jgriff

I'm sure Air Liquide would love to hear ideas on how to spend shareholder money on some artistic flair for their buildings.

Look, I really don't want to be argumentative, but what do they do now. Do they double deck the freeway or add ten more lanes so it can carry more cars. There are solutions (commuter trains), for one that would help take cars off the freeway. We don't need more cars on the freeway. That's counterproductive. Plus it uses a hell of a lot more fossil fuel to run all of those one passenger cars to town.

I could care less about all of the buildings out there. I liked it more when the tallest things on 1-10 past Gessner,  were the grain towers on Brittmore and the other ones in Katy. Are you suggesting that we should be impressed by the plethora of pedestrian new 10 - 20 story towers on I-10.  Like the tower in Memorial city with the Godzilla structure on top. Now that's a sight for sore eyes.

I would prefer to see smart growth and efficient transportation solutions with a high concern for quality of life. The point is that continually adding lanes to a freeway is not a realistic solution and unfortunately the powers that were (Delay/Culberson), weren't very smart when it comes to transportation solutions. If people want to live 40 miles from town and sit in traffic for three hours a day and feel lousy when they get to work or home that's their choice and its fine with me. That's not what I consider a good quality of life decision. Add paying over $3.00 a gallon to make that commute and it seems counterproductive.

I'm not impressed by any of the towers on I-10 or downtown. They are buildings put there to serve a purpose other than impressing people. I'm not really concerned with taking cars off the freeway. If cars on the freeway are concerning you there is an easy solution.... stay off of them. That's what I do.

Yes, continually adding freeways cannot go on forever. Clearly we were not at the point where we couldn't add any more lanes when the last ones were added. Yes, we can add even more if that's the way we want to go or we can add rail.

I don't want to live in the burbs but I understand that there are people who value things differently than I do.I don't really care where other people live. I don't have a need to make them conform to the way I want to live. I don't care if someone wants to spend $3.00 a gallon for gas. I don't have a need to put everything downtown so that someone can be impressed by office towers.

No, the point was to make the drive time shorter. That's my point. All of those buildings built out there didn't need to go there. We didn't need to make Houston and San Antonio connect. Lets leave some fields for the migrating birds, the runoff that used to be collected on the Katy prairie and stop all of this suburban sprawl. Downtown Houston is the engine and magnet that makes all of these suburban satellite communities even have an opportunity for existence. Houston's port, airports, petrochemical industry, medical center and all of its infrastructure are the keys to what sells the region.

Culberson even had an opportunity to add a commuter line down the middle of the freeway but he said I'll be damned if I'm going to hold up this expansion for a rail line. Just think if those rail cars full of people were traveling down I-10 every day what a difference it would have made.

No, the point was to carry more people.  It's easy to make the drive time shorter... move closer in. Highway expansions allow development where the empty land is so people can have big houses for little money. 

I have no desire to live out there but I also don't want to impose my preference on other people.

Speaking of Culberson and his efforts to derail the University Line. His pet project of I-10 which was rebuilt with  close to 20 lanes has now a 20 minute longer commute than three years ago. Just saying pouring more concrete and widening freeways don't solve commute problems and he was an idiot to think it would be the answer to the problem.

Spent over three billion dollars so developers out west could sell more tract homes, and suggest that with his new freeway, life would be a breeze, and so would the commute. He should stick to things he understands.

I-10 carries more cars now. That was the point.

Very interesting article in WSJ this morning about the financial situation with Chevron, Exxon, and Shell, but it's behind a paywall unfortunately:

 

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303277704579348332283819314?mod=WSJ_hp_EditorsPicks&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303277704579348332283819314.html%3Fmod%3DWSJ_hp_EditorsPicks

 

Had a graph showing expenditures vs. production at each of the three since 2009, and Chevron looked the worst: capital expenditures have soared 89% with production down 3% in that time. The Australia project in particular has gone up over 40% since it began, and remains a very tricky endeavor.  They're under pressure to show investors that their balance sheet looks good.

The LNG liquefaction boom in Australlia is probably over after this round of plants. It's so expenive to do business over there that they probably won't get a lot more investment.

Pretty easy to get a variance if you want.

 

More residents = more demand for retail. 

 

A public retail space is ultimately much more exciting than some of these private amenities. I'm pretty sure no one who lives in Columbus Square on McKinney Ave. in Dallas, which has on its first floor a Starbucks, i Fratelli pizzeria, Palm Beach Tan, Trophy Fitness, and Sebastien Salon, and whose sidewalks are full of people at night, wishes that they could trade all this for a private cabana and grilling area, and a dead first floor. And yes, there's plenty of other retail development in that neighborhood, too.

You're assuming everyone wants the same things you do. I really wouldn't want to live in a high rise where the sidewalks are full of people at night. If I was going to live here I'd rather have a 12' wall around the building. Nice and quiet on the grounds and you could walk across the street for retail.

My suspicions of overpaying for Comcast cable tv have been overwhelmingly confirmed by this.

I guess the oil companies are wise not to build too tall.

Hines has done some residential in the 70s too.

http://www.hines.com/property/detail.aspx?id=386

Anyone remember the first rave party in Houston was in the bank vault of this place? I think it was 1995 or maybe 1994; NEW WORLD (waaay before my time but some older friends told me about it in the early aughts).

I have been trying to figure out where I was ever since that night. I remember going into the vault. It was a crazy night. I think it must have been '95 or '96. I'm not really positive it was this building but I do remember going to a rave downtown in the mid 90s in a bank.  My memory of it was a more modern building than this. I remember a HUGE dance floor and escalators. I think people were smoking cigars in the bank vault.

Edit: I think this article mentions the one I went to. They claim 3200 people showed up.

http://www.houstonpress.com/1998-10-15/news/spun-from-the-underground/full/

Edit: I'm pretty sure that's it. I found some interior pictures of a bar that used to be there and it fits the layout I remember. It's much smaller than I thought though. Of course I had just moved from a small town to Houston 2 months earlier so everything seemed larger than life.

http://www.clubzone.com/c/63058/level-Houston

I had been trying to figure out where this was for years. Thanks....

The parking garage is for 3000 Post Oak. The existing garage was under sized for the building. Half was demolished and is being replaced with an 11 story garage. The other half will be demolished when its done. This will leave a large site for a future development.

no pics?

http://swamplot.com/clearing-the-strip-center-at-the-gallerias-west-end-for-the-new-hyatt-regency/2013-12-13/

Heavy equipment is on the site today. It looks like they are about to dig up the asphalt parking lot.

I noticed this morning that there is a fence up around the site.

I've seen people selling drugs near the gas station across from the BMW service center right in view of cops less than a block away. This was around noon.

Mad Men premiered 6 1/2 years ago...

Yes, I said at least 5 years and then emphasized it by saying that it was even before Mad Men. When I bought my house 10 years ago it was already back in style.

i'm seeing this mid-century look everywhere now.  i'm afraid it's the next big thing.  i like it, but most of these are simply generic apartment complex boxes with a unique feature in key places.  nice, but it's still just boxes.

Mid-Century has been the next big thing for at least 5 years now. Even before Mad Men. It seems like every house you see in a commercial on television has some mid-century in it.

I wasn't impressed with the burger I had.

People don't avoid high traffic areas. If they did they wouldn't be high traffic.

_{It loses it's significance in this redesign but if that's what it takes to get it leased then that's what they should do.}

It's OK. We'll continue to take the jobs, the economic development and the ugly buildings that come with them out here on the west side.

I actually live right behind Memorial city. This was a joke. I'm sure there will still be plenty for people to complain about even if there is ground floor retail. I'm surprised we didn't get the standard... "This should have been built in midtown or downtown already."

Ground floor retail.  This thread is going to be super boring.

Don't worry. The building is sure to be ugly.

I don't think his comment was serious. As for ruffling feathers, nobody expects developers to do this, but planners can and often do, and the designs of developers can be critiqued by the community. This is architecture discussion, not developer cheerleading.

Architects have to live in the real world just like everyone else. Without customers there would be no architects.  Buildings serve a purpose. They are not put there for your convenience, they are put there for the customer.

Ee-Gads.  It calls for a covered (probably climate controlled) passageway connecting the new parking garage directly to the apartment building.  I'll just go ahead and post on behalf of H-Town Man:  This is not good urbanism.   At some point you have to force people to the sidewalks and ruffle a few feathers.

 

;-)

Yes that's what you want to do when you're trying to make money on a project. Ruffle the feathers of the people who are going to give you that money.

I walk in the Galleria area on Post Oak daily. I cross it on foot daily. I came within inches of being hit by someone going 40+ because they were texting and ran a red light. If I had been 1 step ahead I don't think I'd be alive right now. I stay several feet back from the curb when I'm waiting to cross Post Oak. One of the hazards of using public transportation daily is that you are going to be crossing busy streets on foot. I think on my route to work I'm much safer in my own car than I am on the bus. I still take the bus everyday but I try to stay vigilant when I'm walking in the Galleria or Downtown.

Why does it cost them $100k+ to leave a gate open? Just leave it open and don't charge any tolls. Tell the staff to go home.