BEES?!

On 2/11/2022 at 3:42 PM, hindesky said:

Partially true since I was a tower crane operator for about 20yrs in an industrial setting. Thus the user name hi_n_de_sky. I love seeing the buildings going up to though.

Oh snap, so that’s how you pronounce your username? It’s been one I’ve been trying to figure out for far too long…

Wow, this is nuts. Honestly? I would’ve expected a project like this maybe after Trebly Park finished, but this is awesome! 

If you don’t mind crossing traffic, it’s actually a fairly easy walk to Midtown from here, and on the weekend it’s pretty much dead (traffic wise I mean) so you aren’t really playing frogger to go get a bite to eat. :P

Did they talk about that in one of their meeting documents? That’d be awesome

Two recent articles on initiatives in the area.

Second phase of CCHA to begin

and

Houston City Council approves plans for homelessness service center in Fifth Ward over pushback from some community members

It sounds like Houston’s been doing more aggressive disbandment of camps. Good on the city, is how I feel. It is absolutely inhumane to let unwell, down-on-their-luck, or addicted people languish on the streets in hazardous conditions. And in the summertime it is downright dangerous. I get peeved when I see well-meaning people on places like the Houston subreddit get bent out of shape when they clear out encampments. I get that the optics are bad. But I’d rather a bad photo op then people getting murdered, contracting and spreading completely preventable diseases, raped, robbed, and left to die instead of being given a chance to get their life back on track.

Some people are always gonna refuse help- that’s certain and an unfortunate inevitability. (And I’m willing to bet a lot of those people are very addicted to drugs, or profoundly mentally unwell) But you don’t deal with that by just throwing up your hands and going “WELP. 🤷‍♀️ Guess we’ll just let them camp on the streets and die, no biggie. That’s the kind thing to do.”

I am really curious to see the long term outcome for these people who are given housing- it sounds promising since the program was implemented a decade ago.  

I think the annual count of the homeless folks is fixing to happen, if it hasn’t already. COVID definitely caused some setbacks for the effort to help homeless people off the streets, but at least the city is trying to remedy it and push forward. 

It’s always so crazy to me how massive this whole thing is. All of those buildings just for Phase I. 
 

What a monumental project. 

It sure does look the same, @mattyt36. Though it looks like it’ll be a different color once all is said and done.

what are the rental rates going to be on these? (Like is a certain % workforce housing, other % VLI, etc) Is this project supposed to be replacing stock that was wiped out during Harvey flooding?

How exciting! I’m so happy to see this getting leased up so quick, even with covid and whatever other economy woes. Maybe we’ll see more awesome projects like this one!

I had no idea we’d added that many people, holy crap! 
 

I’d like to add too that I know at least in Sugar Land’s case, they have fairly strict zoning and a lot of the city limits is built out. (I grew up there so am decently familiar with how it developed.) That plus everyone wants to be zoned to (only certain lol) FBISD schools, so the house prices in SL have gone up pretty high. They can’t really move quickly and tear down, say, a crappy commercial area and just build residential unlike in most of Houston or the unincorporated areas, so while it isn’t critical, I bet it pushes a lot of development further outward. You can see Richmond/Rosenberg rapidly growing, though they seem a bit more keen on letting stuff like multifamily get built. 
 

a lot of west exurbia is outside of whatever city limits, so I bet that’s a lot of why you have insane numbers of housing stock getting thrown up left and right and people moving there- most seems to be single family just from looking at HAR/zillow, but they don’t seem to be as allergic to MF housing or very small lot sizes, unlike Sugar Land. 

I also wonder- is some of the westward expansion because of the business districts that formed on the western side of the city? You have westchase, energy corridor (which did come later to be fair), and the galleria if you aren’t commuting downtown. Living in one of the far-flung exurb towns doesn’t seem so unreasonable if your work is a straight shot along I-10 or the WPT. 

Plenty of megalopolises sprawl, anyway. I could use Tokyo as an example- the 23 wards and the surrounding satellite cities’ area in sq mi is pretty huge- though about half the size of Houston- if I remember right. Obviously they developed in a totally different pattern and have, like, the entire state of Texas’s worth of people living in their MSA, but they sprawl hard, tear stuff down all the time, and are able to keep their housing stock relatively affordable for being the largest city in the world. They have great transit, but they also have good expressways too even though they’re not car-focused in the slightest.
 

It’s unlikely Houston or really any american metropolis that developed after the automobile will ever hit the kind of density that you see in some of those cities (but tbh I’m okay with that. The densest, most walkable parts of town don’t feel claustrophobic like some cities in other parts of the world do- that is a real driver to make people leave, and our culture is very different re: personal space), but I think we can use the robust road system we do have and make transit work on it really really well. I mean, think about it. We don’t have to acquire a bunch of ROW if we want to take one of our nice roads and put a two-way bike lane or shared use path or BRT or LRT down it. Or nix traffic signals and throw in some roundabouts. Whatever, lol.  We’d just have to do a road diet, and we have plenty of roadway to make that work for us. We get better transit, cars get taken off the road because said transit isn’t stuck in traffic, and it didn’t cost insane amounts of money to build because a lot of the groundwork was already there. The freeways and highways and too-wide roads are ugly, absolutely. But there’s a lot of opportunity in them, too. 

44 minutes ago, mattyt36 said:

And, for the record, I hate the Katy Freeway but that’s more about exiting the parking lots of the many retail centers around Mem City on to the feeder, a true death-defying experience. Almost as bad as the insult to us Inner Loopers on merging what seems 5 lanes to get to Ikea as a punishment for exiting the Loop.

Parts of I10 seriously freak me out. It’s no I45 to be sure, but I’ve seen some crazy stuff and have had plenty of near-misses by people racing. I feel like when I drive on 59 it isn’t the same kind of white knuckle driving, but maybe that’s just me. It could also just be that I’m a little car-phobic :P

@ZRFkris As far as anyone can tell, it is. But probably not for a while. I’m not sure what the original timeline was on it.

There is going to be another virtual public meeting for this on 1/31, per METRO’s page on the project. 
 

Link

On 1/24/2022 at 10:39 AM, aachor said:

I certainly agree that there are some strong drawbacks to the sprawl. And, big drawbacks to sprawl to the extent that Houston sprawls. 

However, in terms of opportunity and quality of life for working-class families, I think Houston is hard to beat. When compared to other large cities in North America or Western Europe, Houston provides more job and earning opportunities, at a lower cost of living, with more affordable housing options than other comparable metropolitan areas. The proof is in the rate of growth of the Houston metro area. 

I think there are strong advantages to increased density, but I think the an organic market-driven approach to development is best, as it ensures that housing costs remain low. That is: let developers develop whatever they can sell, and do nothing to impede demand for any particular housing from being met. This ensures that supply is maximized, and demand-induced costs are minimized. And ultimately, lower cost of housing helps promote lower cost of living. And, lower cost of living helps families prosper. 
 

This is basically what I’ve come to feel on the topic, too. Sure sprawl sucks, and honestly I wish we developed differently, but IMO benefitting the working class far outweighs the negatives for me. I know a lot of people who are moving to Houston area because they’ve been priced out of other markets. Some places are losing middle class families and young people in droves because they can’t afford to live and raise a family there, and that is NOT good for those cities’ futures. 
 

I’ve also become a big fan of utilizing our robust road systems as backbones for regional mass transit. I used to be skeptical of that position.

But managed lanes w/ BRT and park and rides seem like really cost-effective options to help reduce congestion, eliminating trips for people who don’t want to commute into town for whatever it is they’re up to. As long as it can be integrated well with local bus/rail services, I think it’d serve us really well without having to put hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into a system that wouldn’t be as cost-effective since we don’t have the density to support it. 

9 hours ago, Amlaham said:

Have they technically started on segment 3 (downtown portion)? 

I don’t think so. 

Per their website, POST is now open daily. 
 

their hours are

Sun-Wed 11-9

Thu-Sat 11-10

Oh, so it will have GFR?

1 hour ago, j_cuevas713 said:

I love cypress trees. They transition through the year beautifully. 

So true, they are such amazingly tall and majestic trees, too! 

On 1/12/2022 at 3:47 PM, BeerNut said:

Kinda off topic / on topic.  Saw this youtube video of where this guy ranked Freweay Lids/Caps/Decks in the USA.

 

That was really interesting! 

4 hours ago, IntheKnowHouston said:

 

 

As suspected, Money Cat's publicist emailed press releases to local news publications earlier this month regarding the latest Kirby Grove restaurant addition.

Money Cat anticipates a summer 2022 opening.

https://houston.culturemap.com/news/restaurants-bars/01-05-22-money-cat-new-japanese-restaurant-sushi-upper-kirby-sherman-yeung/

 

So exciting!!

Did it say anywhere what the rents would be like? 430 sq ft isn’t half bad for a ‘micro’ unit, and it could be an affordable option for people like students, people living on lower wage, etc.

On 1/14/2022 at 3:40 PM, Luminare said:

We both agree on this, but for others looking at this. Imagine if, I Luminare, finally get my architecture license and now I have the ability to practice architecture, design buildings, stamp drawings, etc...

The argument against TCR would effectively be like saying...Luminare you aren't an architect because you haven't built anything yet, therefore you aren't allowed to practice architecture, design buildings, stamp drawings, etc...

I can't believe this has even made it to court. Its absurd.

It’s so anti-startup it’s crazy. If this argument can stand, I feel like it could be used to basically re-inforce monopolies in some industries

2 hours ago, BeerNut said:

Were those balconies or sun shades on the rendering?

They look like sunshades to me

Am I remembering correctly that one of the new towers in their master plan is going to be a condo tower? More condo activity downtown would be cool. 

What a fun set of buildings. Every time I see a new pic, I notice some new texture in the building I’d not seen before. So cool!

I feel like this will get plenty of foot traffic in part thanks to POST. When I was there, you could see it (the garage) all lit up from the skylawn. 
 

How is buildout going?