Jump to content

Nate99

Full Member
  • Posts

    2,803
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    85

Everything posted by Nate99

  1. Construction elevator has arrived. I walk by the place all the time, so I'll do what I can to chronicle the refurb.
  2. Agreed. That looks pretty sharp. To go from what is there now to that would completely transform that block.
  3. Anyone know anything about Wexlers? A guy who saw me take this pic said that it was a clothing store.
  4. It catches the old Texaco building too, for which someone was fishing for incentives to build out in to condos.
  5. I wish The Men's Center all the luck in their mission, but if you think putting a rehab facility for homeless drunks improves any neighborhood in any way, shape or form, much less one with a lot going for it for people with cash to spend, I think we're done here.
  6. I'll pile on to what Niche said. They're treating alcoholics, not curing cancer by splitting the atom in geosynchonous orbit. Maybe I'm missing the "captivity" of medical center employees, but I wouldn't figure that volunteers for such outfits would be drawn from people put out by the inconvenience of going a few miles from their work in the TMC to Midtown. Getting drunks with no resources of their own to turn their lives around isn't a job for the highest rent "treatment professionals" in Houston. Could they do a marginally better job of it in the TMC? Possibly. Could they do an even better job of it without paying thousands extra in rent every year? Without question. The lack of ability to understand costs and benefits even by people with fairly strong communication skills frightens me to no end in an election year. And how can one not see a synergy between alcoholics and bars/vagrants?
  7. Looks like they are prepping the Main Street side facade for the installation of a construction elevator. A bunch of windows are knocked out and a non-cotinuous vertical strip of facade has been stripped off.
  8. The other day I could see a bundle of large pressurized gas cylinders hoding what I preumed to be some kind of welding/cutting torch gas. Possible it could have been some kind of construction phase fire protection/extinguisher system. They're definitely busy, but I can't imagine how long a full refurb on an old building like this would take. How long did the Inn at The Ballpark take?
  9. They should do a 100 story ultra-huge that looks just like the old Oilers logo, but twisted in to kind of a helix. No I don't want to pay for it. I'm guessing 25-ish story modern-ish brown-ish box.
  10. Thanks for the pics major. I sat outside at the In-N-Out that is just outside the fence at LAX and watched one of Quantas' A380 come in. The thing looks like an office building coming out of the sky.
  11. Never mind. The plaques were back up this morning. For a minute there I thought this was the fastest track to demolition ever envisioned. It will be interesting to see if they do anything to accomodate the tunnels.
  12. Walked through the building in the tunnels today. They already took down the descriptive plaques for the pictures of the various Skanska projects that are on the wallpaper in the tunnel. They were only up for maybe a month.
  13. Rich NIMBY busybodies make for some of the least sympathetic people as it turns out. I don't think anyone cares for their overblown cause that doesn't already own a half million plus house. Seems they made a fair run at all legal avenues to stop it, and they failed. Seems sour grapes are leading them to petty harassment after the fact. If they think a high-rise apartment hurts their property value, I wonder why they think making it an unattractive place to live once it is already constructed is a step in the right direction.
  14. Not sounding as good. Will there or will there not be women in dirndls? That's what I need to know.
  15. Sounds like there will be beer and sausage involved. I'm in.
  16. Interesting idea. Seems that many bars downtown can't manage enough proceeds to keep the doors open, hope they beat the odds.
  17. There is a very narrow vacant ~10 story office building that is immediately south of 806 Main. The main entrance to it was open one day a few months back when I walked by, couldn't make out what was going on inside apart from the ground floor being a fairly open floor plan. I have heard exactly nothing about it, and it has been empty as long as I've been walking past it. With the refurb of 806, it makes you wonder if a structure like this is a more attractive option to renovate or if it is basically doomed to sit empty since you can't tear it down. Maybe if the hotel does well enough, they could take it too and add rooms or meeting space. EDIT - it was the Battlestein's department store building.
  18. Wasn't there an El Tiempo at Main @ Prairie back 2000-ish?
  19. If someone comes forward with a credible plan that doesn't involve massive subsidies (i.e. the state buying the right of way), I'm all for it. Passenger rail loses money nearly everywhere it operates and airlines pay for themselves occasionally. You can not build infrastructure in this country without political support and you'll have organized and well funded NGO opposition fighting you no matter what it is you want.
  20. There was a low rent gym on like the seventh or ninth floor of the building that I actually wanted to join, but the owner told me about the building's pending bankruptcy and how they were going to have to shut down. That was the only time I ever went in there. From the neglected tenant directory in the lobby, it looked like a pretty rag-tag list of folks in there.
  21. There was nothing at all wrong with it, that I could see. I'm just trying to guess Skanska's motives. An interesting thing to me is how it occupies virtually the entire block with its footprint. That's actually pretty rare downtown. How are the Gulf and Esperson buildings doing for tenants? I agree that that block of Travis looks very clean and classic.
  22. From what I know, G. Rollie is a gonner no matter what option is selected. This strikes me as something you do once every hundred years or so. The infrastructure of the existing stadium is in bad shape. I'd like to see something spectacular built from scratch.
  23. It would be a shame if a parking lot was more commercially viable than a building that seemed to be perfectly serviceable, but I can't say I heard of any tenants, other than the club themselves and the few retail shops. Seems not worth the bother and possibly unlikely given that they have disclosed that they already hired Gensler. Hoping for the best, but it's not my money.
×
×
  • Create New...