toxtethogrady

How about a 50 story tower as the proposed hotel in the Westcreek redevelopment? It would balance out the Uptown skyline with a northern anchor.

Not too far north. I hear the Omni near the bayou had water damage in the last flood.

I would prefer this over a trump.

You've read the minds of most Republicans.

Announcement by Company on Stage, a longtime theater company local to Westbury Square, about its future suggests Westbury Square may finally have been sold and is about to be repurposed:

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/News-about-Westbury-Square.html?soid=1101752725694&aid=KR5AexBNLrM

"...To the Patrons, Volunteers and Friends of The Company OnStage, 

"Hey, look! The Komatsaurus is feeding."

Looking at the list, Houston not getting a huge bump in inventory, so there's definitely room for something high end in the GHP building/garage.

It's always exciting to be at Ground Zero.

They can probably afford to wait.

As for GE, Abbott seems to think he can lure them. Based almost entirely on an anticipated change in their tax situation.

Has Skanska pitched this building to General Electric?

"This is not a practice facility, we practice where we play."

I suppose he sh!ts where he eats, too. 

Ten mil would be pocket change considering what some of the penthouses in Manhattan are going for. I'm still trying to figure out who is buying them.

Incredible density along the lake. The Woodlands is growing up.

DC has an annual Fringe theater festival - 80 different productions in a dozen small theater venues over three weeks. When MATCH is done, someone in Houston should organize a similar venture in Houston.

i want to say yes but can't remember who... harvey maybe?  first phase will be a spec 400,000 SF office (up to 600,000 if they secure a major tenant)

With Governor Abbott chatting up General Electric, maybe they should groom this site for them? They do have a major piece of the oil and gas division here.

Here's what the Houston Business Journal reported just last month:

 

"Camden has two tracts of land in downtown Houston that it is eying for future development, Campo said. However, Camden likely will have no construction starts in Houston this year due to the onslaught of new apartment projects flooding the market, sky-high construction costs and oil prices hovering near six-year lows, he said.

 

“Even if we wanted to start this year, we couldn’t,” Campo said. “There could be a 2016 start. We’ll watch to see if the timing is right.”"

I remember sitting at June 2013 and hearing about projects that were going to start in 2014. As far off as that seemed, we are now in the midst of a major round of construction. 2016 will be here sooner than we think.

Who wants dibs on the mattress?

It's a four story chateau-like thing with a funny paper hat on top...

Ah, well, the most revealing news is that the Arabella is expected to launch in July. With or without the accent.

This is what it looks like when they drain the pond for cleaning:

Damn. It's like Phyllis Diller with her makeup off...

The Economy at a Glace came out for June. Takeaway, April 2015 Houston finally showed job losses, see page 5.

 

http://www.houston.org/economy/archives/glance/Glance-June15%20final.pdf

The Texas LMCI Showed a bounceback in job creation for May. Net result - payrolls jobs are at a record high of 2.85 million.

If anybody was wondering, the building permit for this just hit today's HBJ. About $20 million - office building and retail superstructure (according to the listing).

After hearing that the largest apartment complexes in the city are just north of Hobby Airport and have 1-2,000 units each, size doesn't matter anymore. So much more could have been done with this besides a 4-story wrap.

I know, I get puzzled when so many people say "it's too hot, too humid ... no one could possible survive the horrible experience of sweating a bit".  As if no one walks during the summer months in New Orleans, or any time of the year in places like Singapore or Jakarta or Acapulco.  How do people survive there?  ;-)

I was on travel in Miami last week. The ultimate land of hot and humid...except that the thunderstorms form in the early afternoon and dissipate most of the heat. The same effect happens in Houston as long as the winds come off the Gulf.

Gosh that tower would have been the perfect downtown centerpiece... get a little sad everytime I see that old rendering lol. 

Jahn built versions of it in Chicago and Philadelphia. If it were built now, it would look positively derivative.

It's not really an office "park" (and neither is Tyson's). It's multiple properties owned by separate developers.

And if it makes anyone feel better, Dallas went to a lot of effort to get the University of Texas at Dallas created as a high technology center, but it does not appear to have created the "silicon prairie" that everyone up there thought would come of it. UT Arlington is still the better of the two UT institutions up there.

There was talk once of absorbing UH into the University of Texas system, but that got discouraged. Now UH has satellite campus.

Rice is a great school but it lacks so many things compared to it's peers. Seriously, compare Rice to USC, Columbia or NYU, Northwestern or Chicago, Boston U or Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Emory, Stanford, Penn, Georgetown, etc...

Rice ranks as a Top 20 school nationally, which puts it ahead of most of those schools. Exceptions would be Columbia, Harvard and Stanford (possibly Penn and Northwestern). What they lack in the way of theater or film, they make up for with their music department. And the Baker School is getting a lot of national press for global policy issues. I suppose you could make the school larger, but more students won't add to its prestige. If there is any criticism of the school, it's that they have not created many commercial ventures off "bucky-balls". But then, UH created superconductors and didn't monetize those, so everyone's missed their opportunities.