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'Stonian

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  1. 'Stonian
    Looks like a crane to me..., Here we go!!
  2. 'Stonian
    My bet is it's the site of the older Avalon apartments on Westheimer between Shepard and Kirby. I love all the new redevelopment inside the loop however I just wish developers would target more run down strip centers and empty lots. If the goal is to get more residents living inside the loop, then tearing down older complexes and replacing them with newer ones really mutes the population gains.
  3. 'Stonian
    Hopefully someone from Hines in a position to make decisions regarding retail for this project reads this blog and reconsiders retail here because it really does appear to be a no brainer. I wonder if parking considerations factored into any decision not to include retail here. The retail spaces would almost be forced to rely on the Galleria or Transo's parking garages because the 518 spaces in Waterwall Place's parking deck would hardly accommodate 322 residences and their visiting guests (1.5 cars per unit is somewhat standard for these type developments) let alone additional retail visitors. Personally, I know I have a difficult time finding on-street parking whenever I visit the Waterwall Park.
  4. 'Stonian
    Should we call this a Regent's Square construction Kick-off!? http://www.chron.com/business/homefront/article/High-rise-kicks-off-major-urban-development-3788652.php The article states construction of other buildings after "The Sovereign" high rise apartments should start in about a year! Could take 10 years to complete But hey..., i'll take it!
  5. 'Stonian
    Looks like this latest version of River Oaks District will eventually get started considering the approved tax rebates from the City. http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/City-OKs-tax-rebate-for-developer-3773542.php
  6. 'Stonian
    Just 3 stories. :-/
  7. 'Stonian
    Thanks Golyadkin! Question about a near by development - Have they started demolition of the old 24 hour fitness gym further down Post Oak for the proposed new office tower?
  8. 'Stonian
    Houston's nightlife is "up and coming". Every time I go back there's a new spot to visit. I prefer more upscale type of places though, so most times you'll definitely have to kinda dress-up. No blazers or slacks required, but some places will require a collared shirt, no caps and hard sole shoes for sure. Still I'm somewhat laid back and casual so I always keep a pair of nice kicks in my car just in case I'm denied entry. H-town has its hood spots as well, but I can only do those places when I'm feeling gangster. As citykid09 stated earlier, we don't know how old you are, but if you are in your 20s or 30s, you may want to take a look at http://indmix.com/ to get a feel of some of the AA club scene in the Houston Area. That's a popular site in Houston and the spots they advertise attract a nice crowd, very similar to what Atlanta can give you at times.
  9. 'Stonian
    Embrace change, bite the bullet and move to H-town! I think you'll be just fine, but if you find Houston's black culture is not exactly on par with Atlanta, you can always hit up ATL every now and then for your "black-fix". As I stated in an earlier post, I'll be moving to Houston just as soon as I can sell (more like "give away") my condo in Atlanta. Many friends of mine have moved away in the past 2 years as well, mostly due to the economy. The A has lost some of it's luster recently.., it'll come back eventually but it's going to take a while.
  10. 'Stonian
    Well since Monorail was heavily discussed and pursued during the Kathy Whitmire era, it's been around 30 years or so and we're still at 7 miles of rail and finally expanding. If we haven't learned patience by now then I guess we'll never learn. :-/ And how can 1/4 of the sales taxes member cities give to METRO be considered a "handout" when it comes back to assist with road projects. These 15-20 ton buses (with passengers) use our streets as well and most likely do the most damage to the roadbed. In fact the roads could be considered "tracks" for the buses similar to rail is for the trains, so METRO is just as responsible for maintaining the roadbed as it is the bus fleet. Again, I AM PRO RAIL, but I'm also for well maintained local city streets. To say METRO is a "transit agency" and not a road builder would make sense if METRO only operated rail lines and did not use our roads to move it's buses to deliver "transit", however we know roads are a critical part of our transit in Houston.
  11. 'Stonian
    MetroMogul -- Even when the light rail line is "built out" with roughly 37 miles of rail, METRO will still be a bus system with minimal rail. No one's suggesting that METRO follow Dallas' lead with DART rail and build almost 100 miles of rail and attempt to supplant the entire bus system..., that would be ludicrous in a region as sprawled out as ours! I wish the anti-rail folks would just get over themselves. We've already started building our light rail "system" and there's nothing you guys are going to do to stop it -- Culberson and his cronies may attempt to "Delay" it but they definitely will not stop it. THIS TRAIN HAS ALREADY LEFT THE GATE!! Just accept the fact that you guys LOST that fight! Honestly I'm not at all concerned with the rail expansion opposition because there's some good that comes as a result of the continued debate -- I believe it helps keep METRO honest and realistic and our region will not get carried away with expanding rail in excess of what is prudent. I've always been and "middle of the aisle" type of guy and can see (and agree) with both sides of most arguments. Politically I'm an Independent (not Republican or Democrat) because I rarely agree 100% (or even 75%) with any particular group. Although I'm a strong rail supporter, I am NOT in support of METRO ceasing to give 1/4 of the collected sales tax back to it's member cities for road projects and re-construction and I will vote AGAINST the referendum! Have you guys driven around this city lately?? I'm almost embarrassed having to drive my visiting friends around town on these crappy roads. Many times I have to go way out of the way to avoid the embarrassment of hitting potholes. Without even being prompted, my passengers often comment "Why don't yall do something about these crappy roads?"and mind you I drive a big FORD F-150, not some go-cart. Any referendum that takes funds away from repairing our roads will get a big fat NO vote from me. We need MORE road repair funding, not LESS. If this means it takes METRO another 15 years to build out the rail line then so be it, I'm patient. Without a doubt, this City needs to find adequate funding for ongoing road repair and this means keeping what METRO gives back AND possibly raising taxes to supplement that. My guess is 30-40% of all roads in the city limits are in need of some form of repair and 20% of our streets are just downright shameful.
  12. 'Stonian
    Huge News! Could the Irving HQ be on the way as well... we'll see? Exxon had better keep that secret under wraps as long as possible because you know the North Texas (i.e. "Dallas") boosters would throw a supreme hissy fit. Haha, regardless, I'll take the 2100 jobs that come with moving the refining operations from the D.C. area (Fairfax Va.) to Houston. The Irving HQ with its 350 jobs would just be the icing on the cake, but make no mistake about it, these thousands of jobs are the "cake"! http://www.bizjourna...mobil-jobs.html http://blog.chron.co...0000-employees/
  13. 'Stonian
    While this explains the recent move to demolish the Pavilion, I'm still not sure what all this means for the overall BLVD place project. Ed Wulfe states in the article that selling 6.4 acres off to Apache allows the project to move forward this summer. This almost assures the project will be revamped in some major/minor way! http://www.chron.com/business/article/Apache-Corp-buys-a-big-chunk-of-BLVD-Place-3603732.php
  14. 'Stonian
    My guess is this project is too big in its current state to get the massive capital that it needs to begin construction. The credit markets have somewhat thawed but banks are still gun shy about loaning the big money for these huge mixed-use projects. Ed Wulfe would be smart to break this project up into stand alone phases and piecemeal it. This can be successfully done and still keep the overall vision of the project, a vision that I've never been totally captivated by to begin with. The current vision is similar to "Uptown Park" but I think it should be more like "City Centre"!
  15. 'Stonian
    At the city level it's called Gross "Metropolitan" Product (GMP) of which Houston is in the top 5 of all U.S. MSAs, but Niche is right it doesn't necessarily mean the money stays here. Houston as a whole is comparably wealthier than most areas of the country and there's no reason for us not to get our act together in terms of development. Cities like Atlanta can zone even the poorest of areas to make them look planned and organized (decent). Without zoning, or at least more strict development codes, the only way the "free market" will develop more sophisticated areas in Houston is to do it voluntarily to attract the middle class to wealthy folks. That's why I'm all for more wealth in Houston.. it's our form of zoning! There's also a misconception that zoning only decides land uses such as residential, commercial, or light industrial and not other things like architectural styles, development orientation, landscaping requirements or sidewalk widths. However when an area is zoned for say light industrial and a developer wants to build multi-family residential on a particular lot, he/she applies for a zoning change. The city then uses their authority to approve or disapprove the zoning request as leverage to require all sorts of other stipulations before they will re-zone the property and allow the developer to start building. This is similar to the City of Houston's Planning Dept.'s "Request for Variance" process but zoning has more teeth because if the developer does not agree to the city's stipulations to put a spire on a building or add more brick to the facade then they risk not being able to build the multi-family units ALTOGETHER, whereas in Houston the developer could simply say "to hell with it, we'll stick to your parking and setback requirements, but we're still building the units". The 360 agreement approval for the new Heights area Walmart will act similar to zoning in that the city has required certain architectural stipulations before approving reimbursing the developer for planned infrastructure improvements. Walmart might have proceeded with construction regardless, but a developer with less-deep pockets might have had to abandoned the project altogether. Niche is cut from a different cloth than myself and I can respect that, but there's very few unplanned areas of Houston that I actually enjoy visiting. I get so tired of looking at rural, culverted ditches on the sides of raggedy, pot-hole filled roads with 3 ft sidewalks one mile from downtown Houston and seas of asphalt parking lots without a tree or bush in sight to break up the monotony! I can't wait til zoning comes up for a vote again. I'm hoping enough yuppies have moved to Houston over the past 10-20 years at least make it a close vote this time!
  16. 'Stonian
    Yeah they've started on the fenced in section north of Kipling. The permit sign says Phase II so apparently the two phases were switched at some point as noted in an earlier post, besides it wouldn't make much sense to start Phase III before Phase II. IMO the very fact that any section would start "second" would make it phase "2" regardless of what it was initially titled LOL. It doesn't appear any retail is included in this new phase, but I'm ok with that because they have plenty of retail in the 1st phase (almost 200,000 SQFT).
  17. 'Stonian
    They began construction on Phase II yesterday (Friday 4/13). Permits are posted and plenty of heavy equipment was feverishly working when I visited a friend who lives in Phase 1. They already had a pretty good sized hole in the ground. West Ave is an awesome development!
  18. 'Stonian
    Also, after thumbing through Wallace Garcia portfolio, they design great multifamily apartment projects with the majority of them in Houston, so this one at Lakeside should not disappoint.
  19. 'Stonian
    Sorry, I was confused about the exact location, thanks for clarifying. That other location at 8811 Lakes at 610 Drive appears to be another 319 unit apartment project by Grayco Partners called "Lakeside". http://www.smartapartmentdata.com/share/Reports/Houston_Construction.pdf Houston's intown apartment construction is getting crazy... which is a good thing!
  20. 'Stonian
    It's a huge apartment complex called "CONNECTION AT BUFFALO POINTE" that was mentioned in the Chronicle late last year. If I recall correctly, it's more than 350+ units and developed by a company called Embrey .
  21. 'Stonian
    Nancy got us good this time.... too funny!!!!
  22. 'Stonian
    Great News! Keeping the stadium at the Robertson site helps more with revitalizing the area between U of H and TSU. The area closer to I-45 would have more visibility but the manicured grass fields are currently not the rundown eyesore that the Wheeler/Scott intersection is. The new football stadium, Hofheinz's renovation, Metro's light rail and accompanying street reconstruction (somebody please reconstruct Cullen as well!), the new Cougar Place (Sophmore) and new Freshmen dorms on Wheeler, and the West Dining Hall will all be great improvements to the area and give it a "newer" feel within a couple of years.
  23. 'Stonian
    Great Question! Being an African-American (although I simply prefer "Black") and a native Houstonian who has live in Atlanta for the last 8 years with plans on moving back to Houston before the end of the year, I can say that you would be hard-pressed to find an equivalent of Atlanta's "AA" culture anywhere in the U.S. save for maybe the Washington D.C./Balitmore area and to a lesser extent Chicago or New York. While NYC has a huge AA population, it's considerably less "American" with it's strong, Dominican/Puerto Rican/Jamaican/Caribbean influences. Atlanta has always appeared to be more "straight-up" African American, with less foreign born black ancestry. Generally the further west you travel in the U.S., the less black, and hence less "black culture", you'll encounter. When comparing black culture in Houston and ATL you have to first take into account the fact that the Atlanta MSA has almost 2 million blacks (30% of its entire population) while Houston has about 1 million (roughly 17% of the population) and Dallas-Fort Worth a little less than 1 million (or 15%). Houston is also similar to NYC in that a good portion of its blacks are of foreign ancestry, mainly African and Caribbean. IMHO opinion I think Houston has a good mix and diversity of people. Whereas in ATL you could absorb yourself in black (african american) culture and never experience much outside of your race, that won't be as easy to do in Houston as you will miss out on much else of what the city has to offer. Houston's Hispanic, Asian, and Indian communities add considerably to the vibe of the city and I believe you would cheat yourself by not embracing or appreciating their culture. I do feel you on your main question though because I've asked myself time and time again "Can I submit to live full-time in Houston again, having become use to (spoiled by?) all the black culture of a place like ATL?" and I can honestly say that Houston has a large AA community and can replicate some of the black culture seen in Atlanta, but it will never be an exact equal. As stated earlier, the only cities I've found to replicate what Atlanta has in terms of black culture would be the Washington D.C./Baltimore area. Cities like Detroit, Memphis, and Birmingham are similar to Atlanta in terms of demographics however they are not nearly as affluent, neither do they give you that big city vibe. DFW is similar to Houston as far as black culture goes, however overall the area is not as diverse as Houston and as an earlier poster commented, you kind of sense more of a segregated atmosphere, although I sensed that same heavily segregated vibe when I first moved to Atlanta (and still do for that matter). If you choose to relocate, I think you'll eventually learn to love H-town. It will definitely take some getting used to if all you're looking for is an Atlanta copy. But eventually you'll expand your horizons and begin to appreciate ALL of the black culture the city has to offer. I hope that helps!
  24. 'Stonian
    The East end is all ripe for new development. Who's to say this area will remain as "industrial" as the area between the Fannin South and Reliant Park stations. Also I don't see a need for the rail to speed through this transitional East End area, esp. if it becomes more dense residential/light commercial as we're hoping. Maybe METRO is exercising some foresight? Just my 2 cents.
  25. 'Stonian
    What fool would drop deposit money down on a condo without knowing what property it's going to sit on!? I understand presentation and all but I'd think knowing the location of the tower and what the possible views/adjacent buildings were etc. might be kinda important (you think?). I suspect he's announcing now (with no property and no funding) simply to discourage other developers from going forward with their competing projects.
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