IronTiger

I had read that the Brays Bayou project in progress actually did prevent/reduce flooding...where it was completed. The big problem with the flooding was that recent infrastructure improvements HAVE curbed the floods, it's the older stuff that didn't. I certainly don't think mass demolition is the answer, at least not on the scale Kinkaid is suggesting. I would propose requirements on detention ponds in new development, as well as converting existing long-vacant spots (like the Main Street McDonald's site mentioned) into drainage areas with permeable asphalt lots.

By the way, Google Maps updated to show Houston as of 8/30 with lots of flooding, including the Sam Houston Tollway near CityCentre turned into a rather lovely looking canal, until you know it's not supposed to be there.

Pretty sure that the Fiesta in question opened around 1989, not '99

In further thinking, sealing off the tunnels from floodwaters with the big "submarine" doors may have prevented damage underground but I also think that affected waters above. One site that would be GREAT for a retention pond area is right at the corner of Richmond and Main Street. Close down the little section of Rosewood and tear out the old McDonald's slab used for parking, as well as other slabs from old development. In return, a new detention pond can be dug as well as modern porous asphalt. 

+ Gets rid of blight

+ An environmentally friendly replacement to the leftovers of yesterday that weren't even doing much

+ Can mitigate flooding

+ Keeps parking use

+ Adds green space

+ Does not harm traffic patterns

+ Relatively cheap

+ No structure demolition

+ No additional land used

+ No need to worry about maintaining Rosewood again

There's not a lot of downsides here. Then try to do that all over the city.

I think that part of Houston's problem is just largely unchecked development for years. Probably the parking requirement may have stemmed further ultra dense development that in retrospect, would've been worse for flooding. In the meantime, new development needs to have detention ponds and possibly defunct retail could be demolished for it. Almeda and Wheeler used to have a Burger King that was razed for parking, but more importantly a place for water to drain. We need more spots like that, and they can also be little "green spots" in a city filled with development.

I would say that more areas need to be bought out and converted into greenspace, a la what happened after Allison, especially struggling retail (what if the bulk of West Oaks Mall became a huge reservoir lake?!). Perhaps also some sort of parallel "emergency spillways" for bayous.

There also needs to be rules on retention ponds, I know College Station instituted detention ponds a while back for commercial and large residential developments, and I think that has prevented flooding. Nothing like a parking lot that gets sopping wet with just the slightest of downpours...

I assume for the floods that the tunnels were sealed with the giant doors they put in place after Allison, therefore the damage here is limited to the surface and some underground garages. It also appeared from my last check of Google Maps yesterday that US-59 was fully open.

I hope the Julia Ideson Building and the archives are okay. Luckily, the flooding doesn't seem to be too bad, you can still see that the planters aren't overflowing and you can still see the road striping. It's been really difficult to tell how much damage there is. I saw flooded streets but I don't know where...plus some roads have notoriously poor drainage (a brief but heavy rain can easily flood out some roads...Long Point Road comes to mind). I also saw a picture of water near Sam Houston Parkway with a stoplight almost overfilled, but I don't know where that was (I think it was near NE Houston). I haven't seen any big "highways into canals" pictures, though I suspect that maybe that's not a bad thing if the water doesn't flow into neighborhoods and instead serves as emergency water conduits.

Yesterday, there was actually a part of Highway 6 NB in Grimes County that was closed due to flooding, and there are no shelters prepared in Bryan-College Station. I suspect that as Houston dries out, there will be some blowback to local political officials who said that "local officials know best" and that people should just ride out the storm.

On 8/17/2017 at 4:14 PM, Firebird65 said:

For anyone who is interested, I've come across the approximate opening dates for the Malibu Grand Prix and the Watercoaster that were located at I-45 and North Shepherd. The Malibu Grand Prix (technically at 7655 Stuebner Airline) opened in May 1978. The Watercoaster opened the week of July 9, 1978.  This is from the Aug. 31, 1978 (Malibu) and the Jul. 20, 1978 (Watercoaster) North Freeway Leader. 

So, I assume that the MGP near the Northwest Mall opened at approximately the same time?

On 7/29/2017 at 10:38 AM, IronTiger said:

Wow! This post dislodged an old memory...when I was in kindergarten back in my hometown in the mid-1990s (where classes were only half-days), I remember one of my teachers saying that the classroom (which seemed rather large, at least for a 5 year old...I'd say that it was about the size of a typical elementary school classroom) used to be twice the size before they built a wall between the two classes (the building was built in the 1970s and still showed it...brown everywhere). I wonder if they did "cluster classrooms" for kindergarten back then.

Keep in mind that this was CSISD, not Houston--but the timeframe seems right.

On 7/26/2017 at 0:07 AM, Tumbleweed_Tx said:

Pod B at James Lewis Elementary near Kansas City for third grade, Pod D for 4th grade, too many distractions.

 

that was nothing compared to the (poopoo) show that was Meadows Elementary in 1975/76- the entire school was one huge room with only the cafeteria and offices being separate.

 

they split the large room up into a normal school layout with walls a few years later, they did the same to Sugar Land JR HIGH (middle school... pffft!) the summer after I got out in '79

Wow! This post dislodged an old memory...when I was in kindergarten back in my hometown in the mid-1990s (where classes were only half-days), I remember one of my teachers saying that the classroom (which seemed rather large, at least for a 5 year old...I'd say that it was about the size of a typical elementary school classroom) used to be twice the size before they built a wall between the two classes (the building was built in the 1970s and still showed it...brown everywhere). I wonder if they did "cluster classrooms" for kindergarten back then.

11 hours ago, blue92 said:

I lived in Houston (CooperField) from 1999-2001 and I used to love going to an all you can eat Japanese Sushi restaurant on 1960 at the entrance to Willowbrook Mall. I can't remember the name of it. I was wondering if 's still  there? Lots of happy memories.  

It looks like "Kirin Japanese Seafood & Sushi Buffet" is still there.

1 hour ago, brucesw said:

The apartments along Bissonnet are beyond the U-Haul facility.  In the pic linked by gnu the building with the blue sign across Bissonnet was identified in a thread in Historic Houston I think as a Chuck Wagon (bbq? burgers?).  It then was briefly a place specializing in sliders called My-T-Bite or something like that and for probably at least 20 years has been El Pupusodromo, part of a local chain of Salvadoran places.  Beyond that, on the corner of McAvoy, is a small grocery store with a tortilleria attached. I do not remember a LJS along there.  I will have to take a drive and look. 

 

The CarTex across Bissonnet was a Pizza Inn, then a pawn shop or insurance office for a few years.

 

The Baskin Robbins catty-corner has been there forever and is still standing.  The Parkway Center behind it, which was anchored by an A&P 50 years ago, was leveled for an Aldi. You can see the blue construction fence (in the 1/16 picture).  Aldi opened ca. May of last year.

 

I am not aware of changes on the other corner which is the SW point of a residential neighborhood.

From perspective it looks like El Pupusodromo looks like it would be LJS. Meanwhile, Smiley Plaza looks like it replaced something else (between McAvoy and the apartment complex) sometime after 1989 but before 1995 per aerials but HCAD says it was built in 1974 (and Smiley Plaza does not say "1990s build" to me). The picture must have been when Stop N Go was brand-new as HCAD says 1985. Knowing this chain, I'd say that in the mid-1990s it converted to a Diamond Shamrock but kept the name, renovated & rebranded the Stop N Go into a Corner Store (DS had that shape of Corner Store) in the early 2000s, then rebranded as a Valero around 2006 or 2007.

1 hour ago, mollusk said:

The 80s tend to impair any remaining memory wisps of the 60s.

 

IIRC, they were bulldozed, not necessarily one at a time, and ultimately replaced by a strip center.  However, the Stop N Go was bricked over to match the strip center and is now The Bar Method. https://www.google.com/maps/@29.744887,-95.3877107,77a,35y,180h,39.59t/data=!3m1!1e3

According to Google Earth, all four(?) were wiped clean by 1989 but the strip mall wasn't built until 2000 (according to HCAD).

38 minutes ago, mollusk said:

 

Ah, youth...  

 

The old joke is that if you remember the 80s you weren't really participating.

 

Now get off my lawn. 

I thought that it was if you remember the 1960s you weren't really there. In all seriousness, though, what did happen to that row? Was there a big fire?

39 minutes ago, mollusk said:

 

Hard to say.  It was Montrose in the 80s.  

Well, it was 1995 when Diamond Shamrock bought it, so it probably lasted through the 1980s. It does look like that entire row was bulldozed sometime in the 1980s for....reasons?

The source is Houston Chronicle from this page but does anyone know where this is today? I'd say it still exists as a Valero with a Corner Store, and you can see a Long John Silver's in the background to the left and apartments(?) to the right. The road seems to be a typical four-lane thoroughfare but lacks a large median, my first guess was Long Point Road but that lacks Corner Store gas stations oriented like that.

4 minutes ago, mollusk said:

 

Most of the businesses were in converted houses, but the Stop N Go was your basic classic CMU convenience store box.

Looks like the perspective is throwing me off. I see the curve and I know it's facing east, but Midnite Sun is 524 Westheimer, which would place it in the middle of the block, whereas the Stop N Go is farther out in a building that still exists (though is vacant) at Westheimer and Whitney. According to TSHA, Stop N Go adopted that name in 1983, though that wasn't the logo they were using by the late 1980s.

I'd reckon that they closed then when Diamond Shamrock bought the company and purged it of non-fuel locations?

The first picture in this thread is from Arch-ive.org, run by @sevfiv.

I've never been inside the building, or even seen it (I just remember the fence around the property with indications that it was used by HISD at some point, somewhere deep in HAIFistory there is a thread I made on it). It reminds me a LOT of how the defunct Zachry Engineering Center on A&M used to look like.

On 7/15/2017 at 10:21 PM, mollusk said:

This image faces east.  And the strange orange car on the right is a Mercury Bobcat - the nicer Pinto.  What was the Stop N Go on the right was torn down and is now Osaka.

 

It looks like Stop N Go (and the other businesses there) were converted houses (which is what many businesses in Montrose were like). Neat!

The building looks like it was gone by 1989, though (probably closed after converting a nearby 7-Eleven?)

On 7/17/2017 at 4:18 PM, Purpledevil said:

 

If only....

 

I can offer up nothing helpful, Tiger. Not to sound stuffy, but I've never worked in, nor know any history about the Motor Inns of Houston.

Too bad! A few years ago you always seemed to know EVERYTHING about I might have had questions in, including hotels (fantastic stuff with the Hilton near the airport, I still remember that).

As an aside, I did find out a bit later that the Preference Inn didn't even open as Preference Inn, it was opened as "Icom", a French-styled hotel (built at the same time as Sofitel/Hyatt Regency but more budget-oriented).

On 7/17/2017 at 5:41 PM, intencity77 said:

 

Looking at historicaerials.com, 7000 Southwest Freeway definitely had a large, sprawling hotel/motel like building starting from 1968 into the 80's. Once you get to 1995, the hotel looks demolished and the lot is completely overgrown. In the early 2000's, the current car dealership shows up. 

 

PS. Always check back with historical imagery (Google Map historical imagery or historicaerials.com) when reasearching former properties. It's a must. 

Yeah, I was a bit thrown off at first, but my second post found that the Royal Coach Inn and the "Radisson Inn" were one and the same. (Also, Venture didn't even build out anything, that was all the dealership's doing)

7 hours ago, Firebird65 said:

 

Why would you want to put a Randall's there?!? Randall's is closing stores, and likely will go the way of Sears itself soon, seeing how Safeway ruined what made Randall's a market leader in Houston before they bought it. I've never been a fan of Randall's... prices were too high, but their stores were always clean, well-staffed and their employees went out of their way for you. If you were willing to pay for it, I could understand why it was so popular. But now, all Randall's offers is high prices. That and how if you forgot the chips on Super Bowl Sunday you can go into one of their stores right before the game and not have to wait in line they are so devoid of customers. 

 

Better to put an HEB or Aldi there... someone with a pulse who's likely to stay around a while rather than someone who might well close the store at a moment's notice.

Well, there's no Randalls stores nearby and they can rebuild their market share, it can be an attractive space rather than holding out hope for a Nordstrom or putting something like a second Macy's or Dillard's there (or outright demolishing the space), it can be an attractive and interesting addition to a regional mall, and all that. They have only closed one Houston-area store since the Albertsons takeover, and the independent division status was too small to justify (seeing as how the Tom Thumb stores were re-aligned with the Dallas offices, and the few Louisiana stores were not enough to compensate) along with the DC.

I use script-blockers and other tools on my desktop, but browsing HAIF mobile is a painful experience because regularly, I try to click on some topic link, and before the topic fully loads it redirects me to some third party spam site. Then when I try to click back, it takes me back to the index and not the topic I was reading. It's terribly frustrating and I don't know what's the cause of it (host, third party attacking host, webmaster) but it wasn't always like this and I'm wondering if anyone else has had the same issues.

I'm guessing that the center remodeled in the late 1980s when AppleTree expanded. SOMEwhere in my archives I have a picture when AppleTree was still at the center.

There was a blurb in Texas Monthly regarding Kids' Kounty.

You know, Baybrook Mall's Sears once had a McDonald's INSIDE the store though it's been gone for years now. Anyway, as for a replacement tenant, they should go for something non-traditional. How interesting would it be if they put a Randalls in the mall, with an entrance and everything? It's a stone's throw away from the Randalls where Yeltsin visited, and it can have all the niceties that Albertsons is putting in top-tier stores these days.

Following another successful run at the Texas Room archives, I'm trying to document changes at some Houston manufacturing plants. From what I can tell, 1982 was when 3350 Rogerdale opened as the third and final location of Schepp's Grocer Co., a local Houston distribution center that in a few years went from a large force in the industry to an ownership change to liquidation (Schepps Dairy, a subsidiary in Dallas, was spared from liquidation and continued until a few years ago when Dean Foods retired it in favor of the Oak Tree Farms name). The liquidation happened in 1986 and the facility stood vacant until Randalls purchased it in mid-1988 for HBA and private label lines.

Randalls sold the warehouse in 1998 to an apartment developer but still occupied the facility. The newspaper noted that "Randalls will continue to occupy the warehouse for another year or so, until it is ready to move into a new facility on U.S. 290 in northwest Houston", which makes sense as 1999 was the year the Telge/290 warehouse completed a major expansion.

In 2000, the apartment developer sold the warehouse (only the excess space in the front became apartments) to Micarles LLC, another grocery distributor. From there, the trail runs cold. Micarles still owns the building but almost no information can be found on it on the Internet other than the fact that it owns the building. It also has leased out parts of the building, to companies like Active Water Solutions. Apparently, Micarles no longer uses the building at all, having divided it into five tenants: Blue Line (food distribution), NatureBest Pre-cut & Produce LLC, Stork, Deepflex, and AWS (aforementioned).