strickn

It reminds me of a saddle-horn but is 10 miles away from the SA Stock Show & Rodeo.  Maybe it'll have gull-wing doors...

The Port of San Antonio, an inland business campus formerly known as Kelly Air Force Base (don't worry, San Antonio still has Lackland AFB, Randolph AFB, and Fort Sam Houston, which trains all military medicine staff for the Army, Navy, and Air Force) has been trying to create economic development by, among other things, subsidizing Delorean to relocate its headquarters to Port of San Antonio land.

Now here is a blobby signature office building designed to create buzz and visual brand impact for the Port.
Kendall-Heaton is either the design architect or architect of record for it.
This document says 230' but also says high point of 205'
https://oeaaa.faa.gov/oeaaa/external/searchAction.jsp?action=displayOECase&oeCaseID=597169018&row=7

Good thing SA has a building or two that will age well.

If this were a more doctrinaire architectural firm, Stern would be describing how* the designer has deliberately evoked the essence of the sweetly at-home angularity of the unique face of the opossum native to the pineywoods biome, or, perhaps, that the color palette is drawn from the elegant, admirable paleness of the local vultures’ legs (which is colored by their excreta so as to regulate their temperature through evaporative cooling) thus avoiding toxic reliance upon air conditioning while decreasing the resort’s and the birds’ carbon footprints.  I like the connection you suggest, monarch.

Apt and very interesting observation but I don’t think it’s on their radar

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2023/11/14/bechtel-departure-post-oak-office-loan-risk.html
 

3000 Post Oak has a loan whose borrower is at risk of becoming nonperforming once Bechtel, the tenant, finally moves away.

9 hours ago, hindesky said:

https://www.wileinterests.com/featured-projects/

https://www.wileinterests.com/photo-gallery/#908

 

Irving R Klein & associates 

On 10/27/2023 at 10:34 PM, strickn said:

By our standards no freeways in 1920s Houston.  Not sure when Wayside Drive was completed

You might also look up how Holmes Road-Griggs Road connected to Ship Channel area suburbs, parkways and ferry crossings, back before even the Washburn and Baytown Tunnels were opened 70 years ago.

https://www.houstontx.gov/superneighborhoods/snmapsbyzip.pdf

On 11/10/2023 at 4:28 PM, EspersonBuildings said:

I have never been inside of their headquarters but have always been curious about it.  My parents bought their first home just south of it in 1963 where I grew up.  We always passed by it on the way home from being out.  The Art Deco style with the reflecting basin is rather classic.

Is south of there also called Willow Meadows area by those in the vicinity?  I see that the City of Houston considers South Main to be a boundary between superneighborhoods.  Ordinarily I would be skeptical of that -- since both sides of a street do not work anything like both banks of a river -- but this particular bypass route is not part of a neighborhood streetscape in either direction.

I haven't been... I would like to know how to get us a tour though.  I'd bet it's well worthwhile

11530 Main St
Houston, TX  77025 to be precise 

Have you ever been inside of their headquarters on South Main / 90?

On 8/30/2021 at 10:13 PM, j_cuevas713 said:

How are these developers so clueless? Not saying they need to build a parking garage, but putting parking in the back helps so much. I wish I could afford this chunk of land. I‘d do HAIF proud 😅

Houston area developers were extremely hesitant to try mixed use until enough of them did it first.  The master planned residential developments with office and retail that Exxon and other oilfield owners performed throughout the 1970s did nothing to assuage their fears of asking for financing on non pure-play asset classes.  Large buildings were perceived as more difficult -- even if a financier understood them -- to find a large-as-normal pool of future buyers to take you out of, if I have read and understood correctly.  Small buildings were perceived as not worth the squeeze.

Changing parking is still that way.  Parking in the back really helps everything except snagging traffic's ambivalent drive-by wallets who don't want to guess about how to get inside.  It's like fishing with the right bait and lure, and I suppose that the higher the speed limit, the more leery of uncertainty (and more inattentive) the fish will be.

I'm sorry we don't have a precise way to get the best of both worlds on any given site.  You/we could still do HAIF proud by inventing a parking mullet that meets the current visibility standards of CRE professionals while enhancing the actual big picture of a mixed use site -- at every point on the gradients from small site to big site and high speed to low speed.

That square footage often includes the parking garage square footage, but if I were developing such a small site with office, residential and a bayoufront restaurant...

then I would want to build as much parking space as possible, but by means of flexible-footprint automated parking with a smartphone retrieval-concierge ( https://www.trident-structures.com/parking is one example that office developers are fielding currently).  That way I could maximize the amount of floorplan available for primary uses to flow throughout a site and strengthen the program.

Paywalled, but the plans revealed are just to own it?

I wouldn't mind if they think of also owning that Shell station next door and building something on top of it

I would like seeing y'all's sketches of design ideas for this quiet site on the north bank of Buffalo Bayou.  It would be nice to continue the pocket neighborhood rhythm that the little streets nearby already have.*
 

I'll post my first draft once I come up with one.

* rather than just drawing a shape or two squatting atop a parking garage, like some parkfront developments on Hermann Park and Transco Waterwall park -- and, for that matter, the Hobby Center downtown -- have done.

The new supertall in Brooklyn, Long Island's first, reminds me of WEDGE International Tower.

https://www.shoparc.com/projects/9-dekalb/

Those aren't mutually exclusive by any stretch of the imagination 

Bump

Uh because they decided not to compete head to head in most US states yet while they both get established, so the people who can have both are mostly the people who buy their groceries online.

aldi tends to build 16,000-18,000 square foot locations so a lot of intown hermit crab shell spaces could suit them

I think a better strategy for this corridor, though, would be to pick four or five really busy stops to build enclosed waiting and boarding stations.  Run 1/4 of the vehicles Express stopping only at these stops.  Run 3/4ths of the vehicles Local, stopping at every stop.  The average rider's ride time would decrease even though they have one or two quick indoor Local-to-Express transfers if they're going across town.

It would be challenging to fund an efficient rush hour transit system in a city where the major employers are military bases, hospitals and a few universities, all spread out across random neighborhoods five to ten miles apart.  So I think a non-commute system anchored by the airport and downtown is probably the only mass bundling option where ten minute headways would be sustainable.

While they can try that anywhere, the low off-peak ridership elsewhere would soon lead to cutbacks as money was wasted at ten minute intervals, so it's better not to implement it and then have to retract it.

Just my 2c, I hope they carve up the site into small Rainey Street slots, develop a couple of towers and pocket parks...and open the rest up for ground leases for suitably cool neighborhood towers to develop on others' dimes

It would form a western anchor to the Washington Avenue corridor

On 10/28/2023 at 3:28 PM, strickn said:

The design of ... that garage roof could fit at _least_ four more tennis courts on the top level without breaking a sweat

And maybe a grid of oversailing poles (link) with solar mesh tented on them to keep the players from breaking a sweat

an effect akin to this, rather than a Topgolf/driving range, perhaps?

The city didn't pave every block for as few people to enjoy it as possible.  So it didn't do that for yours in particular just because you bought a house or asked nicely.

On 7/10/2019 at 8:31 AM, Nate99 said:

 

Yep. Up in Kingwood when the plans for the ridiculously overwrought development on the lake came out, everyone was instantly convinced of any and every calamity that they could imagine ruining their lives because of the impact of towers, offices and some shopping.  There were even some high school kids looking to burnish their college applications trying to "organize" the noble opposition. 

 

It's a cultural thing, what will we accept happening around us and what rights will eventually be legally recognized if they are not delayed and harassed out of feasibility.  There are many places in this world where laws are vague and what will be permitted is anyone's guess. This dynamic is on a spectrum, but unless you are that incumbent in a comfortable position or become wildly rich elsewhere and like the scenery,  you don't go anywhere near the least predictable jurisdictions and they stagnate or bifurcate into extremes of luxury and poverty as a result. 

Some of the "rights" to zero traffic increase that people know don't exist ought to be codified just the same:  if you want to pay an absolute ton of money the city to guarantee a super low speed limit placement on your street for 10 years, you can, but if you don't want to, then we're clear that you haven't opted in to a traffic diminishment contract

And if you haven't, then don't go fishing for an expectation of that at the planning commission meetings by threatening to make your world unsafe for density