jfre81

Ooooh....can I bounce in the bouncy room too? secretsquirrel's gonna have to give me a tour...

Looks really clean in there for a building that's been abandoned for >20 years.

I bet from an airplane we'll look like a gigantic graveyard with all these crosses sticking out of the ground. Just beautiful.

A frog

It looks more like Oscar the Grouch (minus trash can) wearing a bra on his head to me.

How bizarre must it look to an outsider, who never saw Astroworld, coming to Houston and seeing that empty pedestrian bridge to an empty lot full of weeds?

And in that old AW pic - the second one from the left, between the mouse and the rabbit - what the hell is that supposed to be?

In all its glory...

Yes, that is very professional-looking, isn't it?

I do wonder what this will look like when (if, I probably should say) it's reopened.

I might be game for that. I've been wanting to explore more of the East End anyway...

What is the big deal with the service facility anyway? How is that out of place there? I hope everyone understands that the whole East End has pretty much been an industrial/blue collar area for generations. And suddenly they're too good for a maintenance shed? Spare us. Isn't this basically over there on Harrisburg by Thunderbolt and the RR tracks and whatnot?

I can understand why some people scared of being gentrified out would oppose the rail line, but I don't understand the problem with this facility. Yes, it could go over in the Hardy Rail Yards, but when the rail system gets big enough there will probably need to be more than one service facility. It makes sense to have one there. Isn't the Hardy Rail Yards where the Intermodal station is supposed to be?

Could we see a Hampton Inn, Drury Inn, etc... in that space?

I hope so!

I'm not a huge fan of the building aesthetically - even spruced up it's just too big and kills a great view of the skyline behind it looking from the SW on the ground - and wouldn't be so hurt to see it come down. But if they can get it in shape (that could actually be cheaper nowadays) and price the rooms right I think this project can succeed. There are some nice views up there and it's still just a block away from the rail while also being accessible to Midtown. It's preservation, FWIW.

Now that it looks like something is happening with this, if it succeeds it gives hope to some other older DT buildings (including hotels) that need a little TLC....what if, say, having a new rail line along Texas spurs interest in bringing the Ben Milam back to life?

I can't believe they only went 7 stories for the office component. Even in a slow market, 7 stories for downtown, really?!

They easily could have gone 15 or at the least 10, but 7?! Think about that. Pretty lame-o

Well to be fair I wasn't expecting this to turn the Houston skyline into Dubai or anything....it's indeed closer to 10 though.

It would be cool if they could at least redo the roof, shore up the walls, gut the interior, put up a couple support columns as needed and make it a sort of museum to modern downtown's history as being basically the whole of old Houston. I think the Savoy Apartments were on what was then the "edge" of town more or less in 1909. Pictures, artifacts, perhaps pieces of old historic buildings that didn't make it through the *progress* - pictures, maps, you name it. I can dream, anyway.

The new Savoy would require the asbestos to be removed for demolition, but it seems to be in generally good shape from the outside. I wish I could check out the inside. sevfiv's brochures seem to make it out to have been a rather nice place in its day. I sorta tried looking for a way in (or at least to see inside without necessarily entering) but it appears the owners might have caught wind of the squatterkid's conquests here and turned it into a regular Fort Knox. Can't really see anything inside at all anymore. The window facing Main with "1616" is busted out, probably has been for a long time, and it looks like that door led to some sort of enclosed foyer rather than the center of the building which is basically one gigantic, trashed-to-hell room.

Let's see how the ambitions to reclaim the Holiday Inn turn out before we write off the newer building. There's just something about it I like. To me it's like a monument to the oil boom/bust from the 70s/80s, and a constant reminder that Downtown Houston has seen both brighter and darker days. It's at worst the second-ugliest abandoned hotel on the south end of DT

This is what the inside looks like:

I remember seeing that picture in the Houston Press last year. That toilet is hanging up there from what was one of the top floors right? I think they mistakenly labeled it as being in the old Holiday Inn.

BTW sevfiv, your site and pics are awesome.

That brick wall is cracked and it looks like it could fall over any time....and people (who work at the Exxon Bldg.?) still park basically at the base of the western half of the old Savoy.

I was trying to get a closer look inside....hard to do from the ground level outside...

It's kinda sad to watch it rot; this has to be one of the oldest buildings still standing downtown. I'd like to see them do something with the new building.

did they finish out the demo?

It looked like they were still working on it from what I saw from the rail yesterday (granted I wasn't really right around it). I'll try to get out to it today.

Cool shots, midtownuser. I was out there yesterday walking from the 82 bus to the rail (yes, folks, walking) but my camera batteries were dead.

The vacantness around there does indeed send a mixed signal about Midtown but I really think of the whole place as a work in progress. The question is what to do with all that space.

I figure you can fit three or four CVS there.

yep that's how it is around bus stops too.

You know, I've been taking Metro a lot more often lately and finding a lot more people who I know aren't homeless riding. Maybe this $4/gallon business has something to do with it. It's not just for the poor and homeless anymore. Driving makes you poor now.

So - supposing we're transitioning into a new norm where transit is a little more "mainstream" here - can you can explain to me how the expansion of transit (i.e. rail) is not going to cause more pedestrian traffic?

those are homeless.

They look like they're fairly well-off by homeless standards then.

so rail results in walking MORE? is THAT what this is all about? we're building rail so people will walk more?

I usually see more people walking around the rail stations than anywhere else so....yeah, he just might be on to something.

That's got to be from at least the mid-80s because there's Hakeem Olajuwon in a Rockets uniform on the brochure showing different attractions (Hakeem represented the Summit)

Here it is:

http://www.houstonarchitecture.info/haif/i...?showtopic=4419

Hopefully this might be the start of something good on the south side of Downtown.

i guess the eyesore is in the eye of the beholder.

Well, it wasn't a bad building when it was new and I like that wall on the south side.

Maybe if that wall faced the freeway it wouldn't look so bad. But....what can you do?

It's just kind of embarrassing to have that kind of highly visible blight right there next to the gleaming CBD but I guess that stuff happens.

I took Metro and walked on West Gray, right in front of the New York Pizzeria, with the car parked at home.

I actually walked there from Wheeler Station.

This city is full of lightweights.

Now if we could find a sucker for the other eyesore on the other side of the Pierce...

Why not another CVS? That'd make it three on South Main between 610 and Braeswood.

I've heard it said that the trains can't make those turns on the curvey parts. Not sure if that true or not.

It's no more curvy than the part of the Red Line when it switches over from Fannin to Main, is it?

I don't think it's going to happen, but rail on Westheimer all the way down would be awesome.

The freight line they are talking about is in Rice Military, I think.

Yeah, I was referring to Rice Military. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that. I was referring to the ones off Washington near Heights Blvd...