X.R.

You would think there would be more retail and food in the blocks that surround the park, if the parks are slow, you got the burgeoning neighborhood and the med center to support what you're doing. Its funny that the Bodega Group (its what I call them) is cornering the market on this. I think its the right idea.

As for the restaurant, you can already see some of those elements in their other restaurants as they slowly expanded the patio and increased the lighting. This will be the proof of concept/litmus test since this doesn't look so much to attract the random park/zoo goer and moreso the individual who already has this place in their plans when they are coming to the area or live in the area. If this works, I can see other retail/food utilizing the spaces in that building and around the area. Imagine if the museum district stop had actual open and inviting stores once you get off the train 👀

On 12/1/2022 at 9:50 AM, txtiger said:

^'Jack's Cafe' will break ground once 'Galapagos Islands' opens (so the sea lions can move).

'Birds of the World' seems like it will be comprised of three aviaries, and will also follow the opening of 'Galapagos Islands.'  Per the bit of site plan visible above, BOTW will be sandwiched between 'Galapagos' and 'South America's Pantanal.'  

Bird of the World wasn't on the website until I checked two-three weeks ago: https://shrstudios.com/on-the-boards

And its not in planning status like some of the others on the website, so assumedly this thing is ready to go soon.

The parking garage can't come soon enough, it seems like the Zoo and Hermann park are somehow bringing even more people in, as the lines to get into the lot are larger than I remember pre-covid, and the parking on the street lining the park is packed by noon on Saturday.

13 minutes ago, Amlaham said:

I feel like they haveeeee to do something about it to make it look decent......i'm staying hopeful 🙃

They were going to, but I think we got the current garage when they lost the variance request. So, you know, we have to sleep in the bed that we made.

On 4/6/2023 at 4:52 PM, steve1363 said:

Could be that those radio hosts were stuck at NRG away from the action?  Does anyone know where the media stayed?  I guess it was Westwood One Radio that covered all the games.

Remember the group of teams playing did not make a buzz nationally.  Apparently the men’s final 4 was the opposite of the women’s final 4 where Caitlin Clark was the undisputed star of the tournament.  The announcers said they felt like they were defending the men’s college game all week.  The announcer made the comment in that context…said he could not get a feel for the excitement about the men’s games.  This was about 2:00 Saturday afternoon before the gates were open at NRG.

I saw a tweet today that the games were a windfall for the city of Houston…so there’s that.

They were probably in the Woodlands. Wanted to work on their golf AND work the games. Little did they know it meant they had to work to get to the games.

As someone who used to work at a gas station and car repair shop combo, isn't it weird to build a restaurant on such a lot? I thought oil and such leaking into the ground is a big deal, or do they have to remediate some of that as they construct. Sorry if this is a dumb question, I just know it was difficult for the owner of the place I worked out to sell the property.

4 hours ago, thatguysly said:

Hard to compare Austin and Houston. They are getting a ton of tech money and jobs pumped into the city. The downtown district is vibrant with Rainey St, 6th, all the concert venues, UT, Town Lake, ect. Houston isn't Austin or Dallas and shouldn't expect to build like them.

If the entirety of downtown could be like deep ellum, that would be fantastic. Otherwise, no, I would not want to be like Uptown or Historic Downtown Dallas. Austin is the outlier, the inner city Dallas and Houston are more alike than either are akin to Austin. 

Rando thing about Dallas, as someone who lived there for a while, my litmus test for "do you know Dallas" is when I tell someone from DFW that I loved the homes on the M streets and would think about moving there. If they are from the city, you get "oh they are so cute, quaint, etc" but if they are from Bedford/Southlake/Frisco/Plano etc you get "yeah I don't love to party that much" as if its a townhome in Midtown Houston next to a bar, hahaha

On 3/28/2023 at 12:23 PM, steve1363 said:

Disappointingly, and conspicuously, no mention of how the Astrodome could contribute to development of the area.   😒

Because the whispers on the street is because no one wants to foot the bill for redevelopment, its contribution will be that it won't exist anymore. 

Edit: The issue is that redevelopment is supposedly extremely expensive, where asbestos abatement and destruction is cheaper. The issue is bringing it down without messing up all the other buildings. They are in a pickle.

On 4/1/2023 at 12:13 PM, strickn said:

If the point of building them is to build his hospitality brand, The Sharpton, then he has to offer that brand's services to the public, and if he does, then he is selling transient accommodation, which qualifies this as a hotel building.  They may not have preemptive power to deny him until he makes that product offering to the public, but as soon as he does, he is in violation of the citywide code.

I don't think this is a valid interpretation of city code in relation to that definition's application. You should look at the recent Texas Supreme Court decisions regarding HOA bylaws and Airbnbs, I think they would be instructive here. FYI, the Supreme Court is quite pro land use, even some terms that I thought would restrict the establishment of STR did not do so.  Also, if I was him, I would just pull all the Airbnb records for Montrose. Whats the city gonna do, shut it all down in Montrose? lulz. You know there are several homes in Montrose, near Westheimer and some by the Menil, that spend the majority of their time rented out on Airbnb, VRBO, etc. The problem with the ask is that if your interpretation is right, then its a massive change and it must be retroactive otherwise lawsuits are coming. I am genuinely surprised this is a path the neighborhood has decided to go down.

13 minutes ago, bookey23 said:

I saw some city planner say that the first thing he would do if he was in charge of Houston is plant 1 million live oaks. We really do have some outdoor areas, but the city just doesn't focus on them enough. 

Its funny because you can see the city/county/local districts are slowly doing this. Emphasis on the word slow. There are young, newly planted trees in the bayou parks, and in braes bayou along some part of the trail. You see some parts of Montrose are getting additional trees, along with that reworking of Shepard drive, and a beautification project in third ward around the universities. They need way more, but it seems like the first thing the local stakeholder reach for nowadays when starting a project is "trees" and thats an improvement from where we were.

Kind of crazy to think that Houston parks and zoos got enough philanthropic money to have successive, large projects at the Zoo, the land bridge at Memorial, the Commons at Hermann, and the Wyatt development downtown.

It feels like the Zoo is finally starting to reach the type of potential a zoo with its volume of visitors would naturally have. And what's super nice is that they are creating different visitor experiences at different parts of the zoo in terms of places like the beer garden and jacks cafe and such. Way back in the day, the family could do the whole zoo in a few hours, but now there's enough to-do and eat and drink and enjoy that you can't really do that anymore. I take that as a sign of big improvement.

The Blodgett improvements is a project involving Commissioner Ellis and they 100% did outreach and its been on the bikehouston website forever. TSU had flyers about it, and I know the combination of the uni and county interviewed people about it because responses were in a slidedeck I saw online.

Ellis doesn't just do random things in third ward, he's been fairly protective of the area. And yes, its moving forward mostly because they had already done so much work before Shabazz brought it up which is kind of an indictment of her knowledge of the area. I like her, but her comments were wonky, acting like her constituents (which is fine and fair) and herself (not fine) were unaware when if she basically just followed other city employees on twitter who regularly give updates about alternate transit construction she would have had a steady stream of information over the last year. Wacky.

They gotta do better with the crosswalk from the Ion to the parking lot. I have seen a lot of frustrated drivers either blow the blinking red light if the person isn't moving fast enough or they aggressively edge into the crosswalk. People can be such assholes.

It seems like their solution so far is to put cones in the crosswalk area and that has helped. I'm hoping there is a more permanent solution coming because that crosswalk is tough.

Since the end of last year, this one has seen some serious man-hours given how often I see people out there working and the growth of the building.

I have a feeling if there are strong leases that come out of this development, especially with the stability of the leases from the first development, I'm not sure we'll have to wait as long as we did between development 1 and 2 for new retail to pop up in the area. 

I was gonna chime in earlier but didn't want to go too far down the astrodome path but we're talking about so *shrugs*. I have heard from friends who know people that the cost of tearing it down is something the county/city doesn't want to bear, and they also don't want to be the ones to make the choice to tear it down. They've heard the choice to tear it down and put something in its space has to be tied to something important to the city. 

The sentiment of developers and very interested parties they've heard about who have approached the county/city is that it needs to come down. One friend in particular mentioned that none of the proposed developments they've heard about includes the Astrodome staying in tact. But, as mentioned by @Brooklyn173it has a historic designation so it will take approval by the state to tear it down. 

Obviously the above is just what I've been told by others, but I'm operating under the assumption that in the next year or two we'll hear about something crazy that may take its place. 

They took the fence down? How long has it been down? It was still up just two weeks ago when I walked by. 

Via instagram, some artists have put together holiday themed art installations in the park so we must be close to the official announcement by the city and some celebration. I checked downtown and city of houston and nothing yet.

This development cycle for the zoo is fairly incredible. One capital project near completion? Onto the next one.

Those more familiar with the zoo, have they always been so aggressive with their development? We've only been going to the zoo consistently for 4-5 years now. Cypress cafe and the development on the west side of the zoo was big in 2017-2019, so I guess yeah, once they finished that they took a little break and then headfirst into this?

On 10/19/2022 at 3:55 PM, BeerNut said:

I guess what I'm trying to say.... Herman park is my usual go to park and it's nice with lots of amenities and programming. I've always thought of Memorial as the wooded micro version of Sam Houston inside of the city.

If anything, its more vibrant from a plant perspective now than 10 years ago. That area @Skyboxdweller pointed out, the outdoor rooms, is just incredible right now with plants as tall as an adult. You just gotta hope the magic makes its way over to the project going on in Herman park. 

Plus, the other side of the park on the Arboretum side is still as aggressively woody as you'd expect. 

From @steve1363's video. This would be a massive, massive, massive change for that little section. Post goes from kind of an island to fully connected to DT. 

Unsure if ground lease is the way to go with the parcel. I guess maybe they are hoping for another gas station but there are numerous ones on Almeda already that occupy all economic levels, you have gas stations with good wine and beer selections, food options, cigar selections etc. And most of the big gas station brands are already represented.

The only thing I can think of is maybe some kind of retail store? Access to it is great, but it can't be a specialty grocery retailer, those need to be embedded like on Westheimer in Montrose or Richmond by upper Kirby. If it went retail I could see a suburban-style starbucks, but starbucks is moving away from those larger footprints since their drive-throughs are so successful. A brewery or a beer garden could be successful there given the amount of renters in the area and the lack of such a thing near the park and TMC. The closest one is Savoy Icehouse and Under the Radar. Unless the owner is willing to put cash into it to expand the building or raze it to let the tenant build, I don't see how the lease option is that great and it limits it alot.

@hindesky are they moving slow to you? Or is that just the nature of them constructing on top of that garage?

Man, I appreciate the working thats been done but 2024? Doesn't that seem a bit slow? Memorial built a land bridge in a two year span, meanwhile at Hermann it looks like they've mostly just moved dirt around and cleared stuff away and its been closed for most of this year. Just feels like Memorial got deeper pockets to get things done.