Ross

2 hours ago, Buy-U-City said:

I know of way to many folks that commute from Clear Lake to the Woodlands or Katy; or from Kingwood to Sugarland etc. The suburban work center concept has been a complete flop IMO and created miles of infrastructure maintenance headaches. The issue is cities growing and sprawling beyond all comprehension. Houston, with a metro population of 2 million back in the 70s was so much more enjoyable and easier to get around than today. I have family here I seldom see because it's such a draining chore to get to them. Things felt closer knit back then. I'm a native boomer, and my glasses are very much rose tinted.

It was far worse trying to get around in the 70's and 80's. Traffic was heavier and the drivers were worse. During the late 80's it was easier to get around for a while, because the city was dead after the oil busts.

The people driving from Clear Lake to The Woodlands could move if they wanted to, but they don't. They like where they live, they like their jobs, and the commutes are just something they tolerate.

Dallas is also the city that destroyed old businesses by deciding to rezone them out of existence without compensation. I expect the drive through to be closed, followed by closure of the entire restaurant and then redevelopment into trendy places that the nearby residents can't afford.

5 hours ago, __nevii said:

City living is more about smaller purchases in more frequent store/shop visits, so the concerns that you bring up are mostly moot:

• The whole concept of "large bulk purchases" comes precisely because of the isolated nature of post-WWII single-family suburban buildouts: even a simple trip to the grocery store is an arduous drive, so you HAVE to buy all the bulk stuff that you can in order for the supply to last longer until the next trip.
   
• Some of the stuff you bring up (like the pounds of mulch) naturally get less use-cases in a more urbanized setting anyway (or the use of it is less individualized, meaning that no one individual has to worry about such purchases).

 

Precisely why we need to axe parking minimums all over the city. Removing that burden will allow development in "narrow street" areas like Heights to be even more "context sensitive." The recent Livable Places did some great work in terms of "middle housing", as well as addressing driveway structures (i.e. such that there are less driveway curbcuts destroying the previous street parking)  ..... but relinquishing the remaining useless rules throughout the city would assist a ton in preventing the issue of cars in "streets too narrow for them."

Heights was one of the original "streetcar neighborhoods" in Houston: we're going to have to build that back.

 

We live inside the loop.. We have a 1/4 acre lot and live within a few blocks of Kroger. We still use the car to shop for groceries.  Anything to do with the yard is going to require a car. I've known a few people who tried to live without a car in Houston. One managed pretty well, but he was a coworker who was literally a rocket scientist, but was absent minded. He never learned to drive. All the other gave up after a month or so. The other issue is getting to and from work. Unless your office is downtown, public transport is tough. When we lived in Midtown, I had to take the bus to Bellaire for work for 6 weeks after TS Allison flooded my car. 6 block walk to the bus and it dropped off across the street from my office. It turned a 10 to 15 minute commute into 45 minutes or longer. Why would I not use a car for that?

8 hours ago, TacoDog said:

The only reason someone would need a car to access their home is if the only entrance to the home was a weird garage door that opened for cars but nothing else. You don't need access to your home via a car. If you did, people who utilize other means of transportation could not live there, which is just untrue. 

If your property doesn't have a place to store a car, you end up relying on on-street parking. If you live on a street with lots of people in the same situation, you may not find a parking spot near your place, and have to park a block or two away. Or you have access to a parking garage but it's a block away from your home, same situation. To say you need a car to access your home is simply untrue.

To say you need access to your home via car isn't true at all, it's just a convenience thing. The point @mollusk was making was about how often the streets are being used for certain modes of transportation should dictate how we allow the street to be used, the same argument people are making about the bike lanes on 11th St. If no thru-traffic is being used on a street, and it's local residents only, then we could convert the street into a glorified driveway for those residents only. 

You've obviously never bought 400 pounds of mulch. Or a month's worth of groceries. Or anything else in quantity. The issue in the Heights is that the streets were laid out when people had one car at most. So the streets are narrow, the driveways are narrow, and some people are jerks about how they park.

My great grandparents lived on W 17th from about 1910 to 1919. The had a car, since my great grandfather was a car salesman. So cars in the Heights isn't a new thing.

12 hours ago, TacoDog said:

No they don't.

Can you expand on why people do not need to access their homes with their cars?

56 minutes ago, Highrise Tower said:

I was wondering what the new CenterPoint Energy Texas Medical Center Substation will look like.  I thought I would stop at the CenterPoint property off Westpark Drive that's located on Newcastle Drive in Bellaire.

 

I believe there are different uses for both sides of the street? On one side you have the actual power plant, and the other is used for communication/power towers?

 

 

 

What are these weird objects?

Those look like pylon sections on their sides. Note the flanges with bolt holes on the ends of the horizontal pieces.

That's the home of T W House Jr. http://www.houstontimeportal.net/t-w-house.html

The picture is looking to the South/West. This is the block bounded by Smith, Louisiana, McKinney, and Lamar. Block 144 SSBB. Address was 1010 Louisiana. 

Image 29 in the 1907 Sanborn maps.

That block is now the site of the Allied Bank Building(now called Wells Fargo, but I've never been able to call the early 80's buildings by their current names)

Find a grave https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/50070125/thomas-william-house

House was demolished in 1936.

You can see the buildings, sort of, on this Google Maps Streetview https://www.google.com/maps/@29.6965066,-95.3974478,3a,75y,176.52h,85.55t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s5BmmBL9u8iXDGMeKYpTVGQ!2e0!5s20110601T000000!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu

I used 1850 OST as teh address.

8 hours ago, JLWM8609 said:

Legs are for cyclists and pedestrians

No, no, no, no. You have one leg for the gas pedal and one for the brake pedal in a car, where God intended people to travel. 🤣🤣🤣

12 hours ago, editor said:

Ugmo.  Looks shiny and new, but hopefully it will eventually be demolished and replaced with a proper building.

You haven't figured out that the hospitals in the area are a cover for making a fortune from owning parking garages?😃

1 hour ago, Highrise Tower said:

Found something very cool this weekend. I never knew this existed even walking past it 500 times.

Do other underpasses/bridges/etc have plaques as well? I see the number 731 next to the sign. I'd assume it stands for sign number 731.

City of Houston
Main and Fannin Street Underpasses at Holcombe Blvd.
Lewis Cutrer, Mayor
1962
Brown & Root, Engineer

Here's the underpass. Notice the Gus S. And Lyndall F. Wortham Park on the right. Former site of the Shamrock Hotel.

 

Those plaques used to be everywhere. Unfortunately, they seem to get demolished when the item is rebuilt. I've always thought there should be a museum for them.

21 hours ago, freundb said:

It was dark this morning when I went to the gym so I could see through the windows #notacreep

I like the crane they left up.

 

If the crane is set up correctly, it can be used to remove obnoxious drunks that refuse to leave when asked. The only thing better would be my patented Drunk-a-pult😀

1 hour ago, trymahjong said:

I get the feeling there is a big question just hovering........why is COH using @#$% asphalt now and not completely renovating Westheimer road  in a manner that might last decades instead of a couple of years?

They will get to a complete renovation at some point, but that takes a lot of planning as the storm drains all get redone, along with any other infrastructure that's under the street. It's also expensive, and not all streets can be done at the same time.

1 hour ago, Highrise Tower said:

In the mid 1940s, MD Anderson was granted to setup in the old Baker Estate donated by Rice Institute.

A little confused. I thought I read an article that mentioned MD Anderson's first clinics were located in an abandoned military barrack/house. Maybe a Naval house of sorts? I know James Baker was a Captain so it would make sense.

Then known as The University of Texas Post-Graduate School of Medicine M.D. Anderson Hospital. You would need to enlarge the image to see the building signage. The James Baker mansion is to the right and the clinic on the left.

 

 

 

The unused military buildings were moved to the Baker Estate according to the MD Anderson history page https://www.mdanderson.org/about-md-anderson/facts-history/who-was-md-anderson.html

"The hospital began its operations in temporary quarters on the James A. Baker estate at 2310 Baldwin Street in downtown Houston during World War II, under the acting director, Ernst W. Bertner, M.D. MD Anderson Cancer Center rightly regards the Baker home and extensive grounds as its place of birth. Several war-surplus buildings were added in the late 1940s and 46 patients were being treated in those primitive quarters when the hospital moved to its current site in March 1954."

3 hours ago, Triton said:

Seriously.

I think trying to convince the mayor that we had to create congestion in order to slow down the vehicles is a loosing argument. That's a guarantee to them pulling the bike lanes. 

No matter what Whitmire ends up doing, especially with this being the Heights, he has to put in pedestrian safety as a high priority. This is a very walkable area and allowing vehicles going 40mph down this road again is a nonstarter.

Not according to the folks on Nextdoor, who seem to be horrified and mad that they cannot drive 40mph or more on 11th. My response to many  of them is they need to move to Katy, where the roads are wide and the speeds are high.

3 hours ago, steve1363 said:

The city's plan of attack is fairly obvious...

"The mayor has been very open about his concerns with the 11th Street project. What started out as a request for a safe crossing at Nicholson and 11th Street ended up a bike lane project that makes it difficult for emergency apparatus to maneuver and has negatively impacted a business. He is reviewing this along with other projects," said spokesperson Mary Benton.

There is no mention of traffic.  

I've been critical of this project because it looks like a perpetual construction zone.   Having said that, I support improved walkabity in the city.  If the bike lanes are removed I hope a light is added at the Nicholson intersection.  I would also advocate for more pedestrian islands.  It would be a mistake to revert this road to 4 lanes.  At worst I would add a turn lane similar to Studewood, even though Studewood itself could use a few more pedestrian islands, especially near White Oak.

I wonder which "business" was negatively impacted?   My guess is the Chicken Shack, but who knows...

Turner's minions consistently said that TxDoT rules do not allow for a light at Nicholson. If they revert 11th Street, I am going to demand a stop sign at every cross street. There is nothing wrong with the current setup, and emergency vehicles have no issues.

SJL would have been worse in most ways, but I am super annoyed with Whitmire over traffic and giving away $650 million to the firefighters, who I would have told to leave if they don't like their pay. What next, close the libraries and parks to fund public safety?

7 hours ago, IntheKnowHouston said:

Yay! Thanks for the update, @goofy.

Also, I'm certain when I created this topic, it was posted in the Other Houston Neighborhoods subforum.  Yet somehow it's in this forum now.  This is not in the Greater Heights. It's why I put it in the Other Neighborhoods forum. 

It would be nice if Highrise Tower left other people's topics alone. And know there are others who feel the same based on exchanged private messages.

There is no indication this topic was moved. And Greater Heights is closer to the truth than the nebulous "Other Neighborhoods". To me, the subforum is irrelevant. I never look at that attribute, and just pull up the new posts list.

There are 100+ units in that condo, with a bunch of different owners. There's a unit for sale now that's 664 sq ft, $147k and $460 per month condo fee. https://www.har.com/homedetail/800-post-oak-blvd-32-houston-tx-77056/3438735

That's not going to be redeveloped any time soon, unless someone is willing to pay 300% of current prices, and maybe not then.

34 minutes ago, editor said:

I do the same.  But I think at least part of it is that people are used to turning there, and it's been my observation that No Left Turn signs across Houston are often not very prominent in size or placement.

Here's Westheimer at Avalon Place, where a few days ago I sat behind someone trying to make an illegal left turn.  (I didn't honk this time because someone was between us.)

If someone is making a left turn from the left lane, they're not looking for the No Left Turn sign all the way over on the right sidewalk.  The geometry of the curbs should be some indication that this isn't a good place to turn, but there should be more to it than that.  Whatever good citizen placed those cones on the sidewalk when the Apple Maps car went by knows it's a problem, but those cones were long gone by the time I was there last week.

It's just part of the Houston ethos: "Ah, that's good enough."  No, it's not.

There should be a No Left Turn sign on the little concrete island along with a Do Not Enter sign facing southwest.

And if that doesn't work, we should get all Washington, D.C. with it:

 

That's a great way to make the no left turn more visible. They need these at Shepherd and Westheimer.

13 hours ago, editor said:

Anecdotally, I have switched from shopping at the hardware store on Westheimer to the hardware store on 11th Street ever since the bike lanes went in.  

I prefer the calmer, safer 11th Street to the chaos of Westheimer.  As a bonus, it's nice to not have to worry about making a left turn out of the parking lot onto a four-lane speedway anymore.

It is not possible that you are using 11th due to the bike lanes. According to Nextdoor, the 11th Street bike lanes are a total disaster, and are destroying the lives of car drivers daily by increasing travel times by 15 seconds and making it impossible to drive 55mph while taking the kids to school🤣 I had one person tell me that people who want to walk or bike should use Heights or the Nicholson trail, even those go North and South, and do not go to every place someone might want to walk to.

C&D Hardware on 11th is a good store that has pretty much everything you could ever want.

4 hours ago, TowerSpotter said:

I saw that and thought it may be for Chevron, would that be the same land they have aquired? 

No. This is East of 99, Chevron is West and more to the North.

On 8/24/2023 at 10:10 PM, j_cuevas713 said:

My barber has some pics of Houston when all of these smaller buildings were still around and it makes we wonder how much nicer Downtown could have been had developers and the city been more considerate of it's history. Downtown was littered with small little brick buildings with ornate features. While a lot has been saved since then, there is still so much that has been lost.  This one along with the old original city hall were absolute gems. 

The old City Hall building was used as a bus station until the building burned in 1960 https://www.houstontx.gov/abouthouston/cityhallhistory.html

25 minutes ago, Highrise Tower said:

I noticed an article from 100 years ago that said the Methodist Hospital was moving to a (new) home, which was the former Dr. Oscar L. Norsworthy Hospital in Midtown. That would mean there was a previous building.

Maybe, and more of a church funded operation, the Methodist Hospital started out in this single story residential home?

Anyone know anything about this?

In 1923, Methodist was located at 3020 San Jacinto

I haven't found anything earlier than that, but I haven't searched every directory yet. The hospital was founded in 1919. That picture looks like it was taken in the 1940's or 1950's. Possibly the 1930's.

37 minutes ago, springcityparts said:

Nope the listing is a sale of the building with its existing tenants. Magnol Bakery is opening in the former Andy’s building

That's great news. The location on Post Oak near Hempstead is a minor pain to get to. Their breads and pastries are amazing.

3 hours ago, freundb said:

Wonderful demo work. Can we send them two blocks over to take down the Holiday Inn?

Not possible. That building is a historic landmark, to be preserved forever🤣🤣🤣