cosmo

Hello to all and am back again after having read the great responses and responses to the responses...I cannot input statistics as my time does not allow for this research however my input is based on my experience and love of the urban core of Houston as I feel this core is very unique in the U.S. We have a grid system of streets that measures about a 1mile in width by 7 miles long....proportionately similar to Manhattan from our downtown to Reliant Park and when this corridor is attached to a San Fransisco type city configuration going west, we end up with a city that's about 10 by 6 miles ...for our dynamic core ...We have 3.5 downtown areas , if you include Greenway Plaza and have several distinct urban areas of interest within the core...historical district , theatre district , museum district , hopefully 2 shopping districts if the Pavillions and Foley's/Macy's works out along with the Galleria etc. My hope for the downtown area is always that the wasteland that is south downtown will someday have a future but speculative real estate prices seem to prohibit that. Midtown is ripe for development that has yet to occur. We love Houston ..but how to convince other people to love this core and how to convince visitors to move here or how to convince businesses to move to this core is a different animal. My particular point in this discussion of the Grand Central Hub terminal as it interfaces with the Hardy Rail Yard development is that in order to bring a critical mass of people to the downtown area and midtown , point being , to make our city a real urban city , I feel that it would be necessary to not have a bus facility that would be connected to an integral part of the public transportation system. There will probably always be a need for intercity bus transporation , vis a vis Greyhound but I don't feel that that is an element of transportation that furthers the cause of city's healthy development ,low income, middle income , upper income not withstanding. I keep harping on this point because for what little benefit a bus company ,,Greyhound bus lines or any commercial bus line brings the area that it is located at , I see a downward spiral for that particular area of town due to the demographic peoples it attracts. If it weren't so and developers felt that locating their businesses next to a bus station would be a fantastic asset to their location then we should have all kinds of infrastructure and amenities ; buildings , condos , restaurants etc next to this bus station. As it is , no business is going to want to locate themselves next to a bus station .....period.....so why should a potential catalyst to the downtown area, the Hardy Rail Yards be any different...... That is my point............. Please don't tell me about how this does not represent the indigenous population or the reality of the population or how one is being elitist. This dynamic core of Houston must compete with other urban areas of Texas and the U.S and from what I see/read/talk about...not just with my aunties and uncles but with my business associates and clients. Houston is and has been falling behind in attracting a demographic of people and business that Austin, Dallas , Atlanta, Seattle seem to have no problem attracting. Houston is at a disadvantage from the get go in that it is not an intrinsically geographically pretty city as is Austin or Atlanta or Seattle, however with a little motivation and pruning we could be a very beautiful city ...ie Herman Park corridor, Memorial Parkway the possible Buffalo Bayou Park developement or see what Moody Gardens can do to convince . But a bus station in the new Grand Central Hub? Please reconsider this.

It is good to get some kind of response to this issue because most people who would not freqent the downtown area feel pretty much the way I do yet they would never think to respond or even know of this web site. No one is calling people icky because they are low income and eveyone needs a chance to be who they are and grow however when the city is constantly inviting this demographic into the dynamic core of the city...and who pays into this metro system....? surely not the person who constantly jumps on the train for free. surely not the unemployed youth or the homeless person walking the fringes of the city, nor the drug dealer or the greyhound bus passenger. Regarding who takes the bus, you are greatly exaggerating the demographic market and makeup by stating such an egalitarian list of people who use the Greyhound bus terminal. Again , the constituents in Midtown would ...love ....to see this business be relocated , but if I had to go to the Hardy Rail Yards on the Metro Rail that would hardly be a destination for me, a middle class person to wind up in the Greyhound bus station completely surrounded by low income people....who are not icky as you would put it but who are not my peers or people I have association with on any level. Most people in Houston feel this way and if you think that this rail system is some day going to be efficient you haven't been taking the rail. It is the most inefficient way to get around the city as past articles in the Houston Chronicle have stated. An at grade rail sytem is not efficient for Houston as spread out as it is and only an elevated or subterranean system would actually be efficient, Grand Central Hub or not. As an aside, Atlanta seems to have corralled the funding to do what they wanted to do with their system, at grade or elevated but of course that was before the competition for federal funding really kicked in and now Houston is stuck with an at grade system.

Also, it would be interesting to write our city council members and ask them why they feel the need to put the Greyhound bus terminal on the border of the Hardy Rail Yard project and tie this in to the rail system. Is that supposed to make our city livable or humanitarian? People in Midtown would be extremely happy to see the Greyhound bus terminal leave the area as this has only attracted street people and local drug pushers to easily blend into the already down and out crowd at the bus station. Now we want to take this bus crowd and happily bring them into the Hardy Rail Yard developement where city council wants low income housing. Have you ridden on the Metro Rail ? It's primarily a glorified bus whose ridership depends on low income groups of people to make transfers from the bus to the rail. Now we want to tie this into a Grand Central transportation hub for.....more low income people? I feel that the bus terminal needs to be relocated to an area away from the dynamic core of the city....perhaps around hwy 59 and 610 and tie this into the city with an existing bus route from that area. I feel that the Hardy Rail Yard should be developed for middle to upper income people and that the Metro Rail should pursue an elevated system or pursue something on the scale of Atlanta's Marta system , though to be honest with you, Marta has not made that much of a dent in the transportion problems in that city and has actually caused some major demographic shake ups.

I believe many people in this web site and so many countless others in Houston would like to see a dynamic corridor established that would someday join other dynamic corridors and urban areas to create a meaningful pedestrian oriented type city. Some people think that ...''diversity" is a mandated politically correct movement however I see this as a hindrance to constructive development where what is needed is homogeneity of at least income and mentality ...if not culture. I personally do not want to rub elbows with people who are low income, those teens who listen to rap music and call themselves gangsters,who may or may not have mental disorders or people who are substance abusers though I do firmly believe they need our help and love as anyone else. Putting people of dissimilar backgrounds and incomes together in a potentially important and dynamic development , as in the Hardy Rail Yards, is a perfect way to squander one of Houston's few possible meaningful moments of growth in the right direction. For all of those urban planners who disagree please not how large the homogeneous areas around Houston have grown over the past 20 years and imagine what kind of city we would have if so much of that development was in downtown or midtown or even in the area south of Reliant Park but cannot happen because no one , including our greatly ...diverse....city council can convince people or developers that living in Houston would be like living tension free as people live in the suburbs, not having to constantly look over your shoulder at the person who is paralleling your path or by worrying about your children going to a school that will sabotage the child's education and put the child in the path of inner city school violence.

Think Las Vegas.....

From the only drawing that we have of the hotel, the interior layout does not in any way look like the Gaylord Texan and if anyone has been out to Las Vegas lately, the Astrodome hotel would not be any different than that of say a New York NY or of a Venetian Hotel or any of the other faux Las hotels...It would be nice if they could do a recreation in detail of the 1800's perhaps even better than what's offered in the Woodlands Townsquare and something better than molded rock formations along a riverwalk but again we're talking about today's construction. My idea to further the Astrodome hotel would be to , of course bury those ugly transformers on the east side of the building and connect the dome with a walkway and tramway that would be partially covered with an arched roof and landscaped both with shade trees and palm trees that would go to the Metro train station to quickly link the hotel with the rest of the city.

I for one would love to have Barnes and Noble to read at and then walk around the area , have something to eat and be able to take the ....ahem...train to other areas on the Metro line...However even though we have a public library, I don't care to visit it as there are too many homeless or transient people in the area loitering around...haven't been back to the library since my last experience...but if Barnes and Noble could keep out the people who would just use it to loiter in and sleep in the chairs...the bookstore would definitely be a place to read, have coffee and people watch.

that's my dogs name but I like it better than mine for this thread

I feel that the Astrodome hotel should be done in a historical motif but only if that means recreating the the effect in detail and not creating a pseudo modern historical type building but we all know that that means money. Perhaps the contributors to this thread need to look at what can and cannot work for an interior ex sports complex and what people can relate to as visitors to a hotel if they keep Las Vegas in mind. Having seen all the interiors in Las Vegas Hotels on the strip I would say that the problem of deciding on a motif for the Astrodome hotel can be compared to what works in a large enclosed hotel in Las Vegas. You decide....everyone has their favorite interior....however I favor the historical motif as I enjoy victorian buildings or those period buildings from the 1800's as I have found them to be the most human oriented and warm type building that I would want to walk around or have business in. I think that the riverwalk theme is something we all love and if it looks like a replica of something in the past ...remember that all architecture is of the past...even those buildings just built last year....It's just that some architectural forms retain their relevancy forever while others ...especially the modern lose their appeal in only a couple of decades....