dalparadise

The word "town" should never be spelled with an 'e' in a Bryan context.

Or any context, for that matter.

Yep, that's the simplest and best explanation. One thing I don't like about Telfair, though, is that it is directly in the flight path of Sugar Land Regional Airport.

Oh, it's more than that. Telfair is practically right at the threshold of Runway 35. I do touch-and-gos there on weekends, sometimes. I fly in just a few hundred feet above where houses will someday be. My little Piper Cherokee probably won't stir up anyone in the neighborhood, but the line of Hawker and Citation jets that fly in there sure will.

SGR recently renovated and continues to build to attract even more business jet traffic, too. I'm betting residents and the airport will forever be at odds.

This cracks me up.

You don't think the Menil Collection or MFAH, along with their associated organizations and efforts are real art? I guess you're trying to say that Houston is not on par with the great art centers of the world. You're right.

However, there are some excellent pieces and collections here, brought to the city by a few who truly wanted to give something beautiful to it, none of which is concrete crap on the side of the freeway.

Ask yourself this, is the concrete replica of David that stands in the Palazzo Vecchio just as nice as the marble one in the gallery a few blocks away?

PS - I doubt it really cracks you up. If so, your ability to comprehend what you read here and your participation in this discussion is highly overrated by many of your "fans" here.

Dal we understand how much you hate it, you've made that clear on several post. Could you be a little more clear on WHY you see this as crap. Have you seen them in person? If not i suggest you do so, it may change your mind.

As I've said before, I'm biased, but I believe this adds to Houston's propensity for quirkiness.

If they were carved stone, I might be able to overlook the randomness of the subject matter. Then, it would be about the artist's craft. If they were still concrete, but instead explored some kind of unique vision, ala Watts Towers, I'd see their significance as public art. If they were giant, like Mt. Rushmore, they might make a more fitting tribute to the band and distinguish themselves as art that someone might actually travel to see.

As they are, they are half-assed cast concrete junk that you can file away with the giant balls of string and mystery spots that litter rural highways across the country. They certainly aren't appropriate public sculpture for a major metropolitan area -- particularly one where so many have worked so hard to place it on the cultural map. We have real art here. This is more like the neighbor down the street who puts lawn ornaments or a concrete birdbath in his front lawn...only on a truly offensive scale.

The big Sam Houston in Huntsville and the Stephen F. Austin in Angleton, I at least understand -- though the concrete plasticity of those "sculptures" cheapens them, too. "The Beatles" is neither fitting tribute nor art. I hope David Addickes is fined for littering on the freeway.

This is way better than the Exxon building in my opinion. It's funny how people either love or hate the Exxon building. There doesn't seem to be any riding the fence.

I'm just "okay" with it.

when I moved back to Houston from Dallas in about 1999, I looked at this place -- it was a new, lease building then.

The breathless sales lady showed me a smallish apartment and really hyped the downtown view. She said, "isn't this an amazing view?" I told her I liked the view, but that, at the prices they were asking, I should be looking at Coit Tower out my window.

She replied, "Oh, those all pre-leased before we opened."

I believe when that theater opened, it was the largest in the US. There was quite a bit of news coverage about it. For years, it was the only first-run theater convenient to Montrose, West U and Uptown. I used to go there for movies all the time in the late 80s. They had framed newspaper articles about their opening in the lobby, from various cities across the country. This was the first of the "megaplexes". It seems small now.

I love the Beatles, but this is crap.

I think it's too far away from Downtown.

I know from working with the Midtown Management District a few years ago that the Randall's has never been very healthy. It's not the brand -- although that has declined with the Safeway buyout and is a contributing factor -- it's the location. There just aren't enough sales at that store to offset operating costs. It's pretty well known among chains operating locally, too, so I'd think they'd avoid moving in if Randall's closed.

Whole Foods or Central Market might be viable in Midtown, but not in that location. They'd need to build a really big one -- a "destination" grocery store that could draw customers from several miles away. The Randall's vision in Midtown was to draw people from about 2 miles away, along with a bit of MetroRail traffic. It has never worked to their projections.

Essentially, Midtown/Downtown is a small town of about 10,000-11,000 people. "Upscale" grocery stores just don't work in small towns...at least I've never really seen one work.

Those antennas look so bad in the day.

No way. I use them as a quick guide for the altitude of the ceiling flying out of Houston Southwest Airport. I need at least 1500' to fly in the pattern under visual flight rules. Those towers are 2000' tall, so if I can see the tops, I'm good to fly.

I stand by my post. Towns form when groups of people converge on a specific place because of its economic potential or because of its geography. The growth in Cypress is just part of the overall Houston suburban growth. People that move to Cypress want to live in the Houston area, but they don't actually want to live in Houston. Cypress was much more organic in the past, when it was mostly rural. Cypress will never be a town, but simply a large area, whether it decides to incorporate or not. I don't need to know anything about Caldwell's development to know that it will be either a neighborhood or master-planned community. There isn't anything else that it could be. If they build a "town square", it will not be the center of Cypress, but rather only the center of Towne Lake. Sugarland's town center is different in that it was developed for the entire city of Sugarland and not built as part of an isolated residential development within Sugarland.

I don't quite understand. They're building Towne Lake to have office buildings, medical facilities, shops, restaurants, recreation, etc. People will be able to work and shop there without going into Houston. Not everyone is hung up in your commuting nightmare.

Furthermore, since you say you already know all you need to about Caldwell, can you explain how this project of theirs is a neighborhood or master-planned community...or, how that's all it could be?

http://www.remingtonsquare.com/

Caldwell is first and formost a commercial real estate and development firm. They own lots of office buildings and commercial land in the area. Master-planned communities are not the biggest part of their business. They do much more.

Real towns develop organically. Anything developed by a corporate developer is a master-planned community or a neighborhood. Towne Lake is just a big neighborhood like Fairfield with retail embedded and extra glitz. It will not even remotely resemble an actual town, nor will anyone view it as the center of Cypress.

Wow, I guess I haven't had the benefit of seeing the site plans, talking to the landscape and building architects, meeting with the developer and presenting to the domestic and foreign investors like you have. Only someone with intimate knowledge of this project would make a statement like yours. Of course, anyone who knows Caldwell Companies knows they are all about "extra glitz". I should have done my homework.

I suppose I also lack your all-knowing ability to see the future of Cypress or "anything developed by a corporate developer".

Great post.

Sounds like they are trying to get in the game before Bridgeland can get there stuff together.

Well, Bridgeland has at least an 18-month head-start. Something as big as Towne Lake will take time to develop. I do believe the vision for Towne Lake surpasses Bridgeland's, in that Towne Lake will devote a greater percentage of its space to public areas that will foster a more cohesive community. I believe Towne Lake will end up being less of a master-planned community and more of what people envision when they try to picture the "town of Cypress".

The office complex with the central park is not actually a part of the Towne Lake development. It is a development called "Remington Square," which will be located on the Beltway near 290.

There are a few cool things about Towne Lake that we all should find interesting --

This lake is no typical water feature. The perimeter of the lake will be about 24 miles! At it's widest point, it will be about 300 yards wide. That will make it the third largest lake in the Houston area, I believe.

Plans call for a small marina, lots of bridges, a waterfront retail and restaurtant area and a mini-Kemah family attraction area.

The Towne Lake Center will be the "town center" for all of Cypress, with office space, medical and walkable retail.

I'm surprised many here haven't talked more about this. This seems right up most of your alleys.

Then Pearland is all but out of consideration. 288 is a nightmare. 59 coming from Sugar Land can be bad for about 1 hour each morning & evening, but even at its worst, you'll still be moving at least 10-20 miles per hour for about a 2 mile stretch right before the 59/610 interchange. 288 out of Pearland will have you sitting still for long periods of time with accordian style stop & go traffic. Also, 59 was just widened and had the best network of Park & Ride Transit & HOV lanes for the metro.

I think Sugar Land is great, but don't discount their traffic. It's pretty bad more than just a few hours a day -- still manageable, though.

Likewise, Pearland isn't as bad as you make it out to be. Remember -- only "New Pearland" uses 288. Most of the rest of the city -- including really nice, new neighborhoods like the Lakes of Highland Glen -- use 45 for commuting into town. It has a really nice elevated section dedicated to Downtown destinations that covers the last couple of miles of the commute and speeds times into Downtown from Pearland to about 15 minutes off-peak and 25-35 on. That's a bit better than Sugar Land on most days. It's at least comparable on the on-peak times.

Actually I don't really mind commuting to restaurants and social scene now that I have 3 young kids. The number of times per month that my wife and I can get away in the evenings is really embarrasingly low. Getting a sitter and getting out of the house alone is always a trial. And when we go to games and cultural things like museums its usually on the weekends when traffic is less of an issue. Heck, my wife and I frequently drive up to the museums in Fort Worth and Dallas with the kids on the weekends and that's a 1.5 hour drive for us.

What I do mind is daily long commutes to work. I will absolutely refuse to move into a situation that has a guaranteed long commute. We'll stay here before we do that. Ideally I'd like to live close enough to bike or walk to work but I don't expect that to necessarily happen in Texas where the suburban streets are less than friendly to anyone on less than 4 wheels.

For my wife its even more crucial to live very close to work. Not necessarily to the clinical offices where she'll be seeing patients on a regular schedule, but to the hospital where she'll be doing on-call work because she does OB and is on-call for deliveries at least once a week in the evenings. We currently live 20 minutes from the hospital where she does deliveries which means she is pretty much forced to drive in and camp out all evening when she has patients close to delivery. If we lived 3 minutes away she could stay home and still make it into the hospital on short notice in the middle of the night when necessary. That's the sort of thing that makes all the difference.

Given your various criteria, I'd say virtually anywhere in Metropolitan Houston would be an awful choice for you. You could conceivably look for a place in the Meyerland/Braeswood area for good family atmosphere and reasonable biking commute to the Med Center, but that's about it. Otherwise, Sugar Land probably represents your best of all worlds...except for the biking. In Sugar Land, you would have a large concentration of urban amenities and medical facilities closely grouped. The neighborhoods are nice and the restaurants/cultures are diverse. The problem is -- a freeway runs through it. Highway 6 divides it all going the other way. This makes for pretty terrible biking.

The Woodlands offers less diversity, but similar grouping of professional, medical and shopping amenities. Biking would be better here, but in The Woodlands, you are pretty much giving up on Houston and "real" urban life. You will slowly figure out ways to never venture into the city again. Worse, if you're like most people in The Woodlands, you will proudly proclaim this fact.

..........but the restaurants in pearland. there is an average to below average mexican restaurant in every other strip center. both vietnamese restaurants i've been to are average. both chinese restaurants i've visited were abominable. and the traffic on 518 at 288 is a nightmare. kudos to discount tire though, those guys have really pulled through for me and sonic is consistently..........sonic.

You've missed one of the best steaks in in the country...much less Houston.

http://www.killenssteakhouse.com/index.asp

The chef turned down a position to be assistant chef at the White House to open his small restaurant. The jumbo lump crab cake appetizer is the stuff of legend. The sides are incredible. The steaks are... well, I've been all over the country and have never had such perfectly prepared, fine cuts of beef. This is what I imagine Kobe beef to be like.

The original Gringo's is in Pearland. I think it's very good Tex-Mex. There's a Vietnamese place called Van-Loc, I believe, which ventures beyond being just a pho house and is good. Over on the "New Pearland" side, where I suspect you are limiting your search, yes -- it's mostly crappy chains -- but even they have Tokyo Bowl, which is a pretty good sushi option.

I just read an article saying it might not make it because it's not in a good enough location (not enough businesses or shopping near by). This might be true, but the fact that it's a short metro ride from downtown and the medical center, and rice too. Also, Hermann Park and the museums are the closest thing Houston has to a tourist attraction, so hopefully it will do well. I really love the neighborhood it is in.

Yeah, nobody stays in Houston hotels unless there's a racquetball tournament in town...Then, it's CRAZY packed with over 100 rooms occupied.

Funny, I think you were a participant on the initial topic (Post #26) in which we were discussing how downtown has been going downhill. While clubs have a tendency to die off as their initial costumers die off (or rather, "grow up") and move to other venues.

Clubs have a high turnover rate and the city has been enforcing the noise ordinance to try to make the place more habitable for the residences that ARE there. The current crop of clubs are still doing great business, it's just a matter of getting rid of the freeloaders in the parking lots.

Then again, I think a "No loitering" sign should be enforced in the parking lots anyway.

Will one of the mods PLEASE transfer this discussion to one of the other threads pointed in my post or have them deleted please? We're going WAY far off topic.

(and I'm not helping)

Why is it funny? I haven't changed my opinion.

Also, perhaps you should ask yourself why the city is cracking down on this noise ordinance now. They didn't seem to mind when the clubs were making money. Now, when there are just a few that attract a lot of loitering, it's an all-of-a-sudden issue.

My theory is that they're trying to hurry along the clubs' demise, so they can start over. Regardless, the writing's on the wall for nightlife in Downtown.

I don't think I wrote anything too cryptic to understand. But, I'll say it again in plain English: When clubs and bars Downtown -- where major investments in design, rent and promotion are required just to stay in business -- begin only attracting one minority racial group, it's a sign they're on their last legs. These clubs are like theme parks -- they must draw from the largest group with the most disposable income that's willing to put it in their pockets.

That group generally starts out as single people (non-race specific) 25-34, making over $50,000. To truly be successful, a bar or club that aspires to be a "destination," as most in Downtown do, must find a way to build a big night out of one of the Sunday-Thursday opportunities. So, add "willing and able to spend on off-nights on a regular basis" to our customer criteria. And, because it's bars we're talking about, you need a healthy turnout of people who live very nearby, so the drive, walk, or train home is short and "safe". You may not like to hear this, but the vast majority of people in this city who fit that criteria are caucasian. I know there are African Americans, Koreans, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Native Americans, Samoans, Mexicans, Argentinians and maybe even a few Aggies who also meet that criteria. However, when you decrease your sample down to a single race, it gets increasingly difficult to hit all those hot buttons.

Don't believe me? Ask yourself why a country dance club hasn't been able to establish itself Downtown. One could assume it would draw exclusively whites. No, the places that have been successful for the longest times have spanned racial lines. I used to see a really good mix of whites, blacks, Asians and Hispanics in places like Tonic, Mercury Room and the other mainstays. When they started going all-black or all-Asian, or whatever, they signalled that they were going out of business.

It's not a black thing. It's a green thing. A Downtown club with big overhead can't survive on two nights per week of parking lot pimping. That's why 4/5 of what was the nightlife district is now boarded-up. Yes, I told you I saw a couple of clubs with people hanging around outside. To say that having something like that is an indication that Downtown is healthy for retail, restaurants and nightlife tells me you don't have a good understanding of what will really make Downtown viable as a residential/entertainment destination in the long run.

One thing you have to take into consideration that this is a holiday weekend. Clubs are generally slow on 3 day weekends, the entire city was slow when it came to business (from what my pocketbook is telling me) and quite a few other people and business agree. It just slowed down for the past couple of weeks but more so this week.

I have to agree with another poster has stated, the color of the people enjoying themselves at a club YOU wouldn't go to shouldn't matter to you as to whether Houston has a nightlife as well.

As far as the "pitiful train" Sorry the rail didn't have a direct line to and from the theater district to the Hilton Americas, catch a cab.

Hotel businesses during the weekends IS slow unless there is a major sports event, a convention, or a major concert going on. The Hyatt DT is currently packed, and HAS been packed for a racquetball Tournament over at the YMCA that has been taken place for the entire week. Over 100 Checkouts are currently scheduled for tomorrow, it's at THAT point that the hotel will be dead.

There was a convention earlier this week at the GRB and Americas was packed as well.

I'm constantly getting comments on how difficult it is to get a hotel room downtown at times, so before you comment on how dead downtown is, you two need to REALLY get to know what is going on around town before going off and shooting at the mouth.

Wow, you're right. If I had known about that racquetball tournament, I'm sure my perception would have been altered. Over 100 checkouts? Whew! I can't believe a city this size can handle such an exodus. Perhaps that's why we couldn't find a cab to the Hilton. The streets were empty. No cabs. No nothing.

Yet we had the opportunity to go to Julia's on the crappy train, have a nice dinner, save fuel; avoid the stress of getting into the car; trying to find another place to park then driving back to DT. BTW, just because you don't consider consider The Hard Rock doesn't make it any less of a destination. Do you also devalue Sambuco, Arista, The Strip House, Vic and Anthonys, Cabos, St. Pete's...etc...? We could have gone to any of those that night but instead of taking the chance they were all booked up, we took an educated guess; jumped on the crappy train to Julias and only had to wait 15 minutes.

V&A's and Strip House suffer from the same crappy train syndrome as Hilton Americas. Sambuca is awful. Artista is nice and close, but completely isolated and in the wrong direction. Plus, everyone in my group agreed that the service is terrible. Cabo and St. Pete's do not warrant a response.

I'm all for saving fuel and avoiding stress, but our train doesn't go anywhere in Downtown. It only goes to Midtown -- a choice I agree was your best one for finding an interesting place to go... at an early hour... in the middle of what aspires to be a vibrant city.

I have the opportunity to chat with one of the downtown regulars who works for the Hilton and a few weekends ago, the occupancy was 17%. with all the extra taxes added on, it really isn't worth it to drink/eat there unless you have a specific need to.

That's a shame. It's one of the best looking places in town.

I don't see that happening in Midtown as the customer base is less affluent and sophisticated-those traits seem to prop-up areas like the Richmond strip and Midtown for a while. Once the customer base matures the attraction dies down. We were at the same event dal was. When we left we went to Bayou Place for dinner. All the restaurants were packed so we walked over to Mia Bellas-our favorite. Packed. So we got on the Red Line and went to Julia's, had a nice dinner and came back to our parked car at Market Square.

Not to nitpick - but "all the restaurants at Bayou Place were packed" means three places plus Hard Rock Cafe (which I don't count) were packed. Then Mia Bella -- agreed, the only decent place in the nightlife district Downtown -- makes a fourth place "packed". This is the downtown rennaissance of the fourth largest city in Texas? there just isn't much going on.

The fact that you had to go to Midtown to find something that suited you is telling of Downtown's dire prognosis...at least until HP changes the landscape...hopefully.

hola...

anyone have any advice (or positions... ) for a recent college grad trying to break into the commercial brokerage or development field? i dont have much of a background in commercial real estate or financing, but i do have my real estate license (whatever that's worth) and construction experience, albeit in luxury residential. i realize breaking into this job market can be difficult, but this is something i have a strong passion for (and quite determined). i'd ultimately like to find a mentor to shadow and learn from, hopefully with a large firm with great training resources.... basically, an ideal situation

any help whatsoever is greatly appreciated. i will gladly email my resume, if desired.

May I suggest Caldwell Companies? They are a medium-sized, family-run firm that is venturing out into major development, brokerage and investment arenas. They tend to fly under the radar a little, but have a huge portfolio of buildings, projects and listings that is making some big waves in this market.

In addition to their commercial business they have expanded into residential development -- most notably the $1.6 Billion Towne Lake project going up in Cypress. This place will have a Town Center, giant lake, marina and more, when it's done.

They're good people and the upside for their business is great. If you're actually honest and ethical, you'll find their approach very much in-line with your values -- a refreshing departure from typical firms in this field.

http://www.caldwellwatson.com