h-townrep

h-townrep: I appreciate your comments. You don't come here and run down Houston because you live in Atlanta. We've said some positive things about Atlanta. It is a great town and I wish Atlanta well. I simply want to thank you for your positive post. Can't say that about some posts from some cities in our own state.

NO NO NO. I love H-town, that's my home. I was actually talkin bad about Atlanta cause someone gave Atl some props. Look at my post again. I was basically saying the only reson why Atlanta's is so close is because they only really have one city center and midtown is so close that is whuy Atlant's shows so close and they opnly build on one street. Peachtree Street. to mee that's a bad thing. I love Houston, I'd beat any one down for ragging on my Hometown of h-town.

I just moved out of the Greenspoint area and if you are talking about that 10 story business tower sign on I-45 @ Greens Bayou just south of Rankin road the Harris County Flood Control District bought all the land from I-45 along the north side of Greens Bayou to Greens road and up the East side of Earthman Cemetery. So that tower is cancelled.

Darn, what about the building over near the HL&P building, or did they build there already. It's been years since I drove through. the only thing I do in that area now is drive through back and forth to the Airport when I come to my city. 4th largest in the land.

I wonder what affect or effect will this have on Texas Southern univ?

Your right about ATL's vacant space, their CBD is sitting at almost 28% vacancy. That being said, my point was that Atlanta's new highrises are being constructed within a very close proximity of one another, Houston's are not.

Don't get me wrong, I love that Houston is building so much, I just wish there was a little more cohesiveness in our planning.

well just remember, since I live in Atlanta, There downtown is seperated from it's midtown area only by a double freeway going through it and seperatedfrom Buckhead by two freeways and a street. Now most of the new construct in Atlanta is either in the North end of Midtown or is being constructed by georgia State downtown for student housing. The new constructs in huston has a lot to do with TMC with 5 different constructions going on, some stuff going up in Greenspoint as well as in the differnet Buisness districts. The amount weather near are far is still an amount....lol....go Houston.

Well actually houston has 40, don't forget about the Mark condo's were 2 buildings, 2727 Lan Pkwy 3333 Alan Parkway and the expansion of the Galleria. Also the new building on memorial that American general built. Also Don't forget that the University of Houston has added several buildings to there main campus and downtown one

Well said, TheNiche.

Plastic, the reason why SA has so many people is due to the fact that the city can annex land and grew from annexing land. SA is not hemmed in with suburban cities like Dallas is.

When was the last time that San Antonio annexed an area. They can't go west because of sdesert, can't go North cause of San marcus or South bacause of Military, only North towards Austin and East towards Houston. the reason why San Antonio city wize is bigger that dallas is because people in dallas are moving to the burbs and in san Antonio people are living actually in the city.

The city population actually is more relevant than the metro population when it comes to the economics of that city. Infastructure, more things get placed in your city by what the population is. Also depends on what type of Metro you are. If you are like dallas, San Jose, Baltimore or Philly. You actually have another large city near you that takes care of it's own economic impact. Fort Worth and Arlington both were there before Dallas and already had there own impact and then Dallas. Now Dallas impact toward it's region is more important and larger than san Antonio's but not Houstons. Houston's impact is felt all over. people in the metro of h-town are greatly impacted by Houston, even galveston has impact stemed from houston (of course if it wasn't for a hurrican in 1900 then galvston wouyld be the 2nd largest city in the US) . Now Atlanta, when I go to work, more people are going to other cities than are going into Atlant at times. So they feed of each other. The impact and the relevance of a metro or city is different. In Houston it means one thing, Dallas another and San Antonio another. No matter how you put it, if San Antonio was near Houston it would be part of our Metr because san Antonio doesn't have as strong an impact.

some of those stadiums that were listed are 80 years old. they have something called history, and charm, and mystique, and all that crap. that is why they haven't replaced them. It's just too hard to walk away from Fenway Park. It's hard to walk away from Wrigley Field, and Yankee stadium.

30-40 years is the ideal time. A lot changes then.

Look at the cookie cutter stadiums of the 60s and 70s. I'm talking about Busch Stadium, Three Rivers Stadium, Riverfront Stadium, Veterens Stadium, Jack Murphy Stadium, Fulton County Stadium, The Kingdome. They were all the rage. They could be used for football, and baseball.

You fast forward to the mid-90s and these stadiums suck ass compared to Camden Yards, or Jacobs Field.

the owners will figure some way to draw more money from a stadium in 40 years.

Well Tiger Stadium had charm, definitly had History and mystique (Tha natural) and it's now just part of the parking lot for there new stadium. They just kept it until it really started to fall apart.

I say 15 for a fast city and 25 for a slow cityy like Houston. WHile the new arena or stadium opens the old one's still operational. It may even get rennovated. Then we'll have 2 arenas and 2 football stadiums.Then in 15-25 years when the next stadium or arena get's built the original is used less or torn down.

Man, what is a fast city. there is no such thing as a fast city New Orleans was considered the other City that never sleeps and they had no plans in replacing the Super Dome. New York was doing it to lure both a Super Bowl and an Olympics. Man leave tha stuff alone..

...these are not Dallas teams. I know a lot of people think the Cowboys and Rangers are Dallas teams-they are not. I always wondered if maybe the city of Dallas just flat-out refused to use public funds to build sports stadiums for bazillionair team owners-if so, it is clearly a lesson Houston could learn from.

Then I guess the Giants and the Jets aren't New York teams since they aren't in New York. Honestly the Rangers ae not a Dallas team, and never was. It's been an Arlington team.

One *small* problem I see is that we're using 30-year bonds to pay for these stadiums that you want every 15 years.

You know we're still paying for Bud Adams' late-80's/early 90's Astrodome expansion...the one that he promised would bring us the Superbowl, and keep him from moving the team. As long as I live I'll curse that man for forcing Harris County to scrap the greatest scoreboard that mankind has ever seen!

It's amazing that the two times we hosted the SuperBowl, they were not at the AstroDome. Rice and reliant

Hate to make an Atlanta comparison, but this could become Houston's Bucktown, or whatever they call it. I know Houston already has Uptown to fill that role, but why not two?

If you are going to compare it to Atlanta, better compare it to the 17th Street project ? Atlantic Station. Houstons Uptown puts Buckhead to shame. trust me i have lived in and chilled in both. Uptown is way bigger and a lot more buisnesses and nite life, ever since the club scene went down in Atl. Actually it was houston that started this redevelopment stuff back with the rice Lofts and Bayou place.

When did they find this out? I work with Permits and when a developer or whoever wants to build something, they put in an application to build and sense this building is downtown, the only thing that this did was switch from Commercial to mix-use. Then this generates a worksheet that will generate a permit card and lastly a sign permit card. This doesn't take long sense there was already something else on the lot. The Permit should have beenm the 1st thing done before McDonalds came down.

Oh yeah, where's Baltimore Orioles, cause they should be in the top 5.

http://www.wordofmouthbbq.com/houston.htm

Check out the link above. This might help you h-townrep. Houston ranks the 3rd largest city in consulates.

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Thanks emp, but the site is relatively old, it states that their are 76 and I know for a fact there are 83 but more than likely we are behind NY and DC. Just wasn't sure where Chi and Mia were.

You're right. I used to live in LA in the 80s and it is sprawling AND dense. I remember then that there were absolutely no empty lots anywhere. Since it's very similar demographically to us and ahead of us in traffic and population, we should study it to see where we're possibly headed and make necessary corrections, sort of like the Japanese taking our cars and tearing them apart then making their own superior ones.

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Ask the people near the mountains and by San Pedro, I've seen the lack of density there. One good thing about Houston is that we can get an influx of another 5 million people and all would be comfortable except on the freeways. I really wish mass transit would come but the politics of those d@mn republicans and mojney hungary councilmembers from back in the late 80's and early 90's caused it not to happen. If people had listen to Lee P. from get go we would have had it. I'm talking about when he was police cheif and had came over from Atlanta and was an important cog in starting it's rail system and knew it would have worked here.

I think he was talking strictly about the area within city limits, which, because of aggressive annexation policy, is larger in Houston than LA. You are right that if we combine the contiguous populous regions outside city limit then greater LA area is much larger than Houston. However, then the question becomes how does one define the boundaries of a city? Should all connected populous regions be considered one city? Does the entire region between NY and DC, heck, between Boston and DC where one town or city runs into other make up one city?

I guess the original question asked by marc was whether Houston has enough land for growth. As we know and you pointed out as well, there is a lot of empty land within Houston's city limit and outside it limits there are no physical barrier to stop the sprawl (except for the water on the East). So yes there is a lot of empty land around and yes sprawl is going to get worse.

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Like I mentioned earlier in a post, the reason Houston can't really grow outside it's CITY boundries population is because of other cities. Cypress- Fairbanks is to big in size to be annexed as is Katy and other defined cities. Now Sugerland and the woodlands charter calls for it to come under annexation as does Missouri city, but neither of it's populations is included in the population of Houston. If, and this is if Houston included all areas that is affected and utilized by Houston into it's metro, we would be in the top 6 in metro polpulation instead of the top 10. We are 8th or 9th depending on which source you use. One says we are ahead of Miami and another said's we are behind. If you think about 5 times the land that would be over 3 thousand square miles and California is not that wide.

Does anyone know where we rank in Foreign consulates. I'm sure we are behind New York and possibly D.C, then again D.C. has mostly embassy's and not consulates. If anyone knows where we rank then what cities ae in front of us and their number and what city is directly behind us. I know Houston has 83 at least.

am I the only on that thinks this is terribly ugly?

http://www.endex.com/gf/buildings/liberty/...irit/spirit.htm

All I can focus on is her crotch and boobs...they sort of...er, stick out. 

Great concept, but how about a statue like the one of Sam Houston near Huntsville?  Something.......a little more historical?  More appropriate?  How about a giant chrome replica of the Space Shuttle?

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What do you mean a little more historical. There would not have been a victory at the site of the Sam Houston monument if not for the person the statue is representing. The Yellow Rose of Texas.

Houston is first in land space. Houston has over 630 sqaure miles, while L.A. has 431 sqaure miles of land.

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Actually, not including Anchorage and other Alaskian cities, Houston is second in the continuous 48. Jacksonville is 1st with over 800 square miles, L.A. would be second but for somereason they don't count the Mountains while in houston they do count channel and the uninhabited land going East. Houston really can't expand anymore with Katy to the west, Richmond to the Southwest, water and League city to the South, Lake Jackson and swamp land to the South East. Baytown and water to the East and Spring, Cypress to the west and Conroe to the North. Really the only places for Houston to spread is to Sugar Land and the Woodlands. In fact when the Woodlands was created, it was created to one day be part of Houston as our most northern part of the City. That was the plan, much like Missouri city was in the past.

Rail would be great to have for people to move around in. No matter how big Houston gets there is still a CBD and other areas of Business, Galleria, TMC, Greenspoint, Greenway and the Edgewood Enclave/Westchase. To another degree the Woodlands, Sugerland and to a smaller degree the Northwest exchange.

I think there will be another outside of New York/ Chicago American tallest in downtown Houston, just the FAA will have to approve it and change the course of one of the Hobby runways that includes downtown. that is why the Bank of the Southwest and the original continental tower was not done.

You are right Uptown Houston is not considered inner city. That's why Transco tower was always known as the tallest building outside a CBD in the Nation. Right now I live in Atlanta and have traveled to Charlotte and @85 encompasses so many other cities that aren't close to Atlanta and whose impact don't come from any economics of Atlanta, such as Marietta. Same as Charlotte and for DC, it encompasses two large cities, it goes around both DC and Baltimore. Ive driven the whole 285 and 610 and it takes longer to go around 610 than 285 or the one in Charlotte.

Inner City has always been basiccally where your surface streets start intertwining with each other such not because of loop that extends out. If that was the case, does that mean New York and Vegas don't have an inner city cause they don't have a complete freeway loop.

As for Houston the inner city is inside the loop and a couple miles outside the loop, it depends on the surface streets. There's only an inner loop if there is an outer one too.

Any renderings and it sounds like maybe that section off theelevated is getting ore attention.

I like it, it's like this building on one end and the St. Luke towers on the other end.

i too am a little disappointed with the design of this piece of architecture.  if you've seen the new breed of courthouses/judicial centers going up around the world, then you'll agree that houston missed the mark with both of these buildings.  city governments around the world are building justice centers with CUTTING EDGE, SUSTAINABLE, USER FRIENDLY architecture. 

mayor brown and his administrations were amazed with every proposal that came their way, they failed to be appropriately "critical" in areas of design and planning.  yes, they facilitated many things; however, i don't believe that the "world view" of these last two administrations was much greater than their own careers and legacy, and don't mention the stadiums or the cotswald project, or the main street project.  those ideas were born out of the consensus of houston businesses, developers and architects.  the brown administrations simply put their stamp of approval on projects already in the works to garner as much credit for themselves as they could.  (mayor brown's legacy will be corruption, greed and red ink.)

this brings me back to an older thread........houston needs an objective design review committee for all major projects within the city limits.

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You Kinda Hatin ain't cha.

When Brown came, one of the 1st things he said was to bring people back to downtown, something he ushered in when he was in Atlanta. His other big thing was to get downtown more commuter and that rail would be a grand idea since he also help usher it in in Atlanta so what are you talking about.

His biggest concern was to stop freeway flooding and that freeway conctruction would cause more, build better drainage.

Corruption was already in Houston before he got there and while Brown was there, Houston made it's biggest strides in the World View and proposals for building were at an all time high since the Oil boom. Like most Mayors, they let their departments head make the decisions, that's how that is handled.

I'm talking about membership when it comes to TD Jakes and sise when it comes to Creflo Dollar. TD jakes membership is over 55,000 members strong. Building wise, the old Western Forem which is a church now has over 16,000 seats. Plus the video never said it will be the largest, it said it will be one of the largest. Get that fact strait.

How come all but 2 have been held in the sunbelt region?

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Because of weather. Since when is San Diego in the Sunbelt region.

Uh. No. Bishop T.D Jakes Church in Dallas will still be larger, the guy out in San Antonio, two in LA and Dollars church hear in Atlanta will still be larger. Well I'm not 100% sure arout Dollar since his church looks huge from the outside. It's a Dome.

ORION Emerges: New Luxury Vertical Residences to Change the Face of Houston Skyline

Wednesday December 8, 4:49 pm ET

HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 8, 2004--Groundbreaking ceremonies, scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 8 at 12:30 p.m., will usher in the advent of a significant addition to the Houston skyline. Appropriately named ORION, the first of two 37-story residences will be located on Memorial along the Buffalo Bayou at Asbury Place.

Each tower, with stunning views of River Oaks and Houston's vibrant downtown, will include 180 luxury residences priced to over $5 million. The foundation for the $425 million project will be poured during the first quarter of 2005, with vertical construction beginning in the spring. The first tower is slated for completion in the late spring of 2007 with the second tower breaking ground next winter. ORION will be developed by ORION Towers Tarragon LLC, a New York-based real estate company, a partnership between Asbury Place Development and Tarragon Corporation (Nasdaq:TARR - News), which has an investment portfolio valued at more than $1.2 billion.

"As a native Texan, I am thrilled to be working here again and to be affiliated with such a magnificent project," said Jim Cauley, president of Tarragon South Development Corp. "Tarragon specializes in this type of development and we are pleased to bring ORION to Houstonians."

ORION's 10-acre setting will be made even more desirable by way of gardens, flowers, lush foliage and parks within parks. Its close proximity to the many pleasures the city has to offer -- theatres, museums, world-class golf courses, major sports arenas, shopping and fine dining -- offer ORION's residents a highly desirable location.

"ORION is the legacy of River Oaks -- it's the River Oaks for the next generation of those seeking Houston's finest living," said David Spiers, co-developer of ORION.

Backed by a team of some of the nation's most accomplished designers, engineers and builders, ORION is destined to be an iconic landmark for Houston. A number of prestigious firms have been assembled to give ORION its distinctive look: Architectural Services International; Manhattan Construction Company; CBM Engineers; and Keiji Asakura, ASLA Landscaping. These widely respected firms share a client list that includes the IBM Tower in Singapore, Bush Presidential Library, Reliant Stadium, Washington National Airport, United States Capitol Visitors Center, The Pacific Design Center, Toyota Center and Botanic Garden.

ORION has been designed by world-renowned architect Ede I. Nemeti, president and chief operations officer of Architectural Services International Inc. The building's facade will feature a magnificent soaring Pegasus between art deco spheres, while its finishes, services and common areas have the look and feel of a world class five-star hotel. Generous balconies are complete with Viking Gas equipped summer kitchens and views to the park, River Oaks, downtown, the Medical Center and the Galleria area. Many residences have views in two directions and some with 180 degree sweeps.

"Ede Nemeti has designed and built internationally recognized projects in 24 countries. ORION unites his signature touch with leading developers and designers to create the highest standards of living," said Robert Day, co-developer of ORION. "These residences will draw buyers seeking the finest construction available and the exciting lifestyle that comes with living in the heart of the River Oaks area."

Two gleaming structures will feature elegantly proportioned residences complete with innovative design features and the latest in Smart House technology, representing a benchmark in luxury vertical palaces through unparalleled space, design, innovation and sumptuous amenities. Owners may choose from six floor plans encompassing 1,687 to 8,200 square feet and ranging from two to five bedrooms. Each residence is filled with daylight and is complimented by well thought out appointments -- glass railings, generous balconies, European-style loggias, French doors, gorgeous baths clad in travertine marble, captivating cityscapes, private and semiprivate elevator foyers, 11-inch ceilings couffered and vaulted with recessed lighting, Delacassa cabinetry, Viking appliances, custom-cut granite counters and an outdoor summer kitchen with a Viking gas grill.

Within ORION's pampered environs, owners will find a number of sophisticated building amenities and personal services, including an around-the-clock manned front desk, common area monitoring systems, five-star concierge services, 24-hour valet parking, luxury hotel-style property management services, a residents-only ORION Clubhouse offering the features and service of a grand private social club, a business center, library, Olympic-size pool, landscaped terraces, a state-of-the-art fitness center and an aerobics studio.

ORION's sales center was recognized by The National Sales and Marketing Council Awards and placed in the following categories: Best Brochure over $500,000, Best Color Ads, Best Sales Office, Best Signage, Best Attached Community Urban and Best Logo Design.

The award-winning sales center is located at Eight Asbury Place, Houston, Texas, and is open daily from 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. Private appointments to tour the center can be made at 713-880-1616.

Rendering and interior photos available upon request.

About Tarragon Corporation

Tarragon Corporation is a leading homebuilder specializing in the development and marketing of residential communities in high-density, urban in-fill locations in Florida, the Northeast, Texas and Tennessee. Tarragon also owns and operates an investment portfolio of approximately 14,000 apartments and 1.4 million square feet of commercial space, valued at more than $1 billion. To learn more about Tarragon Corporation, visit www.tarragoncorp.com.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contact:

Stevens/FKM, Houston

Angie Knust, 713-867-3224

aknust@fkmagency.com

or

Jessica Chapman, 713-867-3180

jchapman@fkmagency.com

Nights: 713-974-9133

One reason it didn't work is because of Memorial City rightdown the street and the fact that you can't really get to it unless you take the frontage roads. When the beltway was built, that spelled doom for the mall and the fact that Memorial was getting bigger.