IronTiger

3 hours ago, MaxConcrete said:

As JLWM8609 noted, the 59/69 SB to 610 NB ramp is staying as-is at one lane. All other ramps are being rebuilt, some with major realignments.

 

I don't know the reason for leaving the 59/69 SB to 610 NB ramp as-is, but I think lane balance is a factor. The west Loop northbound cannot absorb another lane of traffic, so the ramp is maintained as 1 lane and traffic will continue to back up onto the Southwest Freeway.

A bit late, but I think I have an idea of how that ramp can be improved to prevent backups onto Southwest Freeway. It's easy. They close off Newcastle Road north of the eastbound frontage road. It's already not a highly-used intersection anyway (no ramps to the west of the road anymore, and a wall was installed at Newcastle and 59 north of the freeway some years ago). They add one lane to the south of the existing westbound US-59 frontage road, putting plastic bollards between the frontage road and the exit. Then that ramp elevates back up to the current level of the exit ramp, and connects to it. Done. It prevents traffic from backing up on Southwest Freeway by having them exit earlier, and it eliminates an extra exit.

Traffic would be informed to access Newcastle via Westpark Drive.

13 hours ago, Triton said:

 

Oh wow. So it looks like the Hardy Tollroad Extension will affect the new warehouse being built on that property. 

 

Edit: Attached ramps that will affect it.

Sad to say that's not too surprising. There was another topic where Toddle House was discussed near the intersection of Murphy Road and US-90. It was neither torn down for Jack in the Box nor the overpass...there was an incredibly short-lived building that was built at the tail-end of 2003 and completed in early 2004 (if it all) but totally torn down by spring 2005.

It was time, and the flooding events do provide nice bookends to its history. The Fiesta probably will close, doing archive searches reveal that the property was sub-leased by Sears and now Rice can (and likely will) boot it out. Coincidentally, Sears Canada announced closing all of its stores, but even if Sears dies as a whole, Sears Outlet and Sears Hometown are a separate company now.

Did some reading and it appears that the Weingarten inside Gulfgate Mall was bought by Safeway. I wonder how long that arrangement lasted, because they were long gone by the time they pulled out of Houston just about four years later.

6 hours ago, MIKE SH said:

I lived in those apartments on Plum Creek (Patricia Manor Apts) for 14 or 15 years. Used to sneak over to Stubbs all the time.

You are correct about Globe becoming Fedmart for a while. 

Holy crap! I remember the horseshoe pitch! I used to cut through there all the time.

Gessner and Katy Freeway started as Globe, then became FedMart in the 1970s, then became Mervyn's in the early 1980s after FedMart went out of business, then became an Oshman's SuperSports USA after Mervyn's moved to Memorial City Mall, then it moved out to a new stand-alone Sports Authority store (in a former Service Merchandise store). It was torn down in 2005.

Mervyn's appears to have substantially altered the building but it seems they didn't tear it down.

12 hours ago, detached said:

Very nice info! I did double check historicaerials.com and the post office was, indeed, a new build (I believe in time for the 1976 Bicentennial - I also believe that building has its same red and blue paint job from 1976, much deteriorated), just to the east of the ice rink/antique mall building. The area where the old ice rink building was became redeveloped into the glitzy Town & Country Mall of the 1980's. I looks like a parking garage took over most of the space. You can see it all on historicaerials.com

Where the ice rink was (a long narrow building) is now the Rosastone Trail townhomes. A parking garage WAS on the space, but during the construction of CityCentre's first phase, part of it was torn down.

12 hours ago, detached said:

historicaerials.com first shows the apartments, on Wirt, south of Hempstead Hwy., in their 1973 aerial.

I'm not sure if Concord Apartments and Village Way Apartments are the same thing. The way @anthonytexas phrases it they were two different structures, yet the 1970s aerial shows the same buildings as the apartment buildings there today. Across the street is another complex called "Hilton Town" today and at some point in the 1990s or even the 1980s, about 75% of the property was blocked off and ultimately demolished.

There are some apartments just to the south that describe the "large lots" though.

3 hours ago, ChannelTwoNews said:

 

While I wasn't around during the entire life of this particular restaurant, I do know that it wasn't demolished for either structure. Both were around during it's later years of operation. Passed through that part of the area a bunch when I was a kid in the 90s for doctor's appointments and scout stuff. I think it finally met it's end near the time that they rebuilt 90 at the intersection with Murphy Road. The connector/turning lane between North & South Main runs around the west side of the site of the old restaurant.

 

 

Actually, it was torn down a little earlier than that. The 2002 aerial shows a gas station at the eastern side of Murphy Road between Main Street, with Toddle House next to it, then Stafford Ice House, then JITB. In 2003, the gas station and Toddle House were torn down for a new building with a new parking lot but that didn't last long whatever it was by 2005 it was history. It's unknown if Toddle House would've survived construction, as the parking lot does get clipped but the building might've been okay. The sign survived, though, and it's blank today.

(Double post because the quoting system is too hard to work with properly anymore)

On 5/19/2017 at 3:35 PM, iliketurtles said:

It was either torn down or completely gutted now.

Correct, both Google Street View and Maps show that it was flattened in early 2016, ground cleared, and completely rebuilt.

1 hour ago, 102IAHexpress said:

 

All the restaurants in the tunnels are really open in the evenings and weekends.

Are you really serious right now? Last week (nay, less than a week ago) I walked from Hess Tower to Travis Place Garage through the tunnel system at maybe 3:30 pm and everything was closed up for the evening. I hardly saw anyone at all except for a small group of employees hanging out in one of the food courts, and every place I remember seeing was closed (except for maybe one) or in the process of closing (kitchen already shut down, employees cleaning up).

I don't go to downtown all that often and can't speak on improvements over the recent months/years but I can call out BS when I see it.

4 hours ago, samagon said:

 

The tunnels are for people working downtown just like the restaurants above ground are for tourists.

 

It's goal post moving to try and prove a point that has already been proven wrong.

 

I work downtown. Every day I see families (and more-so during the summer, or other school breaks) visiting downtown at lunch time. Their question: How do I get in the tunnels?

 

So no, the tunnels are not for the people working downtown only.

 

The only way the tunnel restaurants aren't a fair comparison to the street level restaurants is because they can only operate during specific times and access to them, unless you know how to access them, is pretty hard.

 

I live in the east end, but I spend a lot of my time downtown after work and weekends (someone pays for my parking garage access, so why not?)... Does that make me a tourist?

 

First of all, who cares whether tourists or residents are the main proprietors of the restaurants? A: Money in the doors is money in the doors. B: The discussion is staying open for dinner, not for whom they stay open for dinner.

 

Second of all, there is no second of all.

"Not designed for tourists" and "not for tourists" are very different things. Even at 3:45-4 pm on a weekday, the tunnels are mostly devoid of people with only a few small groups hanging out in food courts where the food establishments are closed. I was there last Thursday, and I saw not one food court place open. Either employees were still cleaning up or they were already shut down for the day and everyone was gone. They are also, as far as I know, closed on Saturday, which is when people that work Monday to Friday might want to come down to the Houston downtown for whatever reason. Whatever tourist traffic they get during the week is not enough to justify opening Saturdays and evenings, which is why the tunnels are still thought to be primarily for downtown workers.

20 minutes ago, 102IAHexpress said:

 

Also, I could see how you would think the tunnels are only for the work crowd, but as someone who has lived and worked in downtown I can also sympathize with my former neighbors who think the street level restaurants near the entertainment venues are only for the tourist crowd and not for downtown locals.

But they really are for the work crowd. Generally, you'd have to know that the tunnels exist, they aren't advertised all that well save for banners downtown that say something like "a maze of tunnels to explore" or something along those lines.

I'm not anti-tunnel or anything, but I can't go down there without the phrase "you are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike" coming to mind.

I drove by the place today (it was on my "what is that building" list), and it looks in pretty bad shape. Despite some attempts in the last five years to get it preserved as a landmark, it's gated off entirely and the front awning looks like it's going to collapse. I wonder when it was abandoned for good...

12 hours ago, Blade Runner said:

Looks to me like they just ruined another perfectly good roadway structure, all in the name of tax dollars.

I'm glad I was able to drive on it, but @Ross is correct. It was outmoded. The lanes were narrow, and there was no shoulder or barely much of a median. I wouldn't be surprised if the Elysian Viaduct was "structurally deficient" or whatever. The thing is, traffic patterns have changed that much since it was built. It looks like Hardy Toll Road traffic (which came many decades after Elysian) mostly shifts over to I-45 at the terminus, not go south through sketchy neighborhoods and several stoplights, and the "all roads to feed to downtown" structure isn't as useful for Houston as it is for older cities farther north. The vast railroads it went over (two yards and the MKT) are reduced to just two tracks today. It was also built when less thought was given to pedestrian access as it is today: there are no sidewalks on it and I'm pretty sure it forbids bicycles.

On 1/31/2017 at 4:02 PM, csears said:

I'm resurrecting an old thread here to comment that the Palace Lanes changed their name to Bowl on Bellaire last year, then went out of business about a month ago.  

 

 

That's a shame.

There's something on the open-source mapping site Wikimapia that explains a bit more about Palace Lanes. No idea how true it is.

The building was built in two parts with the western half being completed in the late 1950s and the eastern half in the early 1960s. Its hard to tell the what original purpose of the building was, but there is a sign facing Belllaire Boulevard revealing that the original name of the building was simply "Bellaire Building" and that it had a different address (4189 Bellaire Boulevard instead of 4191 Bellaire Boulevard). By the early 1990s it was a bowling ally owned by AMF (a large chain of bowling centers). At some point in the late 1990s or early 2000s, the bowling center broke away from AMF and became an independently owned center, yet still some AMF decal remains. 

¶ 

On 2/22/2017 at 8:54 AM, gene said:

i love that this thread was started almost 4 years ago! haha! I go to uptown Randalls often btw! 

Might've spoken too soon considering the division office and the distribution center will close. But the stores remain.

On 3/7/2017 at 7:46 PM, Sparrow said:

I envision a retail power center going in here with maybe an apartment building or two and about a dozen pad sites. Perhaps an office building or two if we get really lucky.  Maybe they could keep the mall structure for the big box retail stores for cheaper than tearing down and rebuilding?

 

I'd like to hope for something more "urban", but I'm not going to set my expectations too high for this one just yet.

Probably not even that, given it is hard to access and Palais Royal is going to be heading out. My guess is that it will become a modern industrial park, which would fit in with the antique mall (remember that it was a former industrial site nestled in industrial before becoming an antique mall...directories indicate it was originally a facility that manufactured fans). If not that, I can see more of an office building/hotel environment going in.

Gotta admit, it was kind of neat and sad the last time when I went there (2013-ish). There was a fountain...there was a Chick-fil-a Express that had closed for the day...there was perhaps the last Sesame Hut in existence...there was a soccer-focused place (I think) that had action figures...nothing like "Wow, this place is a treasure that needs to be memorialized" but to be honest, I'm surprised it lasted this long. The loss of Macy's no doubt damaged its prospects, and the removal of most of its parking lot (making it a pain to get around even the parking lot, one of the sides of the old Macy's has just one lane open up for clearance) for construction made it even harder. Would be surprised if the Macy's WASN'T torn down by the end of the year.

--

Also, when they say "renovating the interior" I'm thinking they'll probably turn it into an office building and/or outdoor facing tenants, they aren't saving Palais Royal and the other tenant they mentioned I believe is not quite flush with the interior either.

I'm not too familiar with that variant of the logo, the only ones I know of is the script one and the "Red Dot" logo. Besides, between Weingarten and Kroger it served as two other names (Safeway and AppleTree) if I'm not mistaken.

Since Albertsons took over in January 2015, one new store in Austin was built, another is planned, the Midtown store was renovated, and one of the Katy stores closed.

1 hour ago, j_cuevas713 said:

It was taken off? I just walked past there and it was on

Hmm, I was wondering if WFM had pulled out. You know they actually closed 9 stores?

Geez. I didn't realize it was so covered with graffiti and becoming a real eyesore. Didn't seem that long ago when it was just a concrete building that was an eyesore but still reminded one of its grand past.

And in better days, courtesy of Arch-ive.org:

It's January 2017 and the center is still standing. A bit of digging reveals that the center opened around 1991 and Office Depot has always been there. The Office Depot's building is older though, it was a Kroger and the rest of the center was built around it.

On 1/28/2017 at 4:11 PM, matty1979 said:

I've heard from numerous people that the first Randall's was at Kirkwood and I-10 which is now Charlottes Saddlery. 

First Randalls that opened as a Randalls and not converted from a Minimax (store #3).

6 hours ago, blue92 said:

I lived in Houston in 1998-2001 and shopped at the Randall's  on Hwy6 and 529 at least twice a week. If Randall's are gone what replaced them?

Sprouts, Goody Goody Liquor, and Five Below. But that's #20 and opened in the early to mid 1980s. We're talking about stores much earlier than that.