crock

replacing local restaurants with pass-their-prime national chains and removing all free parking is just...  sad.     I would love to meet whatever idiot that runs Mendocinco farms that came to houston and ate at Local Foods and Dish Society and watched East Hampton already close a store and thought "yup, we should enter this market".   

3 hours ago, Timoric said:

That was something the 90s were good for, decent brand new suburban movie theaters with lots of screens in big box retail 300K square foot shopping centers,  I particularly remember seeing Independence Day in 1996 in one somewhere up North- a great movie at the time, they nuked Houston

i lived in Dallas for 3 years and recently moved back to Houston.  It's insane how much better central Dallas's movie theater options are than Houston's.   From still having their Angelika, to having a huge brand new Alamo Drafthouse on the outskirts of downtown, to Inwood Theater and Highland Park theater, to Texas Theatre, to Magnolia Theater, a nice dolllar theater in Irving, half dozen decent mall movie theaters within 15 miles of downtown.      

central Houston has... River Oaks playing movies only for senior citizens and the AMC8 thats a shallow shell of its former sundance which was a hollow shell of its former Angelika and that absurd iPic, and then Edwards Greenway with its paid parking garage.      It sucks. 

5 hours ago, Triton said:

PLEASE get us a cinema.... I would absolutely go here rather than the AMC in downtown.

I'm concerned this is going to be an iPix with how small the cinema footprint is.   Our town desperately needs more movie theaters, but not ones where it's $17 to see a movie in a small room.   

I'm also really concerned/saddended that there is no obvious connection with the MKT trail, because that would be the way I come here 80% of the time. 

was flabbergasted by how well it looks when driving by it yesterday.   If only there was some way to get the giant midrise being built above the plumbing store to have the same sort of architectual lines/vibe.  

theres a "new kind of department store" thats opened in dallas and about to open in NYC.    If this was announced as the anchor, I'd feel a lot more confident in this project: https://neighborhoodgoods.com/ 

The biggest Issue I haven't seen brought up yet is that this will be essentially the groundzero of the i45 apocalypse.   There will be months/years/decades(?) where there will be major highway/parkway construction that will make this impossible to get to on weekends/weeknights.  

10 minutes ago, hindesky said:

So far this build has made my commute shear hell, will see if it helps me getting off at the St. Joseph/Pease exit.

i see 0 chance of the traffic they've caused from this change to be lessened in the least from when the 59s exist opens.   all the new traffic is literally from 3 right lanes merging into 1.

so we're... 18 months from people complaining about Martha’s Kitchen and the Catholic Charities on reddit? 

we desperately need to keep a halfprice books in that part of town. maybe they'll end up as one of the mid-sized boxstores in the area between Target and Krogers? 

biggest difference is you don't get sweaty taking a scooter 1-2 miles.  source: we own both bikes and scooters and our decision on which to take is based almost completely on if we can be sweaty where we're ending up. 

On 5/23/2019 at 11:07 PM, BigFootsSocks said:

I mean isn’t the NIMBY-ism pretty strong along this area? They were pretty vocal about not wanting the HSR to extend into downtown via that train route (above or below)

NIMBY-ism refers to residents, not commercial entities.   6th and 1st wards are filled with people that would absolutely love the light rail to be closer to their 120+ year old homes.  

the last i-45 plans have the Winter Street line being taken out.  That is a large enough right-of-way to easily support lightrail construction if Center st is too short and the Washington Ave businesses complain too much (although Lovett has all the land on all 3 of these streets so it doesn't really matter to them, does it?) 

3 hours ago, dbigtex56 said:

Please forgive me if this issue has already been addressed on this thread, but a major impediment to making this development pedestrian accessible is the Studemont bridge over White Oak Bayou.
I cannot walk across it. I'm willing to bet that most people can't. A two foot tall railing and an 18" sidewalk do not inspire confidence.
There may be other routes to cross the bayou but they are not evident to the hapless pedestrian who discovers that You Can't Get There From Here.
Are there any plans to widen this bridge and add adequate sidewalks and rails?

 

I don't understand where you would be coming from that you would need to use this?  Maybe the 4 square blocks south of white oak? Or if you were at Stude Park and wanted to go? 

I share @rechlins frustration that the northern trail just deadends literally within view of the southern trail, when i've tried to make a loop around, but from an actual pedestrian friendly walkablity standpoint, the heights bike trail has been incredible for us living in the first ward.  

 

shame some of the photobuckets are gone, but also incredible that some 2006 photobucket images still exist. 

i was going to respond to Luminaries weirdly butthurt defensiveness, but then i saw the "Room rates will range between $350 and $500 per night" and, well, this is a net-negative for millennial tourism in the city. 

The marketing people that have the gall to say " broader audience " after saying the rooms costs $350 are the worst type of people. 

17 hours ago, Luminare said:

 

Thats kinda the point. That is dictated by code. Hopefully at some point the minimum requirements will end for this area as well and they can build on the other side as well.

 

Its better than nothing, or would you rather them not build it at all? Basically you went from 'Houston really needs something like this, but 9 units is pathetic. Better they not bother at all.'

if they're already having to request variance to even make the thing, why not go for 3-4 stories and enough units so the lounge'll be filled/interesting/vibrant and that a single wedding party wouldn't be enough to buy the whole thing out?  

Houston desperately needs some(any) boutique hotels, but 9-units is laughable, the 9 parking spots are literally the same sq.ft as the building itself.   

Downtown Dallas still has the Original Neiman Marcus, the Majestic Theater and the extremely tourist-y area around the JFK Assassination.   Downtown Houston doesn't have a department store, open historic theater, or tourist destination that rival those spots, so to a traveller/tourist/suburbanite, Dallas's downtown still might seem like it has more to offer.  That being said, downtown dallas has literally 1 decent bar right now: Midnight Rambler.   

fair... i just had assumed/hoped that since TrueGrid is literally right down the street they would have used them. 

drove by the other day... the entire parking lot is concrete.   I had assumed it would be permeable, but nope....  how was this allowed?