toxtethogrady

East side of Houston's CBD is 96% leased. Not the building.

Colliers claims 90% of the A and B product downtown is leased, based on this morning's BisNow (I know - two different people, two different days, two different opinions). And rents are going way up.

Allen Parkway turns into Kirby...I call that stretch from Downtown to Reliant Stadium (NRG) our Broadway...or at least I think it will become that

Except there is a Broadway and it goes straight to Hobby Airport. (And one day, it might even be nice to look at  ).

Hotel Alessandra will for sure start in the "3rd Quarter this year"..., reliable source.

That reliable source is now BisNow. But demolition comes first.

Is this the Trammell Crow midrise?

It will be nice to have additional folks Downtown to support various types of retail. I tend to think additional residential development creates a sort of critical mass that will make Downtown attractive to everyone as additional cafes and shops can follow.

They're going to need groceries. The whole swath from MacGregor all the way up to Northside and beyond is regarded as a "food desert", so it could definitely support something along the lines of WinCo, Aldi or Market Basket. Trader Joe's could also make a go of it down there. DC has done a lot with apartment blocks atop grocery stores, so it can work in any urban setting.

Warriors of the World, by Marx!

It will definitely be massive. I'm not sure I can wait the year for this to start.

So the design was so underwhelming they refused to disclose it?

I sense another five-level stone-faced apartment block wrapped around a garage.    

That may wait till it opens.

Any word on the Apache HQ? Or did Carl Icahn's meddling succeed in killing it?

Ratchet ratchet ratchet...

Hey, at least this year they aren't The Very Worst Team In Baseball

So far, that honor seems to belong to another team at the other end of I-45.

I'm surprised that a 6-story building is being built without a tower crane. Of course it's all wood framing.

They should not be losing to the Twins at home.

Figures they'd put it behind a paywall.

It's going to be a nice building, but it will completely obscure West Ave.

Nice work.

 

Getting the permit (to me at least) means they have a construction team on tap. which is where many of the delays probably come from.

Until the permit shows up in HBJ, it's not really underway.  

Given reports of labor shortages and escalating materials costs, I would not be surprised if the project has had trouble starting. I just hope whoever bid the project built in the extra costs. 

Somebody's got great sources.

There is already a Hanover River Oaks... This would need to be called something else.

Actually, Hanover sold that property to AMLI, so the name is once again available.

Sarnoff's column has a nice big white space. What do you suppose was supposed to go in there?   

So what's the deal with the sports complex? That article just talks about "junior" sports, but I also thought I saw the word "pro" on one of the renderings. Can we expect another minor league team like the Sugarland Skeeters? How about the New Caney New Canadians?

I would guess Montgomery County can support a A or possibly a AA baseball team. The reference to the hockey team intrigues me, though, as Houston lost its only minor league team after the Rockets kicked them out of Toyota Center (Hockey? Shoot, there's money to be made selling tickets to Miley Cyrus and Disney on Ice!).

Big McMansions on the prairie

Big McMansions made of ticky-tacky

Big McMansions on the prairie

Big McMansions just the same.

 

Theres a Tuscan one and a Craftsman one 

and a stucco one and an open plan one

and they're all made out of ticky-tacky

and they all look just the same.

Ain't that America...?

If they showed everything proposed or under construction, houston would look a lot different!

I guess that leaves it to us.

It's supposed to be 757'. Hard to tell from the renders, though...

Update:

The hole is getting deeper and deeper........

And Leo's getting LARGER!

Why would an oil company, or any company for that matter, want to spend the money required for homeless people to learn the skills needed to get one of these jobs. 

Acute labor shortages. It's already a given that you have to clean up their addictions, but that would be true whether you put them on a rig or left them on the street. Getting them a steady income and a skill makes it worth their while to go straight. And maybe they'll become reliable tenants, which is what anyone who owns apartments wants.

Curiously, the competing 40-story tower is missing.  That's Hines for ya. 

Because that takes a lot of money to teach them let alone provide housing, food, etc. and most of them have some sort of addiction or mental illness. It sucks, but that's just the reality of it. Had we stuck with our state sponsored psychiatry facilities then the homeless situation wouldn't be as bad, but that's another topic for a later day.

The latest HBJ says the community colleges are offering training courses for $10K or less. Compared to the salaries being paid to welders and roustabouts, it seems like it the trainees could pay back the cost of training pretty quickly - if the employers themselves weren't paying to train them. And anyone making a welder's salary can afford something reasonable. The rehab's the tricky part. But it takes care of two problems - unemployed homeless persons and companies looking for people to work on the oil rigs.

A different tower is going to be attached to the Marquis garage. Development in the area is eventually going to surround Discovery Green with highrises.