Ross

Or Gallery Furniture High School - Really. Will. Teach. You. Maaaaaath!

I'm pretty annoyed by the HISD board action. The comments by Jolanda Jones and Rhonda Skillern-Jones were the normal race baiting you would expect from those 2, and the whole exercise is a waste of money at a time when the district is likely to have a $100 million shortfall in funding.

Castaneda Library site has them

The bottoms were smaller. I remember seeing that. Every now and then there would be a missed spot, or a dropped pylon

No, they went into holes.

I remember driving on 45 when the contraflow lanes were in effect. Nothing like seeing cars in the lane next to you, headed the opposite direction, at high rates of closing speed, and nothing but a bunch of plastic poles to separate you. It was fun watching the workers place and remove the lane separators as the rest of us zoomed past.

Absolutely true, but there are many folks out there who are convinced that roads can be built for next to nothing, or that someone else ought to pay for them.

Only way they can finance them. There's no money to build new roads quickly without tolls.

NE corner of Yale and the Loop, where the equipment rental place is. There's been a couple of posts on that topic, but I can't find them.

It's open. You can drive the entire length of Yale from near 45 North to where it turns into Waugh. It's actually a pretty cool drive. There's the site prep for the new Booker T Washington high school, the future site of the 365 market, sites in the Heights due for redevelopment, etc.

Who cares? I look at whatever is there and hope the owner is happy with their decisions. I thought the buildings at 509 and 517 were mediocre. They just weren't that attractive to me.

More of a proponent of property rights where the property owner generally gets to decide what is done with the property. I am happy when a property owner chooses preservation, I just don't think it is right to force that decision.

I'm not understanding why you think it would be unreasonable for the owners to make a profit. Are you saying that the owners should suck it up and make less profit simply so you can enjoy looking at a couple of mediocre buildings with no real historical significance(they are merely old, not historic)?

Being a condo has nothing to do with appearance. It's a form of ownership.

No, it's good business if they have an alternate use. They've owned those properties since at least 1994. That's not dabbling.

They weren't dabbling in property, they had a specific reason for owning them related to the hotel that is directly adjacent.

Why would they sell the buildings when they have plans to use the space for future expansion?

That is one awfully written news story. And, the line that the thief's weapon was "possibility a semiautomatic" is bizarre. Revolvers and semiautos do not look much alike.

Bars only ban firearms because it's state law. And that only really applies to establishments that get more than 50% of their revenue from the sale of alcohol for on premises consumption. The open carry law does nothing to make this more or less likely. It doesn't stop anyone from having a handgun in the car, since that's been legal for a few years, based on a prior law. Plus, anyone who is likely to do that isn't going to be stopped by a law in the first place. And, it is against the law for a carry license holder in Texas to have a firearm while intoxicated.

Why do openly carried handguns makes you afraid? I'm not a fan of open carry, but I am not going to let it bother me.

Anyone know why Lola's demo'd their deck and expanded the sidewalk?

Not that Hall is lying, but his name doesn't appear on any of the FCC ownership filings for KCOH that I was able to find. Note to self, must get a life.

No, I am thinking like a rational business person. Unless you want to fund me holding on to a building that is costing me money every day, and increasing operations cost for the rest of my business, your views are irrelevant.

Only in very nebulous terms. Nothing in those posts addresses my question in any sort of useful detail. No one is going to rehab a building today based on pie in the sky estimates of new Downtown residents years from now. There is a very high risk of "if they build it, no one will come and pay as much as is necessary to make the deal economic". And, given the high failure rates for new restaurant and retail businesses, the vacancy costs will likely be high. As for Kinkaid Alums, if the location is so great, why didn't BB's just stick it out until the massive crowds appeared? That's right, the economics didn't work. If BB's bailed due to bad economics, why shouldn't the owner be able to make changes to satisfy his economic requirements?

Do you think that any business located in these buildings can generate enough rental income for the building owners to make a decent return on the costs to rehab the buildings, plus cover the incremental costs to find suitable parking spots on a long term basis within a reasonable distance (no one likes to wait more than a few minutes for their car to show up)?