strickn

IMHO Galveston is already cooler than Rosemary Beach and Seaside will ever be.  But if you take a Floridian or two to the Strand, Post Office Street Historic District, and some of the cool old neighborhoods off of Broadway, they generally don’t see it unless they’re already versed in traditional urban design.  They’re more impressed with superficially nice, higher-property-value but lower-economic-catalysis-value groups of assets like Allen Parkway, Heights Boulevard, and the like.

And your average Houston investor is apt to look at this in much the same way, without thinking of it as herd mentality at all.

Galveston is what most of the inner loop wants to become and yet look at almost every suburban developer making Galveston less so with their development ideas.

It would make more sense to have the same site plan now and treat Broadway like an important part of Galveston with the parking tucked behind, not just a feeder to the Gulf Freeway.

Obviously this developer sees that as too much of an obstacle despite their willingness to work in Galveston in the first place.

Correction-- the one at Weslayan is a Central Market.  
 

Dominion Post Oak treated Guilford like it's going to be an urban living lane someday, and all that that will require is for Post Oak Central's 600-foot wall of parking to go the way of the dodo and receive a new set of properly designed buildings and ground floor connections.

I would slot a new H-E-B (yes there are two on Fountain View already, but the next nearest is over at Weslayan & Westheimer, so this would fill quite a gap) into the surface parking moat and dedicate the ground floor of the existing garage to it. Make its rooftop a POST-style walkable lifestyle retail City Centre deck which connects to storefronts inserted in the side of tower 3 and into the upper floors of the north garage.

2340 University's owner address on HCAD is 6100 Main St, which is Rice.  They bought it in 2019.  Others are c/o the same LLC's law firm address downtown instead 

Howard Hughes Corp itself moved here recently from one of them.  It's like platinum colonialism of Southeast Texas.

Don't know why those replies weren't merged.

Yeah, Houstonians are splurging more and more money on self, seeing, and being seen.  It's still a generous city in general but tbh less and less able to claim any big positive difference in pampering, pomp, conformity and vanity compared to our rival metros of yuppies & old money like Dallas, Atlanta, Austin and Miami.

More and more often, professional Houstonians have lived in one or more of those cities, and their friends think and act much the same way here.

Sol 7 is the coldest planet

Colder than ice cold

I didn't notice that you were referring to monarch's use of the word dream, because I didn't expand his quote box.  Without that displayed, it looked like you were saying that this tower is all that the city up north is doing.

I apologize for my confusion

Don't be confused.  All you have to do is tipetoe over to Dallasmetropolis and see what they're up to

A "confused face" should be reserved for claims that are demonstrably off base, such as the claim that this is all that is going on in the pipeline up north

*tiptoe

As if

And wishing a belated joyful 99th birthday last week to Pres. James Earl J̶o̶n̶e̶s̶ f̶i̶n̶s̶ Carter, a good epilogue for him and for us.

*President Trump voice* people saay it's the best in the west.  They say that.  I don't know why but they're saying it, but they say that, they've said it, they're very passionate about it -- I hear that they don't want some bizarre thing in Austin to happen to a downtown like Houston, believe me, architecture is too nice a word for it, and if they want that then they should have it 

"Who said it?"

*President Clinton voice* Yo mama

To walk back my disrespectful snarking, we can still easily see that this urban forest is longer, even though the trail doesn't take on a forest character until a few linear miles south of downtown:

link: https://www.cleveland.com/resizer/fBfuHB8uc7-x24YAXrhGinZpDqA=/700x0/smart/advancelocal-adapter-image-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/expo.advance.net/img/091cb4eabb/width2048/ade_screenshot20190614at31732pm.jpeg

At 7 floors it's not one of the ten tallest buildings in the city, nor the largest hotel they've had, at 200 rooms, but it is probably the biggest convention space they've ever had in a hotel (36,000 square feet)

Obviously in that day and age you didn't try to frame a picture from behind the wheel, so I don't know if we ever got a photo before towers have filled in some more of the space between them and blocked it.

Interesting.  I always associate them with the chunkier Hines trio project at The Lake(s) at or on Post Oak  -- 3000, 3040, 3050 Post Oak office towers, from the 1970s and early 80s, by 3D/I and forest water landscape by Edward Durell Stone Jr & Associates (son of the NYC modernist architect) per Stephen Fox's guide to Houston.

Not just because of the owner involved, the neighborhood, office usage, three phases and their overlapping construction eras, but for a quietly quirkier reason.

In the 1980s and 1990s driving up the Loop through Bellaire to take his son to school at River Oaks Elementary, my uncle James noticed that one of those Lakes trio cut off your view of the lower floors of Post Oak Central, leaving only a geometric facet and a few floors showing of the background towers.  The unintended effect was of an American flag perched behind the Lake at Post Oak.

Once these get old and obsolete it's gonna be a lot more costly to demolish them than TMC's current old building stock.  Better start socking away pennies for the wrecking fund.

I have read that Brays was a jungly gully too until the forests were destroyed.  But was Sims always closer to the frequently-intermittent-wetland-prairies?

And less close to a bottomland forest biome than the others?

Thank you

If corporate trust just adds a bunch of 30 and 40 foot illuminated f̶i̶n̶s̶ Rooftop Ribbons on top for breast cancer awareness, it will also not be surpassed as tallest in the state of Texas in a few years by the Waterline tower in Austin.  Just sayin'.

On 8/29/2023 at 11:19 AM, astrohip said:

Boo! Those iconic Live Oaks along Sunset are a big part of what makes this area so special. I understand trees in the middle of lots are an issue, but WHY did they cut down the trees along the street?

In fact, thinking about this, aren't the trees in the sidewalk/street easement protected? Why were they able to cut them down?

Still seems like the city should be queried whether this actually flies now or not

(Today's post is brought to you by CNU, the Congress FOR The New Urbanism, where we're interested in the way creative grinds work)

On 10/2/2022 at 8:31 AM, 004n063 said:

I think an HAIF meetup there would be hilarious. A bar full of young people loudly Miamiing while 14 old foagies (in spirit, if not universally in age) in a corner argue about parking garages.

Misread as "14-year-old fogies-in-spirit"

Congress of the New Urban Old Souls

On 10/2/2023 at 4:46 PM, houstontexasjack said:

The parking on the site has GFR, I think, but is kind of low density for a parking garage. I wonder if they might consolidate that a bit into a larger/taller garage to allow for another tower or towers.

Houston Gensler will be happy to provide them with plans for a fully mechanized garage with smartphone valet app!

See thread for details...