jfre81

Hmmmmmm, is Pinche's in Webster on 45 south and attached to a Mason Jar ?

This is it. The place is there. Apparently they ended up saying "Yes way, Jose."

If I start a Tex-Mex place it'll be called Pendejo's. The envelope has been pushed...

This article is actually about Houston in general, but part of it centers on Discovery Green and all the positive momentum surrounding H-town right now. Nice to have a little favorable national coverage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/us/02hou...uston&scp=1

It's about time. The NYT may well be getting it.

A far cry from the NY Post "This Place Is A Hellhole" headline during the '94 Rockets-Knicks NBA Finals...

Is this the Rise Lofts we're talking about?

For the record, I think Rice Military is very over priced. Some areas are close to the train line and in a flood zone. Why would you spend that amount of money to be close to a loud freight train or have water collection issues???

Are these the $300K townhomes that are right next to a freight line? No thanks....not for that price.

Gringo's is the most mediocre to bad nice Tex-Mex restaurant in town. They spend all their money on decor and apparently nothing on the menu. Yuk.

I've only eaten at the one in Texas City (my hometown). I left wondering what all the fuss was about. It's maybe a step above Casa Ole, which to me is a little like eating frozen "Mexican" food from Kroger.

There are loads of these downtown, mostly abandoned/homeless squats. There's one on the Savoy block and one on the old Holiday Inn block. There was another one with a gold dome (WaMu?) on the corner of Leeland and Travis across from the Exxon building, but it was torn down about a year or so ago.

My mom has told me about Uncle John's before; she says she thinks it burned down and was not rebuilt (sometime in the 1970s). Before my time...

God forbid any chain restaurant be left out of the mess that West Pearland has become.

MLK was indeed South Park Blvd.

I hope they do something good with the Ben Milam and have it be a model for what other abandoned downtown properties could become (e.g. the newer Savoy building).

Because if you don't vote for me....the terrorists will have won!

I've heard rumblings that the Greyhound Station may be moving to North Main near Metro's planned intermodal terminal at some point in the foreseeable future.

This is what needs to happen, and if it's secured properly it should be a whole lot better than what we have on Main in Midtown right now.

It would be great for everything - and everyone - around there.

So, are you saying that the various lines will create an unwanted element in the area and, in turn, driving down land values?

Actually I was thinking that would significantly raise values making it probably worthwhile for developers to pick up land along the Red Line like that before everything else gets built, bringing in even more potential retail customers. But apparently the developers are waiting for some price drop? Don't really see how. I suppose I was asking that in a rhetorical sense.

I'm all for expanding transit here....

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Apparently, a good number of developers are trying to wait the landowners out, since property values along the rail line are extremely expensive relative to other nearby areas.

OK....and they might get it for cheaper when the University Line and the others open, bringing in loads of people from other parts of the city into Midtown?

Why don't they build a retail center in the open space around the corner from this project from the HCC building, right there by the McGowen rail station?

Keep Montrose Queered!

I walked by this a couple weeks ago but it was too dark to get a good picture....

Something like this needs to go up downtown. It probably wouldn't, because not enough people live there, but not enough people live there because there's no retail. Somebody needs to take the initiative. Something like this on the east side of DT would be awesome.

As it is, when (if?) this goes up it ought to attract some business from the people who do live downtown.

Another recent name change is the change of an old portion of W. Fuqua at S. Post Oak. The new segment that runs down to past the BW is W. Fuqua, but the old segment that terminated at S. Post Oak has been renamed Fuqua Gardens Rd. or something like that.

I think the signage east of South Post Oak actually reads "Almeda-Genoa." IIRC that's the sign at the intersection with Hiram Clarke anyway....

This might be the perfect place to ask this - Gulfton Drive in Bellaire was changed to Fournace Place a few years ago. Was this to disassociate Bellaire from the apartment slum just down the street?

As a matter of fact, the old Holiday Inn was taken over and run by the homeless for a while. They even had someone manning the switchboard. Finally the city figured it out and chased them out.

Wasn't that at the end of the Heaven On Earth Inn there (with the Maharishi)? It was basically a flophouse then...I still say it's a better place for them than the streets. It's serving no purpose besides being ugly right now.

FWIW, I walked down Smith St. in Midtown in front of Specs and the gas station yesterday evening and didn't get hit up for change or smokes. Now, proceeding up to Downtown toward Tranquility Park, it was a different story...

Open up the old Days Inn just across the Pierce and put them in there. Then they won't be on the streets in Midtown anymore.

I think one section of the barbed wire fence around the tract has fallen over....need to get me a metal detector and go on an Astroworld archaeological dig...

QUOTE(DevelopmentX @ Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 @ 12:59pm) Luxury Residential Tower with a McDonald's at the front of the property!!!!!!!

I am not a fan of Dallas (too white, too small townish, too insecure- thus, the rehearsed snobbery), however when I look at what is happening in Chicago, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Miami (and yes, I know they have overbuilt) I am left with the feeling that Houston is getting second-tier projects where local developers (with the exception of Hines) lack the foresight or capital to execute first class projects that appeal to the type of out of town investors that insure solid financial returns.

I agree with your first point, talk about irony!

Not really, this is Houston we're talking about. We have churches next to Church's Chicken.

Just mindblowing how this building (well, technically a complex with the parking garage and whatnot) that occupies an entire city block just outside the CBD is used for nothing but an occasional SWAT drill.

Not worth saving, not worth tearing down. What a catch-22.

Squatters breaking into the site of a rich oil fatcat club killed off by the bust in the '80s and drinking their leftover Remy Martin makes an interesting slice of Houston history, at least.

I think ultimately this is going to get scaled down to something not a whole lot more high-density than the apartment complex that's already there, and that's if they end up not scrapping the whole thing altogether.

Who needs zoning ordinances when you can just have people raise hell on a per-case basis whenever something is proposed to go up that encroaches on them? Maybe instead of a formal code they could just have some sort of land-use court where a neighborhood association or individual property owners go present their case to a judge/arbiter against a developer who in turn could try to explain how their project will not have severe negative effects on the surrounding area. This would avert the whole process of going to a zoning system where you are trying to retroactively apply use restrictions to places that do not have them and have mixed-use developments throughout.

As it is, Southampton residents ought to do is pool their funds to buy the Maryland Manor and then do whatever they see fit - sell it to someone who will develop something they would want, or run the apartments as they are, or just tear it down and put a park there or something.