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KirbyDriveKid

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    George R. Brown Convention Center Redevelopment, Office Building & W Hotel

    in Going Up!

    Posted

    It's worth noting how this $3 billion over 30 years is useful for today. The revenue capacity from SB 1057 is used to support lending now of the magnitude of that at play in Dallas. It provides the backing for the loans that will be taken out in the near future to finance the improvements. The intention is not to gradually spend in dribs and drabs over 30 years as revenue comes in.

    SB 1057's structure, after all, is exactly what was used in Dallas. The whole point was to give us the benefits that Dallas had previously won for themselves from the Texas Legislature.

    See https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/88R/analysis/pdf/SB01057H.pdf

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    The Chaucer: Condominium High-Rise At 2360 Rice Blvd.

    in Going Up!

    Posted

    On 4/6/2024 at 1:44 AM, IntheKnowHouston said:

      In addition, this art deco style building looks like Gringott's Bank (Harry Potter) with a gigantic GOLD front door! Not the look of Rice Village. A building this size (and style) does not belong in our small charming Rice Village. 
     

    This is art deco now. I dont make the rules.

    Dragon on top of Gringotts Bank in Diagon Alley at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter expansion, Universal Studios, Orlando Stock Photo - Alamy

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    River View: 7-Story Multifamily At 8 Asbury Pl.

    in Going Up!

    Posted

    On 2/14/2024 at 3:30 PM, j.33 said:

    It is the old model showroom for the cancelled "Orion" condo project that was supposed to be built next door. The model showroom was then actually used as a home up until 2020ish. The parking lot was built to accommodate the showroom traffic way back in the day and when the project went bust, the parking lot was used for Brenners. 

    *bows*

    The collective knowledge of this forum is really remarkable

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    Yet another Houston vs Dallas thread. Blah blah blah

    in Other Texas Places

    Posted

    As opposed as I am to these fights...

    Houston has been a cultural leader in Texas by any reasonable definition. Whether its fine art (Menil, MFAH); performing arts (Ballet, Symphony, Alley, Opera); popular arts (non-country music); global diversity (blowing Austin out of the water, see, e.g., Ismaili Center); food (authentic global, domestic, fushions). 

    If one's definition of culture of Parisian boulevards, then we aren't that, but that definition would be woefully underinclusive.

    I won't say that other cities don't have culture. Lots of great things in Texas. But don't knock down Houston to make that point. It misses the mark.

    Our fair city is blue collar -- it makes stuff. Lucky for us one of the things it makes is culture. 

    • Like 15

    Aga Khan Foundation: Islamic Community Center

    in Going Up!

    Posted

    Went down an Ismaili-center rabbit hole and fell in love with the center in Dushanbe. 

    This link had great photos: https://simergphotos.com/2015/09/27/dushanbes-ismaili-centre-through-the-lens-of-muslim-harji/.

    In particular, I thought it was interesting that Farshid Moussavi seems to have drawn on this design, placed above the front door in the Dushanbe center, and made it the centerpiece of the main hall of the Houston center.

    MHarjiDushanbe_IsmailiCentre03_2203c9d 

    • Like 4

    Rice University Campus Developments

    in Going Up!

    Posted · Edited by KirbyDriveKid

    On 11/11/2023 at 1:39 PM, hindesky said:

    Academic Quad Redesign.

    xifrDB3.jpg

     

    Not a huge fan of the plans.  At least in the renders, I'm getting the impression that the new quad and the architecture of the surrounding buildings are somewhat at war with one another.  Very much in keeping with a lot of contemporary public space designs with their emphasis on curves and asymmetry, but I'm (1) not entirely convinced by the trend in general, and (2) I dont think it fits very well with the formal, linear, and symmetrical design of the buildings composing the quad.

    All for a refresh, but I think a plan more in line (pardon the pun) with the gardens of the new Ismaili Center would have better complemented this space.

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    Innovation Tower: Mixed-Use High-Rise At 6700 Main St.

    in Going Up!

    Posted

    Provides some context to this fight (tldr; we are all in a sticky spot) --  https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/commercial/texas-cities-are-booming-but-their-offices-are-the-most-vacant-4cffb565

    America’s highest office vacancies aren’t in the East and West Coast cities that have been shedding population and workers. They are in Texas, a thriving Sunbelt state that has been luring companies away from the big coastal cities.

    Houston, Dallas and Austin top the list of major U.S. cities with the highest office-vacancy rates, according to Moody’s Analytics. About 25% of their office space wasn’t leased as of the third quarter. That was more than double New York’s vacancy rate of 12% and well above San Francisco’s vacancy rate of 17%.

    Texas office floors are struggling to find tenants even though the state’s workers have been more eager to get back to the office than in most other places. According to Kastle Systems, which measures occupancy by counting keycard swipes in 10 major metro areas, Houston, Austin and Dallas have the highest office-return rates. 

    Vacancies are high largely because Texas developers build too much. All three cities experienced a surge in construction in the 1980s, when tax rules favored developers and loose lending created a commercial real-estate bubble. Another construction spurt in the late 1990s aggravated the problem.

    [...]Office markets in other booming Sunbelt cities such as Atlanta are also suffering, despite economic growth and job creation. 

    But the Lone Star State is an extreme case. Cheap land and lax regulation encourages developers to overbuild during boom times, said Thomas LaSalvia, head of commercial real estate economics at Moody’s Analytics.

    Construction in Texas has slowed from the 1980s, but new office completions as a share of the market still outpaced the rest of the U.S. each year for the past 16 years, said Jeff Eckert, the Dallas-based head of U.S. agency leasing at real-estate brokerage JLL. Older buildings have been losing tenants to the new competition. 

    “We like to develop in Texas,” he said.

    [...] Austin saw a lot of new office construction over the past seven years, as developers rushed to cash in on the city’s emergence as a corporate hub. All those new towers are now competing with older buildings built in the 1980s and ’90s. 

    When some construction projects delayed by the pandemic finally opened, developers found that demand was less than they had hoped, partly because of remote work, said Christopher Rosin, an associate economist at Moody’s Analytics. Although Austin’s office towers are busier than those in other cities, physical occupancy is still more than 40% below prepandemic levels, according to Kastle.

    Austin’s office-vacancy rate was 24.2% in the third quarter, according to Moody’s, up from 12.9% in the third quarter of 2019. 

    Houston’s vacancy rate has also surged in recent years, but for different reasons. The city’s economy depends on the energy sector. A crash in oil prices in 2014 caused demand for office space to crater, helping push up vacancy from 14.9% in late 2014 to 23.5% in late 2019. 

    Since then, it has increased to 26.4%—the highest among 79 markets, behind only the much smaller Charleston and Dayton, according to Moody’s.

    At Houston’s 4.5-million-square-foot Greenway Plaza office complex, an appraiser recently cut the estimated value by more than half to $425 million, down from $1 billion in 2017, according to Trepp data. The complex was 34% vacant as of September, up from 12% in March 2022.

    • Like 4
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    X Houston: Residential High-Rise At 5501 La Branch St.

    in Going Up!

    Posted

    I considered even the completed vision of this building to be a blight on the area, and I am very worried by the prospect of leaving this uncompleted husk in the center of one of Houston's best areas, but let's not get too carried away in our grief.

    To view this as an omen of Houston's collapse, we would have to decide that the financial difficulties of one developer (who is designing some of the worst high rises I have ever seen) demonstrates that Houston and Phoenix---two of the nation's fastest growing urban areas---are somehow doomed.  That seems like a stretch.

    Let's be normal sad and not irrationally and apocalyptically sad.

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    38-Story High-Rise & Office Building At 2811 Kirby Dr.

    in Going Up!

    Posted · Edited by KirbyDriveKid

    Amazing! As with Colombe d'Or and the Montrose Hanover, though, it is bizarre to me that in a city as sprawling/unzoned as Houston developers place high rises immediately next to one another... Still very excited, though! As the name suggests, I have always been a Kirby stan, and the medical office building was such a disappointing addition to a block with a ton of densifying potential. 

    I also wonder whether/hope they will site the residential portion toward the east/back of the lot to avoid directly blocking both building's views  (somewhat like what the Colombe d'Or did).  

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