Jump to content

Nate99

Full Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    2,803

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    85

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Nate99

  1. Nate99
    Someone will need to re-photoshop the skyline merger with Downtown, the Medical Center, Uptown, and Greenway once all this is done. We're not Chicago, New York, or anywhere else. Those places are open for business should anyone find them ideal.
  2. Nate99
    It will be interesting to see if they dig out level to the Chase Tower's tunnel level to avoid that grade separation. If they do, they will still have a large jump up to get up to the Esperson building and Pennzoil's level. With enough length, I guess they could plan for ramps to replace though, and they may have to do so to stay ADA compliant It looks like the JW Marriott's tunnel connection is being worked on currently. Something changed down there between last week the previous time that I walked that part of the tunnels.
  3. Nate99
    Who has a total on residential units in the planning/construction phase downtown now? Seems the incentive program was warmly received. Hope it all goes, I may be a buyer in 15 years or so if I can talk the Mrs. in to it.
  4. Nate99
    The rooftop seating in outside Wrigley is barely tolerated by the Cubs and MLB with occasional threats of walls going up and other advertising deals, etc. That is a very unique circumstance that is rather dicey from a legal perspective that only halfway works. If Finger was able to do something similar, he'd have to be in bed with the Astros from the get-go, which sounds maybe interesting, but tough to put a price on. Given the Comcast dealings, I'd stay far away from the Astros' business side. The Cubs averaged 12K more people per game last year than the Astros, and their games (and the whole neighborhood) are regularly regarded as a bar with baseball in the background. Cool and fun, but I don't think you can create that out of what we have here. If you have both ambiance and cheap beer in a public setting, the crowd will put and end to the former or buy you out of the latter. Currently, across the street (or two) from this crown jewel, we have surface lots, a freeway and a drunk tank. This is going to look really good and help the neighborhood immensely. Anyone can pick personal nits with a particular design, but I think this one will be very well executed. Can't wait to see the area after this, the Marriott Marquis, the museum, and the adjacent residential tower go up. For all of Wrigley's charm, this is still across the street from it:
  5. Nate99
    Pumping more concrete, and the sign is up:
  6. Nate99
    The folks that hang out in front of it do that themselves on occasion, judging by the smell.
  7. Nate99
    I'm with you on this one. Some combination of ironclad parking contracts and buying time to find tenants while initial demolition commences must make this make sense, but these modifications are expensive and temporary. It would be interesting to see how many spaces the temporary garage setup will have, then you could back in to how much cash their getting over the term. Seems a long shot that it would even cover the cost to build the ramps, never mind operate the thing for 2-4 years.
  8. Nate99
    Cool center pivot windows:
  9. Nate99
    Digging trenches/beginning foundation work?
  10. Nate99
  11. Nate99
    Interesting. I'm not that familiar with metro Phoenix, but it would seem to me that expansion outward would be more difficult there than here. We have Ft. Bend, Montgomery, and Galveston counties that are also growing right along with Harris. DFW is geographically huge and has two of the top 20 discrete cities with their respective metropolitan areas merging over the last century with suburbs to the West, East and in between. Houston is one city with an exurban ecosystem developing in several different directions pretty much from scratch, unless you count 19th century Galveston, which I don't given that it was wiped off the map in 1900. No two cities or areas will develop the same way or for the same reasons, so comparisons and duplication of efforts only go so far, but interesting all the same.
  12. Nate99
    Well, it's still half parking lots. As it is, downtown is competing for the types of businesses (and lately residents) that can afford premium priced real estate with several different places in the metro area. I'm all for pretty buildings, but that's not exactly our bread and butter. Once things fill up and values rise, then we can be afford to be ultra-choosy about what things look like. Downtown has development momentum, but how much of that would get squashed if a third party had more power over the designs is anyone's guess. I don't think the answer is zero. As a city, we're filling in where there is nothing, that's a good first step in creating value that has to be there as an antecedent to any aesthetic restrictions that are never costless. Maybe these types of restrictions would be worth it in the long term, maybe not, but that's not a simple equation to solve in any case. The progress happening all over downtown is astounding; matters of minor design preference seem marginal and miss what (if it all goes as rendered with many imperfections) would still turn out to be something of a miracle in such a concentrated market.
  13. Nate99
    The only place I have been to that had a similar setup was the Mandarin Oriental in Las Vegas. Probably the highest end place I've ever stayed.
  14. Nate99
    That's sharp looking. It does appear that they reanimated Macy's in the rendering though.
  15. Nate99
    Very interesting.
  16. Nate99
    Excellent job by HFD keeping this from getting any worse and preventing any injury or loss of life. The dude that dropped down a floor ninja style from the balcony had some angels with him yesterday. Exposed wooden studs in an open construction with high winds is about as bad a situation as you could set up. I'm sure there are insurance companies and lenders that lost a lot of sleep last night.
  17. Nate99
    From DT:
  18. Nate99
    Is this accelerated? I guess I'm confused with the two phase thing and what looks like a closed street. Maybe the renderings are wildly preliminary.
  19. Nate99
    I'm still lost as to what exactly the fake/partially real brick actually is and how they are putting it on there. I think the end result will look better than plain stucco-ish whatever that is. Given that they have done nothing to the lower three floors, that bit of execution will be interesting to see, and I imagine that will have to start soon. Interior work is definitely moving.
  20. Nate99
    When they demo this thing in 70 years, whoever has to chip this foundation out of the ground is going to have their work cut out.
  21. Nate99
    It would not be impossible to merge the existing ramp into the garage off Milam in to a curving ramp coming up out of a covered driveway in front of the building. Not sure how elegant you can get with something like that and in any case, there would need to be major structural re-design of that corner of the garage to accommodate the connection.
  22. Nate99
  23. Nate99
  24. Nate99
  25. Nate99
    There's a DT development timeline graphic out there with the SB date noted, lemme see if I can find it.... Here we go...
×
×
  • Create New...