paulanthony1977

there is an enormous amount of infill housing being built south of 1960, west of aldine-westfield, east of 249 and north of beltway 8. most of the housing i've seen is under 150k. i think that any redevelopment of greenspoint will reflect the demographics of these homeowners.

You are right. Thanks to KB home they are building future ghettos, like Remington Ranch off I-45 and Rankin. I was picking up a friend from the airport who came in from California for the weekend and he said, "man, that's a big mobile home park".

They are building that entire subdivision without one single brick!

The W in New Orleans is great with pets. I took my dog with my once and they walked her twice a day.

She even ate a chair leg, and besides not returing my 100 dollar pet deposit, they said "no problem"

The Woodlands is actually getting a new luxury concept hotel called Avia. Check out www.aviahotels.com. This is a new concept boutique hotel opening in Napa Valley, CA Savannah, GA and Long Beach, CA. I work in Corporate Sales for a downtown Houston hotel, trust me Houston can support a W Hotel and then some.

Has anyone else noticed the construction boom in dowtown Dallas and surrounding areas?

Why isn't this happening in Houston??!!!!

I hate to admit it.....but the downtown Dallas architecture is much more impressive than Houston's, and now it's getting more dense and more impressive! And Dallas just seems to be much cleaner and impressive architecturally and visually.

It just irks me, because I know so many people from Dallas, and they're so cocky.

Why does Houston lag behind them? We're still trying to figure out how mass transit fits here, and they've got DART up and running, and very functional.

I'm just frustrated, and I just don't understand it.

Hello,

Most of the building going on in Uptown Dallas are Hotels and Condo's. I'm from Dallas originally, but then I got out and moved to San Diego, and now Houston. Anyhow, I know that they are building A Ritz Carlton and a Mandarin Oriental hotel in the Uptown area near the Crescent Court. Downtown Dallas itself is pretty lame. I haven't lived in Texas for a while, but the Dallas/Houston feud sounds like the people in San Diego vs. LA.

Good day!

Paul

Yeah! I hope that is true, but on the other hand working for Doubletree I don't want the competition. I'm pretty sure it's going to be an Omni or perhaps a Starwood product, Sheraton, Westin etc. I was told that when that hotel was originally built the rooms to meeting space ratio was bad, so they had a hard time selling the hotel to conventions. I also heard that the celing height in the guest rooms was really low. I'm sure whoever takes it over will fix that.

Sounds like you were right! According to the current print edition of the Houston Business Journal, the Sheraton building is being sold "to an unidentified buyer who has plans for new hotel rooms, residential units or a combination of both. This was in an article about Brookfield buying Total Plaza next door. The spokesman compares it to what was done with the old Whitehall Hotel. I hope it comes through.

If I hear anything else I will definitely keep you posted. I even asked my parents who grew up in Houston and they could not ever remember that hotel. It must have not been open for that long. It was such a big hotel for downtown at that time.

The asbestos abatement took place a few years ago when it was planned to become an annex to the Hyatt. Let's hope this works out - several redevelopment plans for the Sheraton have fallen through.

Thanks Friend,

I grew up in Houston and just came back after living in San Diego for the past 5 years. I handle the business travel market for Hilton (Doubletree). Downtown Houston is booming with business right now with Deloitte moving from 3 Allen to Heritage and getting 3 times bigger. The Hyatt, Doubletree are undergoing renovations. What we are hearing is that Omni will not have to do abatement on that building since it is asbestos free.

What it looks like so far is that the structure will remain and undergo major renovations. Thanks for the great pics from the brochure. I never kew that used to be a Sheraton.

Wow! Welcome to HAIF and thanks for the tip!

I sure hope that is true. I love this building and hate seeing it a shell. It just seems surprising that Omni would want to buy in. I thought there was a lot of excess hotel room capacity, but maybe things have been tightening up with the strong economy.

I work for the Doubletree Downtown in Sales, we heard in a meeting yesterday that the former Sheraton-Lincoln was just purchased by Dallas based Omni Hotels and should become the next hotel to hit downtown Houston.

Rooftop pool

This has always been one of my favorite buildings downtown. When it opened in 1962 it was the first downtown hotel since 1929, so it was a big enough deal that the Chronicle ran a special supplement about it. Famous guests included Jack Ruby and the Beatles during their only visit to Houston in 1965.

Beatles press conference from the Sheraton-Lincoln:

Fans spying:

The hotel closed in 1986 but the office section of the building remained open for a while after that. The Hyatt Regency bought the building for expansion in 1998 and planned to connect it to the Hyatt with a skybridge. They got as far as gutting the Sheraton interior to remove asbestos, but the expansion fell through because of the weak economy. It has been a vacant shell ever since.