Two

55 minutes ago, Montrose1100 said:

"It's on par with Memorial City Memorial Hermann Robot building."

You mean the world's largest blender blade? The god's demand a smoothie.

What's up with the teal color windows? Are they just not finished putting some sort of window tint on or did they pick that on purpose?

Isn't this the same idea as the shutoken gaikaku hōsuiro in Tokyo? It can dump/pump out 52,800 gallons a second into the Edo river but it is much shorter than what's in this plan. 

It's also pretty complex, with a nasa-like command center for 24/7 monitoring, you have to have 10+ meter wide tunnels that connect to inlet silos that also need to interface with different district's sewage that also feed into massive pressurized vessels at the end where the day to day stagnant water has to stay before being released. Water goes slight decline through some of it but is pumped up and out with modified jet engine turbines turned water pumps.

I don't know if San Antonio's is that complex or more passive. But it took the Japanese 16 years to build a 6km one and we're talking two 10m tunnels traveling east for 50km from the reservoirs interchanging with local sewers and silo collection points along the way before both being fed into two separate massive pressurized discharge channel/reservoirs many miles apart. It's all far far from passive, you need pressure vessels, pumps and blowers the entire length and massive ones at the end to ensure during normal ops you aren't dumping de-oxygenated water into rivers and channels and killing everything in it.

The San Antonio tunnel began a year after Tokyo's. It's also like 6km long. The Houston project would dwarf both combined it's much closer to Chicago's ongoing TARP mega-project.  Similar problems with being low lying, former marshlands etc. and having many tunnels span many many miles each with in-stream aeration capable of pumping 100,000s of gallons of oxygen down into the water. Chicago's using old quarries (see thorton and mcCook reservoirs) for holding prior to reprocessing the water at treatment facilities. It's also trying to solve a similar set of problems, handle flooding events, additional sewage treatment holding and processing, process the water prior to releasing into rivers and lake and killing everything in it.

The 10bn-12bn cost number is definitely overly optimistic. The TARP 21.5 miles of tunnels, is said to have costs a total of "3.1bn" but the GAO released a 1981 then restricted notice to then Senator Percy that was later released to the public noting of cost overruns running up to a final projected total of 10.150bn in 1980s dollars, so I am not sure where wikipedia citing a 2005 3bn total number for a project still in phase 2 stage and still not completed comes from. It would be interesting if anyone knew. (granted that they are in stage 2 is impressive as the same report to the senator claimed it would never get there) Anyways, regardless this solution would take many many decades and would be extremely expensive.

The first person to open a cafe'/coffee shop here would make a mint. DT is very close but awkward to get to, houston avenue's cafeza used to be this locales peoples goto and it's a bit out of the way and now closed (I don't think for lack of business). The other options are far up main street or main street downtown. I think locale group brew needs to carve a corner out of their brewery/gastro-pub and make money in the morning hours selling coffee and bagels but that's just me.

6 minutes ago, Texasota said:

"a cloud-based system for delivering hot water to buildings without water heaters"

...what...

Yeah, it's worded funny... like I am going to just download my water this morning from the cloud. It's just district boiler water controlled by a central center/server and control room. Think just like district cooling enwave is centralized cooling, Teal is that for hot water.

I am thinking just like the apartments behind it, they'll have areas with hardy plank and areas with brick. They sell it as an aesthetic to break up the monotony but really they mix it up to save on money, it ends up looking somewhere in-between good, decent and crappy depending on the viewing angle and how they choose to mix the facades.

4 hours ago, Twinsanity02 said:

Wonderful plans and design. My only fear is location. Unless some shuttle is provided the number of office workers going there for lunch is going to be minimal.

Even if it's not a DT business lunch spot destination I think this area generally is going through a lot of change and all of the developers are mindful about each others interconnect.  The push to connect decent trails out to east river, its already a direct connect to Washington, the flip of the neighboring warehouse district including in it additional res units, the expansion of UHD, the apartments getting crammed in from hardy yards to north Eado, the additional res towers in DT, the gorgeous new bagby trail. The north canal simplifying that connection between these previously mentioned areas of activity. 4 months out of the year its a bit hot but people often forget that Houston for the rest of the year is really mild (excluding occassional 2 wk mega disasters like harvey or freezes - but that would apply to any venue at all).

(also if it happens, east river at one point mentioned running a ferry to the landing, even if they don't it still speaks they are pretty aware of this being some sort of future urban activity corridor)

They've got the parking for events and suburbanites traveling in but I don't think the long game depends on it.

On 7/28/2021 at 8:30 AM, iah77 said:

You think random people who don't own a property should have specific demands on how a project that is privately financed is developed down to the T? Why don't you share your address to we can evaluate how your garden and siding effect the quality of life of your neighbors lol 

It looks too much like on rails pick your template viral marketing for a local group (otherwise it'd be a pic of some angry cartoon tower with some gibberish about traffic) . Most likely the developer is well aware that disco Kroger is something the community had feelings for so they're are getting ahead of bitterness and re-framing the local conversation with 'localist'; 'A marketing automation platform used by businesses to engage communities to achieve your business goals'.

If you're a big dev you're probably paying for market studies, surveys etc. anyway for all sorts of reasons, why not roll a bit of that into a cheap campaign like this?  My take is they (the dev, being strategically ambiguous about it being them) are asking you;

1. do you want an overpriced gym that will take up most the retail space we are talking to

or

2. do you want that same space subdivided into a  bunch of different shops and for us to look for tenets to fit that instead

That was my take anyways.

I think I biked by/through that housing authority lot a couple of weekends ago. Is that the field the trail bi-sects or is that further down? We know a friend with an air quality reader when he goes through there (maybe further down) it's going off a like a Geiger Counter siting on a pile of plutonium. I remember smelling the air in that crossing and you can clearly make out the metal/tinny content, on a bad day it's like swimming in a sea of aersolized nickel and copper. It makes me think there's no way Midway and the city don't already have some sort of legal strategy/plan in mind  - b/c as soon as you make it down to the metal recycle facility and see all their piles hanging over into the bayou and piled high on their lot, its no mystery where it's all coming from.

On 5/23/2021 at 11:12 PM, sapo2367 said:

Thoughts?

Some people should move to a west Texas ghost town. Very historical. Nothing ever changes. Cities are living things, what sticks around and whats built are reflections of what we value. Even if it's a massive MATTRESS sign. People like sleeping in comfort. This is someone who wants to dictate to the rest of us what we should be valuing and is throwing a fit that we don't share their history hording disorder.

Just like that stupid river oaks theater, you had people out there making fools of themselves irrationally decrying that this place had so much value to them. But as soon as you spent more than a couple moments drilling into that you found how entirely vacuous their stances are.

... So you went like once or twice in the last decade and you feel nostalgic? Basically.

And for that we should all have to pay into your nostalgia tax to a parent corp who very well could have but opted to not pay the rent on the property that put them in violation of their lease contract? And further you'd want us to supersede the right of the actual land owner and steal their property from them. All so you can feel better about a place you never paid enough attention to so it died. No. Ridiculous.

The argument for a decrepit old warehouse no one cared enough about is even dumber.

Historic preservation often go way over board about places and things there's zero behavioral alignment in showing they really cared about it much less anyone else who doesn't share their history hording disease, in all but passing fancy, they are the senescent cells of urban development. But they want use all to pay the price for keeping things the same and the opportunity costs of business moving back in and moving forward. No thanks. Build whatever or keep whatever you think you can make successful.

It won the C40 prize for the use and design on that strip. Who knows how serious their partners are but some are definitely wealthy enough to build that project without cost engineering it to a warehouse on a lead ridden mole hill.

Say, if the 'partnership' with UT (second largest endowment in the nation at 31.9Bn) is real that alone dwarfs the Rice endowment that's building the Ion. And this is a project whose focus would directly compliment the Ions.

Also many large oil companies, like Shell, are under heavy stake holder pressure to divest from Oil, extraction, supply, and refinement capital and move into renewable chain tied ventures. So it's possible they find enough forward thinking institutions to pull it together. But who knows, the website is awfully quite about timelines or finance, just vague 'partnerships' and plenty about their vision etc.

Yeah, there's not enough ppl. And there's already a NNS fiesta just 1.08 km from Leona St in Hardy Yards.

I've looked at that old TSP red warehouse and thought it would make the perfect place for  Houston Farmers Market clone. Much better long run positioning. Along the redline, bus depot. Easy distance from just about every bustling development center/district could have access to it, unlike the Houston Farmers Market which isn't very accessible without a car, this would be by everyone within walking distance of the rail. With midtown, eado, east river, and DT new spree of res units going up it's a place for all these people to get farmers market food.

Midtown was doing much better towards the end of Parkers admin with bums at an all time low ( then it was seen as one of the up and coming places to be for people like me, not now) . It's 100% the greyhound issue. They are all over that corridor thanks to redline and metro never enforcing ticketing. 

It had a flash of popularity at that point that carried into right before Covid just as the bums began to peak again... And then the population of homeless exploded and because midtown has all the churches, transport and infrastructure for them that's where they stay. 

No one wants to live on that end of midtown. Theres literally perhaps a dozen or so homeless people doing all manner of crazy stuff on every block up and down main and a lot of Fannin too.

Polite people won't say it, but when you have similar options popping up in every other direction with significantly less bum density and already happening places, why bet on midtown? 

I think the long arch of midtown is a good bet, but that Grey hound is an albatross. Covid magnified that problem, one it took Parker years and years to fix. Activity there will pick up again. Slowly. 

2 minutes ago, Urban Monster said:

Is your assertion that good urban design, good development = luxury? I believe a lot of architects, planners, developers, city officials, and policy makers would take issue with that. Including the 2 projects right next door - The Exchange and Hardy Yards Apartments, both of which are examples of decent urban “affordable” projects. 

If they make the same types they built in Sawyer yards it will be nice. For sure. If it's a call back to 1980s/1990s  cypress development .. sighs...

10 minutes ago, Ross said:

The old rail buildings were far more cool than anything we've seen on that property so far.

 I would agree but given the i45 (once it gets through court) demolishes even more of their existing hobo encampments, I guarantee that would've simply become a massive hobo village. They're already moving more and more tents to the near north main st empty commercial dev lots as of a couple weeks ago, that thing would've been positioned to be the perfect hobo shanty town, they would've been attracted to it like a magnet. So as urban exploring goes, sure it was cool but as far as development goes it wasn't going to get turned into anything but a tent town imo.

11 hours ago, Urban Monster said:

If it indeed is as bad as it looks, this is truly awful development for being so close to transit, so close to downtown, and in the year 2021. What an incredible disappointment the Hardy Yards has become. Truly a lack of leadership and vision. 

Well... We kinda called it, right? My guess...

1. The business district didn't/doesn't know what they were doing. 

2. Had some landscape architect firm draw up some layouts from some bullet point vision about what they vaguely wanted to do there. They leveraged that work to get the bones in and copy pasta'd it for a decade for promotional mats they largely got nowhere with.

3. They didn't know how to interact with the development community or get anything rolling. They didn't know how to negotiate contracts or fight for their positions. They didn't know how to hard sell anything much less use one success to snowball their vision, in arguably one of the areas with the most potential in the city given the up and coming developments and it's excellent bones. That's what makes it the most pathetic, there's a LOT of potential there to sell.

4. They sold off the work of doing '3' to some local guy one of them probably knew, instead of a capable firm, who oversold his own capabilities and then did jack all for a decade and then sold it off to someone else who didn't give a damn about the vision that then just sold it off to the first bidders willing to develop anything. They scored one good build and then failed to capitalize on even that, which is what makes me think whoever controls it now just does not care and if its still the biz district signing off wouldn't surprise me either, the way they talk about areas isn't forward thinking at all it's expanding 'mehh' to more 'mehh' (just read other articles where they talk about the near north, they give away the impression that they are a completely uninspired group).

Overall. I gotta say as disappointed as I am, I am glad they're building anything. As others here have put it any development is better than empty fields for another decade, they can always build something else but it won't be for another decade or two unless the property value just skyrockets at least this helps near north commercial prospects. But if it does flip again that'll be thanks to SWA, Midway, others like POSTHTX, and Urban genesis knowing what the hell they're doing. If Near north becomes a success story it will be because it does so despite it's leadership.

So the same prose workforce apartments they built in sawyer yards?

Hindesky, Does the overpass connect all the way yet? (maybe wrong thread, but while you're up there.. might as well ask )

With a completion horizon being what it is, many years, any one building a hotel now will be well within the safety of 'outside the pandemic' and 'post recovery' by it's completion. The vaccines have all hit the mark as far as efficacy is concerned, the most recent federal orders put us at 300 million by fall.  I think they'd be fine to start now and by then the economy will be roaring. I think all this working from a distance slowly fades back too, there's nothing like meeting in person, talking in person, humans are social apes as much as an introvert like myself wants to pretend we could all work from home I seriously doubt it'll stick. People in most fields will make up any excuse necessary to get people grouped back together again.

Anybody by chance have access to drawings that have been submitted to the city? Or know what they're building here? (obviously probably just more apartments, but what the specifics are? )

Alliance is a huge developer so I haven't seen anything from their own media fronts about these projects.

They put up some of the paperwork. And real fencing. *for the east field, the neighboring field has a fence too but I didn't see any signs.

 They've flattened the fields today, other than the company sign of the people doing the prelim stuff didn't see any builder signs etc. of what they're doing.  

Anyone know if this is the same Aggie group pushing forward or someone else? Can't seem to find any info.

Two of the other sites adjacent to the two apartment buildings now have small "fences" around them. They've also dredged along the sidewalks. Looks like they're doing prelim work on the sites for construction.