kzseattle
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Posts posted by kzseattle
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anyone been to kaveh kanes coffee place on prarie for breakfast/brunch? i stopped in last saturday while checking out the market square market and it looked promising. unfortunately i had already been to breakfast on the way downtown since i wasn't sure if anything was open that early, but the counter guy told me they were open until 1am so they must be doing something right. we bought lunch from the food vendor at the market because i wanted to support the venue, and met dave the guy who runs the show. hopefully more people will start checking it out because it was a ghost town and the place could really use some foot traffic. great weather, great live music and the food was much better than i expected. i would be interested to hear from anyone who frequents keveh kanes coffee because i was thinking of having breakfast there the next time i go to the market square thing.
deb martin
You know, it would be a shame if Market Square is a ghost town most of the time since that would give an indication that Houstonians prefer their cars over their feet. We all clamor about pedestrian friendly venues in downtown when those that already exist there are being ignored. Perhaps that is why the developers do not choose downtown for those kinds of projects no matter how much we complain. Perhaps they know better. Apparently, the imagination of most Houstonians doesn
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I agree. 59 is a better drive to and from the airport. Mayor White did say something, last year I believe, about tearing down the billboards.
What about Hardy Toll Way? Is it better than 45 and 59?
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Westhimer needs a rail Over or Underpass where it crosses into Highland Village. That area looks to good for train tracks to be right there.
Yup, I wish they did something there for both Westheimer and San Felipe but at least for Westheimer. That place is just too inappropriate for a rail road crossing. It is right in Uptown and right on its main drag, that is, Westheimer.
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I happy that Fry's at least will target older shopping centers and inject them with life.
I would like to see that happen but how could Fry's make that happen?
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This is the information you should of known before doing business with The Cordish Company the Baltimore Developer.
How unfortunate! Of all the developers in the world, Houston had to pick Cordish to work on Bayou Place
In another thread, someone mentioned a major project planned for downtown Kansas City. I was glad to learn about it but then discovered that Cordish Company was behind that project which spoiled the mood.
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Thank you so much. We look forward to visiting Bentwater and surrounding area this summer. The only drawback we see is the summer heat.
Oh well, that could be a big drawbrack! Heat and humidity can ruin the impression of even the best of places. I am new to Houston myself but from what I have been told, April may be the best time of the year because greenary is back and the weather is generally nice. From Nov to April, weather is fine but Houtson looks less greener. From June to October, greenary is at its peak but so is the heat.
May I ask why did you pick Bentwater as a potential destination after retirement? I am assuming low cost of living is a factor since most people usually head to Florida or California after they retire. Or so is my impression.
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This sounds exciting but i am a little confused. Are there two Pavilions in Houston that are supposed to be going up? I remember reading about the same type of project in the Galleria area off Post Oak. So there's a similar project proposed for downtown? If so, that might really boost Houston's downtown image.
Yeah, thats right. The one in Galleria area is going to replace the existing center that is called Pavilions. I dont know what the new development would be called.
The one in downtown is being developed by the same company that did Denver Pavilions and that is why they are calling it Houston Pavilions.
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I just want to know but sometimes driving along 45, i see dated and rusty looking old shopping centers and mobile home parks off the freeway, it sort of gives a presentation of Houston as a big "hick" town. I wish they would convert some of these old ugly looking structures that are barely standing into some nice town centres and villages. Alot of Houston is nice, ie on the westside, but they need to do something about the eastside and parts of I-45.
I know that before the Superbowl, the city tried to plant trees along I-45 to hide those ugly structures or at least make the freeway seem better than it is. The city even instructed cab and limo drivers to consider alternate routes when bringing guests from IAH to Houston. However, those greedy businesses protested against the plantation of the trees complaining that they would hurt their businesses as they would make them less visible from the freeway. Well, I know there are plans for the expansion of the 45. Perhaps, that would remove some of the clutter. Otherwise, if they dont want trees, the city should build a wall 10-feet tall on both sides of the freeway as an alternative!
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Well KZ, I'm just as new as you when it comes to looking for the flowers, but I have lived here in the south my whole life. So I can tell you all about May weather. It will be in the high 70's in the morning and will quickly run up to the high 80's low 90's depending on the percipitation. Hummidity is at least 90% any given day also.
It might feel bad at the time, but just keep reminding yourself that July & August are still coming!
And yes, I wish every day was like today. I've been eyeballing KCM ever since that thread about shopping popped up.
Hey 27, I thought that, being from South and all, you would be used to the heat and humidity of this region. But you scare me the most about it!
I came to Houston for a couple of days in August before I moved here. It was actually quite pleasant. I am sure I got lucky. But that gives me hope that at least a few days here and days would be ok.
I am not sure I have mentioned it before but I have lived in Asia for a while and am familiar with heat and humidity to some extent. In places like Kuala Lumpur, it is hot and humid every single day of the year!
KCM, eh! I am sure it is nice and that shopping thread has surely changed the perception of that city for some of us. One would thing I would like to say though is that sometimes pictures dont tell the whole story. So I would check it out in person. I was reading about the project going in downtown KC. However, some of the things such as sports facilities, hotel and convention center have already happened in Houston DT. So Houston DT has already gone through the early phase. The main elements still missing in Houston are residential and retail developments. Hopefully, Pavilion would fix some of that. One thing that bothered me about the project planned for downtown KC is that the developer is the same company that did Bayou Place in Houston which unfortunately didn
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My parents would be visiting me in May. How is the weather in Houston that time of the year? I know, I know it is going to be hot and humid with mosquitoes. However, are there at least a few days when the temperature is in mid-70s and humidity is low when I can take them out? Speaking of which, it was a beautiful day today! I wish the entire months of April and May was like this. Speaking of April, wild flowers are in full bloom now. What is the best place near Houston (within 3 hours drive) where one can find those blue bonnets that you often see in Texan post cards? I assume it would be in the Hill Country. Is there a specific location in the Hill Country? In Washington, we used to go to Skagit Valley to see the Tulip Festival where the entire fields would have nothing but tulips!
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All the webiste says is "coming soon"...
Crap..I justr hope this does not go like the Shamrock..
Say..watever happened to the Sham, anyway?
Well, the project thats going up in Memorial City also had a website for a while that just said "Coming soon....". So just because the website doesnt have enough information doesnt mean much. They probably havent finalized the details yet and they probably do not want to give details that may change.
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Thanks for the info KZ.
How about the IT job market in Houston, would you say
it's solid? Is the pay much less than Seattle? Something
like 75% less?
On specific Houston area home appreciation rates, I've
Googled on that for awhile, but didn't find much.
I am not sure about the state of IT job market in Houston. I believe I targeted only two companies and was hired by one of them. Since you are actively seeking employment here, you may have a better idea than me.
Houston is certainly not as important a center of software development as Seattle, Bay Area or Boston. I think IT sector is more extensive in Austin and Dallas. However, in Dallas, it is mostly due to telecomm and semiconductor industry and Austin took a hit when dot-com bubble burst. However, among the three cities, Austin is surely more active in software development.
In Houston, I believe that NASA in southeast and HP in northwest Houston are large employers of software developers. BMC Software is another large software development company. Beside them, financial institutions and oil companies may have internal IT positions but I would imagine they are mostly related to the management of their IT infrastucture as opposed to Java development.
By the way, I know you mentioned that commute to DT would be important for you when looking for a house. However, since you dont have a job here yet, are you sure it would be in DT?
For salary info, you could look into www.salary.com. The pay is certianly less than San Jose area but that area is also expensive. However, compared to other places, pays in IT sector here would probably not be that different. By the way, salaries in Seattle aren't too high either because of Microsoft which was able to keep salary level low as employees cared more about stock options than their pays.
I know I got a salary boost when I moved here.
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By the way, this thread has some horror stories about home
appreciation in the Houston area:
http://www.houstonarchitecture.info/haif/i...?showtopic=1427
Is it difficult to sell a home in the Houston area?
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We have no shopping districts here. Only strip malls all along the freeways, and huge monstrous malls 47 miles from downtown. That's it.
Please ignore this irrelevant post from LTAWACS!
The OP is looking for shopping districts, period. A shopping district is a place that offers shopping options and there are plenty in Houston. The term does not dictate that it HAS to be an open-air urban shopping area right in the middle of a downtown.
The Uptown area definitely qualifies as a shopping district and indeed few places in the country can match the quantity and variety of shops in that area due the presence of Galleria, the nicest and one of the largest indoor shopping mall in the country, as well as other open-air centers such as Highland village and Uptown Park. And, of course, Pavilion, Fashion Square and the strip mall across it would become shopping destinations of their own.
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Well, I am looking forward to moving to houston to experience the strip mall and mall shopping. However, the first place I will go when I visit back to KCMO is the Country Club Plaza. If you haven't ever been here to experience look at the following web site I found.
http://imageevent.com/kcgridlock/kansascitymissouriplaza
By the way any other Houston shopping pics?
Hey 97saturn, are the shopping centers that you listed n or urban (in downtown KC)? If they are suburban, then you can ignore all the posts complaining about lack of shopping options in DT Houston which would be nice but is something you wouldnt probably care about.
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I am sure most people would prefer not to shop in a mall that is being demolished with a few bulldozers roaming around
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It is pretty sad. I am quite ashamed with this country's government as of late. People don't care about other peoples lives anymore. I signed a petition to have that judge impeached.
R.I.P Terry Schiavo
Regardless of legality of the whole matter, as the real value of which is nothing more than a piece of paper, if one considers this purely from the perspective of a human being, then what was done with Terri and her parents was nothing less than inhuman. Whether or not her husband was her legal guardian, she was the first-born biological daughter of her parents who started her life and raised her to her maturity. As a parent, can you imagine the anguish of helplessly watching your offspring starved to death AND not even allowed to see her at hour of her death? After he is remarried, which he would most likely do, the husband would no longer be Terri
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kz, that's exactly right. Property owners don't want to see their value or their amenities reduced at all. "not doing as well as before" doesn't cut the mustard.
I'm not sure about your answer to the HOA maintenance issues. The Villages all maintain seperate HOA's so I don't know who is responsible for what. Before Clear Lake City was annexed, they were doing their own esplanade/median/curb detail through a private company, but after the annexation the city of Houston did the common areas and they did a real crappy job, letting too much time go between cuttings. I remember the complaints resurfacing when the Kingwood annexation began.
Part of the HOA dues when we lived there was private garbage pick-up. It was quite nice; little golf-cart-truck looking things would scurry up your driveway, dump your garbage in the back and put your cans right back where they were. You never had to drag your cans to the curb. I haven't seen that anywhere since and wonder if they still do it.
See? And then folks complain why do people choose to live outside the limits of COA. Given the prospect of reduction in property values and possibility of deterioration of public services, it seems highly unlikely that Woodlands would choose to become part of Houston.
It is unclear to me, however, how would the responsibilities for public services be split between COH and Woodlands Association. Would its schools become part of HISD? Police and fire departments would certainly be responsibilities of COH. What about roads, medians, parks and other public amenities? I know that currently residents of Woodlands pay about %0.5 of the values of their properties to Woodlands association to maintain those amenities. If those responsibilities stay with Woodlands association, then perhaps it may not see much change after annexation. Otherwise, the quality of those services could go downhill.
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The area is densly populated. Sure it is not Downtown (which is not densly populated) or Midtown, but this area is obviously ready for this type of development. The mall has transformed into probably the #2 Mall in the city and with a successfull malls come all the ancillary developmeny.
OK, I have no real way to quantify Memorial City as the #2 mall in the city, but I can not think of a nicer mall with better tenants besdies the Galleria.
Well, actually, it is # 2 mall in terms of size/retail space. Indeed, it is the 17th largest malls in the nation.
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Well, you have Kingwood, Clearlake & Willowbrook as the last 3 major unincorporated areas that were annexed. They seem to be doing well. They might not be doing as well before, but they aren't ghetto either.
Keywords : They might not be doing as well before. If this is the case, then it would be hard to convince those in Woodlands to become part of Houston. While COA would add 100,000 tax payers, what would Woodlands "gain" by being annexed? I wonder what would annexation would do to property values.
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Well, they'd do it just the same way they do it in Kingwood, Clearlake, Blue Ridge (Fondren south of the Belt in FB county), IAH, & Willowbrook.
So what is Houston's track record with regards to annexation? Did the areas they annexed detoriated, stayed the same or improved?
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WTF?! Annex to teach them a lesson?
Yeah...uh, I'm sure that would teach them whatever it is you think they ought to learn.
I grew up in Kingwood and know a lot of folks that are still seething due to the annexation. I don't blame 'em. The last time I was there the medians and grass looked like crap. But, ultimately it isn't the City of Houston's fault that Kingwood decided to chop down all their trees in the front and ruin their image....I cringe whenever I think about it.
Isn
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The neighborhood back behind the NW corner of westheimer and gessner with the 3-6 million dollar properties has tons of peacocks. We can see them all from our windows of our offices. They roam from property to property, not sure who they may belong to.
Yeah, I have seen them too. Always wondered who own them.
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Austin Business Journal - 1:30 PM CST Wednesday
Census: Austinites' commutes average 21.9 minutes
As much as Central Texans grumble about traffic, Austin workers actually had the best commute time among the state's major cities in 2003, according to a U.S. Census Bureau survey released Wednesday.
Nationwide, Austin ranked 39th among 66 largest U.S. cities for the longest commutes, with an average of 21.9 minutes in 2003.
Houston ranked 15th nationwide, with 25.8 minutes, followed by Dallas, ranked 29th with 23.6 minutes; Fort Worth, at No. 33 with 22.8 minutes; and San Antonio, at No. 36 with 22.5 minutes.
Taking the dubious top spot nationwide was New York City, with an average commute of 38.3 minutes in 2003, followed by Chicago, 33.2 minutes, and Newark, N.J., 31.5 minutes.
Among the 10 cities with the highest average commutes, New York and Baltimore lay claim to the highest percentage of people with "extreme" commutes -- 5.6 percent of their commuters spent 90 or more minutes getting to work in 2003.
Which city had the best commute time among the 68 cities mentioned? That honor goes to Corpus Christi, with an average commute of 16.1 minutes in 2003.
So 14 cities have worst traffic than Houston but for some reason when people talk about Houston, traffic is the first thing that comes to their minds!
The Mercer Houston At 3388 Sage Rd.
in Uptown and Galleria Area
Posted
I assume you are talking about Mercer Tower (or is Mark II ? ). It is too ugly for anyone NOT to notice it. And, yes, it has been bashed several times on this forum.