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strickn

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Posts posted by strickn

  1. One possibility for the CBD would be as described in my summary of this article which itself just summarizes an article:

     

    https://www.bisnow.com/national/news/office/universities-gobbling-up-office-buildings-in-a-bid-to-expand-footprints-at-a-discount-120959

    "Dozens of schools are picking up vacant office buildings, making the most of the sector’s pain by increasing the size of their campuses and real estate portfolios at a low price. 

    ...

    The acquired buildings often need renovations, but these improvements are typically less expensive and time-consuming than constructing new buildings from scratch, per the NYT.

    ...

    Colleges and universities buying up buildings vacated due to the rise in hybrid work are unlikely to make a major dent in office woes. The nation’s office availability rate sits at 24%, per Savills, up from 17% before the onset of the pandemic.

    'It stands out because almost nothing else is happening on the office market,' economic historian and author Dror Poleg told the NYT.

    ...

    [when they're truly nonprofit, they] usually don’t pay taxes on academic buildings and dorms, so the properties they acquire could slide off the tax rolls. But some elected officials don’t mind, as the sales can bring foot traffic and employment to downtown areas in need of a boost, per the NYT."

  2. No taxpayer dollars were wasted investigating whether anybody has actually regarded a little-known and incomplete greenway as the nation’s longest connected urban forest but dude what a long forest 

    “For Your Consideration”

  3. Maybe we could expand this topic to assess the bigger picture beyond active threads like those and this one:  

    Since the main feature of these woodland corridors is their proximity to their creeks and bayous, I have a recent offline personal "Southeast Texas Blueways" collection of notes I will be happy to dump into this thread if there is interest.

    • Like 1
  4. $12,000 an acre for 658 acres is not that much in this day and age.  It would cost hundreds of thousands an acre to try to clear the bottomland floodplain oak-ash-elm-pecan forest, to drain it and put in streets and electricity for subdivisions like Sienna.  Probably that's why the price is so low, because it has no more market value unless you are buying it with some way to clear that very high hurdle.
     

    How much would they charge to sell to TPWD, I wonder, so that both this -- and an eventual reforestation of the multiple publicly owned prison farms south of this -- could be added to Brazos Bend State Park?

  5. Having trouble finding a megatall that looks more interesting than it could have at a smaller size... an ounce of architectural thought diluted into a gallon or two of engineering.  There's one under construction now in Monterrey, Nuevo León, which shares a very tiny state border with Texas, and it's not much better to behold than these, although it has a sort of vaulted outdoor sky loggia/porch in the plans.

  6. 22 hours ago, samagon said:

    I'd love to see a zipline installed between the two!

    In these last two photos I see that the X is farther away than I realized.  It’s on the other side of the ZaZa (Warwick) Hotel.  Instead of it I was looking at the building going up by Richmond & Woodhead, so please update your carabiner accordingly.

    I’m sure Bob Hope would have liked the view from the Warwick’s zipline too.

  7. My knee-jerk reaction is that a good use of this site would be the only thing that could get anyone to justify the expense of a park on that adjacent site anymore, but I have no firsthand understanding of the actual value of having this city park in such a spot

    I like that the railroad line remains signed as Maffitt, like the city maps show:

    IMG_3300.jpeg

    • Like 1
  8. My knee-jerk reaction is that a good use of this site would be the only thing that could get anyone to justify the expense of a park on that adjacent site anymore, but I have no firsthand understanding of the actual value of having this city park in such a spot

  9. On 1/25/2021 at 5:19 PM, Avossos said:

    They could have built a great building on the 2 lots and not had to tear anything down. I cannot stand demolition for the sake of vanity.

    The 2020 design by Meeks and Partners had a lot more light and air, including short skywalks above the garage/pool deck joining separate midrise floorplans.  
     

    But by the time HAIF saw EDI architects had value engineered it, in June 2021, it was the normal doughnut that we see now.
     

    ICYMI the draw for landlords to build something like this is that even with lower sticker prices, they still have higher cashflow per square foot.  To maximize that, once light and air were no longer priorities, and cheapen the garage floor plate cost per garage space, it would no longer have worked as well without tearing out the old homes.

     

    to trymahjongg, I have memories of Proletariat too.  One of my very first dates was to a show there.

    • Like 3
  10. I believe the historic George Ranch park visitors center and living museum is the little jaggedy notch at the top of the picture reposted by ChannelTwoNews.  That Signorelli wants a small town atmosphere with nothing to do with that...?  Maybe they could find a way to make more money building their business in Minecraft -- it seems more suitable to the real world than to merely go around pretending you're not building where you actually are.

    🔥 

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