IronTiger

The closest thing that may be original is a strip mall portion, northeast corner of Town & Country Blvd. and Kimberley Lane. These have remained intact since at least 1978, though the facades were altered in the 1990s re-do. There are some more shops at Beltway 8 (West Belt Road, then) and Memorial Drive, but they've been expanded (if not outright rebuilt). A long skinny strip mall at Bough and Memorial appears to have remained intact since at least the late 1970s, but that's not part of T&C Village. By the way, there is a map of the Town & Country Village with photos at the Houston Today scan I linked a while back.

Not really. If you look at Google Earth, what part of Town and Country Village wasn't torn down for the mall was "redeveloped" in the late 1990s or early 2000s.

I was astounded to learn that a) people actually were talking about this on the College Station-Bryan forum section at TexAgs it's that expensive on pay-per-view, we're talking $100 for homes and $5100 for restaurants (even smaller ones like Buffalo Wild Wings) c) $25 for a cover is considered a lower end

This may sound bad, but I blame international students. When I was living in Eastgate, I was standing at a corner to see a girl miss the protected green arrow (it turned yellow, I think), suddenly jerk to a stop, nearly causing the girl behind her to rear-end her (she looked pretty pissed off, as anyone would be), then when she had to yield on a solid green, she went forward, nearly causing a motorcyclist to collide with her.

Well, there will always be grocery store snobs. That's never gonna change.

OK, but seriously though--in retail, when has this "the time-honored private equity playbook" actually been true, except for (notoriously) Mervyn's, which was an underperforming asset to begin with? I mean, Kmart/Sears have been this (but even in 2004, neither was really going anywhere) and Albertsons (which was brutalized, but the company was losing money and they ended up turning it into a really big company). NRDC Equity Partners if I recall correctly, turned Lord & Taylor around so that they opened more stores instead of closing them.

That tells me nothing that I didn't already know. I know it's opening on Highway 6 North. What I want to know is WHEN.

The fact that they installed a new president was troublesome.

Wasn't it delayed to late April or May?

It would save the state money if they sold the freeway to the park foundation (or whatever) at market price, saving money on demolition. It's up to them to see it restored, torn down, or let it sit.

Depends on what side, I guess.

Private investment firm, so things doesn't seem like they'll change from a homogenization standpoint. Kinda lame that its being owned out of state now, and the last big supermarket to be considered "local". Randalls will go local management next month though from what I've heard, but its still controlled by a large supermarket.

Are you kidding me? Admittedly, the whole "well, they must have been mistaken" is kind of an assumption, but a 9/11 doubter shouldn't be lecturing others on assumptions, since 9/11 theories rely on a lot of guesswork. Also, "explosions" and "explosives" are not the same thing, but I'm going to assume you're not stupid and actually already know that.

For such a world traveler, you still have bigoted and prejudiced views. And it's partly cloudy right now in NYC too, not clear.

I think that a heavy rail/light rail combo will probably de-incentivize rail even further, not make it better (because transfers just add another layer of inconvenience). I find it interesting that the Red Line going northeast gets the most ridership and it's the only(?) one paralleling a highway. Others tend to meander through spaces where they can get it...the airport-downtown connection is just one example.

That doesn't "prove" anything. Nothing the magnitude of 9/11 had ever happened before and certainly not to the firefighters (not around, when, say Pearl Harbor happened) and it would make sense that some of them thought they heard explosives. I believe that there is some stuff the government's not telling us, but not anything particularly juicy (side note: about 5,000,000 pages of documents related to the Kennedy assassination are available, many electronically, and yet there's STILL all sorts of talk about it) that will change everything that we thought we knew about 9/11. If there was a conspiracy, any talking head that claims there's an inconsistency (like people shown in the links above), they'd be locked up, like Manning or (in theory) Snowden, and neither of them had anything about 9/11. Furthermore, during the 9/11 cleanup, if there was controlled explosives in WTC7, they would've probably found evidence, not to mention any reports of workers in WTC7 noticing crews doing some "rewiring", or something like that. For every question raised about 9/11, there's more questions raised back, really.

That's funny: weather reports for NYC have been sunny or overcast for the last week and a half.

The theme to Forrest Gump is a classic too, of course. I would agree, it has to be scores or soundtracks, and not musicals. Otherwise, the whole album of "The Wall" qualifies, which was also a movie (the album lacks the disturbing imagery of the movie, if the movie turns you off)

I'd guess so, since he seems to have no real idea of the state of the stores there. Any pictures to prove you're there?

The green stuff sprayed on the concrete is definitely high friction, but it looks like it would make any wipeouts much worse. It felt scratchy on my finger just by touching it.

Didn't say that, my point was that it's inaccurate to say "it's expensive because of massive demand" and I would say "supply" figures into that as well. It's the reason why a bungalow in the Heights is so expensive these days, is because not just because of demand, but these things are being snapped up or demolished outright. Look, if Astoria works for you and you have the money to live there, great. I still fail to see how "most neighborhoods" have things nearby, or how all this makes it a superior city somehow (actually, just so I don't open a can of worms, there are legitimate arguments about NYC being the superior city, but this ain't one of them).

Post Oak Blvd. is not a straight north/south road, no. What I mean is if you look at a map of Houston, you'll see major "north-south" roads and "east-west" roads. Westheimer, Bissonnet, San Felipe, and others. North-South roads include Kirby, Chimney Rock, Shepherd. Before 610 Loop began, Post Oak Road ran from Hempstead Road (no 290) to past the Brays Bayou. At some point, when 610 was built, TxDOT decided to replace much of Post Oak Road with a freeway. A small part of it north of Memorial was left intact (N. Post Oak Rd., to 290), and south of the southwest corner the Post Oak name also continues (though this too was planned to be a freeway at one time). The curve in Post Oak Road was cut off and straightened to be part of an interchange with 610, and was renamed Post Oak Boulevard. This robbed a vital link to the rest of the city, and only got worse as time went on and the Uptown/Galleria area got more crowded and was a mess of streets that curved in on each other and dead-ended, and because the nearest "north-south road" that integrated it with the rest of the city was Chimney Rock, nearly a mile out of the way, 610 ended up doing double duty as not only its function as a highway but also the north-south surface street that used to be there. Result: legendary congestion. This problem was apparent even in the late 1980s, when several projects were proposed to fix the issue [sweeping traffic plan for Galleria area proposed Houston Chronicle - Thursday, AUGUST 24, 1989], 31 of them, in fact. The plan involved switching a few roads to one way only and widening others, but the hallmark was the Uptown Parkway. It would be, and I quote, "a new road linking Post Oak Boulevard to Woodway that would require using a piece of the western tip of Memorial Park, west of Loop 610." Sadly, this and a plan to widen 610 were both killed when the area residents protested it. Some choice quotes: Now, I know this isn't quite totally related to the Pierce Elevated, but I answered your question, the quotes link back to the Pierce Elevated, and there's mention of certain NIMBYs too! (Both quotes from "Council asked to oppose plans for park, West Loop roadways" Houston Chronicle - Thursday, JANUARY 11, 1990)

But that's like saying an apartment in a run-down San Francisco neighborhood is "better" than a significantly larger apartment in a significantly better Houston neighborhood. Actually, "massive demand" is also false, because unless it's fixed somehow (rent control!) it's based on supply and demand. The supply of housing in New York and San Francisco is generally short, seeing how everything is super-dense and there's no drive-through restaurants, houses with yards larger than a postage stamp*, or grocery stores with parking lots. (San Francisco has a little bit more space, but not by much—there are in fact supermarkets with parking in "the City") * hyperbole in case you didn't notice

I really think that the "look how much is nearby" is a really subjective and easily distortable. You could probably make a case for Rinky-Dink, Texas about how there's a Walmart, a Brookshire Bros., a barber shop, and a church all within a quarter mile of your house. Dry cleaners and dentists are another thing (you probably pass by a few dental places on the way to yours, and the closest dry cleaners is not your favorite), because you're not Sims who will go to the nearest service. The important thing is accessibility, that's what drives people to big cities in the first place. And if it takes you 15 minutes on the subway or the road to get decent groceries, what's the difference, really? You'll either have to pay attention on the road or sit next to smelly/loud people. ("The subway is cheaper" is not a good answer, because your costs of living are far higher)

Well, the Sam Houston Tollway has usually demands higher payment (*rimshot*)