jgriff

My thoughts on the reasons behind Downtown and Midtowns problems.

1. Houston has plenty of room to grow so there is no need for high-density living. High density living is not usually by choice but neccesity.

2. People in Houston do not have the same attitude as people from other large cities like NYC, etc... Living in an apartment in Houston has a stigma attached to it. Parents and friends keep asking "When are you going to buy a house?" People of all social classes live in apartments in NYC.

3. Most people when given the choice of having a large 4 bedroom house with a big yard and an hour long commute vs. a townhouse with a short commute will choose the first. That's not my personal preference but I find that I am in the minority on that one.

4. You can live and work in Houston for years and never even go downtown and a lot of people like it that way. For many people the only time they go downtown is to pay a ticket or get a friend out of jail. It can be a very confusing place to someone who only goes there once a year, with one way streets and trains crossing all over the place.

5. Homeless. Who wants to buy a house where your wife has to pass by a vagrant on the street when she walks the dog? You have to get rid of them to get the average family with small children to feel comfortable.

In another thread about a new office building in the Energy Corridor someone commented about how much nicer it would be if this building was put downtown. It just struck me as kind of naive. Why would they want to build downtown? There's just no good reason I can think of for an engineering related business to build there. Most people in the energy business live in Sugarland, Katy and The Woodlands. For many of them the energy corridor is a shorter commute and most of the people who work in the business really don't want anything to do with downtown anyway.

I look forward to development with a more long-term focus.

It's just too bad that this long-term focus involves rich people keeping "undesirables" from moving into their neighborhood by using the government for their own benefit over that of others. If they want control over the property around them they should buy it like everyone else has to do. When I was a kid my parents bought empty lots on both sides of our house to keep the neigborhood undeveloped. That's they way to handle something like this. I'm sure if a good enough offer was made these developers would sell the land and move to another site. Apparently it's not important enough for the neighborhood to put up their own money, instead they trample on the rights of the rest of us.

It is an aristocracy. And it is not an aristocracy based on money; the aggregate monies of those that would live in the tower would've justified that the greater pooling of resources would've prevailed. It is an aristocracy based upon political connections, favors, backroom deals. It is an 'Aristocracy of Pull'.

I agree it has more to do with connections than money, but money usually gets you those connections. The future inhabitants of this tower would have been wealthy also but right now it's just a couple of developers against a rich well connected neighborhood. Aristocracy is a very good description of what is happening here.

No, but there's no reason to think that this one example means that things would swing to that extreme in Houston, so I'm not particularly worried about it either. As I said I don't like the way this ordinance was cooked up at the last minute, but one project hitting a political roadblock is hardly the end of the world as we know it. I just don't buy extremist hyperbole that this puts us on the road to some communist hell, with jackbooted thugs marching up the driveway to take our houses.

Look, we don't live in Libertarian fantasy-land, at least most of us. Here on planet Earth, people have different interests, and these interests are typically mediated through political processes, not just business transactions. That's just how it is. You may not like it, but that's what governments do. Political risk is a fact of life, and it's not going away anytime soon.

If we have to live with political risk why can't these property owners that got this thing blocked live with the risk that someone might build something in their neighborhood someday? I guess now when you buy a piece of land in Houston you get control over all the land around you too. How nice for them. The thing that really stinks about all this is that people all over Houston have lived with unwanted development as the price to pay for the property rights we have and this just shows that rich people don't live under the same laws as the rest of us.

I just don't usually find restaraunts closed on Sunday nights in Houston. I live in the Memorial Villages area, they all seem to be open out there. Of course they are all filled with the after church crowd.

We did drive through the Bagby/West Gray area and there seemed to be a lot of activity there. To me that is the "walkable retail" area of Houston.

My wife and I attempted to go to La Strada Sunday night but found out they close at 6:00pm on Sunday. So we walk over to Indika and it's closed to. Then we decided to try the Italian place next to Indika and it's a 45 minute wait. So much for lower Westheimer on a Sunday night. We just gave up and went to Chuy's. I guess there's not much of an after-church crowd in that area.

I have a friend who lives in the townhomes behind numbers. I'm down there nearly every weekend. Beleive me, it is a very sketchy area. I've looked out the window of the townhouse and counted a dozen prostitues within view at once. Some of them used to use a hearse to do their "business". You're lucky if you can walk 2 blocks without being asked for spare change.

I was out there last weekend and saw a Lifetime Fitness semi on the site.

His home in Houston is now part of The University Of St. Thomas.

This tunneling subject could easily be it's own thread...mods

Correct... Sorry for getting off topic.

You work in west Houston or the west side of downtown?

I work near the West Belt and Westpark. No walking possible around here...

If I worked downtown I could see myself walking a bit.

That being said, I beleive I would rather walk down the Beltway access road in sub freezing temperatures than typical June Houston weather. I think 90 degress and raining is worse than 0 degrees and snowing. If I had gone outside yesterday and came back in I probably would have been fired.

I spent some time in Hamburg for a while, it was around 30 deg F and very windy most of the time. I never had a problem walking around town. You could walk around all day in that weather. You can put on as many clothes as you want to stay warm. There's only so many clothes you can take off before being arrested though...

I can fix my hair with a comb at work after removing a hat, a head full of sweat is a lot worse. It's the smell that does it. There's no way to get rid of it without a shower.

I work on the West side of town though so your experience may vary downtown. It's about a 1 mile walk down roads with no sidewalks to the nearest businesses. The only people you see walking around here are lunchtime joggers, gang members and homeless people. We recently built a new building and many of the employees asked for showers for the lunchtime joggers. Management refused.

I'd consider you on one extreme. Many of my coworkers and I walk to lunch all the time, and we work Uptown. Many also walk to work from their nearby apartments.

I wear long sleeve dress shirts to work most of the time. There is just no way to walk very far in Houston dressed like that in 90+ degree weather and be presentable for work when you get back. You could do it in 0 degree weather just fine, it might be uncomfortable but it doesn't ruin you're appearance or make you smell bad. I think this is one of the main reasons that public transporation is so difficult in Houston.

We do have one guy here that rides a bike to work every morning. He pretty much takes a shower in the sink when he gets here. It makes everyone very uncomfortable and people talk about him behind his back quite a bit. He's known as the "Crazy Bike Guy".

I think most would agree that Montreal weather is way worse than Houston. At least in Houston you can simply get up from your desk and walk outside, there should at least be a breeze. In Montreal (or any cold city) you have to spend 10 minutes just putting all your "layers" on just to take them off again when you get to your destination. If I lived there I'd never go outside. That frigid cold is way more uncomfortable than Houston's heat. At least when you get to your destination the A/C cools you down rapidly.

I would disagree. If you walk a few blocks in June during lunch you may have to go home and change clothes. You simply cannot walk around outside in Houston weather during June and go back to work. Montreal may be cold but the cold doesn't soak you in stinky sweat. There is no way I would ever walk to work in Houston unless I lived less than a few hundred feet from the front door of my building. I once worked in a building whose property was connected to the apartment complex I lived in. I didn't walk it once.