kzseattle
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Posts posted by kzseattle
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____. Let's face it, the "nice" parts i think Houston has is uptown, medical center, woodlands, & NASA
Actually, my list of "nice" parts of Houston area is a bit larger. It include neighborhoods along Memorial and Briar Forest/San Felipe, Uptown, most of the western half of inner loop (which include River Oaks, Montrose, West U, Rice U area, Heights etc), Sugarland, Woodlands, Kingwood and Clear Lake. And these are only those areas that I have seen. Still, they make up a very large land mass together. The western half of inner loop alone is about 50 square miles, if I am not mistaken (assuming inner loop
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Some of that comes from the fact that until the 1930s more people in this city depended on walking and streetcars to get around than automobiles. Everything was pedestrian friendly because walking was a lot more involved in getting to and from work, shopping, church, school, and other activities than it is now here.
But I do see your point. Zoning wouldn't solve all of the city's problems, but it probably would help with some of them.
Sometimes I wonder if absence of quaint pedestrian-friendly shopping venues has more to do with culture or availability than lack of zoning. For instance, Sugarland is zoned but until Town Center was built, it didn
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I visited Dallas alot growing up, but haven't visited it that much since i moved here. i really didn't notice or care about the things i reported in my post until i became a member of this forum.... whether it's good or bad, i don't know. I've noticed that when people describe Dallas as pretty or cleaner , they are usually refering to areas way north and out of the city limits like Plano,frisco, etc.... plano is nice, but so is the Woodlands and kingwood.Look, Houston is far from perfect, but even my
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No, he meant Greenspoint. And technically, it's in the city limits.
I meant, no where near Houston's DT.
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I do think that Dallas takes bolder leaps when it comes to fresh ideas. The plan to build a park over the Woodall Rogers, The Trinity River Project and the new buildings planned for the arts district will really put Dallas on the national radar.
I think Dallas takes bold steps since, for a long time, it has been trying hard to become or be considered the first-tier city in the nation. In contrast, Houston doesnt really take itself seriously. I think Houston has achieved what it intended to with that kind of an attitude. It's time to change.
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I grew up in Houston and can say that Greenspoint can hardly be described as part of Houston's skyline.
I guess he meant Greeway Plaza? You are right, Greenspoint aka Gunspoint is no where near Houston.
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So what are they going to do with the lots? Can they build if they build elevated?
I wouldn't worry too much about Meyerland's future. Our office just took two listings on new construction well over a million $$ in there!
Yup, Meyerland seems to be a pretty solid neighborhood.
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After reading some of the posts on this thread and others I got to thinking and I feel that good zoning and more green areas with lots and lots of trees (Not the stupid palm trees that are going up every where) would go a long way in impoving the way this city looks.
Hey, where are those palm trees? I havent seen many of those except a few planted here and there. Did you mean Clear Lake area?
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...its Texas during the winter...pretty much bland and dead everywhere...
Actually, pretty much any place is bland and dead during Winter (well, except Hawaii), let alone Texas.
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Brijonmang I agree completely with everything you just said. I am a native Dallasite but I could never see myself degrading Houston to the extent some people bash dallas or vice versa. I like Houston and I truly believe that it holds a bright future.
Houcajun I can't understand how you can completly stereotype a city with such a quick visit. All cities have their bad parts and you seem to have visted some of the least attractive places in the area. I recommend you visit the uptown area of the city the next time you're in town and then see what you think. I'm sure you'd enjoy it.
I am planning to visit Dallas for the first time in a few weeks. Please tell me where the nice parts are so I don
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It is possible to have planning and design ordinances without zoning, but it is extremely difficult. Typically planning and architecture stuff goes with the zoning ordinance, because the way you regulate design works in tandem with the way you regulate land - e.g., if Maple St. is a commercial avenue, then you will put all your guidelines for commercial architecture on it.
For the past couple of years the City Planning Dept. has been trying to pass an "Area Plan" ordinance that would allow neighborhoods to create design regulations and incentives for their area, the main area in mind being Main St., but so far it has been brought down by property rights opposition. If you pass zoning, you don't have to have this battle - things like this simply get decided on whenever the zoning ordinance is revised.
The zoning ordinance for College Station states that any commercial building facade must have at least 25% natural materials (i.e. brick, stone), and if painted, the paint must be selected from a list of 243 approved "earth-tone" colors. In Austin, there is currently a plan to rezone the area west of Guadalupe St. (near UT campus) to allow taller residential buildings with a greater number of units per lot, and to stipulate that such buildings must provide ground floor retail. The idea is to make possible an exciting urban environment.
The reason why it is so difficult to have quality, pedestrian friendly development without zoning is that there is no way for developers to protect their investment. What if someone decides to take a risk with a mixed-use apartment complex with balcony lofts and a sidewalk cafe environment, and then somebody else builds a monstrous parking garage across the street, with cars spilling out or trucks unloading all evening long right across from our nice cafe? People stop going there, noone wants a balcony loft facing a parking garage, and the developer loses on his investment.
The top developers in Houston - Richard Everett, Ed Wulfe, etc. - guys who build fancy stuff like this in other cities, have said repeatedly that they cannot build their best stuff in Houston because there is nothing to protect the investment. In a sense, the developers have their hands tied behind their back architecturally, and the only environment they can afford to worry about is the private environment - not the public one.
What you end up with is a city where everything is turned away from the street, where dwellings are walled off or turned to face towards an inner courtyard, and where the only thing that greets the street are throw-away facades and parking spots - because it's too risky to do anything else!
Good points, H-Town man! However, there are a couple of things that I would like to say.
First, the walled out dwellings can be found just about anywhere. You can find them in the zoned city of Sugarland as well as in any master-planned community. It seems to me therefore that it has more to do with "prestige" or perceived sense of heightened security than zoning. Also, I think another purpose of the walls or turning the front of houses inward is to shield those homes from heavy traffic on major thoroughfares. Besides, homeowners wouldnt want their kids playing on the sidewalks of a heavily traveled road. For instance, can you imagine the homes in Briar Grove Park facing the Westheimer instead of quite residential street as they do now?
About developers not putting out their best stuff, that certainly makes sense in a risky area or an area in transition. I would think, actually, I would hope that they could build their best stuff in an established area such as River Oaks, Uptown or Memorial.
By the way, just to make my position clear, I actually favor zoning. However, like I said before, some time I think there may be other factors responsible for current state of affairs that need to be considered as well.
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The Crescent was not built AS A PART of the uptown revitalization project in Dallas.
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Is this near the Prison land that just got sold. I am not really sure where the prison land is.
Isnt the name of this community going to be Telfair? If I am not mistaken, it is the empty land that on the south west corner of Highway 6 and US 90 (across Walmart).
By the way, I was in Sienna this weekend. Indeed, it is pretty out there.
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I have excluded areas within western half of inner loop since they are already going through the process. I know some of you may not be happy with the process due to the loss of historical significance of an area or the quality of revitalization itself. However, that's a separate matter. Assuming that things are going to change, what would you speculate given the choices above?
By the way, I havnt listed Northline, Fifth Ward, Acres homes and other areas at the edge of the city etc since, frankly, I dont see much hope in the near future but then that's what I think.
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Three Brother's on Gray and Acadian on W Alabama--best in town.
Thanks for the suggestions although I headed to inner loop before seeing some of these. I checked out Central Market for the first time. Very cool. They got some unique and good quality stuff. I wish we had more of those.
I also went to Three Brothers at Gray and Shephard. However, they were close at 7.00
I will try it again.By the way, getting off topic, I haven
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Ok, how do I fix the typo in the title?
Oh well, read Godo as Good
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Hello everyone,
Could someone recommend a good bakery for a birthday cake? I could always go to Kroger or Randalls but I wanted to get something nice. After all, its my daughter's first birthday!
What about Central Market? I have never been there so I could check it out as well.
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Wow, that's great they doing something for the homeless vets. Degeorge is a good man thinking about the homeless vets, and it looks like its going to be a pretty nice building for them. Not only that, but residental programs to help the veterans to adapt to independent living.
And why y'all so hard on homeless? Every major city have problems with this situtation. You think we bad, you haven't seen New York, L.A., Chicago, etc. I can go on and on. So chill, Houston's homeless is not near is bad as those cities. y'all talk like we're the captial of homeless. Get real.
I think the Lincoln Park right behind the White House is a heaven for homeless, or so I heard. The Central Park in Manhattan, surrounded by the prestigious and upscale neighborhoods of Upper East Side, Upper West Side and 5th avenue area, isn
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http://houston.bizjournals.com/houston/sto...ry4.html?page=2
"Meanwhile, the Mercer will begin pre-sales in the next couple of weeks on a second condominium tower. Only about eight of the 54 units in the original 30-story building at Richmond and Sage are still available.
The second 30-story building will also have 54 units, priced from the low $400,000s to more than $1 million for a penthouse."
I cant believe people are paying $1 million to live in that! It looks like a college dorm building. I hope the second tower is better than the first.
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Campaigns for local issues are decided by who has the advertising money. In the 1993 (or was it '91?) zoning referendum, early polls showed that Houstonians favored zoning. Then a large coalition of powerful developers hired Dennis Calabrese to design an advertising campaign that would scare Houstonians away from zoning. The slogan he came up with was "The Only Thing Worse Than A Bad Plan Is No Plan At All." The idea was to admit that planning in Houston was bad, but that with zoning it would be miserable, because the zoners didn't have a plan. It didn't make a lot of sense, but it worked, and zoning lost by a huge margin.
Most of you have probably seen this guy's work on a more recent slogan: "Costs Too Much... Does Too Little." He was hired by Texans for True Mobility for the anti-rail campaign a couple years ago. This time, however, he lost.
Wow! So one guy single-handedly changed the fate of Houston! Where does he live? Sugarland? Woodlands? Dallas or Austin, perhaps?
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I think that our opressive property tax structure also plays a sizeable role in keeping housing prices down....I know you said cost of housing, but I think you mean not the TCO of housing, but rather, prices of the actual real estate....no?
Yes, I meant the actual price of real estate. Infact, I mentioned in my cost that high tax rate actually makes up a lot of the difference between TCO of housing in Houston vs other expensive cities.
Indeed, I think the tax rate is high because the actual price of real estate is low. For example, the price of real estate is roughly 2.5 times higher in Seattle but the tax rate is roughly that much lower. So, Seattle gets the same amount of money for a house with low rate that Houston gets with high tax rate.
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Midtown- Back off with your constant insults. You rarely add anything substantive to this board but pipe in with things like "print it" and "back to school." It's really getting old.
As for why the current housing trends should concern us.
There are 10% more new homes sitting vacant right now than there were this time last year according to MetroStudy. This is largely a result of a massive influx of spec home building by large developers hoping to cash in on the record low interest rates creating a much wider pool of first time buyers. There appears to be little slow down on this phenomenon.
That's a deadly combo considering that numerous reports have indicated that many of these first time buyers really cannot afford the houses they are being approved for. If there is a slight downtown in Houston's economy, we will be headed towards foreclosure rates that will rival the 80s oil bust.
Additionally, the surge in low end buyers (over 70% of the new homes constructed in Houston in 2004 were priced under $200,000 and 43% under $150,000) has created a piss-poor rental market with vacancy rates in the mid 80% range.
Both of these conditions make me wary.
I would imagine that almost every major city is facing the same scenario. So, this isnt specific to Houston. The housing/construction boom is nation-wide. Indeed, I would think that Houston is relatively safer since the prices havent balooned as much as in other places as LA, Seattle, Virgina, NJ etc. I would equate current real estate boom with dot-com bubble. However, if there is real estate crash, one would hope that low prices in Houston should cushion the blow to some extent.
As for the rental market, I always wonder why they keep building more apartments. Maybe, the builders are hoping the housing market would crash sometime in the future? Maybe they know better? However, isnt it better to own than to rent? Also, if rental market doesnt recover, I would expect some of the underperforming apartment complexes (read slummy) being torn down and replaced with houses or some other commercial properties. Some units could be converted to condos. The rundown apartment complexes have often been blamed for conditions in areas like Sharpstown, Alief, Gunspoint etc.
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Of course our never ending land source is a major factor in our low housing costs. It's also the main factor in why our quality of life rates so low when compared to similar sized cities.
Additonally, is it really such a good thing to have such undervalued real estate?
I ask this because my guess is that another reason we have such low housing costs is because we are one of the last regions that allows developers a blank canvas for development. We allow developers to continue to clear cut the pine forests in order to build cheap homes on 6,000 acres. We allow them to pave over the Katy Prairie and demand 24 lane highways for access that get built on the taxpayer's dime.
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Agree with KZ!
There are a number of other factors that influence our housing costs such as weather, transportation and labor costs.
Back to school.
I just got off phone talking to a friend of mine in Seattle. He is trying to buy a house and what he told me is scary. He is trying to get a Quadrant home (a Quadrant home is basically Seattle's version of KB home but twice as expensive). Only 6 homes remains and there's a list of 60 applicants trying to get one of those! Obviously, it is a seller market which explains high prices.
When I was looking for a home in Seattle, I was a day late in filing paper work and the house was sold. The builder raised the price of next available home (same floor plan, same street) by $35,000!
It is crazy over there!
I will try it again.
Shamrock Tower At 617 Main St.
in Houston Neverbuilt
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Wow! I didnt know zoning dictates that much. Well, if only for this, we need zoning pronto!
By the way, someone on this forum mentioned that businesses in Houston are required to allocate a certain space for parking lot and that space is too large. If a business wanted to build the structure closer to the street, they needed to get a special permit to bypass the setback requirement. I wonder why the heck would city impose such a requirement. The new planning guidelines are supposed to rectify that. Or so I heard.