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Ross

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Everything posted by Ross

  1. Ross
    That's never a good thing. There was an 18 wheeler that did that somewhere near the Heights a few years ago and lost a wheel on the trailer that ended up killing someone
  2. Ross
    I've lived in London. I've worked with people from the UK for all of my career. I am reasonably familiar with what they go through to build something.. The permitting process there is far different than here, but if you can convince the planning authorities, you can build almost anything.
  3. Ross
    The UK doesn't really have zoning as such, and that includes London. I am assuming this is sarcasm, since London has any number of high rise buildings outside what passes for "Downtown", which isn't really the same as a US downtown, ie the City of London.
  4. Ross
    Residential. This is the house that the previous owner had a huge amount of foliage and such on the 12th Street sidewalk area. Street view 2016 Here's the permit detail
  5. Ross
    Chinatown died because the people that lived and did business there moved out to the new Chinatown off of Bellaire Blvd. Chinatown was still going pretty strong in 1991 when my wife and I started dating. We would go to the Sun Deluxe Café, Lucky Inn(I think that was the name), and a couple of other places. The kung fu movies were still going strong at that time, as was Kim Son. When we moved to Midtown in 1998, we still went to many of those places, but it was becoming obvious that the center of mass was moving out West, where the larger Asian population was living. The Vietnamese places in Midtown stuck it out longer, but they eventually went West as well. The Houston Center area was dead before the buildings were razed. The 80's made it worse. The oil bust then was worse than you could imagine. I went back to school because there were no jobs. Fortunately, when I graduated in 1989, the jobs had started to come back. No one would have been willing to pay the taxes on buildings that made no money at all, least of all the Houston Center developers. Razing the buildings did no harm as far as I can tell. And, let's not forget that Houston is a tear it down city. It always has been.
  6. Ross
    Old Chinatown was on the other side of the freeway. I am trying to find a source to get a better handle on what the buildings were on those blocks. No one wanted those buildings at the time. The owners were probably happy to get them sold for a decent price. There's no way one entity puts together 32 blocks of property in a major Downtown without the sellers being pretty motivated. Once the Houston Center entity bought all that property, the buildings were doomed, and there was nothing that could stop it. Seriously, in the 70's and 80's Downtown and Midtown were complete wastelands. Midtown couldn't be redeveloped due to a lack of sewer capacity. It was a very different time than now. I would drive through Midtown in the 80's thinking how odd it was that an area 5 minutes from Downtown wasn't developed. In the 1990 census, less than 1000 people lived in Midtown, and it was probably less in Downtown.
  7. Ross
    Here's a block number map for Downtown with as many blocks as I could identify from property records. I think there were excess properties purchased, as Houston Center bought part of Block 115, which is North of Minute Maid, and I don't see where Block 289 fits n. Blocks 122, 123, and 248 disappeared into the GRB and Discovery Green, and under Avenidas de las Americas.
  8. Ross
    What was the loss? The buildings that were razed were like this one Older building or this one Joystix or this Law office. Obviously, the Houston Center developers did not plan on the 80's oil bust, which delayed things, but I am wondering what you thought would have been located on those blocks. Did you ever go Downtown in those days? It was a complete wasteland, with nothing open. I just don't see losing some random crappy buildings as a big deal.
  9. Ross
    If not, the Exxon on Durham and 16th has pretty good tacos.
  10. Ross
    Keep in mind that Texas Eastern, through it's Houston Center entities, owned all of the properties that were razed. The previous owners sold the properties of their own free will. So, if you can buy an entire subdivision of single family homes, you would be free to tear them all down. It's hard to tell from the maps and aerials, but the single family homes were on the Eastern edge, and were on blocks that were partially homes and partially vacant or businesses.
  11. Ross
    When all of the redevelopment started, I hoped they would keep the railroad buildings, as they had unique looks, and were visually interesting. Failing that, the new buildings could have been designed to mimic the older structures. Instead, we got generic stuff more suited to infill development on major roads, where there's not any real opportunity to get out of the building block look and still use the available space efficiently.
  12. Ross
    The buildings that were torn down were mostly 1 or 2 story random businesses or homes. There wasn't much of note in that part of town.
  13. Ross
    I've started this thread to try and capture the history of Houston Center that's not really related to construction or development of a given building. Maps, descriptions of acquisition, people involved, etc. Here's a start. The name on nearly all of the documents I've found on the acquisition of the properties for Houston Center have George R Bolin as the trustee. He died in 2020, here's an excerpt from his obituary https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/houston-tx/george-bolin-9191588: George was a licensed Texas Real Estate Broker since 1958, and he kept his license active for 61 years. Appointed by Gov. John B. Connally, Jr. to serve six years as a member of the Texas Real Estate Commission, including 2 years as its chairman, he was active in the commercial real estate brokerage and development business at various firms bearing his name. One of George's greatest relationships was with Trammell Crow. He helped Trammell assemble his first Houston land, 52 acres belonging to RE “Bob” Smith. Trammell waited until the last day of the option to decide to buy it, so George was to fly to Dallas last minute to get the contract signed. He missed his flight (terrifying for a 24-year-old facing a career-changing deal), but Trammell told him by phone, “Just put my signature on the contract” and so, with a shaky hand, he did. Suddenly, his small firm was the biggest real estate company in Houston, exclusively representing Trammell Crow and Gerald Hines. Then in 1969 he put together and led the team of brokers and attorneys that secretly assembled 33 contiguous blocks in downtown Houston for Texas Eastern Transmission Corp. It was cloak-and-dagger under his own name – he officed out of a secret space through the computer room at Texas Eastern headquarters overlooking the target area, and the company told everyone the team were IRS agents. It took nine months to acquire the tracts from 155 different owners, and remains to this day the largest single assemblage of property in a downtown urban core in the US. The area is now known as and encompasses Houston Center, Discovery Green, Hilton Americas, and the George R Brown Convention Center.
  14. Ross
    For a large portion of those decades, any buildings constructed would have sat empty, as demand for space was not enough to fill them.
  15. Ross
    Yep, just wait until the big arms and the snarling mouth are installed.
  16. Ross
    Sure. it's not that hard to do, especially since the one lane street helps with traffic calming and keeping speeds down. Look both ways and carefully cross the street.
  17. Ross
    In keeping with the science nature of the buildings, there should be two buildings with addresses of 2.71828 Discovery Way and 3.14159 Discovery way, also known as e Discovery Way and Pi Discovery Way.
  18. Ross
    It's meltiiiiing!
  19. Ross
    I've never seen a developer advertise that "we build the crappiest hovels in town"
  20. Ross
    They better not force Romano's out. That's one of my favorite places to eat.
  21. Ross
    Frost Town did not extend as far South as MMP. MMP is on the site of Union Station. Here's the 1944 aerial, with Frost Town circled in red
  22. Ross
    I never knew the Petroleum Club was notorious. I went there for a couple of weddings, and it seemed pretty nice, if more than a bit dated.
  23. Ross
    They are using an existing building at the back of the North lot, and expanding it. All the other structures appear to be slated for demolition. If they weren't using the existing building, maybe they would be closer to the street.
  24. Ross
    Great video, although I can't believe you didn't censor the pornography on the Flagship Hotel🤣🤣🤣 The old railroad causeway is still there, but the drawbridge was replaced. The SS Galveston Hotel was awesome. It must have disappeared before I ever went by the location. Those cars on the beach would be gone from rust fairly quickly if they weren't washed well Galvez Mall looked pretty good for a city the size of Galveston I am still annoyed they demolished the cotton compress machine that was there for a century. It should have stayed as a hiistorical item
  25. Ross
    Properties are owned by DK Real Estate, LP, with an address of 1500 W Alabama, which is the Dylon Kyle office. The property includes both structures, and has an address of 1438 Alabama.
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