wxman

Dude, you have wrong info. Change the title back---for the second time. Thanks. I hate to sound like a d-bag about it but it's annoying when people take it upon themselves to change things up based on faulty info. It's going to be a 40 story building. Not 35.

Can somebody piece together an a rendered image of what downtown will look like with this building in place? Preeeeety please?

Wow, what an awesome thing to log in and see. In one of those renderings, the building looks to be significantly taller than MainPlace. Is that accurate? 41-stories should make it SHORTER than MainPlace...even with the slant, yes?

Yes, it's freakin' 40-stories. Don't jack with the title. Please change it back. Thanks.

Yawn

I dunno---I'm a HUGE fan of The Woodlands. I think it is top notch in every way. However, I'm not sure that area can support a big high-rise condo tower, much less many of them. I love that The Woodlands has its own "downtown" now, I really don't want huge developments taking over the place and it lose its seclusion feel. I love concrete and steel at much as the next guy but if you can't hear the birds chirp for the sounds of cars on the ever expanding Woodlands Pkwy, then The Woodlands really loses the magic that made the community different and coveated to begin with. Just my opinion.

This building looks like a block straight out of the Soviet Union or North Korea. If you were to add 50 or 60 more of these things next to each other, you'd have Pyongyang or some other God forsaken city that nobody cares about. I hate to poo poo some people's high opinion of this building but poo poo.

How big is Apache Tower supposed to be? 30 stories?

This building turned out to be somewhat disappointing. The renderings looked far more urban and cutting edge verses a white box with a small overhang. It looks suburban-ish from the 1980s. Hopefully the will add Phase 2/3 to this.

From what I've read about the new Simcity, I already have major issues with the game. First, the obvious: CITY SIZE! It's incredibly small and like the poster above said, it would take many cities to create something to the likes of Houston. Second, there are no subways in the new game. They did away with them. Second, it looks too chartoonish from what I've seen. I like something that is going to look like a city from the air (which your perspective of the city is always from the air). While I have not played the game, this is what I am hoping to see and perhaps somebody can fill us in: -I want to have full control of what my skyline looks like. Often times, at least for me, it's the focal point of my city. I want to be able to pick and choose real life skyscrapers from any place in the world. -I think the game should have been made to where there are no ''borders'' to the city. It should be made to where your city can stretch in any direction for as far as you want. Also, borders of a city shouldn't always be square. Why can't we have the power to annex and draw in our own boundaries? -I want to be able to lay out my airport the way I see fit. I wanna be able to add runways and configure the layout of those runways in different directions. Why haven't they thought of that? From what I understand, the new game is geared more towards multi-player than it is the individual player. I feel like they really dropped the ball on this game. So far, I think Sim City Rush Hour is the best so far. Just my two cents. Can somebody add anything or correct me on anything? I'm very interested. Thanks in advance!

I was counting it up earlier and if I am correct, we have 21 buildings that are 20 or more floors tall that are either on the drawing board, have broken ground or almost complete. 5 Allen Center: 50-stories 600 Main: 48-stories State Grille Condo: 40-stories Anadarko: 32-stories 1500 Post Oak: 30-stories Astoria: 28-stories The Soverign: 22-stories Hanover: 30-stories Blvd Towers 1-5 (not including Hanover) 20/30-story ish BBVA Tower: 20 stories 3333 Richmond: 20 stories Noble Energy: 20 stories Marriott Downtown: 30-stories Ashby Highrise: 20 stories (ish---forgot exact #) New Apartment Tower downtown: 20+ stories

Rendering for this page:

The Chron has picked up the story, too... http://blog.chron.com/primeproperty/2013/02/bhp-billiton-office-tower-to-rise-on-post-oak-boulevard/#comment-21660 BHP Billiton Petroleum said Monday it will hire hundreds of new employees and lease a 30-story office tower to be built at 1500 Post Oak Blvd. to accommodate its expanding shale business and future growth. Construction is expected to start later this year on the new building, which will be connected to the company’s current headquarters at 1360 Post Oak Blvd, creating a two-tower campus. A glass skybridge will connect the structures. The buildings will house several thousand BHP employees, many still to be hired. Some 1,800 existing BHP employees will office there, including workers in other locations. Employees in downtown’s Wells Fargo Tower and a building in Tulsa, Okla. will relocate to the Post Oak headquarters. “We’ll probably be pushing 3,000 when we move into the new building,” CEO J. Micheal Yeager said at a press conference. In total, BHP will occupy about 1 million square feet in both buildings. The new tower will have 560,000 square feet. Transwestern will develop the new building for owner TIAA-CREF. BHP Billiton deals in natural resources ranging from iron ore and uranium to oil and natural gas. The company is headquartered in Melbourne, with a major office in London, but the petroleum division is based in Houston. Architectural firm Pickard Chilton designed the building, which is expected to open in 2016. Gensler also was involved. “We have designed this new building with employee productivity and appeal as top priorities to retain current employees and attract prospective employees,” Yeager said in a statement. “We plan to hire hundreds of new people in the immediate future. To attract the most talent, we believe we need to offer them the best possible work environment.”

So we're still two years out from construction?!? Did I read right? Nevermind, I think the permit will be submitted in April or May and then they start construction right then. Somebody should also change it to 28-stories in the header.

This came out of nowhere wouldn't ya say? http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/humble/news/grand-texas-theme-park-continues-plans-to-move-into-east/article_502edc4a-9c53-51c3-9dc2-3eefa9ac345b.html?mode=story Grand Texas Theme park continues plans to move into East Montgomery County Story Comments Image (1) Print Create a hardcopy of this page Font Size: Default font size Larger font size 2 Grand Texas Theme park continues plans to move into East Montgomery County Posted: Friday, February 15, 2013 10:58 am By JENNIFER SUMMER New job creation, money back into the county and surrounding school districts and entertainment are just a few of the things the Grand Texas Theme Park will bring to the community. The plans continue to progress for the educational theme park as developers work through agreements with the East Montgomery County Improvement District, Montgomery County and the Montgomery County Municipal Utilities District #4. The Grand Texas Theme Park is slated to be located around FM 242 and Interstate 69 which means ad valorem tax will benefit both the New Caney and Splendora Independent School Districts. Representatives discussed the park and how it will benefit the community at the EMCID board meeting Feb. 14. “Grand Texas is the name for both the theme park and the entertainment district. This is a theme park based on Texas history and culture,” Monty Galland with the Grand Texas Theme Park said at the EMCID meeting. “The park will feature the elements of a typical theme park with a couple of major roller coasters and carousel to name a few but it will also have elements that you will not typically find in a theme park like a museum, a focus on live entertainment like music and dance and an exploration of Texas history and culture.” The projected closing date on the land is April 30, 2013 and between April and October 2013, they intend to have all of their pre-development, engineering and planning completed. By mid-October, they plan to have site work and infrastructure begin and they are looking at an opening date of March 12, 2015. The total capital cost of the water park, the theme park, the amphitheater and the paintball is $118 million. The peripheral development such as the restaurants and such will add another $95 million. The total development costs are $205 to $220 million. Information about the Grand Texas Theme Park was first introduced at January board meeting as a compliment to the Earth Quest park. They are continuing with the developers for Earth Quest Adventures theme park, Contour Entertainment, who presented updated information to the board at their December meeting. EMCID required for Contour Entertainment to meet three requirements including hiring a qualified investment firm, purchase the land where EarthQuest is set to be situated and present an investment package proposal detailing fundraising and efforts leading them to meet their financial goal. “A main goal of EMCID is to drive tourism to our area which will benefit all of the businesses in our community as well because families will travel to the area and go to the restaurants and stay at the hotels,” Frank McCrady, president of EMCID, added. “The addition of a second theme park will give families a reason to stay a night or two at our hotels. We are excited about the possibilities of this coming to our community.” Grand Texas Theme Park has budgeted to reinvest between $33 and $42 million over the first seven years back into East Montgomery County with a total economic impact of $334 million over time. The organizers of the Grand Texas Theme Park hope to incorporate everything from ragtime music to zydeco music to Tex-Mex food; they will have a little bit of something for everyone. The park will feature four dining establishments, a full-service hotel with 200-400 rooms, two limited service hotels with a combined 175-210 rooms and reception hall and chapel. “We want to make sure all of the elements are successful and there is enough traffic to support the business so we are planning very conservatively,” Galland added. “This will also bring a lot of new jobs into the community that could truly make a difference for a teenager who is looking for a job or a family who is looking for an additional job to help pay the bills or more savings. Also, this will benefits teachers since there will be a lot of educational elements at the park; they could work during the summer to teach about Texas history and culture.” They are expecting first year attendance to be around 665,000 rising to 904,000 at the theme park and for the core elements to boast an attendance of 1.4 million growing to a little over 1.8 million. The entertainment district will be anchored by four primary elements which are the theme park, Big Rivers Water Park, the Pine Grove amphitheater, which has an 8,000 person capacity and a baseball stadium. They will also have the Gunslinger’s Paintball experience for guests to enjoy. “With the theme park being the anchor, it is very important for us to have a great team. We have a very strong team including Chuck Hendrix, who oversees the planning and operations for the theme park. He has years of experience since he was previously responsible for operations at all of the North American Six Flags and former general manager for Six Flags’ Astroworld,” Galland said. The rest of the team have all worked at various theme and water parks in the Houston area and retail areas like the Marketplace in the Woodlands and for the most part, live in the Houston area so that is one of the reasons they chose to open a theme park in the East Montgomery County community. The Grand Texas Theme Park has partnered with Brae Burn Construction who have a $100 million bonding capability and they will help with construction once they officially sign on to the location of the park and they make their agreements with the three entities. They also plan to have an agri-tainment arena where the guests can learn about different things like how to drive a tractor, where to plant crops, how to milk a cow and enjoy petting zoos and horseback riding. “That is what this park is all about is having families interacting with each other and the animals. We want to incorporate the educational aspects of the theme park with fun. It is an exciting venture that we are excited to begin,” Galland said.

WOW!!! That was quick!

They aren't going to force McDonalds to close its location if the space wasn't needed. Grant it, McDonalds Corp. may have had this location scheduled for a renovation at some point and they figured it would be easier just to tear the dump down than to renovate it. Either way, the closing of McDonalds in my mind signals it's all systems go for this project.

It's pretty cool to see major highrises being built in the suburbs. It's funny, you drive into Dallas on 45, you don't even know you're in a major metro area until you get downtown. In Houston, the freeway opens up in Conroe (40 miles out) and the density really begins to pick up in ernest when you get into The Woodlands (25 miles out).

Have they begun construction? They have erected a crane at the south end zone....as seen in a video from ''dude pefect'' on the home page of the Houston Chronicle. http://blog.chron.com/aggies/2013/01/manziel-dude-perfect-form-quite-a-combo-of-trickery/

Yeah, I kinda agree. Can somebody clear up the BLVD. mess and which is which?

I suspect that's a lot bigger lot than we realize. Astoria isn't a big tower anyway, just taller and that McDonalds is like the biggest I've ever seen. The footprint of the new McDonalds will be far smaller. Plus removing that trailer thingy on the site will open up the area quite a bit. I mean look what they build downtown (Mainplace) with that while building (forget the name of it) sharing the lot. I thought that was much more impressive.

I'm 27 and I personally like The Woodlands but I wouldn't mind working downtown.

"...and it's going to be tall.'' Does that imply that it'll be unusually tall? I mean we all know a 30, 40 or 50 story building is tall but the fact that you included ''it's going to be tall'' peaks my interests. lol

Height? Stories? Anything???

United would have pulled from E or C. Not D.