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'Stonian

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  1. 'Stonian
    I couldn't read the entire article because it was behind a paywall -- I knew he didn't have funding from the part of the article that I could read but if you don't have funding OR a site picked out why even announce the damn thing! And why on heaven's earth would you produce renderings showing your tower placed on someone else's property Maybe Pumapayam is right about Randall Davis...
  2. 'Stonian
    No, not at Post Oak and San Felipe. From the renderings this new tower looks to be adjacent to the (still to be demolished?) existing building that previously housed Hermes. The location is basically right smack in the middle of BLVD Place on Post Oak. That's why I speculated the Whole Foods site may still be a go.
  3. 'Stonian
    This announcement in the HBJ this morning that Randall Davis "hopes" to secure financing for a his Astoria condo tower which sits on Ed Wulfe's property speaks volume about the status and future of BLVD Place. http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/print-edition/2012/01/27/randall-davis-galleria-tower-rising-on.html I think you're correct lockmat..., piecemeal is the way to go..., maybe the project as a whole is just much too large to secure financing in this post-recession environment. The best thing about the rendering of this new tower is it looks as if the strip parking adjacent to Post Oak blvd is going away, at least directly fronting of this tower! This development needs to be more of a City Centre type design instead of an Uptown Park clone. Previously I believe Wulfe was going for something in between, but it just wasn't working. Although it appears the whole foods aspect is still intact, I'm all for a total redesign at this point.
  4. 'Stonian
    I'm not sure if this project is mentioned anywhere else here on HAIF but I was in Houston for my nephew's graduation last weekend and noticed 2 cranes in the Galleria/Uptown area near the St Regis Hotel and was surprised that no one here has mentioned it. I searched the net but could not find any renderings, just a brief mention from this development/consulting firm http://reddcore.com/projects.php. I'm excited about this upscale "8-story" Gables Project as I think the Uptown area needs more of these types of developments to become more walkable/livable in the future. If this project is anything like Gables' Memorial Hills project or its West Ave apartments then it should be a great addition to what I call the "forgotten side" of Uptown (just inside the loop). It looks like Houston is finally leaving the recession in its wake and beginning to start some of its long delayed projects from the last couple of years. Atlanta is dead right now as far as new development goes, so Houston it's your time to shine!
  5. 'Stonian
    Not hardly, so long as the Irving corporate executives keep making decisions to invest in billion dollar projects in the Houston metro area and relocate more jobs here, have at it! Thanks Irving.., thanks for showing H-town some Luv!
  6. 'Stonian
    Because this is Houston..., "Out with the Old, in with the New"!
  7. 'Stonian
    mfastx, the majority of those MARTA bus riders and rail riders are 1 in the same (counted twice). Pretty much here in Atlanta the bus system is just a feeder to the rail stations.
  8. 'Stonian
    CLARIFICATION: It does appear that the main entrance or "front" of the store will face the parking lot that is between the store and the AIG Tower, however there does also appear to be an entrance from the side facing Waugh as well (similar to the Sugarland store). I can't determine from the rendering if there will also be some sort of entrance on the West Dallas side. It's hard to imagine them totally turning their back to West Dallas, who knows, they may at least have windows on that side.
  9. 'Stonian
    I did see a rendering before where it was not obvious how the Whole Foods was going to be placed on the lot, but having personally walked the lot about a month ago, it appears that the building itself will be placed directly on the corner of Waugh & West Dallas (facing Waugh) & set back only about a 20 ft from the curb. The parking lot will be to the left of the building on Waugh (between the WF store & the 40 story AIG Tower). So I think they have indeed tried to make the project both pedestrian & auto friendly.
  10. 'Stonian
    I agree BLVD Place, Regent Square, and High Street would have (& still may) change the game for Houston. Houston was late to the game as far as building mixed-used urban infill developments. The credit crunch has slowed us down considerably & I'm not sure that was necessarily a bad thing. My hope is that City Centre (& West Ave to a lesser extent) will be the game changers. I'm hoping other developers see City Centre's success out on the west side and try to emulate it inside the loop. Here in Atlanta they were out front as far as securing financing for large urban infill developments & were able to complete quite a few projects before financing dried up. However, Atlanta severely overbuilt (a lot of those developments currently sit empty) & now they are paying the price with falling values which have disastrous effects on so many other fronts (i.e. local government tax collections, school budgets, lowered office rents, home values etc). Also at a time when we most need to be creating jobs, since everything is already built, construction related employment will be severely impacted for the forseeable future. I often ask myself would it have been better for all the proposed trendy developments to have been built in Houston & just sit empty until the economy improves (I mean at least they would have already been built right, huh?) & I must say that I'm leaning more towards the old saying of "Slow and steady wins the race"! IMO (& I'm no expert) Atlanta is about to experience something similar to what Houston experienced (maybe lasting 5 years instead of 10 yrs) from the late 80's through the mid 90's when virtually nothing got built and land values had fallen so low that very few quality developments were proposed even after things had improved by 1995'-97'. While I'm still looking forward to the change at Post Oak & San Felipe, I have never been totally pleased with the plan for BLVD Place (& I'm sure the developer couldn't care less about what pleases me lol). But it appears Ed Wulfe is more or less following the model of Uptown Park. Although Uptown Park by most accounts appears to have been a huge success, I think BLVD Place would complement or compete more favorably with Uptown Park if they offered something slightly different that's more urban/walkable like City Centre. My hope is that the delays caused by this recession will give planners in Houston an opportunity to refine their designs to offer something that's truly urbane.
  11. 'Stonian
    Yeah, that's my biggest complaint.., TAKE DOWN THAT STUPID RENDERING ALREADY! It only reminds us of what could have been. Honestly I was suspicious when I read the initial press release that they were about to go ahead and start construction because they had secured a $30 million loan for financing construction. $30 million would barely finance Discovery Tower's adjacent garage..., so I was skeptical. This developer knew all along that they could NOT build that rendering with only $30 million. IMO the rendering was just a ploy to get the City of Houston's tax abatements.
  12. 'Stonian
    Editor, All of your points are SPOT ON & was pretty much my responses to the survey. Retail follows Reasonably Affordable Residential Rooftops. Before I lived in Midtown Atlanta where I currently reside, I lived out in the far suburbs in Houston, Dallas, & Atlanta for years and initially had to drive 5-7 miles to get to a grocery store, drug store etc. But soon enough as housing construction exploded in my neighborhoods, there came the retail. Why developers think that urban Downtown areas will develop any differently is escapes me.
  13. 'Stonian
    Aw come on Niche, as many trains that have been run on you... you ought to be used to the soreness by now! Get over it or change your ways....
  14. 'Stonian
    I agree with you Mfastx, no doubt all of these delays and accusations stem from an anti-rail bias. But the bottom line is HOUSTON WILL GET LIGHT RAIL EXTENSIONS! It may take an extra year for the North/Southeast/East End lines to come online and even longer for the University/Uptown lines, BUT THEY WILL GET BUILT! Expect a few more fights from rail opponents because they die hard. Even after Houstonians voted to approve light rail, opponents have fought tooth & nail to stop construction every step of the way, so I wouldn't expect anything less from them now. So cheer up, come 2015 the trains will be rolling from UofH, to the East End, & out to Northline. The Anti-Rail folks are just SORE LOSERS!
  15. 'Stonian
    Setteghastly, Although I'm originally from H-town, I've lived in the heart of Atlanta for the past 6 years & would agree that it is surprisingly a naturally beautiful city with great architecture and attention to detail. However I would also have to point out that Atlanta has just as much "ugly" as Houston does. IMO Atlanta just does a magnificent job of hiding its ugly & Houston does an equally magnificent job of hiding its beauty! It helps that Atlanta has all those towering trees to be able to hide its uglier areas behind. Apart from those rolling hills in ATL, north Houston/Memorial area isn't all too different. As far as architecture goes, Its a far stretch to say that Atlanta "defecates" on Houston. I think the two cities are very competitive. Its just a matter of opinion and preferences for different architectural styles. If you're into the church steeple spires on top of every building, then Atlanta is probably your city. However IMO Houston has a more modern cohesive skyline. Although Houston is dominated by flat-roof towers it still has its share of crowns. Examples include: Bank of America Plaza, Continental Center, Heritage Plaza, Transco Tower, St. Lukes Tower (Med Center) & Four Leaf towers (Uptown). I've often thought to myself that Atlanta has way too many towers with spires on top and could use a little more variety. Now where I would give Atlanta a clear advantage is in its night-time lighting scheme! Hopefully with the addition a Mainplace, Discovery Tower, OPP and the new Med Center towers Houston can step its night-time game up a notch but it still needs to turn the lights back on at Enron II, do something to highlight the crown on Heritage Plaza, and ditch the Christmas lights on all the other buildings (except maybe during the Christmas Holidays). Again, just my opinion!
  16. 'Stonian
    Well try a little constructive criticism every now & then instead of the mumbo-jumbo rambling nonsense you often spit out bruh.
  17. 'Stonian
    Niche, go back on vacation for a few more days please..., I was enjoying your absence! You're right, no one promised me anything. Bad analogy or not, you get my point. I understand that the developers of the Embassy Suites owe me absolutely nothing & that they are free to build whatever the hell they want on their land (well atleast in Houston they are). In the same vein, I'm free to criticize, be disappointed, give whatever analogy I choose & expect more for my city. Thank you Sir.
  18. 'Stonian
    I agree with you Jax! My great disappointment with this building is that they got us all excited with the rendering that was initially released only to drastically delete it's most aesthetic features. In essence they over-promised & under-delivered! Imagine getting promised a Lexus (or at least a fully loaded Toyota Avalon) and end up only getting a base-model Corolla. Now there's nothing wrong with a brand new Corolla, it's just less what we expected lol As I've stated before, had they simply put out the true rendering & built this Embassy Suites as is, then I dont think we'd have half the complaints and "ugly" comments as we're having here. Truth be told, the final product is in line with a typical Embassy Suites and not any uglier. So whoever is comparing this to that Sheraton in DT Dallas is going way overboard.
  19. 'Stonian
    Also, they appear to have added another floor or at least expanded the top floor since the last rendering..., the bigger the better!
  20. 'Stonian
    Sign says early 2012, wouldn't seem to take another 1&1/2 years so maybe they are under-promising and over-delivering.
  21. 'Stonian
    I concur! Let's all collectively ignore Niche & his useless babble...,
  22. 'Stonian
    You mean the expansive view of downtown, there just one view of expansiveness, and thats towards the north. Parking lots,toyota center, hilton americas, scattered buildings, and more parking lots to the left/west. Parking lots, Discovery Tower, MMP, scattered structures, Harris Co. justice buildings, and more parking lots to the right/east. Not really expansive.And until those parking lots turn into something, I'd prefer a supertall that blocks out that view of the parking lots, but heck a 2 story structure can block that, so it doesn't really have to be a supertall. Well depending on where you're standing in Discovery Green looking west/southwest, you can still see the Enron/Chevron blgs., Continental, Houston Center, etc. as well as many of the taller skyscrapers on the west side of downtown, and if you get @ the right angle on sloped ground near the performance pavillon, you can even see Mainplace. So that's what I mean by "expansive" -- a view of towers other than just those immediately surrounding the park. Once you are deep inside the park, the parking lots in the vicinity are hardly noticeable because of the many trees and small structures throughout the park.
  23. 'Stonian
    I don't have a problem with the height, just the cheapish stucco facade, orientation on the lot, and that "thing" on top. Actually I'd prefer smaller buildings around Discovery Green as opposed to the park being boxed in by super-talls on all sides which would block the expansive views of the rest of downtown from the park.
  24. 'Stonian
    Houston, like most large cities, has many different cultures to be discovered. Most of my friends that come to visit for the first time have this image of Houston as this big conservative gritty blue collar sprawling oil town with a lot of people but nothing to do. While I wouldn't say that's a total misrepresentation, neither would I say it fully describes my hometown. I don't try to make Houston out to be something that is not, I simply let my guests know that Houston does also have its sophisticated cosmopolitan side as well. They are always wowed by the variety of the food offerings, the culture of the museum district, the beauty of Hermann Park, the downtown/uptown skylines, the massiveness of the Texas Medical Center, shopping @ the Galleria & Rice/Highland Villages, the urban forest of Memorial Park & points north & west, the heavy industrial feel of the Ship Channel & refineries, & yes even the sprawl! I don't just visit the sterile environs in H-town, I also expose them to some of the quirkiness, grit and realness of H-town (Montrose, Washington Ave, 3rd ward, SW-side). Interestingly most of my friends always ask about great shopping, nightlife, unique restaurants, parks, urban life etc. so that's what I end up showing them. I have to respect Niche for his east Houston tour, because hey, that's what he thinks his friends/guests would find interesting. In fact I wouldn't mind taking the tour myself someday. Bottom line is there all many different types of people that make this world, and this specifically this city, the fascinating place that it is. Different strokes for different folks..., neither is right or wrong..., it's just who we are!
  25. 'Stonian
    Niche, Exactly what do you like? If anything??
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