stan the man

A con you can add to Sugarland area is the proximity to the prison (at least the NW part of Sugarland). It's really something to think about when you see a big billboard advertising the upcoming Aliana MPC and then a few hundred yards from it you see the roadsign warning you not to pick up hitchhikers.

Let's face it, it won't be long before TDCJ is forced to create a natural barrier around it to cover up the jail so that Sugar Land can be Sugar Land, not a haven for slum lords.

I will add some other pros:

• Sugar Land, as mentioned, is proven for family living...the average age is relatively young.
  
• Fort Bend ISD is a great district...Austin, Clements, Dulles, Elkins and Kempner are all among the best high schools in the area, Clements especially...and among the best places for Fine Arts programs in high school if you have kids who are interested in the arts.
  
• You don't have to face the threat of evacuation in a hurricane, because FBC is inland enough to shield most elements of a hurricane.
  
• Excellent civic leadership, only rarely has corruption other than Abramoffgate (which affected Tom DeLay) taken place with such notoriety.
  
• The crime rate is great, the media is biased against Sugar Land because Houston is for the most part jealous of what SL does.
  
• Trees are mature, providing excellent shade. The neighborhoods are very impressive and filled with walkers and joggers in the morning.
  
• Booming economic opportunity in and around town, and well established as well. Great small business climate as well.
  

You'll thank me in the long run if you find this helpful.

DISH Network gets the sorry end of the stick. Every once in a while they drop a channel simply because they want to offer reasonable rates for customers, and then that channel retaliates and drops the ball. This was the case with CBS and the cable nets under Sumner Redstone/Les Moonves/Mel Karmazin (who isn't even at Viacom, nor CBS anymore)'s watch at one time.

We all recall Time Warner vs. KTRK, and also Cox vs. KRIV all the way up in the Lake Livingston area where my maternal grandmother's ex-husband resides. Not to mention the reception problems KPRC had in Sugar Land (the closest area to the electrified antenna farm by Willowridge HS) that forced Prime Cable (our cable provider then) to move Sachse, Balleza & Co. to channel 12 and moved Telemundo (I believe it was them, it was for sure not KNWS) to channel 2. The same thing happened with TCI when it dropped BET (and potentially angered Jesse Jackson & Co.) and added KNWS.

Too bad Marvin Zindler isn't around to deal with this mess that Comcast, DISH and DirecTV fight over, he would have had a field day and even speak this: "It's hell to pay for TV." I feel sorry for all the working class and poor people who are frustrated with their cable and satellite providers.

I should mention there was a bill in Congress last year that was introduced by Rep. Joe Barton of Ennis called the COPE Act which dealt with telecom reform. This bill's key Democrat backer, Bobby Rush of Chicago supported it and stated "why build out when you can build up" because of his constituents which pay a modest amount for too little programming, which won't really matter once cable choice rolls out courtesy of Democrats from penny-pinching districts like his and the Religious Right which claim that TV poisons their children. Even the queen of C-SPAN's House coverage (Sheila Jackson Lee) backed it because of provisions supporting cable franchises for women and minorities. This bill supposedly never made it out of a do-nothing GOP-led Congress that is now nothing compared to the one Nancy Pelosi leads now. (11% approval rating I'm told, soon to be 0%)

Ok, let's put it this way: In Houston, as I mentioned earlier, news departments just like the city and metro area are pro-business and socially responsive. Examples:

• The TV news is generally Blue Dog Democrat/Bush 41 Republican (not necessarily Bush 43 Republican) in general. A Main Street Partnership crowd nonetheless.
  
• Talk radio is predominantly conservative Republican and Constitution Party-slanted (the latter party is where the third-party opportunity is likely going to come from if the Religious Right don't get what they want from the GOP). It's no wonder Dan Patrick received Paul Burka's wrath in Texas Monthly.
  
• Newspapers are either New Democrat (e.g. Clinton, Gene Green, not Al) if it's the Chronicle (they are center-left, I'm told) or Libertarian/Green if it's the Press, because alternative newspapers have historically been known for their appeal to coffeehouse constituencies.
  
• Suburban weeklies vary but in Sugar Land, one paper is led by a former GOP precinct chair who endorsed Lampson and a slate of Democrats last year (this was the same paper that once had the "Mayor Osama" commentator that slandered CD22 candidate Dean Hrbacek, but we at least don't have to worry about him slandering Hrbacek anymore and stirring up the "base" because he's gone).
  

Question to top it off: Which station do you predict will be the first to accept an anti-Hillary ad by a conservative fringe group?

But Comcast doesn't have a financial interest in people having the most basic cable package. But all the lower channels are filled with the broadcast TV stations (which still beat the ratings of cable stations by an order of magnitude or more) which is enough for most people. So they're content to pay very little a month for just the very basics. So Comcast loads up the lower channels where it can with garbage that nobody wants to see in order to encourage them to upgrade to the next tier of channels, thus extracting more money from the customer who would have been otherwise happy with paying less for the basics. Essentially, Comcast fills the lower end with as many annoying channels as it can in order to make the customer think he can improve the quality of programming (by adding USA, TBS, etc..) for just a few dollars more. The cable company gets more money, the cable channel gets more viewers (and thus more money) and everyone gets more money except the viewer who now has pretty much what he should have had before, but now is paying more for it.

That's one of the many reasons why cable companies are fighting a la carte cable selection laws.

Oh, and then there's this little tidbit: The cable companies get a kickback (5-10%) from every purchase made on a home shopping channel. Now you know why they get cherry placement and a crapload of ads and coupons in your cable bill.

I always block these channels out. I guarantee you when a la carte comes, these shopping channels won't survive. But are cable companies also opposing cable choice because they don't want to risk losing popular channels because of pressure from programmers and cable networks?

Interestingly, these cable systems typically had HBO on channel 3. In fact, most cable companies did that in the early days because lower channel numbers on analog cable mean a better quality picture. The best thing that ever happened to cable companies was the switch to digital so they could put HBO and the other channels that customers will complain about if they're not perfect on whatever channel the cable company wants because the cable company knows that the people who are interested in these channels are not casual viewers and will hunt for them.

I do recall back in the early 90s, there were many premium channels in the lower numbers...in Sugar Land circa 1992, if I am not mistaken, Cinemax was on 1, The Movie Channel was 4, and HBO was probably 5 (I am not sure where Showtime was, probably either just before 11 and after 8 or after 13 and before the PPV channels). This was, of course when multiple cable providers shared the market then instead of one dominant provider (and a few smaller fringe competitors in newer neighborhoods and apartment complexes) nowadays. When the systems expanded a couple of years later as SL grew, the premium channels were moved up to higher numbers.

I also recall when Warner ran the show here, you often saw those blue screens with service information in English and Spanish with yellow Chyron text, and also when sporting events blacked out. I would have to assume their Chyron system dated back to the 70s when it was Warner Amex and the system was called QUBE, because I recently saw a couple of videos on YouTube previewing the original QUBE system in Columbus, Ohio, and the background was blue with yellow Chyron text.

In contrast, with TCI (which served SL and a couple of other suburban areas in the mid-to-late 90s), the screens were either black or gray with white Chyron. I would expect Comcast to have a different kind of blackout screen by now with a picture quality rivaling the local forecasts on the Weather Channel or at least pull off an ESPN during blackouts (i.e. inserting ESPNEWS in place of ESPN when the Astros are on both ESPN and FSN).

That being said, it wouldn't surprise me if a cable TV history thread popped up somewhere on the Media section of this forum.

i always flip channels in the mornings. it's unfortunate that the local media repeat the same stories on every channel. i'm worn out from the latest murder, sex offender, mold case, animal abuse stories. you'd think they could try something new.

Not to mention repeating the same stories every 30 minutes, and traffic and weather takes up half that, with commercials taking half of what's left.

I believe the NE portion may be declining, while the southern portion is still suburban.

The NE portion (Fondren) has been in decline because of the mismanagement of the city itself, which has been accused of bias towards Highway 6. The Fondren portion lost its Kroger store a year or two ago for instance, and one of the city council members just got voted out of office.

2 - PURE Republican but dumbed down as low as it can go...kind of a "we are good they are bad" mentality of things when it comes to any issue. Their weather reports are as close to calling bad weather punishment from God as you can get without actually saying it.

It should be no surprise that 2 tends to lean towards the GOP, given that Dominique Sachse grew up in the Memorial area and the first female reporter the station hired was Kay Bailey Hutchison. It does take a soft news approach, which from my own recollections is evidence of a newscast's appeal to more conservative locales.

11 - Libertarian - they are not democratic because they cater to more of the yuppie audience than anyone else. They are very pro-gentrification but at the same time present all of the facts from both sides well. That said, they lack the balls to do hardcore investiagtions when a powerful republican is in trouble; they just spit out a fact when people like Tom Delay are involved but do not elaborate. At the same time they kind of patronize the poor class of Houstonians and give lip service with the old and played out "there is more to the ghetto than meets the eye" angle of things.

Channel 11 is definitely not Democratic, but they definitely get more of the professional and intellectual viewership which seems to be common among Belo stations. They have historically been known as the thinking man's newscast in Houston, which explains their target audience. There are health specials and such on 11 and a lot of professionals here are involved in medical practice (I have even seen State Rep. John Zerwas in several Memorial Hermann inserts during the 10pm news).

Their sports department is especially evidence that 11 is not Democratic. Giff Nielsen was mentioned on Roll Call (a major newspaper serving Congress and Capitol Hill) as a potential candidate at one time for Tom DeLay's old seat after Nick Lampson won it (he admitted to considering the seat but has never pursued it), and the station once had as Sports Director none other than State Senator Dan Patrick. To top it off, the late Sylvan Rodriguez was married to Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, who took over DeLay's seat before Lampson started his new term, and Shelley made quite a show of it.

In other words, 11 is more eclectic than most people give it credit for.

13 - heavy republican tilt but designed for the working class. They kind of have this idea that if you are poor and uneducated you should completely leave things in the hands of the republican party and you will come out in better shape for it. I kind of find their special interest stories about poor people insulting and elitist. They will drive to the ghetto and stick a camera and mic in the face of a slum lord to make it seem like they are looking out for the little man when slums have and always will exist in Houston.

Channel 13 does have a reputation for serving working-class and majority-minority neighborhoods. There are a lot of stories done at this station that fall into these subjects, and that's also the kind of stuff that Marvin Zindler did for 34 1/2 years. Zindler himself even considered running for Congress as a Republican (he had previously been a Democrat) but still continued to support socially liberal issues even well before his death. That being said, what district did Marvin try to run in when he considered running for Congress? I know that CD18 has always been staunchly Democrat, CD7 has favored Republicans (it was Bush 41's district), and CDs 25, 29 and the current incarnation of 9 never existed when he mulled a run.

Of course, given the recent scandals of the GOP, many of the more notorious scandals in Houston television have seemed to usually come out of 13, including a much-publicized one in 1989 that many recall. At least the person involved in the scandal cleaned up his image in time before retiring. Finally, back to the working class, a lot of the investigations that Wayne Dolcefino has done has been against the Houston political machine (anybody recall that one investigation where they baked a pie full of money?) and charter schools in working class neighborhoods, especially Alphonso Crutch. One time in my high school days, the men's JV basketball team was slated to play Alphonso Crutch in a tournament but they never showed up, and it ended up being our coaches vs. the refs, which didn't surprise me given that the Crutch (and most other Houston charter schools) has been known for corruption and bad morals.

26 - Completely LACK comsistency cause they are very Republican in political views but Liberals when it comes to social issues. They dumb it down nearly as much as 2 does but come off worse than 2 because they try to make themsleves seem hip and cool but seem lame.

To me, Fox 26 seems to have a somewhat suburban mood, since every time I tend to watch this newscast it almost always reminds me of Sugar Land as far as the feel goes, and also they have a lot of segments that cater to suburbanites such as the Predator Check segment that it considers especially important in siphoning suburban viewers away from other stations. You may also recall the City Under Siege segments in the 90s, to me they also seemed to have a suburban effect to it since crime is a factor in why so many families of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds move out to the suburbs. Sports fans are another common suburban viewer cluster, and Mark Berman is the most aggressive sports reporter in town.

Overall, it is a local Fox News Channel with diversity, given their anchor lineups.

39 - BEST NEWSCAST in town. Granted, they lean democratic cause they will do major investigations on GOP scandals but do like 11 does when it comes to bad news about the DNC. However, they do not use stupid gimics and points of view to report things. Their presentation is at a high school grad level in terms of how they relay information. They are the average station for the average viewer.

I'm not sure if 39 leans Democratic, since their parent company's flagship newspaper (the Chicago Tribune) is known as the more conservative of the two Windy City papers (it endorsed Bush 43) and favors the affluent north side of the area (as opposed to the working class, liberal leanings of the Sun-Times which endorsed John Kerry). I do recall that a lot of prime time newscasts seem to have the stigma of a conservative viewpoint (the newscasts on Sinclair-owned stations during Bush 43's first term is one classic example).

For the most part, Houston newscasts tend to favor a pro-business agenda. I have to wonder what political biases exist on 45 and 47, because even Spanish-language stations have political biases.

I'm pretty sure 99 is the split between analog and digital. TW was trying to move all their channels to digital to free up bandwidth. I'm sure Comcast is doing the same thing.

Do folks think a lower number is a better number for some reason?

A lower number is not necessarily better, but you never know with some rabid Fox News fanatics who now want to argue that CNBC has a "liberal bias" and is more deserving of a higher channel number than Fox Business. We'll see when the ratings roll out, but as time goes by, all cable will go digital with the aim of warding off satellite competitors that claim to have a better picture than cable without boasting the fact that satellite drowns out in the rain.

It's about time. Missouri City is really in need of a makeover.

The new HD numbers

National Geographic: 283

USA Network: 284

A&E: 285

History Channel: 286

HGTV: 287

Food Network: 288

CNN: 299

Also, some new Spanish-language channels

Cine Mexicano: 500

Once TV Mexico: 501

TeleFormula: 502

Latele Novela: 505

Canel 52MX: 507

SUR Mexico: 508

AYM Sports: 514

On another note, the expanded basic has been changed around. They moved...

...FX to 31 (no surprise given their top-shelf dramas and other shows)

...Golf Channel to 32 (some may be bored with watching 24/7 coverage of golf, but then again with the presence of SHO and especially all the golf aficionados in MonCo (The Woodlands and Conroe, if anyone is confused with my slang terms))

...ABC Family to 48 (no word if it has anything to do with Channel 13, given that last time a Disney network wanted to be moved around (circa 2000) we were left in the dark with no Marvin for a day or two, and sadly he is no longer with us)

...TBS to 51 (apparently with Time Warner out of the picture now, and the Atlanta station that started it all isn't even TBS anymore)

...Court TV to 67 (it will become Tru TV come New Year's)

...Spike TV to 68 (apparently Comcast is on the rocks with Sumner Redstone & Co. (he's the owner of Viacom and CBS))

...MSNBC carrying the rear at 80 (that is where TV Guide Channel was, so instead of an archaic channel guide, we now hear about the Worst Person in the World nightly)

Finally, to top this post off: I'm surprised Fox Business Network (Channel 234) didn't get a lower channel number (lower than 99 for instance), but I guarantee you if Rupert has his way...and his wish, it will eventually fall down to the lower-tier. Of course, with all the talk radio fans around town, Dan Patrick might as well petition for a lower number.

Lucy's not showing the cleavage she did when she first started here. Viewers must have complained. My son's not happy with the change.

At least the PTC did not come knocking down on KHOU's doors...because they would have started campaigning to have all newscasts (local and national) rated TV-MA.

Freebirds would be better but they're not the suburban type.

I heard through the grapevine that Freebirds is looking at expansion. They're more of a college and arthouse-oriented joint though, which explains their origin. And most likely not fit for a mall setting like FCM.

And then again, if DoubleDave's succeeded in a world of academia and expanded out to Greater Houston, then so can Freebirds, but like I said not in a mall.

As far as new stores (and it's Oct. 2007 right now), there is reportedly only one I came across: a permit for Lids. It's a sports hat store, enough said.

BTW, I just looked at a PDF document on the mall's GGP (the mall's developer) page, which listed downloadable leasing information. The tenant criteria for the lifestyle expansion had a tenant floor plan that was nostalgic and in some cases irrevelant. They had Williams-Sonoma where Apple is now, Brio across from the Cheesecake Factory and next to where Grimaldi's is reportedly going, and Eddie Bauer where American Eagle is now (Eddie Bauer closed sometime before 9/11 (it has never been back since) and AE is now in its place). And before GGP took control of FCM, there was even a proposal for a Bennigan's in the food court where the soft play area is now. Source: http://www.ggp.com/Content/Data/Constructi...Construct_2.pdf (on Page 7)

Drove by 59 Diner this morning and it was packed.

Same here. 59 Diner is one of many kinds of restaurants you see frequently in West Stafford/Meadows Place (and I am talking about breakfast joints, along with seafood kitchens and buffets). It's the type of place a restaurant goes to when a more physically conservative city (i.e. Sugar Land) won't loosen up to please a chain's demands (whether it be signage or materials used).

BTW, the Harley-Davidson dealership is soon going vacant, but it's not going out of business...it's moving to Rosenberg in a bold move to become the biggest Harley-Davidson dealership in the nation, with an amphitheater, meeting rooms, outdoor space, and a Quaker Steak & Lube to boot.

Source: http://www.fortbendnow.com/business/3417/r...t-harley-dealer

That leads me to another question: Who's going to fill that space. I'm thinking something like a luxury car dealership (i.e. something not present at Momentum for the moment), a luxury auto repair shop, something of a luxury niche going in that space.

I remember going there in the early 90's.

So do I...I went there many times when it was Jungle Jim's, Kids Kingdom, and Exhilirama. I forget the various rides, but I recall that Exhilirama catered to an older crowd compared to the other two and had a darker-colored theme.

Of course, this was when Memorial City was in a state of flux...this was when Town & Country was the "it" mall on the west side. Then T&C later sat on a tollway, had a great fall, and all the landlords and all the marketers couldn't put T&C together again.

Collectively, I frequented Memorial City, Town & Country, Sharpstown, West Oaks and Westwood as a kid. That all changed when First Colony opened when I was 9.

Houston edges out Dallas in GDP race

08:21 AM CDT on Thursday, September 27, 2007

By BRENDAN M. CASE / The Dallas Morning News

Bad news in the battle between Dallas and that other large town to the southeast: Houston edged out Dallas in a new ranking of the largest U.S. metropolitan economies.

The Houston area's gross domestic product came in at $316.3 billion in 2005, a hair ahead of Dallas-Fort Worth's $315.5 billion.

That's one of the conclusions in a new study by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, a unit of the U.S. Commerce Department. The report attempts to measure total output by metropolitan area through 2005.

The Texas titans rank as fifth- and sixth-largest metro economies in the nation, following New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and the Washington area.

According to the study, the top 10 metropolitan areas accounted for 34 percent of the total U.S. gross domestic product of nearly $12.4 trillion in 2005.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis called the study a prototype that was open to tweaking. Its analysis relied heavily on industry earnings data from the state and county levels.

In Texas at least, the federal estimates track calculations by Waco economist Ray Perryman. He estimates total output in the Dallas-Fort Worth area at about $315.4 billion in 2005. The Houston area stood at $316.1 billion.

METRO ECONOMIES

Gross domestic product in billions of dollars by metro area for 2005:

------------------------------------

New York $1,056.4

Los Angeles $632.4

Chicago $461.4

Washington, D.C. $347.6

Houston $316.3

Dallas-Fort Worth $315.5

Philadelphia $295.2

San Francisco $268.3

Boston $261.1

Atlanta $242.4

------------------------------------

SOURCE: U.S. Commerce Department

How great is it that Texas has two powerhouse economies? NYC remains in a class by itself.

But, as for the rest, the Texas giants are definitely playing with the big boys.

Houston and DFW are pretty much on the rise. Of course, could there be a new trend of Houston surpassing Dallas in various market sizes. (e.g. economic areas, population areas, TV markets, etc.)

What is the Bob Boudreaux story? Wondered that myself.

Not quite sure, but the Chron archives note that about a year after the Ed Brandon fallout, Bob Boudreaux stopped anchoring Live at Five and was later told by his agent (from NYC) to shave his mustache. He also reportedly turned down on offer from Fox 26 and wound up with 13's weekend gig.

Personally speaking, stability is a good thing, especially for a somewhat low-budget but high content newscast as they produce. The graphics are simple but modern, not flashy and intrusive as the other stations seem to be. Heaven forbid one station's graphics don't send you into a seizure while catching the news one evening

I'm not saying Channel 39 should use flashy graphics, but it is beginning to approach that point where new music and graphics would come in.

As far as the set goes, I'm not surprised how the set has existed this long (seven years). It took Channel 2 ten years to dump their newsroom set. Channel 11's had theirs for ten also. 26 had their old one for nine before switching to the FNC version.

Outside of Houston, Channel 39's well-known Chicago sister station (WGN) had their old one for about a dozen, I think.

This is a similar situation to KRIV in that the network produced a certain look to appear on all of it's stations. Graphically, there isn't really a difference between KXLN or the Univision stations in Corpus, Laredo or anywhere else in the country for that matter. Set-wise, it is somewhat similar to KPRC's with a faux limestone background. Not bad and they got it a while before KPRC did. They do have one of the best spanish-language news departments in the country, but I think we bypassed content in this thread a while back...

At least we are discussing content, finally. Why not create a poll for "content" instead of material goods (sets, music)?

The evening newscasts are produced in DALLAS.

Seriously, they are. A number of Telemundo Owned & Operated stations recieve a regional newscast called "Conteo De Noticias" which is produced at their regional hub up there. That was done as a cost cutting measure earlier in the year.

As for the graphics, these people aren't known for doing "cheap" nor low-quality work.

Maybe we can talk about content sometime maybe perhaps? Just askin...

Pyburn of course is a very good company. And channel 47 is a Telemundo O&O. But I have three things to say:

1. Channel 47's website looks cheap in comparison to its Dallas station (KXTX)

2. their studios run out of a leased office building on the northwest Loop, and

3. Telemundo is owned by NBC Universal, which made a lot of cost-cutting moves at Channel 47 and various other places. Moving the newscasts to Dallas was far from the only effect. At NBC, Saturday Night Live's cast was reduced last year. And at other NBC-owned stations, the NBC station in Washington lost their sports director.

Oh my god, channel 2's graphics are the worst. They're so ridiculous and sensational. Cheesy really. If it was a murder they are reporting, they'll have the sillouette outline of a dead person with one arm up and one down in a little box in the right hand corner of the screen with a yellow CAUTION banner going across. It's disgusting.

Channel 2's graphics are cheap. They look more like you are watching a newscast in Victoria or BCS.

Breaking down the stations:

Channel 2: Cheap graphics, bad music arrangement. Nice set, though.

Channel 11: Graphics are space-age, music sounds prepackaged (it is no Stephen Arnold), set looks more like a fast-casual Mexican restaurant (which is a good thing ironically).

Channel 13: Texas all the way. Graphics are unique, set never seems to age, music is more like a newscast.

Channel 26: Graphics are akin to a local Fox News Channel, music and set go with FNC theme.

Channel 39: Primitive. They need a new set, new music, new graphics. In other words, an extreme makeover is needed.

Channel 45: Some graphics are flashy, some are cheesy (Arial font). Set and music I don't have much information on, though.

Channel 47: Cheap. Need I say more.

There are some sports celebs back there, Golf Course is pretty decent, those guard gates used to be functional.

The guard gates were also in place in Sugar Creek up until the 1980s. Reportedly, they were taken down because the City was looking to annex the neighborhood and also the neighborhood's main thoroughfare (Sugar Creek Boulevard) is connected to a major west Houston thoroughfare (Dairy Ashford). I also saw a guard tower at the entry to Oyster Point in First Colony. Any word on whether or not they had gates in earlier times?

It's official. Staples is coming to Houston:

http://www.license.state.tx.us/ABDataSearc...=EABPRJA7819611

BTW, what updates are there on the former CompUSAs (IMHO to some extent, an office supply store is about similar in size to a CompUSA store) in Sugar Land, I-45 & 1960, Webster and near Willowbrook Mall...

First Colony to me ain't much to brag on...it's an updated Sharpstown and catered to the area...when it opened it never had much of an appeal

FCM is not in any way compared to Sharpstown. The main reason it did not have much of an appeal was because of the somewhat tepid retail market at the time as well as the fact that there were a sizable number of local businesses operating in the mall.

Now FCM has a more upscale tenant mix than it ever did before, and has the backing of a major mall owner (General Growth, which also owns the three "brook" malls and The Woodlands (mall and community, the latter of which came in a merger) + Bridgeland).

In fact, at one point FCM (1985 to be specific) was slated to be a suburban Galleria-esque mall before the oil bust took place. A Sugar Land historical publication circa 1984 also stated that the mall would have needed a people mover.

I have a feeling the owner is probably going to wait until Baybrook Mall gets a lifestyle expansion or something like that. As a matter of fact, there is no word yet on what GGP (which owns Baybrook) plans to do with the shuttered Mervyn's.

NOTE: I think CCISD should build a new high school in Seabrook to relieve Clear Lake High School.

The most recent bond project ('07) in CCISD calls for one new high school and various other new schools.

BTW, here's a link to an article regarding Pasadena Town Square:

http://deadmalls.com/malls/pasadena_town_square.html

Wal-Mart is good at putting other retailers out of business and buying out others. Why don't they buy out all malls and call all of them WALMALL?

That would seem rather impossible. I would rather shop in a dead mall than in a WALMALL.

Besides, Target is better at what it does than Wal-Mart, and a lot of rich people are not going to be caught dead in a Wal-Mart, period; if Wal-Mart controlled everything, we would have to be a third world country.