Place, and Hanover's Riverway hirise rental have set the gold standard for luxury rental rates in this market.

I'd bet that Fingers Corp. is quite pleased, especially now that they've finally managed to lure in a market for the commercial space. I'd wager that we'll see a Two Park Place (Finger has reportedly already secured an adjacent site) within 5 years.

Bummer. Without a Ritz I feel so emtpy inside.

Maybe I will move to Dallas. They have a Ritz and a W. Dallas is so cool.

Pathetic. The men in this story must have small ________________s.

Full regional mobility cannot be achieved by an entity whose jurisdiction does not encompass the full region.

Nitpick much?

Full regional mobility also can never be achieved without a comprehensive transit system in the center of the region.

Wow, big promises for such a short line.

I wonder if they can deliver...

I actually think their statement makes sense. Without the University Line, there would be no true East-West connector and the Uptown Line would stand alone.

With the University Line, the light rail will provide coverage to most of the major employment centers within the city (downtown, tmc, uptown, ship channel, UH, TSU, Rice, UST, Museum District, midtown).

Ivy League connections aren't all that necessary in Houston, though perhaps KinkaidAlum can share some of his high school buddies with the class of 2010?

If you hadn't gathered by now from the content of my posts, I am not very well connected with Kinkaid's movers and shakers. Most of my contacts from that school fled Texas long ago. There were a few of us who considered ourselves to be progressive but that was mostly because we smoked cloves at NRG and Red Square and used fake ids to get into Power Tools rather than the Piney Point kegger.

Now, if you want a job as an editor in NYC or doing post production film work in LA, then I can hook you up with my Kinkaid cohorts!

Wow, that is sweet tea fine.

I am bummed though because I wanted to make a joke about the Perot Museum having short ceiling heights.

Belo Gardens looks like a nice addition to downtown but I simply do NOT understand where anyone would get the funding to develop another office building in/near downtown Dallas. Vacancy rates are TERRIBLE there.

I am loving this building, especially the effect the glass has on the immediate surroundings.

That said, the greedy side of me wishes this were a 930 foot tower instead of a 630 foot tower.