wernicke

The same people who own High Fashion own Crosspoint properties, so if The Mix actually ever came to fruition, it could occupy all of the older High Fashion buildings Crosspointe owns North of Elgin. Their flagship store at Elgin and Milam seems to make the other High Fashion store across the street redundant.

I'm concerned that while it looks like 24 Hour Fitness is nearing completion on the 2nd and 3rd floors, there has been no movement towards laying out the 1st floor. I wonder if they actually have any tennants locked in (their site says Starbucks for the storefront closest to Elgin)?

Twice in the past week, 24 Hour Fitness has left a flier on my door (I live at the Calais) offering reduced membership pricing that expired the day I got the flier. That kind of marketing crap is annoying to me.

My siblings graduated from Kinkaid (2), Briarwood (1), Robert E Lee (2).

Catholic?

I'm just worried all these at-grade rail intersections with the new lines will create a cluster**** at crowded intersections.

I get most annoyed with the Red Line when the train gets stuck behind traffic at lights or in turn lanes... It sounds like these problems will be even worse on these new lines. The price you pay for always staying at street level.

Seems like some nice fiction to me.

Man it would be nice if some portions of the new lines Downtown could have been subway... but that is obviously too expensive. I'm also not sure about how the new lines will be in unprotected lanes on Capitol and Rusk, this system definitely will not be very efficient. Oh well.

The squiggle over to Texas Ave. by GRB will also have an interesting impact on how that land can be developed on the North end of GRB.

Local news is crap for the most part.

Jersey Village in the house... home of Paul Wall, Chamillionaire, and a few other people who made it big that you probably have never heard of... in addition to me.

I'm not sure who designed it, but the water wall you see is actually one of two that make up the northern and western walls of McGovern Commons... which has multiple restaurants on the bottom floor and Trevisio's on the top floor (a nice restaurant if you ever get the chance to eat there).

Just found this article from 2002 on the building: http://www.tmc.edu/tmcnews/08_01_02/page_02.html

The six-story Commons building features a unique, quarter-round design, and is entirely conceptualized along a "water-based" theme. Bordering the front entrance to the building are two towering water walls, which "wrap" around the structure

I'm not sure if someone already mentioned it, but MetroNational -- which owns much of the Memorial City area -- will use the crown for their own offices. It is almost like they just added a weird spikey crown on top of a boring building so they could have nice high-rise offices with 360 degree windows.

it's almost like some of these people probably jerk off to winning an argument.

This is a little much.

Anyways, aren't the screens in AT&T Plaza, outside of American Airlines in Dallas, mostly advertisement-free? I sat there and watched them a few months ago and all they showed was artistic stuff, and they slide around on railings. They were intended as more of an activity/public art type of thing. Seems cool enough. Shut them down at a certain time like 11pm.

What do you guys think of the Heritage Plaze Parking Garage?? I hadn't seen a rendering posted anywhere... it doesn't look THAT great to me (esp. not an architectural award?). Just looks like a big metal cage, which will look interesting in such a prime location.

Yea, great people watching in the park... especially during the weekends.

Must be the longest, most contentious debate on public video screens in recorded history.

Yea, if you notice, people were only sitting under the trees... the sun was out in full force. If they keep the lower part of the trees trimmed, you should still be able to see the stage while sitting.

Active debate today. Here are some shots from Sunday.

My fiance and I went and hung out in DG on Sunday, it was a lot of fun. Played some bocce ball with some nice live music in the background... Anyways, here are some shots.

Snapped a couple of shots of OPP on Sunday... I wouldn't mind living here.

OPP Wide

OPP2

I met up with a group of people who were in town for a convention a few weeks ago (staying at the Hyatt), and as the only Houstonian was kind of embarrassed with how little there was to do downtown on a Thursday evening within walking distance (most of the people were from Philly). Granted DG wasn't open yet. Houston Pavillions should really help DT's image and activity level, at least I hope so.

They wanted steak, so I suggested Strip House... walked them down Main St. a little ways, which they thought was cool. But the city seemed very dead.

My question would be: Is there any way to make GRB less ugly? The whole ship motif with the red steam vents on top is horrible in my opinion.

How was the Native American museum... is the gold-clad sculpture from there? It was being built, I think, the last time I was in DC...

This lot is separate from the proposed Embassy Suites site? Seems like it is directly adjacent to OPP?

I'm suprised no one has posted on this Chron article from today:

DT Hilton Officially For Sale

Houston Convention Center Hotel Corp. has hired real estate firm CB Richard Ellis to sell the property through a process that also will seek development proposals for a second convention hotel.

"The ideal buyer will buy the existing hotel and build the new one," said Richard Campo, chairman of the city-chartered group that owns the property and contracts with Hilton Hotels Corp. to manage it.

At the end of the article, though, some real estate people seem skeptical this deal will get done with the current problems in the financial market.

Decided to quit studying much to early to go swimming...

That big surface lot directly to the north is going to be a convention center hotel. Tell me, how will there be more room for highrise residential if the park takes up more land?

I was specifically referring to development of land directly adjacent to the park... which no longer exists if the convention hotel and ES are built. By increasing the size of the park, you would increase the perimeter of the park, which would increase the amount of adjacent lots available to attract new highrises (a la One Park Place). Doesn't seem too difficult of a concept...