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Nate99

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Everything posted by Nate99

  1. Nate99
    I'm seeing Shake Shack's arrival as the tipping point. It's something of a draw in it's own right but still necessitates a critical mass of foot traffic.
  2. Nate99
    We're way behind SF, clearly, but that type of filth is appearing DT, I don't recall seeing it at all prior to a year or two ago. That's anecdotal though, just my impression.
  3. Nate99
    I have worked downtown for almost 20 years, and it's my impression that the increased interaction runs both ways. I think there are more homeless people on the downtown streets because there are more non-homeless people to whom they are attracted for various reasons, including perhaps most principally handouts. That and Houston just keeps growing, so the volume of homeless grows right along with everything else while geographically, downtown stays the same. It is absolutely not an easy issue to solve, and people will have varying reactions to having to interact with them, but foul smelling people accosting you and children isn't going to be tolerated by many, and it will put a cap on what the city can be. There's a reason you see very few children in cities with worse homeless issues than Houston, and while that particular dynamic can work, it is limiting. People that peacefully camp under bridges or get their food from soup kitchens are much less of a problem than the people that get kicked out of shelters and/or choose not to go in the first place because they can't manage living within anyone's structure. The micro-level anarchist description seems apt, though perhaps it would be more accurate to call them involuntary anarchists, either by their own mental health issues, or their chemical dependency (or both). The cost of housing issue is a red herring, at least in my example from earlier. The West coast cities prove the point. They are boutique economies for those that can afford them, but people that couldn't afford a rented room in Portland, Texas show up in Portland, Oregon in droves for the generous public/charity services provided to the indigent. The folks that are down on their luck don't go from affording San Francisco to harassing people that can. If you get priced out of Santa Monica, you move to Glendale or Riverside or Bakersfield, you don't don't start literally crapping on Venice Beach. For people filling lower skilled jobs that are in demand in big cities, that's where the housing cost issue comes in, but that gets solved by raising the wages of those lower paying jobs until they attract people that can live in the area. Starbucks and Marriott would much rather have taxpayers subsidize their labor costs though, they are good at dodging taxes.
  4. Nate99
    Now that's density. You'd have a vibrant street life just by people wanting to get away from their roommates/family.
  5. Nate99
    I for one reject the notion that we can't have Hobbit children.
  6. Nate99
    I was downtown this past Saturday night late, and the crowds were decent. There was a youth volleyball tournament going on at GRB, lots of parents and kids walking around. Also saw one obviously disturbed homeless guy come stand about a foot behind a mom and two young daughters when they were waiting to cross Walker @ Main opposite me; they ducked into the $0.99 store to get him off their tail as he followed them. This is the stuff that everyone hates about "urbanity" that the city needs to do something about. While downtown on net is getting better, the homeless problem is getting worse.
  7. Nate99
    YES!
  8. Nate99
    The tread only started in 2012, that's light speed!
  9. Nate99
    I recall seeing the same, though perhaps something would slow them opening all the way to Chase, no idea there. In any case they are working on interior trim, sidewalk pavers and landscaping. They could certainly be done in a couple of months based on what you see at street level, if the tunnel stuff is behind, it could of course take longer. These food halls seem to take their sweet time getting built out.
  10. Nate99
    Let Crossfit have it for a while, they could make a workout of the demolition. Climb the stairs with a 20 lb sledge, bring back hammer and 20 lbs of material, repeat until there's no more building!
  11. Nate99
    Terrible. Looks like the whole roof is basically gone. I wonder how much of the masonry will hold up.
  12. Nate99
    Literally, no, figuratively, it's debatable. Yeah, that's the really hard part. How does this compare to XOM's Springwoods campus in terms of office square footage? You would need a lead tenant of that scope/scale to fill that space in where there would surely be city-on-city competition to bring them in. At least whatever bribe Houston might have floated to GE didn't win, that war horse pulled up lame. Looking at you Boston.
  13. Nate99
    It could be really interesting, so long as everything was really easy to hose out.
  14. Nate99
    They are involved in meetings and seem willing to answer questions to keep things progressing. The scale of the thing is hard to take seriously, but they are indeed still at it. I do wish them luck. As a reluctant Kingwoodian (I am outvoted in my household), I could probably talk them into moving into a nice condo in this place.
  15. Nate99
    Anyone know how many sq. ft. Anadarko takes up in The Woodlands towers? If they moved more people DT leaving those towers available, I could see someone else sliding right in behind them. That's an attractive location too.
  16. Nate99
    That's a hell of a time capsule. The "Get Mobyvated" 97 Rock billboard caught my eye. Getting on 59 Northbound coming out of the bank was a neat trick, but nothing compared to teleporting backwards by a couple of miles a minute or so later.
  17. Nate99
    Isn't a significant chunk of that block held up by piers in the river [bayou] bank as part of the bridges over the bayou?
  18. Nate99
    Agree. I don't think they're all that different TBH.
  19. Nate99
  20. Nate99
  21. Nate99
    Hamblen Road runs basically along the river (anything south of it has flooded more times than I can count) and dead ends almost at this site, just short of what would be an intersection with Woodland Hills. It reaches all the way to the 59/69 feeder road, and would have to be made in to a major thoroughfare to accommodate this. A bridge over the river at Woodland Hills to connect this site to FM 1960 has been kicked around in the regional mobility thought experiments, but no idea how feasible that is. If this ever went, we'd probably need both, and KW drive would need to go to 6 or 8 lanes. It's a dead end that's deep in the flood plain. It's going to take a lot of very patient money for this to be anything at all.
  22. Nate99
    Likewise, this is beyond ambitious. The developer seems enamored with the waterfront location and aware of what would need to be mitigated to make it workable though, so at least that much sounds realistic. How it would be economic for anyone to actually build, I have no idea, but I am hopeful they are more industrious and imaginative than I am.
  23. Nate99
    Here's a dumb idea: Dredge the bayou and make it navigable all the way to Uptown. If I'm thinking really ambitiously, go all the way to the Barker reservoir and make a lake. Put that in your Riverwalk and smoke it!
  24. Nate99
    Now that I think about it, I wonder if they will have to do something more permanent to these windows in that East facing wall to accommodate the new tower that will be there inches away.
  25. Nate99
    New exterior shutters going up at Hogg lofts courtesy of Cherry Demolition (or whoever is doing the work).
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