largeTEXAS

It also appears all the retail kiosks down the middle of Avenida de las Americas have disappeared.

I agree. Could be an amazing performance space also. You could rig a sound and lighting system unlike any other outdoor amphitheater.

It could be all these things. A "park" doesn't have to be just grass and trees. Ryan Slatterly's proposal may be my favorite so far. Although, if you added one thing, it might actually work. Build parking under the park. \

I agree. Stupid place for a park. Especially if you have to pay $20 to park next to the park. 

How about parking under the park?

Hanover's about to release drawings of their 12-story towers next door. Lots of glass. They look nice, yet nothing too groundbreaking.

Some additional images

From what I've heard, Thien An is working on a new restaurant just blocks away. Sounds like it will be a bigger, badder version of what it is currently.

Exciting news in store for the sandwich shop that's having to shut down in that strip center..

I haven't thought much else past that, but my plan is to use this forum to find adoptive parents to take 2 or 3 for planting and care through the early years. That's it. Except I was going to use the old Registry to find other caretakers in the neighborhood to help out propagating other trees besides the Cherrybark Oak, which is one badass tree by the way. So wish me luck and stay tuned.

Great idea and good luck! Also, sign me up. If you need people to take on caring for a few more, let me know. We have a few properties in town that could help the little guys grow up big!

I think I counted seven stories - but I couldn't get it to expand any larger. Is that what it shows? If so - that's a nice amount.

Yes, 7 stories. I think it's a good density for the property. The design is even fairly inoffensive. it's just too bad the old Ben Milam is going to come down.

I am thinking that something similar to the scale and density of West Avenue would work great in this site. That would look great downtown, especially next to the ballpark and all that is going around it.

Do we have any renders yet?

Let's get to work, guys. Here's the Mayor's and city councilors' email addresses:

mayor@houstontx.gov

districta@houstontx.gov

districtb@houstontx.gov

districtc@houstontx.gov

districtd@houstontx.gov

districte@houstontx.gov

districtf@houstontx.gov

districtg@houstontx.gov

districth@houstontx.gov

districti@houstontx.gov

districtj@houstontx.gov

districtk@houstontx.gov

atlarge1@houstontx.gov

atlarge2@houstontx.gov

atlarge3@houstontx.gov

atlarge4@houstontx.gov

atlarge5@houstontx.gov

Done. Thank you, Houston19514!

I also wrote Marlene Gafrick, Director City Planning marlene.gafrick@houstontx.gov.

Posted earlier today in the Ben Milam thread:

Good news/bad news:

Good: more residential in downtown. More Activity in the MinuteMaid Park neighborhood.

Bad: they are demolishing the old hotel and asking the city to abandon Prairie Street between Crawford and La Branch.

IF the city is prepared to abandon Prairie (and it sounds like they are), they should require at least 2 things in exchange (in addition to money for the property). (1) the city should require that the pedestrian route be maintained along the Prairie path. We should not allow another superblock to cut off pedestrian access to MinuteMaid. (2) They should require ground floor retail space, preferably on all sides of the project, but most definitely along the Prairie pedestrian path and along Crawford and Texas.

Couldn't agree more!

Howard is going to Brooklyn or the Lakers. : /

I sure hope so! The Rockets need to admit that they're terrible and start over.

I think it is safe to say that this project, in the form we saw a few years back, is dead.

It seems as if the developer is going to proceed with an independent condo/apartment tower and I've seen nothing to suggest that it is part of a bigger plan at this point. It has been ghosltly quiet despite the fact that many projects have broken inside the inner loop including a number of large scale apartment complexes.

The retail component was such a small percentage of the majority of the building's floor print (ground level only) that they could have built the apartments and sustained until the retail was leased out. Ironically, The apartment demand is really HIGH right now and Regent Square would be doing really well if they had built it as per the original time frame a couple years back.

Unfortunately, the developer may have missed their opportunity as we are set to get a number of new apartment complexes int he near future and I have little confidence that the developer will move on this project, as we know it, anytime soon.

Fortunately, that is not the case. There are a lot of things going on behind the scenes. It may not end up looking exactly how it did in the renderings, but it will certainly be developed into a dense, mixed-use project. It might take a few more years (or decades) than first expected, but, as of now, it's on track.

Code will require more parking.

There's no code demanding parking in downtown Houston.

How was the remake a design failure? It's depressing that they feel the need to redo the space already however, which makes me dubious that can really become a "vibrant, exciting, active public space".

Ahh, we'll see if you're right, Subdude! When the space has been rebuilt, will it be successful this time? I'm banking on, yes. I have a lot of trust in PPS and think they did a great job with Discovery Green and Market Square. The last redo was done by a lighting designer who has absolutely NO business designing a public space. I'm still pissed and intrigued they hired him in the first place.

Call the Midtown Management District: 713.526.7577

http://www.houstonmidtown.com/

As soon as I realized what kinds of rents they had to get in order to break even, I was secretly hoping this day would come. The development, albeit pretty weird and ugly, is already there. Cheaper selling price will mean, I hope, improvements to the sidewalk experience, especially along Dallas (as Pleak mentioned). Cheaper selling price will also mean cheaper rents. Cheaper rents = tenants. Tenants = activity. Activity = better tenants; better tenants = more exciting place to be.

Keep the parking lot - just pick some of its spaces to be rotating collections, construction, and so forth. We pull up and come and go among them. There could still be 20 or more slots along Main, along the garden wall, and connecting the two, which have a more permanent interface and a bit of street-wall enclosure, but all in all I s'pose it is one solution to 'dissolving the boundary' brought up by HAIF above. And making this new part of the Fine Arts Houston complex be as diffuse as its hometown experience.

As for the parking spaces with rotating collections and blending the boundary, I believe smaller organizations could/should also best fill this role. As cool as it would be for an institution like the MFAH to embark on an unconventional manner in which to display art, I think independent art spaces are the way to go. Did you ever visit Artstorm, or have you ever visited the Johanna or Skydive? These are just a few of the more experimental, temporary, and/or unconventional art spaces close to or in the Museum District. There are also organizations such as No Longer Empty and others that inhabit empty storefronts for temporary exhibits http://www.thirteen.org/metrofocus/culture/no-vacancy-turning-empty-spaces-into-cultural-pop-ups/.

I get the idea of having art, quality, museum-standard art showcased in a place that's vulnerable and disaster-prone. New Orleans' Prospect Biennials http://www.prospectneworleans.org/ and P.S.1 http://momaps1.org/ in Queens, NYC have been just that. For P1 and P2 (New Orleans), the curators use temporary spaces - abandoned buildings, parking lots, industrial manufacturing yards - as venues to display, often site specific, art pieces by some of the most renowned contemporary artists in the world. It's spectacular, really, to see pieces that would normally be hung in giant, billion-dollar white boxes sitting so accessibly in spaces crusty with crime and ridden with weeds. P.S.1 is housed in a beat up (well, used to be) old public school far from the establishment on the Upper East Side. Yet, MoMA purchased P.S.1, I believe, to do something similar to what you are proposing - reach out to artists and other segments of the population, that might not venture too frequently to the shiny, expensive, established art museums.

But, perhaps, this idea of a museum in Galveston should be something separate. The location of the current MFAH, I believe, needs the type of unification the prospectus outlines. The public spaces need to be better oriented, there need to be more comfortable and casual spaces, there need to be more and better food options, there needs to be additional theater space, etc.

Perhaps the MFAH could partner with an institution to establish a satellite venue. Or, even better, let an organization with no ties to a big established art institution open up in Galveston and catch the attention of the establishment.

http://www.loopnet.c...d&PgCxtDir=Down

Ok, I'm trying to understand what you're proposing. It sounds like you think the MFAH should consider linking its "campus" to an old industrial building in Galveston? And, this would reverse Houston "turning its back" on the "historic seaport from which (it) wanted to part ways?" Another part of your proposal is that Holl "blur the line between sculpture garden and parking lot with a system of spaces devoted to permanent and temporary installation." Is this what you would see be accomplished by inhabiting the old Galveston brewery?

I'm a little confused, but I think I like your thinking. Please explain.

I think it better rounds out the MFAH in the imagination to have this emplacement stand separately. I'd like to see Holl blur the line between sculpture garden and parking lot with a system of spaces devoted to permanent and temporary installation, but not too much in the way of shelters. I'd love to see him propose to spread out over & above the brewery at Sheppard Park in G-town. Let it be a stilted foundation and then, on ground lease, let private concerns come in and renovate around and underneath /afterward/.

strickn, what is the "brewery at Sheppard Park in G-town?"

Thanks for the post from someone who has lived there, Andrew. I have fought the stereotyping of Downtown for years. I went to school downtown in the 80s, officed there in the 90s and 00s, and have conducted business in downtown for the last 16 years. I have even owned and operated a restaurant in downtown. Invariably, the whining and carping about the "dangerous homeless" population comes from people who neither live nor work downtown. After 7 years of posting on this forum, I know well that no matter how much information is given, and no matter how many resources are devoted to downtown, there will still be those who freak out at the site of a homeless person.

There is really nothing one can do to stop it. A large segment of the population lives in suburban, largely segregated areas, and will never be comfortable amongst those who look different from themselves. The only "urbanity" that they can handle is the faux urban areas built in the suburbs, such as Sugar Land Town Center and Woodlands Market Street. That is fine. I wish them no ill will for that preference. What annoys me is when they venture into downtown and criticize it for not being as sterile and segregated as the faux urban areas they prefer. Some of the complaints even come from people who never come downtown at all! The 'I never go downtown because...' crowd are the worst.

I try to ignore the misinformation posted by the occasional visitors from the clean, new and orderly parts of town. But, then the misinformation and hyperbole begin, and once again I rush to downtown's aid. I do not particularly care that the poster or the moderators think I am bullying. It is more important that a forum that is read as often as this one not be full of uncontradicted misinformation and exagerations from those who cannot handle buildings and sidewalks over 10 years old. So, I respond. Sometimes I even point out that the only time I have been robbed was in Rice Village, not downtown.

Some people simply need to look in the mirror and admit that they are not cut out for downtown living or recreation. It's OK. Downtown will survive without them. Houston Pavilions, maybe not.

So curious what restaurant you owned downtown, RedScare?! I've worked with quite a few restaurants and retailers downtown over the years; I wonder if we've run into each other. Actually, on second thought, maybe it's better we stay anonymous

I agree with much of your post. There are a ton of suburban-only-minded people in this city and on this forum that can't, or choose not to, get comfortable with the idea of true city living. Nick_G, as most have us seem to have acknowledge by now, does not seem to be one of those people. Quite the contrary. I really appreciate the energy he brings to this discussion and to the effort to revitalize downtown.

I'm speaking only for myself here, but I think for a lot of us who have worked/lived/put our blood, sweat, and tears into downtown over the years, it is difficult to read posts that are critical of downtown and that don't acknowledge the accomplishments it's made over the years. (Downtown and Houston have actually frustrated me to such a great extent at different points that I've fled to live in other cities. But, I keep coming back. Partially because it's home, but mostly, I think, because there is something exciting about this city and the potential it has to be great).

I think there is a tendency to get overly-protective of downtown, especially in discussions about how it could be improved, and lose sight of what is really being said. Even though I might not agree with their reasons for staying away, people still avoid downtown like the plague. Downtown still suffers from the inability to draw the numbers of people it needs to establish a "critical mass" to become a sustainable live/work/shop/play/eat type of environment.

As much as downtown has improved over the years, it simply has not become the inviting or comfortable destination for many or most Houstonians and visitors. In order to achieve that, I believe there has to be something special, exciting, and different about it. Discovery Green is a great start. So, but to a lesser extent, are the sports venues. I was sure hoping the Pavilions would be the thing that generated enough activity to gel that section of downtown, and then create a ripple effect. Whoops. It's a shame the Pavilions isn't overlooking Discovery Green. Then, I think it might actually start attracting small retailers interested in the throngs of people circulating through the park.

My point is, I think there are actually some really wonderful ideas and insights in this thread. I think it would be a mistake to write them all off, even if many of them are veiled in barely intelligible rants.

The scope of this project is pretty huge. In general, this building is supposed to link the entire "campus" together, add parking, add exhibition space, add a library, add community features, "bring Hermann Park to the Sculpture Garden," etc.

High expectations, as there should be. I just hope we can get some awesome green walls! Well, and a cool, functional building. And, better sidewalks, and good dining options...