IronTiger

What did the HEB Pantry in the Heights used to be prior to 1997?

Maybe if they go through with the downtown highway rework, the Pierce Elevated? It's next to the bus station, could reuse infrastructure...I mean, it's probably not what will end up happening, but it's an idea.

Sorry, what? First off, I had to read your sentence two or three times and I still didn't get it, probably because your syntax is all messed up. Secondly, I'm pretty sure that H-E-B hasn't ever "abandoned minority areas they promised", because a) people sometimes seem to confuse "rumors" with "promises" and I can't remember a single H-E-B that flat-out closed (w/o replacement) that wasn't a Pantry store, which are pretty rinky-dink to begin with, and that was their purpose--essentially "demo versions" of a full store (it's an analogy that works quite well, they're cheap to build, so think of the bakery, deli, and others being "dummied out"), and some of those areas didn't really work out. I'm pretty sure that the H-E-B there at least started out as a Pantry and possibly got a small expansion later down the line*, so not only is it a keeper and makes money from the neighborhood and U of H students, it's the only H-E-B I know with Frenchy's chicken inside. * If I'm wrong about this, please correct me.

So, I did, in the last past week or so, drive to Houston twice for different reasons, and I like my trip around September, I have made notes and comments about the large city down Highway 6 from the smaller city up Highway 6. They are in chronological order, with 13-15 on the Tuesday trip (which was for a job interview in Houston). 1. There's something about Brittany Court Apartments that makes me sad or upset somehow. Maybe because they look neglected, maybe because they look ugly, or maybe because the fact that they're stretched along 18th made them seem far larger than they actually were--I was thinking the superblock of apartments like found in Gulfton. 2. The H-E-B Pantry there was disappointing. Not that I was expecting much, but a Pantry similar to the H-E-B Pantry of my youth would've been nicer. There's a plaque that says it opened in August 1997. I wonder what it used to be. 3. There's never a shortage of stoplights in Houston, but there isn't one at East T.C. Jester and 18th. There's a dangerous four way stop there instead. There was a time when both Kmart and Albertsons were open at this intersection, and there weren't problems then? It was still busy after rush hour, with the stores were replaced with a wholesale restaurant supply company and a self-storage facility, respectively. 4. Approaching 19th Street to the Heights reveals a business-lined street not unlike smaller Texas towns. While real small Texas towns don't have random townhomes and a Torchy's there at the corner, I mean that comparison in the best way possible. Houston is full of surprises, isn't it? 5. I know this is Texas, but why were the Riders of the Old Spanish Trail up on Durham instead of, you know, OST? Why did they cross into my lane right in front of me? (That's right, a HORSE cut me off) And why did they turn into a random shopping center? I don't know. 6. Of all the vehicles I could be behind in a road reduced to a two-way road during construction, why a dump truck? First horses, now this? I knew I should've taken the bridge over Memorial and Allen Parkways, I could've avoided two stoplights and this sad fate. 7. The sunken part of 59 is already starting to show age and deterioration, which is sad, because I think it's one of the nicer designed freeways in the area. 8. Now, I've got nothing against sidewalks on roads that go over highways, but the chain link fences that adorn every single overpass over 288 sure are ugly. I wonder if there's a more attractive option. 9. Is it wrong that I wasn't entirely sure I was on 288 South to Pearland until I saw those weird metal structures on the right? 10. I can understand roads that aren't smooth, but if the road (eastbound Bellaire just west of Beltway 8) has deteriorated badly enough to expose rebar, why are you putting a barricade in the middle of the road, causing people to change lanes, instead of patching it? 11. In retrospect, I think it was a mistake to attempt to crawl up Beltway 8's frontage lanes from Bellaire to US-290 in rush hour. I wish I knew the "free exits" of the Beltway 8, which could've saved a bit of grief. (I didn't have an EZ Tag. Or quarters.) 12. Any food or drink item WILL mitigate stress due to congestion, provided you have time to eat or drink it. That was why getting a milk tea from Hong Kong City Mall (with real honeydew) was a good move. 13. On Blalock, there's a 1970s-era apartment complex advertising one "Blalock Grocery", which I'm at a loss for. It hadn't occurred to me that MAYBE they have a convenience store on the premises (a1970s-era apartment complex in town had a upscale restaurant and later nightclubs above the leasing office, so clearly it's an option). It sure beats the options I had in my mind at the time: advertising a grimy little convenience store down the road (sketchy), or someone operating a grimy little convenience store from out of their apartment (really sketchy!) 14. There's another part of Blalock that goes through more residential areas, and there's a narrow, useless bike lane running along the side. Because it is narrow and goes on bad pavement, why not just get rid of it, widen the two other lanes, and put one of those "bicyclists may travel on main lanes" images on the road? Because that's probably what they'll do anyway, and I can't blame them. 15. The Jones Road extension between FM 529 and US-290: in case you ever thought it was useless, it isn't (and you obviously haven't been on it). Based on the traffic backed up there, others don't think so either.

Will there be ground floor retail? I mean, I'm not one to demand it in every project, but the old 3400 Montrose had retail.

But what are the risk factors? There are risk factors. If one in X Americans get lung cancer at some point in their lives, it doesn't (at least usually) strike healthy people, it will be a smoker or someone with some aggravated lung situation.

Thanks! That should be 3425 Kempwood...I posted earlier (but it didn't register for some reason) that many (but not all) of the addresses listed above aren't correct for reasons unknown

Got it, you can remove it now

That's probably a good way to go. One of the many problems facing Houston is the light rail grid, insisting on busy road corridors, which renders them useless as a major road and makes light rail travel slow with diminishing returns. I generally think that light rail should be going down utility corridors and/or existing railroad corridors, as well. Highways need to widened as well (including adding where they need to be...Oak Hill needs freeways but refused them), but there's also the whole inner city grid, which is generally falling apart. Kirby used to be rough and patchy for years until a recent re-paving, and Bellaire is now done after that painful rebuild, but there are other areas that need help. West 18th is far from smooth. Parts of Blalock are deteriorating because it's in an industrial corridor with heavy trucks, I remember massive potholes in Richmond (west of the Loop), and just west of the Belt on Bellaire there's a little barricade in the middle of the lane right in front of a part where the concrete has deteriorated so much there's rebar visible. I'm not saying that the whole city needs to have smooth streets everywhere, it's the fact that when you build a road 30+ years ago, you've got to maintain it!

Paywall...I could access it via my library card in a day or so, but maybe a summary?

Describing Tumblr as a "complete dumpster fire" makes me smile.

Hey everybody! Remember "HOUSTON TODAY", the 1970s-era guide to new development in Houston that had mall maps, awesome 70s architecture, and that whole Houston Center thing with the people movers and the "platform city"? In case you missed it, some enterprising soul has not only found another copy but also scanned the whole thing. The full PDF isn't quite as nice as the scans on the blog with the link or what I've previously shared with you (lots of pure B&W dithering if you zoom in, resembling a bit of what things looked like on my family's old Mac Plus), but it is all there, in case you missed it the first time around.

Thank you. Do you know when it closed?

I was in Houston yesterday again, and this time, I was traversing Blalock Road in my free time to get to the H Mart (this was not my main goal, but I can't go just for one thing). I can't find the address, 9355 Long Point, in my existing archives and what I have, but the windows suggest Mexican. If I had to guess, it was a Del Taco. Anyone have an idea?

Here is a link that should work. For what it's worth, I was more interested in reading about the Harlan's/Arlan's changeover than the HSR, as that was at the top of the page (and that's why I picked it up). Also, the reason I did [subsidies] was the article misspelled it as "subsides" (typos happen). Thank you for apologizing to the last comment, although I will say that I found it odd that you dismissed other railroad viaduct projects/overpasses as irrelevant, yet you brought up Greenway Plaza a bit earlier, which is even more irrelevant to the discussion at hand (Greenway Plaza was able to get away with the buyout was almost entirely due to the Houston lack of zoning...when the deeds expired at Lamar Weslayan, the area could "go commercial", and the developers were able to use that as leverage to buy out the 'hood).

I think that a lot of their arguments do rely on guesswork/predictions and not cold facts. For example, it IS a private rail line, but the thought is that they'll require government bailouts at some point if/when it loses money hand over fist. You could argue that they don't know that it will, but hell, neither do we. The cost estimates no one knows either. The California project is much longer than the Texas project (about twice as long), and currently still at a $67 billion price tag. Even if we cut that in a quarter (a route half as long and needless government bureaucracy), thats still over $16 billion. And that's assuming all those numbers are actually correct. It's easy to dismiss the opposition on how much they don't know, but do we really know that much more?

Yesterday, I picked up a copy of The Waller Times at the Buc-ee's on my way back from Houston (yes, I drove to Houston for a job interview!), and there was an article about the citizens being against the HSR (link). At first glance, it seemed to be an uninformed piece, but I thought it was interest. - It mentioned it will "utilize tax [subsidies]", which I don't know how true it is. Even if they don't grant tax breaks to use the land, it will essentially delete taxable land, which is an argument against widening roads (even smaller residential roads with shoulders). - "Texans Against HSR" was formed by a Grimes County judge (conflict of interest there?) and they outline four points about the HSR. They do know that it is privately funded and operated, but these are their four points (not mine). • The TCR cost estimates are way too low. • Texas State Officials have concluded that it is not feasible to construct and operate HSR solely with private funding • TCR ridership estimates are way too high. • HSR projects end up being paid by taxpayers. - The article also mentions that the train "will actually be a 50-year-old Japanese model, which runs on steel tracks, almost an obsolete technology" and that it would require overhead wires with adequate power supply stations along the whole route. Assuming that bit is true, it not only brings up that scene in The Simpsons where the fancy monorail sticker peels away to read "1964 World's Fair", but also blows out any existing noise estimates, because those were done with modern HSR systems. Secondly, if the cost estimates really are too high/ridership is too low (I was guessing that they were ridiculously overdoing the ridership estimates), what is the backup plan? Would they expect the government to bail them out or just leave it half-done/shut down until they can scrape up more funding? I just don't think it's fair to accuse any opposition as "fearmongering", because unless their side is composed of solely making things up (which they aren't, there's some very legitimate concerns there), you just suck at debating. Now, before the circle-jerking starts back up again, I want to say that I want to believe in the idea of a privately funded and operated HSR, but there are so many obstacles to that.

Is it still sealed off at tunnel level?

I see what you did there.

Passed by 4901 Washington yesterday (Top Dollar Pawn until very recently), and I don't what it was. I thought perhaps it was a Weingarten (not a bad guess: the Weingarten was catty-corner), but it wasn't. I searched Arch-ive.org, and what I got from HCAD was it was built in 1945. Did it used to be anything interesting? The cupola certainly looks kind of cool. I've attached a picture.

Edit: Probably not much larger than ONE queen sized mattress...it was in a corner where I would expect the clearance items or other junk to be, and it was the wine section! The August 1997 opening makes me wonder WHAT it was before. Minimax, Lewis & Coker?

Is that what the big vacant spot is?

So on my most recent trip to Houston, I decided to drive to Penzey's Spices before heading onto Trader Joe's and then Pearland to visit some family, and of course part of the fun is driving through parts of town you haven't seen before and generally paying attention. So I did notice somewhere a sign for Minimax Drive, which is located near the intersection of 610 and 290. I know that Minimax was a chain of grocery stores in the Houston era a long time ago, but what significance did Minimax have in that industrial park? Was there a distribution center there or something a long time ago?

Better stained concrete than dyed water, really. I think some swimming pools use the same tactic.

Well, unless there's some major disaster/scientific breakthrough, I suspect that 5-7 years won't be all that different. I can remember my 2008 trip to Houston pretty well, and there are many, many things that simply didn't change. Heck, some various buildings and projects have been discussed pretty much since the current iteration of the HAIF, which has been almost a decade now. Have we re-developed the Astroworld site yet? Are they doing anything with the old Holiday/Days/Heaven on Earth Inn yet? Nope. That's not to say there are no changes, after all, the Katy Freeway wasn't completed yet. I was in Houston yesterday, and I noticed the utility lines where the line would go over 290, and frankly, it wasn't that hard to visualize...just another overpass structure.