BigSky

In driving home tonight, The Reserve had a nice crowd, so I am certain that once the Pavilions opens, it should be in good shape. In addition, from where I work, I have a birds eye view of the construction and they have delivered the windows and glass, so I think the exterior is going to be a mosaic of the prefab/stucco work and windows. I think this HP has a great deal of potential if it can get some more high end retail, originally they had BCBG on the list and if that is true, they could continue to bring some high end retailors that will be a good draw for tourist convention goers and locals that want to go shopping without going to the Galleria. However, I am not certain if you remember but the old Sachowitz building, which is a beautiful piece of work next door to HP and Macy's, has just been sold to an institutional investor and it use to be a Department store, if another department store purchases the old sachowitz building or buys one of the surface lot, then you will have a critical mass in Downtown Houston shopping. Ideally, a Bloomingdale's in DT houston would be fantastic from a strategic perspective. Macy's would own the two largest retail spaces in DT Houston and own the retail market therefore, it could make it a critical mass. In addition with the great economy of Houston it would be an interesting strategy that could be beneficial to Macy's because so far Houston's economy in the nation seems to be holding up strong against the recession.

I think the Hotel is the silliest idea I have ever heard. Why would you have two competting convention center hotels less than 7 miles away from each other. An investor would not invest in 2 franchieses of McDonalds this close to each other, so I don't think that any investor would think it is a good idea to have Hilton Hotel with GRB connected and then the Gaylord Hotel connected to Reliant Convention hall. It doesn't make sense.

I also originally believed that West Ward expansion was ultimately hurting Downtown Houston's chances of ever gaining a strong residential market. However, I was in a class that talked about the city of houston and the professor said something that I thought was pretty profound. He stated that you shoul dthink of Houston as not as Dowtown, Uptown and Medical Center in competition, that golden triangle should be viewed as the Manhatten of Houston. It is roughly the same size and if you look at the how Houston is shaping, up Central Houston is really within that Triangle. That does put DT Houston on the east side, but if you fast forward about 10-15 years from now, I think you will see 3rd and 5th Ward occupied by dowtown workers and Medical Center Workers. In addition, traffic will squeeze growth in the Galleria area, even though Uptown is trying to rival DT Houston, the infrastructure is not there to support 2-3 80/60 story buildings respectively. Even with the rail system, that area is already swamped with traffic today and if you clog up the arteries of Richmond it would be unrelentless gridlock.