aachor

Hopefully this will push the city to upgrade Fairview between Montrose and Tuam. It drives like a war-torn, bombed-out rural road in Eastern Ukraine. Curbs and decent sidewalks would be nice too. You know...like you find in cities. 

4 hours ago, Geoff8201 said:

Does the Royalton have no basement so the standpipe runs under the slab of the first floor (which I presume sits on deep footings) off the fire pump? If so, I wonder why the builder elected to run the pipe under the floor and not through the ceiling of the first level?

It does seem odd to me. Though, it is the only thing that I can think of to explain the ridiculous amount of sand that came up with the water in the video that's going around.

On 8/22/2022 at 2:54 PM, aachor said:

A burst standpipe on its own is plenty reason to evacuate the building. Likely their fire suppression and alarm system will have to be recertified before the building can be occupied. 

It's no wonder that there was a busted floor.

Given the design requirements for standpipe systems, it's easy to imagine that standpipe would exert well over 14,000 pounds per square foot of hydraulic pressure (assuming no other easy outlet for that pressure) on the underside of the floor. It's also easy to imagine pressures multiple times higher than that. Nothing that is not already designed as a pressure vessel is going to provide the least amount of resistance. The main limiting factor is going to be flow rate. But, looking through NFPA requirements, I don't think that's going to be a factor in any confined space.

I still think that maybe this could have been caused by soil subsidence on the exterior of the building. 

Shr.Technical.Rar.110.pdf

From Wednesday:
 

Quote

The Royalton released the following statement:

Early evening on Thursday, August 11th, one of Houston’s premier residential buildings, The Royalton at River Oaks, located at 3333 Allen Parkway, sustained a water damage event that started under the floor of the back lobby. From what we have been able to ascertain from engineering experts, a burst underground fire standpipe caused damage to the fire safety system.

After the Houston Fire Department initially assessed the situation and decided to evacuate the building, within hours the Royalton had engaged a globally respected engineering and architectural firm, Wiss, Janney Elstner Associates (WJE). By Friday morning on August 12th, WJE had completed a preliminary assessment and declared the building to be structurally sound.

A burst standpipe on its own is plenty reason to evacuate the building. Likely their fire suppression and alarm system will have to be recertified before the building can be occupied. 

https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2022/08/12/suspected-pipe-burst-prompts-evacuation-at-high-rise-condo-in-river-oaks-officials-say/

I wonder if it's nothing more than a water main busted under a basic slab floor due to subsidence outside the building (this drought has been wreaking havoc on the city's roads and pipes). If there was no easy way for the water pressure to be relieved, it could exert several thousand pounds of upward pressure on that floor slab. All of the sand in the video would seem to indicate that the slab is just sitting on a supporting graded sand base and is not likely designed to support multiple tons of unsupported pressure.

Hopefully they got the water main shut off quickly. If they did, I wonder if the damage is minimal- limited to an interior floating floor slab and interior partition walls. 

20 hours ago, BEES?! said:

Well at least your procrastination at work is sort-of tangentially related to what you do, right? If someone looks over your shoulder you can just show them the URL. “It’s an architecture forum! It’s work-adjacent at worst!”

Hey, my lurking on this forum is important housing-market research which will be used to support our company's nation-wide recruiting efforts.

Has anyone seen any renders from the west?

15 minutes ago, 77002er said:

Increasing land taxes inside the city will only make things worse as it will continue to drive people out.

That would be an issue if the tax was not structured properly.

If it was structured how I think it could be, you'd see a significant increase in tax rates on unused lots or lots with nothing but large parking lots. Almost identical tax rates on single-family housing on small lots, and a decrease in rates on multi-family development.

It would require some serious modeling to get it right. But at the end of the day, it's all math and data. It can be done.

The goal would be to make it revenue neutral while somewhat shifting the tax burden onto owners of undeveloped or underdeveloped lots.
 

The hard reality is that Houston just doesn't have the density to make robust mass transit entirely practical yet. If you look internationally at cities where it does make sense, you'll see much higher densities. 

I don't think mass transit is entirely a "build it and they will come" sort of proposition. It certainly does spur a degree of development to lay down a light rail line. I'm certain that much of the development in Midtown is because of the existence of the light rail. 

However, my wife and I have been searching for housing for months. With her working in the Medical Center, finding something within a couple of blocks of the rail was something we were indeed interested in. However, we did not like the very limited options we found. 

Houston has been and still is a low-density city. Development inside the loop in the last decade has begun to change that, but it's not nearly enough for most people to want to give up a car or two. I don't know that simply adding mass transit will spur further development on its own at this point. My wife and I would have liked to have found a condo inside a mile from the Medical Center. But there were no options suitable for us. For now, we will be dependent on our car.

If other incentives would work in concert with transit to spur density- to build more mid and high-rise housing close to where people work and shop and eat, then I think transit solutions would be more obvious and straightforward. The ridership would be there. The demand would be there.

I wish that the state would reexamine how property taxes are structured. For example: Right now, taxes are based simply on the property's assessed value. I think there should be separate assessments for the land and for improvements, with the land being taxed at a higher rate than improvements in major cities. A restructuring like this could incentivize developers to maximize improvements on more limited tracts of land because it would result in low-density developments like parking lots being taxed at a higher rate than high-density developments. This would also address some of the negative externalities that low-density development imposes on city infrastructure.

And, I'm sure that a plan like this could be developed in a revenue-neutral way so as to not further increase the high-property tax burden that Texas already has. Freezing tax assessments on a property 10 years after major developments could negate the downsides of gentrification that this sort of restructuring would spur.

Just a thought...something like this would obviously be a low priority for a legislature that is too busy fighting politics.

8 hours ago, Big E said:

Randall Davis doesn't have eclectic taste though...he just has an absence of taste.

Hey now, even glue-sniffers have a palate.

3 hours ago, tangledwoods said:

This project continues to deliver truly "exceptional" / original design ideas.  I have been involved in a number of projects where we demolished tons of that green marble.

This dude should not be trusted with a 58 story building!!!!

I agree that it is tacky. In fact, I find the whole building to be gaudy and ugly.

However, Houston has no shortage of sterile glass boxes. I think the city could stand to have a few tasteless, garish, and cheesy buildings.

Over the coming decades, for better or worse, this building will be a landmark. No doubt. 

3 hours ago, X.R. said:

The whole boxy designs with aggressively designed balconies is a thing in Houston now, huh. Plus the "lets put this on pillars and make show them off like midriff." 

I love it. It's modern without being overly trendy. I love the pillars separating the residences from the garage- it breaks up the visual massing. And, generally I hate stucco in mid/high-rise construction. But in the instances when it's been used in this kind of building, I think it works.

Regardless, it's a million times better than building massive city block-sized buildings with cheap post-modern bastardized takes on Italian or Spanish architecture.

Hmmm... On March 15, 2018, the Houston Planning Commission had approved a variance for a hotel.

6 hours ago, wilcal said:

The real problem with skybridges (and tunnels downtown) are that they aren't public and typically aren't accessible unless you are already in a building. They don't do much for people that are just walking through.

I don't disagree. I think skybridges are good when there is good reason for foot traffic to run between two non-public buildings (E.g., M.D. Anderson's many connected buildings). But I also think that denser areas should consider more basic elevated crosswalks which are simply connected to public sidewalks via stairs. Again, the Las Vegas strip makes extensive use of elevated crossways, but so do many East Asian cities. Playing Frogger across Holcombe at rush hour is not ideal. And it's not even that the traffic travels particularly fast at that time.

6 hours ago, wilcal said:

"Three-dimensional thinking" is expensive. When people clamor for subways or elevated trains in Houston, they don't fully appreciate that subways cost about 10X as much and elevated cost about 5X as much as at-grade. So that might be feasible in the med center with the enormous capital investment or downtown with the high-rises and tunnels, but where does that leave lower density commercial districts like Rice Village or Highland Village?

100%. I don't think that elevated trains, roadways, or walkways are ideal for 99% of Houston. But in denser areas like the Med Center, I think they are a way to make foot traffic safer and more desirable.

6 hours ago, wilcal said:

And that is why density X personal cars is never going to work and it doesn't make a lot of sense to make long-term investments exclusively on that basis. I'm not saying turn off the spigot, but we really need to start hedging.

I don't disagree. But I think the way forward here is to encourage high-density mixed-use development. I think there are serious tweaks to how Texas' property tax is structured that could help with this, for example. I'd bet that there are city ordinances and permitting rules that could be optimized.

I don't think that the route that many other American cities have taken of trying to regulate and codify desired outcomes is appropriate for Houston. The end result of that approach is usually less overall development and higher costs for the public. Los Angeles has taken to enforcing "road diets" to try and encourage the use of their awful public transit and, according to my friends, all it's done is make everything more hellish for everyone.

We're a city that is economically friendly to immigrants and the middle-class. I hope we stay that way.

5 minutes ago, H-Town Man said:

Note that I said, "successfully." You named a bunch of places that are either not successful

I guess it depends on how one defines "successful." If you define it as creating an cozy welcoming atmosphere similar to a quaint European town with cute little bistros and cafes and a mime on the corner, then no, these examples are not "successful."

But if you define "successful" as functional for the purpose of allowing pedestrian and automotive traffic to safely traverse the area while providing access to mixed-used development including retail, then the examples I provides are successes (except I can't comment on La Défense). As far as I've experienced, East Asian cities in particular often do vertically separate pedestrian, rail, and automotive traffic along major thoroughfares in their denser urban cores, and they are highly functional, safe, and easy to navigate on foot. 

When it comes to urban development, I think we should stop romanticizing the past and consider what works best given current realities. Houston has a reputation for repeatedly bulldozing its history to allow space for new development. Given that the cost of living is low, and the opportunities for low and middle-class residents are unmatched, I embrace the bulldozer. 

22 hours ago, H-Town Man said:

Are these "three-dimensional" neighborhoods where pedestrians circulate in multiple planes successful anywhere in the world?

Also, I'm pretty sure that nearly the entirety of Paris' La Défense district is built with pedestrian traffic elevated above automotive and rail traffic. Though, I've never been there.

22 hours ago, H-Town Man said:

Does anyone want to visit the medical center who isn't sick or visiting a sick person?

Well, there's really nothing there except hospitals. Those hospital food courts are not what most people would consider a "destination."

 

Quote

Are these "three-dimensional" neighborhoods where pedestrians circulate in multiple planes successful anywhere in the world?

Off the top of my head, Las Vegas comes to mind, Downtown Houston (went under instead of over), sections of London, sections of Hong Kong, and sections of Taipei. Many cities in East Asia elevate major thoroughfares and bypasses through dense areas, leaving surface streets for strictly local and pedestrian traffic. It's also fairly common for East Asian cities to have elevated crosswalks at the centers of large blocks or at major intersections. Many major cities around the world elevate their light rail. San Francisco built an entire transit center, park, and pedestrian thoroughfare spanning several blocks above surface street level. Creating multiple levels of circulation is not a novel idea.

 

Quote

This is the engineer's mentality that has guided growth in Houston for most of the past century.

We have a wonderful city. 

Just too throw my two cents in with the unpopular opinion: I think skybridges and elevated crosswalks are good and that we need more of them.

Houston is not a dense little European city where the streets were laid out at a time when people were still pooping in fields. Houston is a modern American city where the streets were designed to facilitate the automobile. Automobiles will always be the primary mode of transportation.

However, if a city wants to encourage walking (which has many urban-planning benefits), a good way to do that is keep foot traffic somewhat separate from automotive traffic. The Medical Center has many skybridges, and I wish there were more. I think it would be ideal if there were a complete network of them connecting every major institution and every garage. Not only would they increase pedestrian safety, they'd allow people to walk between buildings in air-conditioning. 

As it is, there are still many hospital staff who wander into traffic on Holcombe, Fannin, and Main to cross the road. All three of these major roads are very heavily trafficked, especially around the 7a and 7p shift changes, and they all have very long lights. I worry for the safety of the the many hundreds of hospital workers that jaywalk these busy roads when they are in a rush. Automotive traffic gets very heavy and drivers (especially those from out of town) have their hands full just navigating. It seems that additional elevated walkways and skybridges, especially across busily crossed streets (E.g. between TMC Braeswood Garage and MDA) would help both pedestrian and automotive traffic navigate the space more safely. 

The denser areas of the city, especially the downtown and med center, are dense because the built environment has moved beyond the two-dimensional plane of the earth, and has expanded upward into the third dimension. I think these dense areas need three-dimensional thinking when it comes to handling traffic as well. Otherwise, as buildings grow vertically, congestion on our two-dimensional streets increases exponentially. 

16 hours ago, dbigtex56 said:

Bear in mind that District Attorneys can, if they wish, indict a ham sandwich.
Whether Judge Hidalgo's aides, or her own possible indictment have merit remains to be seen. Until then they are presumed innocent. 

To throw my two cents in, I agree. 

I plan on enthusiastically voting for Mealer in November. I've donated to her campaign. And I suspect that Hidalgo's office is corrupt.

BUT

You're right. Smoke does not necessarily imply fire (e.g. Trump/Russia collusion). I think that any voter who is informed enough to follow the indictments is also likely to understand that they are just that- indictments. Nothing has been proven. The prosecutors are just beginning to build their cases.

I don't think that the indictments will necessarily hurt Hidalgo in the general election, assuming she can handle her PR well. I don't think that playing the victim card that she's been trying to play will serve her well. She's in too high of an office for that. But she's not an idiot. I expect that she will adjust her tact soon and play this whole thing smartly. Innocent or not.

8 hours ago, swtsig said:

haha you realize people sell assets in times other than being short on cash, right?

I think we're riding a serious housing bubble and we've already passed the high water mark. If they're thinking the same thing, now is the time to sell. I doubt this will be as bad as 2008, but even so, it could be 5-8 years before inflation-adjusted prices recover.

Houston does seem pretty resilient to bubbles bursting though. Where I'm from in small-town Michigan, prices have only just gone up to 2008 levels. My parents were under water on their mortgage for a decade.

3 hours ago, hindesky said:

It seems they went a floor higher than the render. 

5 hours ago, Montrose1100 said:

The whole thing is offensive. Mercer of the next generation.

I actually don't dislike it. At all. 

Their dusk rendering shows some interesting lighting wrapping the amenities section between the garage and the residences. I think that, if they don't cheap out and invest in some lighting, it will look decent.

Too much modern construction seems to put too little thought into modern lighting. But then, I'm a bit of a fan of the throbbing RGB lighting that seems to cover so many tall buildings in China's dystopian cyberpunk cities.

I drove by the site this morning. I couldn't stop to take photos, but it looks like they've started drilling the piers.