ChannelTwoNews

Port Houston approved to handle cold treatment cargo - Houston Business Journal (bizjournals.com) The Port of Houston Authority — which owns, manages and operates the eight public terminals on the Houston Ship Channel, including its two container terminals — has received approval by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to handle cold treatment cargo.

The MICHELIN Guide Makes Waves in Texas Michelin Guide to highlight Texas restaurants - Houston Business Journal (bizjournals.com) “Michelin Guide’s arrival in Texas and Houston marks an important milestone in our culinary evolution,” Houston First Corp. President and CEO Michael Heckman said in a statement.

Memorial Hermann Cypress to expand again with new tower - Houston Business Journal (bizjournals.com) "A new six-story tower will be constructed as part of the expansion, and Memorial Hermann said another two floors can be added for future growth." $277.5 million, slated for completion in 2027

Ali Choudhri Poised To Lose Galleria-Area Office Building After Lengthy Court Battle (bisnow.com) "QB Loop Property LP has agreed to buy the 285K SF building for $27.25M, which includes $1M earmarked for Chapter 11 administrative claims, according to court documents filed this week. Closing is slated for Aug. 8 or before, the sale agreement says."

Cars damaged by falling concrete at Waterline in Downtown Austin | kvue.com "On Wednesday afternoon, police said concrete fell onto the road from a nearby construction site at the Waterline apartments in Downtown Austin, damaging nearby vehicles."

This development is now called Ryehill and the senior living component will be a Del Webb branded community. The overall development is now mentioned as having 2500 homes total, with about 780 of them in the Del Webb portion. PulteGroup developing Ryehill community outside Sugar Land - Houston Business Journal (bizjournals.com)

If you're keeping the list up - #118 is gone. The road was extended to the feeder and the fountain/water element was removed. One has been added in Rosenberg though. It's the pretty sizeable one in front of the Fort Bend EpiCenter.

No surprise, but... Transwestern breaks ground on The RO mixed-use in Upper Kirby - Houston Business Journal (bizjournals.com) "Transwestern Development Co. announced June 24 that it has broken ground on The RO, a 17-acre development at 3120 Buffalo Speedway, near the corner of West Alabama Street and Buffalo Speedway."

Here are some photos I took around the park.

So, I am back from this part of the world and have to say I've been impressed with the amount of development that's taken place over the past number of years. I stayed on the east side of Odessa near Loop 338 & TX-191 because I'm cheap and didn't want to pay Midland prices for a hotel room. Turned out to be extremely good timing as that particular corner was running .15 to .35 lower for gas prices (2.54!) than pretty much anywhere I saw from Big Spring to Monahans. The east side of Odessa and the west side of Midland are continuing to draw nearer to one another. The intersection I stayed at didn't exist in its current form during my last stay over a decade ago. I wish I had more to say about Odessa for fairness, but we didn't really do much there except sleep and eat. 191 is a really viable corridor now for development between the two cities. It doesn't take any time whatsoever to go back and forth between Loop 250 in Midland and 338 in Odessa. It probably benefits from more intrusive construction along the Midland stretch of I-20 as well. There are some growing pains along this way, to be sure. 191's main lanes are being expanded and have a steady flow of traffic during most of the day. Backups do take place along the feeder at the intersection with 250 heading into Midland at rush hour in the evening. There were already a number of hotels at that intersection - and the location of Oxy, Chevron and others nearby along Deauville Blvd. are feeding that trend as well as more of the suburban residential development to the west of 250. One of the more interesting construction sites actually is at that intersection. A stalled hotel south of the HEB and east of the Sam's Club is moving ahead after years of being on hold. Had to dig into this but it looks like that hotel will be the Doubletree location for the area now. The existing one - the former Hilton Towers downtown - was put up for sale earlier in the year. One of the most persistent knocks on it has been that it's been in need of renovations for some time. Maybe a new buyer can help with that. I did get to visit Centennial Park across the street and am extremely glad that I did. For 5-7 PM, at over 100 degrees, it was being used pretty extensively for a space without a major event that evening, and the folks kept coming as the time passed. Parking immediately around the park and on surrounding lots was mostly full the entire time. The star attraction was the splash pad, which my kids absolutely loved. There was also a really neat looking wood & rope/net play area at one corner which my oldest really liked before she went to go splash. For adults, the star attractions with tables were the shaded tables and benches. The rebuilt convention center is on or effectively in the park now. The other thing that surprised me was that the street scene, especially around that park, was fairly active. I'm sure that there was an event or large group staying at the hotel across the street from the park as they all had about the same welcome backpacks that the CVB gives out to people... but it seemed like there was more happening. Beyond that, there were a fair number of pedestrians out and about along Wall and a few of the surrounding streets, and a decent amount of dining options were open and were being patronized. That's a departure from my last time there years ago when I could walk down the literal middle of the same street at about 7 at night and not be afraid of getting hit. All in all I was impressed. So was my wife who had never been to that part of the state. It's a good base for getting out and seeing the region, and I think we'll have to find an excuse to get back out there some time.

I'm not sure if this has been updated, but the address given is not actually in Brazos Town Center. It's just a bit north and east along the freeway. Here's a street view look at it from May. I was there about a week ago and it looked like a fair amount of the brick had already been applied.

There's a thread for this linked below.

This piece from the Chronicle has a bit about the history of the hospital up to 2008. I'd mentioned a bit of the experience I had with my grandma here in this thread about what once was their secondary location in Westbury. Most of the comments are about that facility though. I visited in 2001 during the week of Allison. She started out at Polly Ryon (OakBend) in Richmond and then was transferred a few hours later. This was the night before the storm came ashore, and we were going back and forth to visit through the course of the week. I remember leaving that Friday afternoon as the rains started up again and just collapsing at home afterward. Turned out we couldn't get back to the hospital until Sunday since that insane rainfall took place over the rest of that Friday and into Saturday and cut off 59 in a few spots. She was transferred to the Westbury hospital either that Sunday or a couple of days later. That's also where she passed away within a couple of weeks. This location was, from what I recall, kind of dated. Most of the staff was nice. The room was okay. I think the view was the best point since it was facing Uptown, but that's not saying much about else there. Overall, the facility wasn't terribly busy and was relatively quiet. This was before the surface lots had been removed for the parking garage and the Art Institute building. T-Mobile's tower on the freeway was the professional building for the place. The sole positive for me as a visitor and photo nerd at the time was the fact that the garage for the professional building was fairly high. I brought my camera a couple of days and took pictures of the TMC and Uptown skylines between the storms, fairly early in the day on a couple of the days.

Grand Parkway turns northeast Houston into next growth area - Houston Business Journal (bizjournals.com) At least some of this area appears to be targeted for some decent growth in the near future...

Time does a number on you. I still think of him as the "new" guy on KPRC. I don't remember the specifics about how he was introduced back then, but I do remember that Roland Galvan (RIP) was the chief meteorologist for an extremely brief period of time prior. Had to only have been a few months after Doug Johnson left with his taped good-bye. That event in particular, and in hindsight, seemed to be the death knell for some of the longtime folks there. That said, I always thought he was pretty good in the role he has been in. He used to be on AIM a fair amount at work back in the day and left it on all the time. He would talk to people directly about the weather and his work and was super friendly and never gave off an attitude that it was a waste of time to talk to him. For my money, he really came into his own years later - I will never forget what he was doing during Hurricane Ike and then after. In the lead-up he kept advising against others who were "wishcasting" the storm to go elsewhere or magically drop in intensity after it became apparent that it was headed for the Houston area. A few days after landfall, he went up in Sky 2 over Galveston and the surrounding areas to check on people's property for several hours, even going back to refuel and go back up again for a while longer as more and more folks would call or email in. At any rate, his time off is well-deserved.