sidegate

Shepherd has more, closer. I shall enumerate the options within a quarter-mile and without even crossing a freeway:

Whataburger, 59 Diner, Lexington Grille, Saffron Moroccan Cuisine, Mia Bella Trattoria, Star Pizza, Le Peep, James Coney Island, Ale House, Doubledave's Pizzaworks, Don Lito's Mexican Restaurant, Starbucks, Freebirds World Burrito, Pot Pie Pizzeria, Bush's Delicatessen, Zoe's Kitchen, Amy's, Azteca's Bar & Grill, Jime's Sports Bar, Mezzanine Lounge, McElroy's Pub, Davenport, FedEx/Kinko's, Frost Bank, Joel's Classical (music) Shop, Academy, Quarter Price Books, and...if I'm not mistaken, plenty of other establishments that Google Earth doesn't pick up.

The sight lines are clearer; the businesses more visible, accessible, and known. And that's important. You have to understand...most people are lazy, unadventurous, and uninquisitive. Other people won't walk, ever. A fair number of the remainder are cheapskates, myself among them. Montrose is not the place for me. Whataburger is far and away superior to anything available there at a fraction of the price.

Personal taste also enters the equation. Montrose has a feel to it that that strip of Shepherd with the hulking, roaring, whining highway towering over everything, will never have. The sinking of 59 was one of the best things to happen to Montrose, I used to cringe walking or biking under the freeway there. Montrose wins - by a street, if you will...;-P

If at Montrose & 59, a driver would exit Main Street or Fannin Street from 59 and then drive nearly a mile via Richmond...with auto traffic interacting awkwardly with light rail the whole way. Alternately, they could traverse neighborhood streets with stop signs and cut down the mileage...and maybe a few seconds. That's a hassle.

I'd argue that the stretch of Shepherd between 59 and Richmond is far more walkable (if not as pretty) than the same section of Montrose. There's much more to do, light rail access will be just the same (and will provide access to Montrose, if someone wants to go walk around there), and more importantly than anything... there's better freeway access and visibility. I know many of us on HAIF don't care, but the out-of-state institutional investors that will likely rubber-stamp the financing of this project will absolutely care.

It's walkable, sure, but that part of Montrose has more tree cover and more pedestrian-oriented businesses

Since when was immediate, fall-over-and-you're-there freeway access the be all and end all of development? This is as far from most of the Medical Center to a freeway and that seems to have done reasonably well.

Maybe office workers want a walkable environment just as much. Sooner or later you have to take a breath and start building, y'know, further away from the freeway.

Nice, street level retail is what is needed right there

One would think that wouldn't require a second's thought on the part of the developers but so many highrises round here have passed up the opportunity and continue to do so, and pedestrians are left looking at a stucco wall, the first level of parking, enormous AC vents or a thicket of tired, generic landscaping.

This is only slightly related, but I really like the way the greenery has filled in on that sunken level of 59. Softens the whole view quite a bit.

Charlie's was actually pretty good, but I can vouch that the bar's name was "Bacchus" after the god of wine and drunkenness. The Waugh side was, at one point (90-92?), a stage. The whole thing was converted into a club sometime in 96 or so.

Used to go eat at charlie's quite a bit, and I only missed the Cheesecake shooting by an hour.

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From the bend down to Montrose has the potential to really become one of the cool places in Houston, but there's so much tired stuff there at the minute. If there is any development here, I really hope it's of the sort that can spark something.

Ah....was wondering when this would be up for grabs. With the pending redevelopment of the marquee opposite there is an opportunity here for the bend to develop into something....he said hopefully....

I wasn't there, but I think that I can answer succinctly. In aggregate, Montrosians vehemently want everything changed in this way, that way, or the other...excluding everything.

Not to generalize or anything...... (rolls eyes)

Huzzah for restoration!!

Hmmm....opens not too long before my birthday....

Edit: some weird Internet thing happened and my text appeared twice.

You picked a nice day for it....

They're ripping me off - I make Indian pizzas at home all the time!! :-)

LOL, I was waiting for this post. There was an op-ed piece three weeks ago (which I guess you missed, or at least muttered sulkily as you read it) in which three BIOMEDICAL faculty (not four Arts faculty), and one arts for that matter, supported the merger. Oh and Rice's President too, forgot about him. Apparently four years at Rice has taught you just to see what you want to see and hear what you want to hear. Seems like a waste of money to me.

You'll note how I didn't lurch on to HAIF when that editorial was published, as you have done with this one, because I know that everyone's mind is pretty much made up on this merger, yours and mine included, and in doing so I would have achieved little beyond burdening the Internet with more pointless bytes of information. As you have done.

Like I said, it matters little what you, I, the alumni on either side or anyone else thinks. If being ill informed is working for a departmental head at one of the institutions involved who is on a joint academic committee overseeing the merger then I guess I am. My apologies. It's going ahead, so let's all make the best of it.

There is one new development in the Rice-BCM merger--an interim report by the Faculty Merger Review Committee. It's interim because the negotiations have been so secret, that the faculty committee is still in the dark on some things and not permitted to report on others. Thier main concern is the imbalance--BCM is much larger than Rice, and has much larger operating costs. (More details here.)

One faculty member, Moshe Vardi, gave a public lecture on the merger that was very much against it. He based his conclusion on publicly available information, including some very damning financial numbers from Baylor (and not so great financials from Rice--who knew Rice was carrying debt? Not me, and I am an alum.) You can read about his lecture here.

Some will automatically dismiss faculty concerns as whining, but the facts about Baylor's serious financial problems are true and would be inherited by Rice if the merger occurred, and frankly, the administrations of the two schools have been talking in secret for over a year now, and this lack of transparency is very worrying. And anyone who has driven around Rice in the last few years knows that President Leebron is an empire builder, but in this financial climate, perhaps what we need is a consolidator, someone who can hunker down and get Rice back on a solid footing.

In any case, as an alumnus, I am disturbed at the vast silence from the administration on this matter. All I ever hear from them are endless requests for more money.

Academics are conservative by nature. Add to that the fact that this is a conservative school in the South (which makes it pretty conservative), and I'm not in the least bit surprised Rice faculty aren't turning cartwheels over this initiative. It's progressive. It's bold. It breaks the mold. Everything that conservatives aren't/don't do. The reason for the silence is that if you enjoined the faculty on either side in this, you'd never get a thing done. This is for the administrators to handle, that's what they get paid for. It'll happen whether the faculty approve it or not (I doubt many will resign over it) so everyone needs to just grab an oar and make it work.

This thread's a downer. Houston's architecture's depressing enough without this.

MD Anderson on the one hand is on a hiring freeze and maybe even laying people off, and on the other throwing up not one but two huge buildings. I fail to understand. I know it's complicated and there are lots of things about construction and financing, etc that I'm not privy to, but the average Joe in the street, of which I am one, will look at this situation and be very puzzled.

Ugh dog run.

I can't speak for anywhere else but dogs are a big deal in this city. We are one of a small minority of households on our block that doesn't have at least one. Their owners invest a lot of time in them, and like talking to other dog owners about dog stuff so I can understand catering to them. As for Market Square I've always found it very uninspiring and as other posters have pointed out the elevated lawns and sunken walkways detract from the continuity of the space, making it seem smaller and generally giving it a very dated 70s-ish feel. From a practical point of view I'd be reticent to let a toddler run around on the grass lest they go sailing off one of those ledges. And then there are the bums but given the climate they will always be a fact of life here. When I was young free and single I used to enjoy hanging out in the bars on the periphery so I'm sure it would be nice to sit outside one of those and look out on a thoughtfully updated urban space.

I dare say as an academic speaking in a public forum that he's basing his opinion on some pretty sound research. Heck I'd like him to be wrong as well, but I can't see any evidence at the minute that he's far off the mark.

Is there any reason not to believe him? I can only speak for the Medical Center but it's in the doldrums right now. I have friends in the energy industry who I will shortly be saying goodbye to as they are moved elsewhere by their corporate offices. Anecdotal evidence yes, but evidence.

Here's the link Citykid referred to by the way

Hmm, Sir Robert Armstrong might have called this being economical with the truth:

"....Strong economic growth underway with exploding (sic) energy, medical and port industries...."

Two of the biggest employers in the Medical Center are on an extended hiring freeze, and those are just the ones I know of. I guess there wasn't room on the flyer for that.

Edit: Crunch you beat me to it, I'm a slow typer!

So is the original plan off the table entirely, to be replaced by this tower?

Baylor will continue to finish the exterior of the hospital but they wont build out the interior spaces. I am betting they are waiting on what will happen with Rice U. If they do indeed merge, look for Rice to try and flip the property. It could easily become a nice research facility since it's so close to the South Campus.

Research facilities (laboratories) have a fundamentally different layout and infrastructure to hospitals (patient rooms, theatres). If the interior build out has gone beyond a certain point it may cost more to reconfigure than to just tear it down and start over. This being H-town, there's even more reason to think that would happen.

Wow. Only last week they were announcing the possibility of layoffs at UTMDACC. I wonder how many people will get the boot so they can pay for this monster.

Oct 2010? This tells me they're thinking this will be a very long recession.

2010 is what I've heard from most talking heads and, possibly more significantly, from some financial academics....

Well I'm not Rice so you probably know better but he did shut down Valhalla for quite a while after the Ike incident. Seems to me to reflect a willingness to hold people to the rules.

State felony if I'm not mistaken to impersonate someone else's e-mail address. I wonder if Leebron shares their sense of humor. I don't get the impression he would.