danes75

i've stated elsewhere on here that the worst part of Dallas is 30/35, so its not that I don't see it. but come on; the entire way from the woodlands to clearlake is ugly as sin. i mean, how many used car dealerships ARE there in Houston? at least in dallas most of them are in the fitzhugh/gaston area. i'll take the lighter route and say both cities have unique attributes and hope we can get back on the question of which one looks newer, not which one is ugliest.

Well, there are... ahem... several projects that begin "preleasing" and never actually go up. All that's needed is a trailer and rendering. I hate the Mercer... its one of the ugliest new buildings I've ever seen.

yay! i love talking about dallas. again, i think most people's opinions of the city are based on drive-through assessments... what can be seen from the highways. the remark about highrise buildings doesn't seem to reflect all the billion-dollar condo construction taking place along Turtle Creek. Houston has no comparison when it comes to those. to me, houston feels like a newer city. it is plagued by rapid growth problems like a poor infrastructure and stripmall madness. the feeling of newness is further emphasized by the fact that houston doesn't work a whole lot towards preserving its history. i've found very few areas that have been redeveloped here as they have in Fair Park, Deep Ellum, Lower Greenville, and the West End. as for skylines, it all has to do with occupancy. if no one is in the ones already built, then no one is going to invest in building another. it seems highrises are pretty much limited to downtown here in houston (and some in the galleria) but in dallas there are concentrations of them as far north as plano and richardson. i was looking for new office space for my ad agency there a few years ago and found a building that I loved... Class A, built in 1989, 27th floor, sweeping views of Trinity and Uptown. The list price was 32 bucks a square foot, which was WAY out of my price range. Just to see how low they'd go, I said we could only afford about 13/sq ft. They gave it to me for 12 and threw in two parking spaces.

Has anyone heard anything new on this? The properties (Robinson and the land/buildings to the south) have new for sale signs up. Used to be Stan Creech, now its Wheless Properties. Guess the apartment idea didn't pan out.

hmmm... Virgin sells other things besides CD's... so I doubt their entire business model is contingent on sales of music.

eh... ya the prices are still pretty high for a discount store. 300 bucks for a pair of candelholders? yeah... no.

i doubt both will ever be built. all metropolitan areas have rich histories of "twin tower" developments, rarely do both of them ever get built unless they are both started at the same time, or are small developments to begin with.

um yeah, their site doesn't mention the development (that i can find). dead in the water perhaps? ::edit:: found it, under "on the boards"... isn't there a stat somewhere that says like 2% of projects "on the boards" actually make it off? and semipro -- just because an artists rendering shows something doesn't mean it actually will have it. anyone remember what the artist rendering of the courthouse looked like? not like the actual building. and artists always seem to throw in a lake or ocean in front and a jungle behind buildings. http://www.altoonporter.com/projects/on_th...enter/index.php

yay cool. i wasn't aware 7-11 was thinking of moving. its not like they're that far away from downtown to begin with.

if they're building it in pasadena, and not by the lake, its cause the land is like a nickle an acre.

hey, yeah, thanks a ton!

Sunstar -- My post does not say anything of the sort. It says Dallas has done one thing, as well as other cities, and it worked. Instead of people jumping in to defend Houston for whatever reason and getting all up in arms for the mere comparison of the two cities, they should just fix the problem. Dallas is the closest major city to Houston... that invites comparison... and competition. I'm not saying Dallas is better, Houston sucks. I'm saying Dallas has done something right, so instead of sticking our heads in the dirt and pretending DFW doesn't exist, look at their model and improve on it, so we can actually be BETTER for once. HOUSTON19514 -- Read my previous posts. I outlined that in the late 80's (i think 1989) the City of Dallas partnered with Post Properties (they had a different name then) to create the Uptown Improvement District and taxing zone. Post Properties built numerous apartment complexes in the area and helped turn Uptown into what it is today. I'm looking for it right now, but there is a program where abandoned properties are sold by the city to developers at discounted rates if they agree to build low income housing on the land. I'll post it when I find it (the city redesigned their site and changed their url so my bookmark doesn't work anymore). I personally think the Crescent doesn't count when considering Uptown Dallas development. It was built there, not because they said "hey, lets build in Uptown", but because it was the closest to downtown they could get. When the Crescent was built, the Uptown district didn't even exist. It was formed in 1989... 16 years ago (but Uptown has looked great since before I moved there, which was in 2001). I don't see where I'm trashing Houston at all... and it seems that everyone but the last two posts agree, for the most part, with my assesment. Houston has problems. Steal whatever ideas we can from the other cities.

huh... thats strange. I could have sworn i read a chron article and a thread on here that they were bought by the same company and were going to put apartments on all the property.

Well, to be honest, Houston's uptown really isn't that similar to Dallas'. For the most part, there aren't really any office highrises in Dallas' uptown, if there is a highrise, its residential or a hotel. Taking into account the transportation system and distance and such, Houston's Uptown is better compared with North Dallas. They have about the same shopping (C&B, Pottery Barn, the Galleria) and the residential in that area is almost all apartment buildings. Dallas' north loop (610) also runs right through the middle of it as does the west loop here. The more I think about it, I really believe our failure to develop Midtown is because Houston hasn't partnered with anyone to help revitalize it. AND they make HORRIBLE decisions like selling abandoned property at significant discounts to developers with the agreement that they must put low-income housing on it. That's the BEST way to create an urban oasis-- make sure crack dealers and their clients can afford it.

Summer IS hot... but winter brown? Not really. One thing Dallas prides itself on is its landscaping. Drought? Hell no. They might institute water rationing but hell if you think they'll turn off the sprinkler systems. Even the highway medians have them. The next few months are probably the best time. There will still be pansies planted everywhere but the grass will be nice and green. The trees will have started either blooming (lots of pear trees in the spring and crepe myrtles in the summer) or leafing. Be sure to check out Dream Cafe, Paciugo Gelato, and Legacy Trading Company. :-D

hmmm.... so MY facts weren't wrong, it was 38. THEIR facts were :-)

Lighting is very important. When you see lights, especially creative lighting, it speaks of vibrancy and fun and beauty. Without lights, it makes people think everything's closed up for the night. Just think of Times Square. Lots of light, lots of neon. Maybe the businesses are open, maybe they aren't, but it LOOKS like the entire city is up and hanging out there. The Republic Center in Dallas has a wonderful kaleidoscope that changes images and colors on its sail. That Continental thing is kinda nice, but hello... its dark outside, who's the moron that thought navy blue would stand out???? Dallas' night life is picking up... quite a bit faster than Houston's it seems. My company designed the interior of Blue, a multilevel night club in downtown D, and recent stats show that residential development in downtown Dallas increased 747% between 1995 & 2005. AND... the same people don't run the buildings in both cities; the majority of highrises in Dallas are run by Trammell Crow.

so is this the development that bought the Robinson Public Warehouse building? i thought there was a post on here about it but i can't seem to find it now. if so, are they going to tear it down or reuse it? if not, is it up for sale again?

Well, zoning in Dallas restricts what can be built where. I may be totally wrong, but just from talking with a friend who works for City Hall, there are 3 or 4 main sections and then sub sections. (i.e., Mixed use residential & C2 [light commercial]). It really only tells you what can be built where, not the QUALITY of the development. But Dallas uses it to strictly enforce strip mall standards, which in my opinion, are the bane of Houston. It doesn't matter how nice of a condo building you construct if there's a strip mall with a 24 hour check cashing store next door. Dallas has no Midtown. The equivalent (according to location) is Uptown. The Dallas Uptown TIF was formed in 1988 as a partnership between the city of Dallas and Columbus Realty Trust (now Post Properties). That means it took 13 years (2001 was when I first visited the area) to go from a dump to a beautiful pedestrian friendly area with boutique shops and lots of patio dining. It was so successful that the first "philly-style" property (brick sidewalks, lantern lighting, small public parks every couple of blocks) that opened, Post Meridian, completely leased up in three weeks. Dallas' Uptown redevelopment is pretty upper-middle to upper class in terms of shopping. They have typical stores like Gap and J.Crew but also things like the Magnolia Film Center (an indy movie theatre), and of course a Starbucks on every corner. There are numerous high-end furniture and design boutiques. In 1998 the median income for the area was 99,000/person. ...Seems to me that this might be yet another case of "we don't need help because we're Houston" from the MMD and the MRA.

she looks like she's saying "god, please take me out of this city". either that or she's gasping for clean air up there.

ah... gotta love dallas! with 38% downtown vacancy, they're still building. i wish houston would get on the redevelopment bandwagon instead of just talking about it.

garden oaks here -- hey... what happened to Post Properties here in Houston? they've developed like 80% of uptown in Dallas. Its miles and miles of high-end, upscale Post and Gables communities with office space and storefronts. Why are there only two Post properties here... and most of the Gables properties are rundown B class complexes? i have a friend that lives in midtown and i have to say... apartments can't make it look much more ghetto than parts of it already do. driving to his new townhouse (built last year) i get the treat of passing section 8 housing where women come up when you're at the stop sign and ask if you want to buy a tube of toothpaste, vacant lots with bums sleeping in them, people's kitchen trash bags thrown in the ditch, and roads with signs posted that the city has proposed abandonment. ABANDONMENT??? why on earth would the city abandon a public street next to a park??? midtown is ghetto, and no apartment complex can make it worse. houston needs to get off its ass and fix ____. pass a no-panhandling law. i know the city of Dallas had a proposal a few months ago that required the possession of a state-id card with a valid address. if someone didn't have one (read= bum), the police took them to a shelter (or jail, i can't remember which). i dunno if it passed, but its a good idea. houston should be wooing world class developers to revitalize midtown with beautiful parks and a pedestrial friendly transit system. I may be wrong, but it seems like almost every street in houston is a damn 5 lane superhighway, and probably 1/3 of the pedestrial crossing signals don't work. why does EVERYTHING seem to look run down? this city has a severe case of a "houston's the most beautiful city in the u.s. no matter what anyone else says" inferiority complex. no its not. and anyone that says houston is more asthetically pleasing than say, Boston, has their head stuck up their ass. once a city councilperson said the reason houston had "growing pains" was because it was so ethnically and culturally diverse. more diverse than New York? Or San Francisco? come on. its like a parent with a bratty kid. stop defending it. just fix the damn problem. ------- i'm done ranting. all you fierce "houston's the most..." zealots can flame me now.

they also just opened that new george h.w. bush park across the street from it... i bet the new lofty parts of the building have a gorgeous view of the skyline and the park right under them. EDIT: I looked up the tax info, the property is still owned by the same guy and he's current on his payments. It does have a note that a mortgage company recently requested a copy of the tax statement, whatever that means.

that is a VERY old photo. the leasing sign is long gone, chain link and barbed wire have been put in the parking garage window openings, and there are several windows busted out both on this side and the one facing the highway... ... and for some reason, now it looks like the jacuzzi baths they planned on installing are all right up against the windows.