IronTiger

I remember driving through there relatively recently, earlier this year, and remember the storefront still being occupied. From what I've been told, the ZDE started out as a Roy Rogers and was later a head shop after its time as a food establishment. It was ZDE by 2003 IIRC.

18 hours ago, CaptainJilliams said:

 

 

And I acknowledge we need more affordable housing/shelters and mental health facilities to assist these people. My question is what part of town could have these facilities and not receive major pushback from nearby residents?

The problem with homeless care is the chance for actually incentivizing homelessness. San Francisco screwed itself over on homelessness by actually having stipends for the homeless for years (even now they're guaranteed a small cash grant monthly, from what I've heard) and other homelessness initiatives to the point where tents are now crowding out sidewalks and the amount of human fecal matter is 10 times more than New York and 21 times than Chicago [https://www.realtyhop.com/blog/doo-doo-the-new-urban-crisis/#figure1], and the "poop maps" are used as political ammunition. 

12 hours ago, JLWM8609 said:

This schematic shows the railroad crossings remaining as-is under the freeway, but that can always change.

http://ftp.dot.state.tx.us/pub/txdot/get-involved/hou/sh35-i610/040618-schematic2.pdf

Ooh, that's not good. Some remarks that come to mind:

- The light rail yard essentially forces a right-turn-only out to the southbound frontage road rather than do something sensible like connecting it to Mykawa. 

- The highway would reduce visibility for the troubling railroad crossings and make it difficult to revamp the crossing.

- The rerouting of Wayside south of 610 means that the rest of South Wayside's extension down to Beltway 8 will never happen.

On 4/18/2019 at 10:14 AM, Texasota said:

Or literally anything else. Reclaim that land for UH. Convert it to stormwater detention. Or some sort of residential use. Or just plant a bunch of trees. Some kind of art. Giant climbing wall. Anything at all would be better. 

Land where the freeway is now was never part of UH, the university effectively ended past Calhoun, save for a few additional buildings and parking lots. As time went on, UH claimed most of the land, but that wasn't until after the freeway was built. What I'm curious of if it will include some sort of revamp for the Griggs/Mykawa railroad crossings.

4 minutes ago, intencity77 said:

 

That maybe for the US interstate system of freeways as a whole but we have still built alot of freeways and tollways since that “slow down”. Hardy Toll, Westpark Toll, Fort Bend Toll, Grand Parkway, Beltway 8, Pasadena Frwy, Crosby Frwy, not to mention the crazy widening and lengthening of all the existing freeways over the decades. Now we t the destructive I-45 rerouting around downtown, billions still going towards building the Grand Parkway in extremely sparse areas of population and now this wasteful thing to Alvin. I think it’s all overkill at this point. 

What I mean is that no one's building big cut-through-city-blocks freeways anymore or entirely whole new routes, but across the nation there are still freeway projects underway, usually involving upgrading existing roads (like divided U.S. highways), loop roads and bypasses around large cities or small ones, and a few other projects, happening across most states, even today. California wants to build a "desert highway" to connect some of the isolated communities in the L.A. area (despite significant resistance, because California), Louisiana wants to upgrade I-49 to New Orleans and has recently opened a new segment of I-49 in Shreveport, a little over a decade ago, Tampa opened a short-but-wide connector freeway (think the new interchange between 290 and I-10), and a bunch of other projects I'm probably forgetting.

Spur 5 isn't even cutting through a lot of territory as land has been cleared as far as Dixie Road south of 610. As a whole, I wouldn't consider new freeways radiating outwards to be "overkill" as long as the area is still growing, which it is.

On 4/18/2019 at 9:34 AM, intencity77 said:

The rest of the country is moving away from constructing new freeways, yet Houston is still crapping them out in every direction.

Freeway-building starting slowing down around 1970 (at least, big ones) due to new environmental concerns and land value issues. It's not a recent issue.

On 4/2/2019 at 10:49 AM, cspwal said:

It would have to be pay by mail/toll tag because of the through traffic on I-10, but a dynamic charge on the inner loop freeways would probably work - and I agree, as long as it is earmarked entirely for Metro, with a requirement it's put into developing either more rail or more regional express service (aka park and ride busses, commuter rail)

Why would a state-funded freeway be tolled to go to a local entity?

17 minutes ago, ADCS said:

 

It isn't "forcing additional expenses"; it's ending subsidies whose costs outweigh the benefits.

Ending oil "subsidies" probably wouldn't do much except hurt the economy.

You could save about $10 billion by...

- not allowing oil companies (including smaller exploration companies) to write off unsalvageable wells and force them to keep an asset that produces nothing. This would de-incentivize the smaller companies from doing business entirely and become a legal challenge for the bigger ones, but it would be too late for the smaller companies.

- increasing royalty payment reductions on federal lands (wouldn't save much)

- not treating reserves in the ground as a capitalized asset that can be written down by 15% each year (wouldn't affect big oil, since those companies are not allowed the exemption).

- exempting the oil and gas industry from a 2004 subsidy that encouraged domestic production (would only mean that refineries would rely on overseas operations, which would be bad for refinery workers, not so bad for big oil and end users)

- exempting the oil and gas industry from taxes paid in foreign countries as long as the money comes back to the U.S. (all companies get this, and it's only $900M)

- ending Master Limited Partnerships which would decrease money paid out to pensioners, widows, etc. with stock in the company.

The other $90 billion comes from military and other uses, including low income households.

You could argue that harming the economy and driving people out of town would reduce the number of cars on the road, but I don't think that's what you were aiming for.

6 hours ago, BeerNut said:

So we should stop investing in mass transit?  What solutions would you propose?  

It depends on what the prerogative is, either creating a taxpayer-supported solution for the less fortunate to get around town, or reducing congestion. For the former, it would probably be best to establish some sort of "transit credit" program that would allow the user to see fit, either through ride-sharing or bus tokens. For the latter, probably something like timing stoplights better and establishing viable alternatives to existing corridors. (I've long said that one of the reasons 610 near the Uptown area is so bad is not necessarily lack of lanes, but there's no true north-south corridor in the area).

4 hours ago, arche_757 said:

Well, not just misery,  but expense will force individuals to look toward alternates.  Eventually we will enter into an era of pricey fuel again - this will drive investment in transportation options.

Trying to force additional expenses on road users only makes driving accessible for the upper class and widens the wage gap, which is a bad thing all-around, unless you particularly like dystopias.

1 hour ago, EllenOlenska said:

Train cars move more people than buses and buses more people than individual cars. And if the train or bus has an exclusive road or trackway, well then it moves faster. It is the consistency and the number that is important. 

To say self-driving cars will help seems to misdiagnose the problem. The problem isn't just that people don't want to psychically drive. It's that we have too many cars on the road. 

Using mass transit as a way to "get cars off the road" is always going to be a losing proposition and a poor justification for mass transit on a cost/benefit level, but it's still used to sell mass transit to the public anyway on the basis that most city dwellers vote on mass transit policies based on the idea that it's for a greater social good (in line with their political beliefs) that light rail is implemented and could reduce congestion, not that they'll actually use it. The end result is that miles of light rail could be built at taxpayer expense and it wouldn't make a significant (if any) dent in congestion, which is what is happening in the Los Angeles area.

46 minutes ago, JLWM8609 said:

Probably was the old GH&SA line that had the bridge over Buffalo Bayou where the pedestrian bridge is now.

That looks right. https://www.tsl.texas.gov/arc/maps/images/map0435.jpg

I knew that there was a spur that went to the Sears warehouse on Montrose, and finally disconnected in the early 2000s (late enough that Memorial Heights Drive and Washington was built with a crossing in mind), but not that it went through to Westheimer and beyond. Grant Street was built over the right of way where it curved southeast but it looks like by the mid-1940s the right of way had been built over completely.

Stafford's Main Street is South Main Street, which would arguably be different than (bisected) Main or North Main. All depends if the addresses are contiguous.

They also got rid of the price indicator on the sign, which had been turned off since it was no longer a two digit number to stay the night.

2 hours ago, Specwriter said:

It looks like this building will have basement-level parking which should allow for more extensive landscaping. Just remember to move your car when it starts raining.

If they have adequate drainage, that should not be a problem. Biggest surprise in post-Harvey Houston was going to the downtown library parking two floors below ground and finding that the murals weren't extensively water-damaged...

On 2/8/2019 at 11:00 AM, thedistrict84 said:

•The Harris County Court annex at 1310 Prairie (which were apparently high-end apartments back then?)

 

I doubt they were high-end apartments, especially in late 1980s-era downtown (probably only used for exterior shots, while the interior set was somewhere else). The high-end apartment towers (not built downtown) kept their value, but the hotels that permanently closed in this era weren't able to be converted to high-end housing and either became retirement homes or were torn down entirely.

The history of this building makes me wonder if Houston was special, or if Cheek-Neal had other plants. Maxwell House was created as a brand in Nashville in the late 1800s by the Nashville Coffee & Manufacturing Company, and the name of the company didn't change until after 1900 to Cheek-Neal Coffee Co. (they also apparently manufactured Maxwell House tea in the early days). Cheek-Neal was bought by Postum in 1928 (General Foods a year later following the acquisition of Clarence Birdseye's General Seafoods Company), presumably kept the Cheek-Neal name at least moving to the new facility in the 1940s (where at the time the Cheek-Neal name didn't show up, guessing it became the Maxwell House division). And from there, it seems to be a black hole? "After that, Denenburg said, it may have housed a few other manufacturing operations." Seems pretty vague, are there really no records out there of any further manufacturing, or was not enough research done?

One the things they did do fairly recently is reconstruct the TX-146B/99 interchange in Baytown. For years (though around 2009 stop signs were added, followed by stoplights in 2013), 146B curved north and 99 ended in a T-intersection, but work began in 2016 so that 146B east went straight to 99, and you'd have to turn left (and crossover westbound 99) to get to 146B. As part of this, 99 was four laned out to FM 1405. That seemed to go fairly unnoticed...but knowing H is underway makes me all the more eager to finally get an update to Google Earth. 

On 1/23/2019 at 11:45 AM, Reefmonkey said:

 

I'm sorry, but you're wrong, Randall's higher prices are still a salient issue. I just compared the same "basket" of goods between Randall's and HEB, and Randall's total was 13% higher than HEB

He was comparing Randalls to Kroger.

There were a number of things that contributed to Randalls' demise. The first thing was Tom Thumb, back in the early 1990s. Randalls and Tom Thumb were comparable in many ways, but Tom Thumb stores were generally smaller and located in more urban areas compared to Randalls in suburban areas. It also carried a lot of debt, which Randalls absorbed. With the acquisition, Randalls was now fighting in Dallas and Austin, all the while during a major grocery battle back home, which saw H-E-B Pantry, Albertsons, and Food Lion enter the market. It killed AppleTree (loaded with debt and old stores) but essentially Randalls as well, with it being sold to KKR, then Safeway within a period of two years.

The second thing was Safeway, which was based out of Northern California and had previously been in Houston (along with pretty much everywhere west of the Mississippi) but times had changed and at some point, Safeway had decided to make all their stores more like the Northern California market. This did not, to put it kindly, do well for their acquired stores, like Randalls, Dominick's, or Genuardi's. Meanwhile, Kroger modernized their stores, replacing Greenhouse stores with new Signature stores, and buying up a number of former Albertsons, which were large, almost new, and many of which were in great locations.

The third thing was H-E-B, which had finally managed to saturate the suburbs with cheap-to-build H-E-B stores (many of which were located in older grocery markets) and H-E-B was ready to take the market with full-line stores. During the 2000s, H-E-B built or replaced a number of stores, many of which were large and upscale, while Randalls stopped building stores and closed down many in 2005, unable to adapt to changing neighborhoods and tastes.

Meanwhile, Albertsons had a long journey to go on its own. Its 2002 pull-out from Houston (and a few other markets) stemmed primarily from an expensive acquisition of American Stores in 1999, which saw Lucky being converted to Albertsons in name and format, which angered customers. Ultimately, Albertsons pulled out of several markets and broke into two companies. By January 2014, Safeway was on the ropes with the Chicago division (Dominick's) being dismantled, while Albertsons had managed to re-form (despite a number of lost stores) and looking to expand again.

Unfortunately, Albertsons wasn't able to do a reverse merger of Safeway and ended up acquiring it for more than it was worth, inheriting Safeway's debt. This wasn't able to help Randalls much or get prices down, and the market share by this time was so little it wasn't going to be coming back from Kroger anytime soon, and like in 2005, there were a number of neighborhoods that Randalls wasn't going to work with anymore without some help. Luckily, instead of just closing them outright, Albertsons had made a purchase of a minority (40% I think) of a Texas-based chain, El Rancho Supermercado, which it was able to flip those stores to, so in a way, those "closed" stores are still in partial control of what was Randalls.

11 hours ago, Angostura said:

The current owners of those parking spaces AREN'T ALLOWED to rent them to other people.

By that, do you mean "can't rent them out to fulfill required parking requirements", or "can't let others use it for parking"? Because the latter definitely isn't true as a whole...there are plenty of places in Houston and others in Texas are shared among tenants, or have parking lots available to rent out.

4 hours ago, Texasota said:

Oh come on. Using "Manhattan" as a catch-all bogeyman is obnoxious, and, guess what? New York City has minimum parking requirements! 

The Heights will *never* be anywhere near Manhattan in terms of density. This is more about making better use of the existing parking we have *and* letting the market do what it does best if more is indeed necessary. 

 

No one is saying that the Heights will be near Manhattan, hence the term "theme park version" (and yes, I was being obnoxious on purpose, because in too many topics I've seen this obsession with eliminating front-facing parking lots). In terms of parking garages, the only way to prevent "spillage" if that was a big problem is to build a parking garage, but parking garages are expensive to build, and no one wants to be liable for building a parking garage, unless you wanted the city to build and operate it and take a loss on it for several years (or if a developer bought up every single property to operate it in essence as a mall).

On 12/26/2018 at 9:18 AM, iah77 said:

Since we all pay taxes to maintain street, who exactly gets to demand parking is "spilling" onto public residential streets? Such an elitist way of thinking...

 

That area has been commercial for over 100 years and used to be denser so there is not exactly anything new under the sun here. If you want a private street where no one can park there are plenty of those in Cypress or The Woodlands.

Demanding that parking requirements disappear and on-street parking dominate in order to create some sort of theme-park version of Manhattan is the very definition of elitism.

53 minutes ago, ttuchris said:

What is the history of the lots outside the seawall?  Were they originally city blocks that just erroded over the years?  

There were a few buildings that extended on piers beyond the Seawall that were wiped out after Ike (others existed in years before). Murdoch's rebuilt, but others like the Balinese Room or Hooters were destroyed.

On 11/19/2018 at 7:32 PM, mkultra25 said:

 

I've always understood that it's much easier from a permitting standpoint to repurpose an existing sign than it is to construct a new one. So I suspect Avossos is right. 

The old Town & Country Mall sign stayed up for several years (as late as 2011) last used with a Hotel Sorella banner covering it until it was finally wrecked for new construction.

10 hours ago, Visitor said:

Knowing Houston they will just slap some lines on the ground and call it a bike lane. 

That's what 99% of what bike lanes are. Painted different colors with barriers is luxury. Personally, I'm a big fan of the "multi-use path", which is just a really wide sidewalk, and given how a lot of the sidewalks are in disrepair, I'd like to see more of them.

5 hours ago, august948 said:

 

I thought I heard the opposite at one point, that due to some political gobbletygook they were going to prohibit light rail on this alignment and the bridges couldn't be built to hold rail.

Yeah, that's I read too. Basically a disagreement between TxDOT and METRO. It's worth noting that the HOT lanes in the Katy Freeway WERE designed to hold rail but they were never guaranteed it. Basically, METRO got a say in the design in the Katy Freeway due to the original bus lanes being built with federal funds, and they decided to spend a bunch of money to over-engineer them in the chance that they'd be converted to rail later (if that ever actually happened, the HOT lanes would probably need to be rebuilt or repaired anyway from age).