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Nate99

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Everything posted by Nate99

  1. Nate99
  2. Nate99
    Like I said, looking at the satellite image of it, expanding the south end to mirror the north, or something close to it would not be a simple undertaking, but anything's possible with money, and Texas' AD has a lot of that. You will forgive me if I look askanse at the idea of your stadium's dynamism, unless you are referring to its ability to quickly empty in less than perfect situations.
  3. Nate99
    Better shot. You can see how little is left of the old building and on the right you can see a boom from a concrete pumper truck. There is a fairly deep hole already dug near the Capitol/Fannin corner. The top of the truck cab was below street grade.
  4. Nate99
    The skybridge/high dive in to the Texas shaped pool is innovative.
  5. Nate99
    A re-vamped marketing effort, I presume?
  6. Nate99
    No tripod, just a goober with an iPhone.
  7. Nate99
    No need to convince me, I actually agree. The volume of rich alumni is reaching critical mass where they have money to spend and don't mind a bit smaller place if it means they can have a more luxurious experience. In another time, perhaps they would have gone for more total seats, but they did not have the money in another time, so there you are. While it was obvious that they wanted to make it the biggest in the SEC, if Alabama adds another 5K to pass us again, I don't see that as a big deal. I gather that these types of things only occur when you make very rich people very happy, so the process will hinge on a few people's preferences such that you either have gobs of new suites or nothing at all. It's all very much a vanity project, but with 20K more seats with many closer to the field, I'll be satisfied, you may not. There are always going to be tradeoffs. I think @102K capacity, when combined with the usual atmosphere will be tough to surpass in terms of experience or volume. One can imagine a better scenario, but I don't know if you could ever get it built.
  8. Nate99
    Yep. Programming supported by advertisers is notoriously indifferent to people over a certain age. Market research must be pretty rock solid that you can not sell old people anything through a TV or radio ad. TV programs can get huge overall ratings, but if the 18-34 demographic trails, they'll cancel them every time.
  9. Nate99
    Close up:
  10. Nate99
    The look of it wasn't bad at all, just kind of there, the worst of it was that the design of the structural pieces severely limited the ingress/egress and infrastructure underneath the decks, especially the second where all the people that are paying for the upgrade had to sit and listen to their wives complain about the bathroom line. Scale it up to fit more stuff and keep the big cigars happy and it would look just fine to me, though the oblong press box screams early 80's. Going with an integrated press box like at Rice Stadium would look the best IMO, but there are still no good complete renderings of the interior West side that i have seen, so they may have something cool ready to go there, no idea. The plumbing and electrical needed major help as I understand it, that's what made some kind of renovation necessary in the first place. Things kind of snowballed from there. If it were my project, I think I would want to go toward something all structural, but given the construction schedule constraint, the boxed up erector set approach might have been the best looking option. Overall, I think they were going for "heft" which they will now have in spades. I'm interested to see what having the fully encircled playing surface that is deeper in the hole with the crowd closer in is like in person. Given how loud it could get with 75K and essentially open ends, it should be really fun with 1/3 more people, the majority of which will be crammed in closer to the playing surface than previously possible. Someone will always want to go bigger than the last guy, all it takes is money. Penn State, Michigan and Ohio State are all already larger than the planned final capacity of Kyle. That doesn't really bother me much. Anything over 100K is absurdly large.
  11. Nate99
    Pardon the finger in the corner. You can actually make out remnants of exposed old brick right at the bottom of the re-covered area.
  12. Nate99
    Looks like the makings of a tunnel to the Foley's garage/Americana building...
  13. Nate99
  14. Nate99
    Is it in the residential incentive perimeter?
  15. Nate99
    Since the demise of the Sheraton and the re-development of the Texaco building, this has become the urine-iest building downtown. Maybe the owner is saving the development of the area for his grandkids. What are the ceiling heights in 806 Main? They just spent a substantial amount of money on the adjacent garage to reconfigure the entrances to accommodate the new light rail line down Rusk, but with the Skanska temporary ramp thing on an active demolition project, I'm not going to assume that is indicative of anything in the medium term.
  16. Nate99
    The cattle skulls in the Esperson building stonework are pretty cool. It is unfortunate that they couldn't have done something on that scale, or even similar to the Texaco building "Texas Company" logos, but I suppose real estate investment is too transitory these days to literally etch anything like the JW Mariott logo in stone (or foam/plaster/stucco).
  17. Nate99
    There will always be opportunities to upgrade things in/around the stadiums, but apart from oneupsmanship, I don't see Texas expanding DKR to fit more people. But I suppose oneupsmanship is a big part of the reason that we Aggies designed Kyle to hold as many as we did, though we were specifically looking to go bigger than Alabama and Tennessee (both over 100K now) as well as Texas. There may be an all time record set this next season (I'm guessing at at the LSU game) when Kyle Field will hold ~110K-112K. After 2014, the west stands will be demolished entirely and their replacement will hold fewer people than the current 3 deck arrangement. That might lead to an historical anomaly for the largest crowd to watch a football game in Texas that would not be easily surpassed. I'm sure it could be done, but I don't know how you would reconfigure DKR to hold 10K more people (or if you would want to). I guess they could double/triple deck the south end, but looking at it from the satellite image, it looks like that would get in to the east and west stand structure, which would be problematic on the upper decks, but probably within the realm of possibility. That would be a cool project to watch too.
  18. Nate99
    I forgot about the stubs of the old first deck sticking out on the South end, that is true. Seeing the old pictures really gave the arches a better effect. Once the upper decks obscured them, it became a big mishmash visually. When the old horseshoe was still there, you at least could see a long unbroken span of them. I have not been in Olsen since the remodel, but I'd be more on board with more functional updates myself rather than spending money on whatever facade treatments someone preferred, but that's not what raises the money, evidently. The "big brown box" approach seemed highly favored on campus, so fake brick seems a net plus in that direction, but I'm not too fussed about it either way. The construction scheduling and physical structure design is fascinating to watch happen in real time. After they are all done, it will look like something cohesive and inoffensively but purposefully styled, where before it was an obvious amalgamation of different phases in plain concrete. The way the place looked never really made it remarkable at all, now it will be something, if not something spectacular to look at. Going off of pictures, I think the new Olsen exterior was actual brick, though again, just as ornamentation.
  19. Nate99
    The old stadium was pretty much all obscured (or obliterated) once the North end zone was done in the late 90's. The old arches of the original stadium were pretty cool, but alas all done in concrete, so there were no bricks to fell this time around. People were sad to see them go when that happened, but on balance happy that the stadium was finally getting an update. It's interesting how brick is now an ornamentation, but this application (which I think is actual brick on panels, not paint ala 806 Main) should look decent. It is made to look similar to the newly re-vamped baseball stadium across the tracks. As I understand it, they are doing it this way for speed. In order to not lose a season at the stadium, they had to prefab the structure somewhere else and then just assemble the whole thing on site. Construction the North end lasted probably a year and a half. The methods they are using this time will construct more physical seating space and amenities in each of the next two off seasons (8 months per). They have built (cast in place) really large concrete columns up the back side of the East stands that will support the new awning/shade overhang/press box structure and presumably reinforce the existing second and third decks as well. For strength, I really don't know, but the previously free standing second and third decks on the East side will be tied in to the big new columns and the steel frame boxes on the corners, so overall stadium rigidity should be higher.
  20. Nate99
    Snag me a star while you're out there.
  21. Nate99
    New stuff on the lower two floors looks to be getting ready to attach whatever the exterior will ultimately be. I did not grab a picture of it, but the fake brick looks decent to me, you can see it better now that they have the rusk side done down to the fourth floor.
  22. Nate99
    When was the Melrose building last occupied? There are also a couple of telephone system switching buildings that are freaking huge and dead (from a human perspective), but they serve a purpose for the time being. I wonder though how long all that will be necessary to occupy space on land that could be increasing markedly in value with new technology taking over for land line telephones.
  23. Nate99
    Is that a helipad on the corner?
  24. Nate99
    Would that not be roughly equivalent to what the Hilton has? I know that the lobby and the big ballrooms up on the second/third level all have tall ceilings.
  25. Nate99
    This one has a steel frame too, it is just much smaller than the Sheraton was. The Sheraton was the full width of the block and ~1/3 block deep. This one is less than 1/2 block on either side.
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