Nate99

14 hours ago, Urbannizer said:

I knew from the beginning this one would have issues. Dolce Living is the worst MF developer here.

I just want to know who gives them cash to start these things. I can come up with way less wasteful uses for their money that involve Italian sports cars and nice vacations for me and only me. 

14 hours ago, X.R. said:

 

And @Nate99 any amount is too much. He's like the billionaire wives they were talking about, but instead of a lawn he has a massive parking lot. 

I don't begrudge him arguing for his interests, but it's not like he's being altruistic here, that parking lot is a commercial asset to his business.  People are quickly adopting the mental shortcut of development = more flooding, mostly due to NIMBY's hijacking an emotional issue.   Let's account for it, be up front about the impact, but there are lots of places in this world that are just as floody as Houston that are more developed.

On 7/20/2019 at 4:15 PM, X.R. said:

 

An unsuspected challenger has appeared. Mac is definitely an opportunist, and he’s got the political/money muscle. It’s about to get interesting!

How much of his parking lot would he lose? 

The columns are back...

Looks really big from the street. 

1 hour ago, Pricilla said:

They should just make it into 2 tall towers instead of 5 short buildings 

The more floors you go up, the higher the cost per total square feet. 2 50 story buildings are going to cost more than 5 20 story buildings unless the land itself is really expensive. . 

It looks like they're taking out the escalators on the Travis St. side.  Should open up the street level lobby. The tenant floor elevators are all on the second floor, slightly inconvenient for them. 

10 hours ago, ekdrm2d1 said:

Something is happening in the center of the enclosed space.

 

 

Crane foundation perhaps? 

On 7/13/2019 at 6:18 PM, samagon said:

 

outlines pretty well the problems too.

It only outlines the problems and ignores the cost and feasibility of the supposed alternatives that are wide ranging and intrusive.  All are valid approaches and ideas that should be discussed politically, but METRO and TxDOT are both fairly famous for avoiding political accountability. People care about bathroom bills way more than who is greasing who's palm for what benefit.

Using transit to sporting events as a supposed upside for the reader to imagine ignores the light rail rodeo experience most of us try to avoid, even before you compare it to the absurdity of paying $40 to park for an Astros' game. No one does that apart from the diamond club folks that wouldn't be caught dead on public transit, unless they need it for their campaign photo op.

Paying $15 to park and then wait a half hour for a packed rail car sounds fairly competitive to $40 now that I think about it. 

7 hours ago, cspwal said:

Not if we had high speed evacuation trains to Dallas

Interesting logistics thought experiment.  One shrinking refugee camp on one end and a growing one at the other. 

5 hours ago, jackie21love said:

People in Shanghai don't need to evacuate in typhoon season.

not only skyscrapers, we also need Shanghai subway, highway, maglev, high speed train, airport......

That amount of people in one place is hard to get my head around. You would need every imaginable way to get around. 

Is Marshall a proposed name, or did they just render the brand name on to the PA speakers? 

https://marshall.com/

3 hours ago, Luminare said:

me walking into this conversation...and me leaving it.

Yeah...

So...

How about that sky lobby, that was pretty cool. 

2 hours ago, nate4l1f3 said:

Don’t Shanghai my Houston?

24 minutes ago, Urbannizer said:

 

Please Shanghai my Houston.

As long as they limit it to skyscraper construction, I'll allow it.  Another 20 million people evacuating the next hurricane would be kind of rough. 

12 hours ago, zaphod said:

The big empty areas I am referring to:

 

NE: The area around Generation Park and Lake Houston Pkwy

E: Huffman. How much would it cost vs. other options to expand the Crosby Fwy instead

SW: The Missouri City antenna fields along Fort Bend Tollway

S: Manvel, which is closer to downtown than Katy. Once Pearland builds out it is next in like down 288.

SE: Alvin, if TXDOT built an SH 35 Tollway

 

This is more sprawl, but it's no worse than building pushing the suburban edge to touch Brookshire and Waller next.

 

All of these things are less than 25 miles from Downtown, which is approximately the distance from Katy to the city center.

 

 

I started to type up a response about how none of these were practical given the current state of surrounding communities (poor, quasi-rural/industrial), but you mentioned Pearland. I grew up in Friendswood in the 80's, and, snobby as it may have been, Pearland was considered ugly, trashy and low-rent.  Alvin was close to the same, but more rural.  Sheldon/Huffman are like that now, likewise Huffman/Crosby/Highlands.  With better access, those areas would grow like crazy if the economy supports it.  They're also unincorporated and can get trucked by developers with more political clout!

4 hours ago, gmac said:

 

Someone smarter than I (a large crowd, no doubt) can probably delve into the files at https://www.houstontx.gov/ecodev/tirz/3.html and get a rough estimate of how much corporate welfare was doled out to the billionaire hogs at the trough.

Pricing without a market is always dodgy business. 

Just went back and looked at the renderings, and I think the square podium will be nearly as tall as the Rice. This is going to take up a lot of perceived volume from the street, it will look imposing. 

As for a webcam, I haven't heard of one, but then you do have this thread. 

Heck of a service you performed Lum! This is a really cool dashboard for the whole city's development with a quick drill down into the hive's detailed content.  

2 hours ago, Angostura said:

 

 

The most predictable majority in American local politics is incumbent residents opposing any new development with a density higher than their current home.

Yep. Up in Kingwood when the plans for the ridiculously overwrought development on the lake came out, everyone was instantly convinced of any and every calamity that they could imagine ruining their lives because of the impact of towers, offices and some shopping.  There were even some high school kids looking to burnish their college applications trying to "organize" the noble opposition. 

It's a cultural thing, what will we accept happening around us and what rights will eventually be legally recognized if they are not delayed and harassed out of feasibility.  There are many places in this world where laws are vague and what will be permitted is anyone's guess. This dynamic is on a spectrum, but unless you are that incumbent in a comfortable position or become wildly rich elsewhere and like the scenery,  you don't go anywhere near the least predictable jurisdictions and they stagnate or bifurcate into extremes of luxury and poverty as a result. 

Everything has a tradeoff, ultimately the least politically connected are going to have their particular interests overruled.  Low income communities are kind of by definition the "easiest" to replace and so the people there get pushed around. As long as there are no takings without compensation, I think this is really the best we can do.  If you're a renter, your living situation is totally governed by your lease.

Supposing opponents are successful and get the project shut down. A plausible scenario would then shift value away from would-have-been more accessible "sprawled" communities to closer in "lower income and minority" communities. Rather than pay with time, people will pay with perceived neighborhood quality and start gentrifying. At the end of the day, people that do not own the property get priced out anyway, absent rent control and the shortages and other distortions they create.  

Money doesn't buy happiness, but it certainly gives you more options. 

22 hours ago, dbigtex56 said:

 

Defense Language Institute?

Daily Light Integral?

Dual Language Immersion?
Deep Learning Institute?
I give up.

Sorry about that, didn't mean to get too jargony. 

The Downtown Living Initiative seems wildly successful. The residential building/conversion prior to it being enacted was very spotty. I would love to see the economics involved for any of the builders with/without the incentive. The stark difference in activity makes me think that it wasn't thought to be all that close to "worth it" before, but I don't have any kind of feel on what value the incentive is worth for an overall project. 

Seemed like somewhere with the DLI that there was a running tally of apartments that were being constructed, all of which are within 77002, I think (One Park Place seems to be the only one within 77010, and it predates the initiative). 

In any case, depending on when in 2017 the measurement was taken, it would predate a ton of the DLI units coming online. 

On 7/6/2019 at 7:04 PM, mattyt36 said:

Now those are some bizarre conceptual drawings. Or maybe they want to make Houston’s new icon the world’s largest rake ... 😂

I was lukewarm on the whole thing before rake. 

This one is in a very visible, but weird spot. It's not actually that far, but practically speaking, it's too much of a walk from the bulk of the offices to be something that the lunch crowd will frequent, so it needs to either be a destination, or origination point.  By the big freeway interchange isn't the best for residential, but I'd like to see that ideally, maybe reach back and spur development behind it to bridge into UH-D.

Or now that I think of it, why couldn't this have been part of UH-D to begin with?