livincinco

Macy's had annual sales of either $15 or $17 million, can't remember for sure.

 

That's actually extremely poor especially for a location of that size.  Macy's per store average is right about $30 million.  If it's true that they were only doing $17 million, then its not surprising at all that they closed.

 

I agree, and I believe that this consideration is factored into the 1/100th estimate. Surely the 150,000 people who work downtown must contribute something toward the success of retail? Not very much, but something?

Totally agree with you and that's obviously a huge factor in the retail that exists, but I'm not sure what percentage of workers shop near their job vs. the percentage that shop near their houses. I'm sure that data exists, I just haven't seen it.

Dallas doesn't have anywhere near that, unless they're casting the net really large for "downtown." Using the center of each downtown as the focal point, Houston has higher pop. than Dallas at the 1 mile, 3 mile, and 5 mile radii, as of 2010 census.

 

Try it yourself:

http://mcdc2.missouri.edu/websas/caps.html

 

For this magic number of 10,000, I would think the office worker population must contribute something to helping retail, if only a little. Let's say an office worker equals 1/100th of an actual resident (very conservative estimate), since the resident is there 24 hours and the office worker is a typical Houston fuddy-duddy who just goes from car to office to car each day and crawls in the tunnels for lunch. Take the downtown worker population of ~150,000 and that gives you approximately 1,500 souls who occasionally emerge from the HVAC environment and chance a street-level retail experience.

 

Another phenomenon that must be considered is that as there are more downtown residents walking around, more office workers are likely to be lured outside. Right now the downtown worker sees mostly just homeless people from the tinted windows of his car as he drives in and leaves; once he starts seeing a few thousand people-that-look-like-him about, he is more likely to risk fresh air and sun exposure and step outside. So from 1/100th of a resident he soon becomes 1/50th, 1/25th, maybe even someday 1/10th of a resident in his ability to support street retail. Something like this phenomenon is happening in Austin and has happened in Atlanta. And 1/10th would mean 15,000 downtown workers walking our streets.

 

The reason that a residential population is so important to retail is more about evenings and weekends.  Most retail businesses do a high percentage of their volume on weekends and are generally reluctant to open in areas that they don't generate that volume.  Very difficult to be profitable as a retailer off of daytime, weekday business.

 

Look at Wall Street which has an extremely dense office population, but virtually no residential in the immediate area. It has a much lower retail presence than the rest of Manhattan and virtually all businesses located there close on weekends.

if 10,000 is the tipping point, we are well on our way to passing that figure. before the residential initiative there were ~2,500 units in downtown, and close to 5,000 residents i believe. with this initiative and the projects announced so far we are at like 3,500 new units being built in downtown over the next few years, more than doubling the population. (i would like to see that trend continue and have a base of like 25-50k residents in downtown eventually..)

with that said i really hope the city raises the cap for the number of residential units that get incentives, since they are well past that 2,500 mark now. it would be a shame if they didnt raise it and some of these developments didnt happen because they didnt get in with the first 2,500 units of incentives. 

 

I think you're right and believe that the city has been doing the right thing by focusing on residential incentives to get the population up.  The retail demand will come with the population.  I'd be really surprised though if the downtown population gets even close to 25-50k in the near ten years.  Consider that the population of Midtown isn't even 10,000 yet and that's been developing for years.

 

Dead serious how many residents would DT need to shift the attitude change and make DT CBD he new hot spot. I'm not really interested in debating suburbs v DT but I feel DT has so much pos momentum regarding living and social aspects but the lechuguga seems to be heading north and west. There will always be law firms and smaller O&G I guess I am asking does 10k residents help DT office landscape or is it just another albeit new neighborhood to live - again this is far from bashing DT- look at my post history I'm thinking big pic

Cheers

Lorenz

 

Personally, I don't think that the amount of residential population in downtown impacts office development in that area that much.  Right now at least, that seems to be much more heavily driven by cost judging by the developments that are underway.

 

I do think that residential population is huge in driving the kind of retail development that people are looking for downtown and would agree that something around 10k is the right number.  From what I've read from various sources, that seems to be the tipping point in being able to support basic neighborhood retail.

 

 

Cars will fly and then the Earth will die. I'm not sure when, but it will happen.

#GFR #YOLO

When I lived in California, there were always news teasers about different seismologists predicting that California would have a major earthquake "soon". Then if you watched actual story, they'd explain he meant geologically soon, meaning sometime within the next 200 years.

That is correct.  However, oil will at some point in the future end.  Not 100%, but as a source used to propel our vehicles and heat our homes.  That is more than likely a long way off.  100 years?  Maybe more, maybe a little less?  But still it is not right around the corner.

 

Houston needs to continue diversifying as much as possible in the interim to avoid any sort of historical collapse eg: Detroit.  We can both avoid and steer directly into that outcome if we're not cautious.

 

 

We're once again off topic (shocking, I know), but I don't see any meltdown of energy companies coming.  I expect that there will be a repositioning as they adapt to whatever the dominant energy source is at that point.  Shell is interestingly enough projecting that oil will cease to be used as a source of energy for cars around 2070 which is well before the current projected "end of oil" scenarios and well beyond the timeframe that should concern current building trends.

 

I expect that you'll see the predominant energy companies do the exact same thing has happened in technology.  They'll stockpile cash like crazy and start buying any firms that show promise and assimilate them.  They have a lock on the kind of engineering talent that is needed to execute large scale installations and quite honestly, there's no way that a wholesale energy conversion happens in the world without their involvement.

 

I would say that IBM is a better comparison than Kodak.  IBM was nimble, adapted to change and is as strong as ever while doing business in a way that has no resemblance to their original model.

 

Saw a sign last night at La Centerra showing application for a liquor license for Torchy's Tacos.

True

Mexico line has lot of implications houston line doesn't

That's the point in the conversation that supporting detail is normally provided.

Since they intend to apply Complete Streets thinking to all new street construction and renovation, we can be reasonably certain that there will not be street parking on every single street.

Especially since they list no requirements regarding parking and specifically call out that all streets will not be identical.

The new Complete Streets policy of the City doesn't have any firm rules, actually. It is just a policy of considering all road users when building or renovating roads.

Agreed. Attached is the actual policy for reference.

http://www.houstontx.gov/planning/docs_pdfs/Exec_Order_Complete_Streets.pdf

The Monterrey-OKC route pisses me off. First train paid for by the gov and it skips Houston.

Doesn't matter, assuming Republicans keep control of the state government, there's no way that they let the gov train finish before the private HOU-DAL train. They want that train bad so that they can point out the differences between the TX high speed rail project and the CA project.

If that project can launch on budget and be successful, it's a huge selling point to pitch to businesses about why they should come to Texas.

We aren't saying Sears is doing well. But they must make changes to survive. They should either sell the land or renovate to survive. It looks like it should be on the side of I-30 in El Paso at this point. Tired, and resigned to crumble.

 

That was my point earlier in the thread.  The store is apparently profitable and faces no competition.  Sears has no incentive to renovate it. 

 

You guys are 100% correct. Sears is completely healthy. Their business is so strong that they reported -7% top line growth for 2013 and -9.4% for Q4. Those are great numbers! Much better than the +8.2% that losers like Home Depot showed.

No question that they're going to look to into immediately reinvesting those strong earnings into renovating the Midtown store. I expect them to start construction any day now, keep watching this thread for updates.

BTW, their stock is a hot buy. I'd invest heavily in it.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-01-22/business/chi-sears-close-loop-flagship-20140121_1_sears-holdings-traditional-department-stores-sears-and-kmart

http://www.tirebusiness.com/article/20140124/NEWS/140129916

alright, i guess thats not bad at all.. just sounds awfully slow compared to cars nowadays...

It's a lot bigger than a car.

yeahh.. definitely no stops in College Station or The Woodlands, or anywhere else between the two cities for that matter.. still wouldnt mind seeing an extension to Galveston but i dont see them needing nearly as many train cars for that route.

I think that the big question around stops is whether they intend on running two tracks in each direction or if they are running just one. If they are running only one for cost savings, then the stops would limit their ability to run non-stops between Dallas and Houston. If they're running two tracks, then the intermediate stops would have very little impact.

If someone opened a Target 1/2 mile away watch how quickly Sears Midtown will close.  

 

 

Probably the only possibility for restoration of the building is if another buyer decided to make it some sort of showcase renovation.  Into what, I don't know.  Like the Astrodome, this is a case where adaptive reuse is really a difficult concept.

 

As for Sears, they have no particular incentive to do anything but milk it for whatever cash flow it is providing until the corporation curls up and dies. I can't see how additional competition in the neighborhood would cause them to do anything different.  What bank would finance expensive renovations of an old-fashioned two-story department store for a corporation that is on its last legs?  It doesn't make sense.

 

Let me clarify my point.  If Target opened down the road, one of two things would happen.  Sears would either close the property because it couldn't compete, or it would have to upgrade the property in order to compete.  Given Sears current financial situation I agree that they probably wouldn't upgrade and would probably close which then opens the property for better use.

 

I don't see that as a bad thing at all.  The area gets better shopping options and the property is now available for renovation that won't happen as long as the status quo exists.

 

 

What I find interesting about this discussion is that there seems to be an assumption that this is a community decision. Sears gets to make the decision about how they operate that location and whether they think that they need to do any renovations.

This is a classic example of how lack of competition causes entropy. They aren't doing anything with the store because they have no competition. People shop there because it's close and they don't have a better alternative. Sears doesn't do anything because they are getting good revenue and they have no reason to invest in the property.

If you really want Sears to either upgrade their store or vacate the premises, then someone should open a power center with a Target and a Kohl's 1/2 a mile a way and watch how quickly changes come to the Sears property.

Something very tall would have to go here... Perhaps mixed use.

Yes, we certainly wouldn't want it to be hidden behind all the very tall buildings that surround it.

The Feds have one shown on their high speed rail map, but I haven't heard much of it.. I don't see that having nearly as high a ridership as any of the Texas lines.

The Feds showed a lot of lines on their map that made no sense whatsoever. One line needs to be built and it needs to be proven to be economically viable and then others will follow.

Update on HOU-DAL from Houston Tomorrow

http://www.houstontomorrow.org/livability/story/hou-dal-hsr-may-break-ground-in-two-years/

Full article - http://impactnews.com/houston-metro/the-woodlands/houston-to-dallas-high-speed-rail-could-break-ground-in-two-/

To add to this. I don't see any part of the Houston-Dallas rail line being done by 2018.

 

"As you know, these projects are long term projects and are not built in a year — so we are looking to finish this — if everything goes okay — 2018."

 

If that quote is in relation to the full Monterrey-SA line, then I would say that it is, to put it nicely, an extremely optimistic estimate.

The first line built will be from Monterrey to the border. Mexico has already started construction. Then the border to San Antonio. That line will most likely be done first. The rest is up in the air to OKC because of funding, or lack thereof. Houston-Dallas will probably be done around 2021 hopefully since it has private funding.

My understanding is that the Mexican government has begun securing ROW but is not going to begin construction until it receives confirmation from the US government that the line will be continued on this side of the border. Funding is just now being secured to start a feasibility study on the US side, so the timeline is very open at the moment.

 

http://sacurrent.com/news/will-the-sa-monterrey-high-speed-rail-line-really-happen-1.1620445

I think Dallas-Houston is probably further along at this point.

I would think that land acquisition costs would be considerably higher for a San Antonio - Dallas route than Houston-Dallas for exactly the same reasons you listed. I think that you'd also have to double track each direction on that route due to the number of stops while you might be able to single track Dallas - Houston.

Sears is pretty much occupied trying to figure out whether they can make their stores relevant in the 21st century.  I wouldn't expect them to devote any effort to renovating individual locations (especially individual locations where they don't have any competition), anytime in the near future.