Nate99
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GreenStreet: Mixed-Use Development At 1201 Fannin St.
Nate99 replied to MontroseNeighborhoodCafe's topic in Downtown
I walked around HP during lunchtime today. It looks fairly impressive, and has more retail space than I guess I was expecting, although I would have known as much if I followed the development more closely. The few tenants seem to be rather spread out. Hopefully it will not follow the same path as the Park Shops, I liked the development and could see it as a great place to drive some nightlife. HoB looked busy with a lunch crowd and Willie is playing two nights next weekend which should get a good crowd in to the area. The proximity to Toyota Center should be good for Rocket game nights too. Here's hoping for the best for them. -
GreenStreet: Mixed-Use Development At 1201 Fannin St.
Nate99 replied to MontroseNeighborhoodCafe's topic in Downtown
I was surprised yesterday looking down San Jacinto from McKinney to see the structure already over the roadway. Looks to have had much more attention paid than with Houston Center and The Park Shops. -
I'm sure that you are right, it did look recessed, although from above, my depth perception wasn't the best, and I'm not entirely familiar with the layout. It's good to see it come together though, since they started, it has just been a giant mud pit bordered by skanky parking lots. Now we'll have a nice park bordered by skanky parking lots. Oh well, one block at a time, I suppose....
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I looked out a window from my office at 5 Houston Center today, and it looked like they planted several acres of sod over the main greenspace recently, although the part of the park closest to the ballpark (north?) is still very torn up.
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http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695244395,00.html
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Without congestion, the average speed on the North Belt has to be 75 mph. I could definitely see fines being levied against anyone whose time between toll plazas was less than that at which a car travelling the the speed limit would have taken. Seems a logical extension of red light cameras to me. Automated revenue generation. I think though, that speed limits are more universally looked upon as a joke by the voting public than red lights, making such measures less politically workable.
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I always figured those buildings were some kind giant switching station. There is another one on Weslayan between Richmond and Alabama IIRC. There is no parking structures to support the kind of office space that something of that size could hold, and without windows, I assumed them to be, as some one pointed out, just full of wires. Seems to me that these might be obsolete in a few years with IP telephony and mobile not needing such massive dedicated infrastructure. That can't be cheap to maintain...
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That great big right of way would have been perfect, but now its a feeder road. My guess is that it would take another 20 years to build the infrastructure (inner loop transport) to make a commuter rail feasible for enough people, by which time the freeway would be completely unusable for anyone. A lot of commerce travels on I-10 through Houston with no way around it, so the freeway needed something. Unfortunately if you build it they will come. And build more subdivisions.
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Quite true, that would be part of my "something large scale". I fear that it might require solutions for both types of congestion. We already have rush hours going both ways on the Katy.
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If the 2 million new residents number that gets thrown out turns out to be accurate, I expect that everywhere will be more densly packed, and with the decentralization, it would be useless without being able to get from the Galleria area to Downtown, so that does make some sense. I do wonder where any eventual commuter rail would physically run. Emminent domaining several hundred miles of right of way would be tough, but after seeing what they took out on the south side of the Katy between the loop and Beltway, I guess anything is possible. Without something large scale, Houston will be close to unlivable with that kind of growth in population. In the meantime though, 290 has to be widened. Train or no train. It might be nice if they made provisions for both at the same time, as they might have been able to do with the Katy.
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I'll chime in with my $0.02. I'm a Kingwood suburbanite, so I doubt that I'll ever get much use out of the rail, but my taxes do support Metro, so I'll bloviate with everyone else. From a cost benefit standpoint, the street grade rail lines just don't make much sense, given how many busses and drivers you could buy for your money. I throw that out there knowing that federal funding won't pay for busses, but will for this, so Metro is taking what it can get to grow. There also seems to be a psychological component for riders that think (perhaps accurately) that if they get on a bus they might end up God knows where, whereas a train is going to go where they want it to. Now filter all of this through bureaucratic inefficiency and city politics cronyism, and the best intentions will turn in to who knows what at the end of the day. I'll admit to libertarian leanings as full disclosure, but there is no denying the value of an effective public transportation system, and all of the governmental garbage that goes along with that is just part of the price we pay as a city to have something that can move people around. All that said, intra-loop transit doesn't seem to be the biggest problem with traffic in Harris county. When I lived in the Greenway Plaza area, I could get anywhere I needed in town by car really easily, so the whole idea seemed flawed from the get go to me. Now, if we want to subsidize the transportation of those who do not want to or are not able to own and maintain a car, that's a whole other discussion to get people yelling at each other about. In my own opinion, a commuter rail (ala Long Island/NYC or Chicago) could have done wonders for I-45 (both ways), 290 and Katy Freeway commuters where Houston traffic is the worst, but ROW issues seem to make that either impossible, or at least politically unworkable. Further, again in full admission of my jaundiced opinion of local politics, would not be attempted since suburbanites don't jive with the whole urban planning agenda.
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Is that the "Just a $1.19" store? One might hope that it does not make it given the crackhead congregation that hangs around out front, although with as many construction workers as it will take to build that tower, I imagine that it could do very well selling gatorade and cigarettes by the truckload during the summer.
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Do you have a link? I'd like to read it. Granted, the Super Bowl is a unique one time event that brings the party with it, but Downtown was THE place when it happened, and it seemed to pull it off fairly well. Oh, and that dingleberry blogger just needs to go on the other side of 45 or about a mile down westheimer to find night life, if that is his be all, end all. Drive an hour or so from one of the airports in Houston and you can be deep sea fishing, five star dining, racing motocross, receiving the best medical treatment in the world or watching a college football game with nearly 90,000 people. Try that in or around NYC or any other city in the world. There are many great places to live, and many cities have great things that they can boast. That doesn't make everywhere else trash. Oh well, such is internet discourse.
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Ah, makes more sense that way, I suppose. I just didn't see any indication that they were selling shoes on their signs, just a reference of some kind to art. I need to pay more attention. Seems like a tough place for retail at the moment, but maybe selling something so specialized will bring people in. Should be better one the HP open up, hope that they can make it that long.
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They moved in to the old Krispy Kreme location @ McKinney & Main. EDIT - Hizzy beat me to it. Tough to read through the long threads..... On a related note, I noticed that an art gallery (I think) moved in to a spot in the Humble Oil/Residence Inn/Courtyard Marriott building. It looked like all they had were a bunch of oddly colored Nike's and a suit of armor, so they might be a wierd shoe store.
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The marble seems to be holding up ok, that is, I haven't noticed it looking bad, and I work a couple of blocks away, so I see it every day. I didn't realize that 2 Shell was largely a parking garage until recently. My guess is that whatever they did to one, they would have to do to the other.
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It would have to go in to 5 Houston Center, which has no underground tunnel access (only skywalks). They would either have to go directly under McKinney street, or cut under the lot where Discovery Tower is to be built and/or the One Park Place construction. Unless those buildings are going to have tunnel provisions, I'd guess that it would not extend that far.
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In searching around, it sounded like there was no news after the Ritz-Carlton plan fell through (correct me if I am wrong). There was a link that had photos by a guy that broke in to the building, and the inside looked to be in rough shape. Add that to the surrounding area that has the ambiance of Fallujah after dark, and I'd be surprised if anyone is chomping at the bit to refurbish, especially for a luxury hotel property. Who knows, maybe the junk that is around there now might start coming around once MainPlace gets up and running and it could be a viable property again.
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That would have to be it, the block with the hole borders San Jacinto as well (street sign in the foreground).
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I searched around a bit and found out that the deep hole in the ground on Fannin & Capitol used to be a parking garage, (I think) but why was it demolished, and are there any plans to build anything on the site? Based on the weathered plywood on the barriers, it has been in it's present state for a while. I tried to search around for it, but couldn't find anything more specific.
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I just walked around the block of the site, and they have crews crawling all over the brown building that fronts Main, with some others in the Montague. They have built scaffolding the entire height of the Stowers building in between it and the other one that is going to be demolished. I guess they must be going level by level on these taller structures taking them out from the top down. It would be fun to watch the Montague go down, any ideas on the timing of the implosion? The area definitely has the smell of recently opened crawlspaces that have not seen the light of day since the 1800
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Just a random update, I walk across the surface lot that takes up the space that DT is supposed to be built on (the block surrounded by Walker, LaBranch, McKinney and Crawford, IIRC) on a regular basis, and I noticed at least two perfectly circular holes about five or six inches in diameter near the corner of LaBranch and McKinney with markings spray painted on the pavement around them. I'm guessing these have something to do with soil samples that the builders might be taking. They probably showed up in late August/early September, if memory serves. Those who know more about the process can chime in as to what these might mean.
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The two black towers that are joined by a four or five story crosswalk over San Jacinto are 1 Houston Center and 2 Houston Center, I can never remember which is which. Part of the land that the Hilton Americas sits on (the NE corner of Jackson and Polk) was the Redwood Chemical Company that my step-father once owned (sold long before the city acquired the land for the Hilton), it had been on that site for a long time, possibly pre-war.
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Co-Cathedral Of The Sacred Heart At 1111 St. Joseph Pkwy.
Nate99 replied to Montrose1100's topic in Holy Places
I caught the news in the recent diocese newsletter, it will be open in April 2008. http://www.diocese-gal-hou.org/newsevents....thedralSchedule
