asubrt

Based on the 2035 master plan development link posted in the terminal D thread, it looks like they aren't planning on doing terminal B north for at least 10 years (the 2025-2035 slide). Appears to be the opposite of what was discussed a few posts above this where United would build out B north first, then C north, then D... instead C north will happen first, then D, and eventually terminal B north somewhere down the line. And it won't connect to terminal A until after 2035 when A is eventually redone. http://system.gocampaign.com/netisd_org/images/imagelibrary/620/74/9096/532533-IAH%20Public%20Meeting%20Feb%202015%20FINAL_R.pdf

But will these large conventions move to Houston from Vegas/Orlando/wherever once the hotel rooms are built? I guess I'm not familiar enough with the convention industry to fully understand, but it seems like landing even a dozen major conventions a year is not enough to sustain so many additional hotel rooms for the other 40 or so weeks per year. I guess they wouldn't build them if the demand wasn't there though. Glad to see that it's happening, regardless. Edit: didn't see the last post above mine before writing this. Looks like all these rooms are required, but I just have a hard time seeing how all of these hotels will make money. Maybe people are currently staying in other parts of town and will stay downtown instead once there are more rooms.

Is this building currently vacant? I'm glad that this is not the GPH hotel, this way we get an old building redeveloped into a solid hotel plus whatever brand they get next to the convention center. Side note: is there really enough demand for all these new hotels downtown? I guess they are at varying price points, but it seems like a tremendous influx of hotel rooms within a couple of years. I know we had a shortage supposedly, but do we expect them all to survive, or will some likely close within a few years?

Not much happened this week in terms of actual breaking ground, but there were a couple of pickup trucks on site Tuesday and Wednesday morning and there are two porta potties there now.

I think it's supposed to be on Monday (Jan 26). I happened to run into the developer and spoke to him a bit about this, it's definitely happening this month.

Another day, another new international destination: http://www.fly2houston.com/0/3922337/0/83280D83283/ This one is Sunwing Airlines to Freeport, Bahamas seasonally from May 24 to August 2 on behalf of Vacation Express.

Is this the slowest construction we've ever seen? It's been a year since they started excavating and they are still on the first/second floor. Do they just have very few people working on this relative to other buildings that go up so much faster?

Looks like United is starting Providenciales (Turks and Caicos) in June.

Wow I'm surprised, I thought this one was dead for sure. Will be nice to see it rise.

Yeah, I saw a post somewhere else saying it would be Chicago, then that article which I quickly glanced at so I figured that was that, but it sounds like it wasn't a very credible source. Do we know if they are still even planning on announcing a North American route, or was Buenos Aires their big new destination that everyone thought was going to be ORD/LAS/IAH?

They announced Buenos Aires today. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11372895 I was just talking about the press conference that was happening today. They may still announce a North American destination, though it looks like it will be Chicago, which really sucks because I think that ruins any chance we have of getting Air New Zealand for many, many years. Edit: Reading that article in the post above this one, I guess EZE came as a bit of a surprise, as they were not expecting it to be a South American destination today. Maybe they were wrong about the Chicago thing, and IAH is still a possibility.

Southwest announced the first international destinations out of the new Hobby international terminal today... http://southwest.investorroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=1966 Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico City, Los Cabos, San Jose (CR), and Belize City starting in October pending government approval.

Unfortunately it's going to be somewhere in South America. Two new foreign carriers in one day would have been too much to handle I guess. Great news about ANA though, hopefully it will be more successful than United's second daily was.

One of those must be EVA Air, I think it hasn't been officially announced yet. The other one's gotta be Etihad, I can't imagine ANOTHER East Asian airline after Air China, Korean Air, EVA all announcing within a couple years. Maybe ANA, but I doubt it. The multiple airlines from Latin America is interesting. The Colombian one will be Avianca for sure. Not sure which other ones we can expect. Maybe Copa? Volaris?

I've got a question about the Downtown Living Initiative, and I guess this is as good as any a place to post it... after a development is approved for however many units, are they "required" to build it? I mean obviously the city can't force them to start construction, but is there a penalty if they don't build, or do the units just get subtracted from the 5000 if they cancel the project? I don't think there have been any examples of this yet, but I feel like it could become an issue once more are started/finished.

Apparently someone has gotten wind of most of the destinations on IAH's Wikipedia already (not confirmed by any sources yet). According to them the three domestic destinations are Cleveland, Oakland, and Latrobe (PA). The international destinations they have are pretty amazing, Managua, Armenia (Colombia), St. Maarten, and the aforementioned Cancun. Two new cities not served at IAH by United or anyone else. Edit: That's what I get for trusting Wikipedia. Those were pretty much all wrong. The new cities are TPA (Tampa), (BWI) Baltimore, OAK (Oakland), CUN (Cancun), SJD (Los Cabos), TLC (Toluca), MGA (Managua), SJO (San Jose, Costa Rica), SAP (San Pedro Sula, Honduras), and SAL (San Salvador). No new cities to IAH other than Toluca.

Spirit is set to announce 10 (!!!) new routes out of IAH, 7 of which will be international. This is pretty unexpected, but quite exciting. They previously applied for Cancun, Los Cabos, and Toluca. I thought all the international cities would be in Mexico, but those are actually the only three Mexican cities that they serve at this time. I guess they could expand to new cities, or the remaining 4 may be Central America/Caribbean cities instead.

If I remember correctly this one isn't using the incentive, and it's on a block that I didn't think would see development for a long time, so I'm not too upset about it. Plus if it encourages additional development nearby then it's a real winner, even with a mediocre design.

So based on this rendering/the development map this will only be taking up a little over 1/4 of the block next to Dirt Bar along Caroline? I thought it would take up the rest of the block, but I guess not.

Vietnam will never happen, the traffic is extremely low-yield, even though we have a ton of Vietnamese people in Houston. India maybe eventually, but probably not anytime soon.

We've been blessed with a ton of major new routes recently, I don't see that pace keeping up in the near future. I think we are basically saturated to east Asia with the EVA Air flight. The only thing I could see is PVG (Shanghai), which United could start with a 787, though they are pushing the delivery of their 788s back apparently so I don't know if they will have enough aircraft. The second daily Tokyo flight was cancelled recently, though theoretically ANA might add Tokyo-Haneda service in the future. Deep South America is also more or less complete for the time being, maybe United could add CNF (Belo Horizonte) with the Azul partnership, but I don't really see that happening any time soon. Some of the more northern South American cities could be a possibility, definitely Maracaibo if things with Venezuela ever improve, as well as possibly going back to Guayaquil and/or Medillin/Cali which Continental used to serve. Central America is well served, there might be one or two random Mexican destinations added, but more likely we will get additional flights on non-United airlines to Mexican destinations already served like the VivaAerobus, Interjet, and AeroMexico flights being added recently. Spirit has apparently applied for 3 destinations in Mexico for a March start, but I can't remember which three they were. Volaris also has applied for some routes, but they might end up at Hobby next year. WestJet makes a lot of sense to Calgary, that's one that I'm pretty surprised hasn't happened yet. Maybe Toronto as well, as there's a good amount of traffic between the two cities. United may add some Caribbean cities like St. Maarten depending on how the Punta Cana route performs. Europe is relatively well served, especially with the addition of Munich, but Madrid is an outside possibility which would be cool. Brussels or Zurich on Star Alliance airlines could make sense as well, but probably not both. As far as Africa goes, I don't think we will see any additional flights other than Lagos in the next decade. There's no way United will take over the LAD flight, even with a 787. Maybe an outside shot of JNB on United or South African one day. The one airline/route that I'm surprised is not yet in IAH is Etihad to Abu Dhabi. It's pretty surprising that they are flying to Dallas (ew) before Houston. I could see that happening in the next 18 months. Also, I think United to Dubai would make some sense if they have enough 787s. Maybe Saudi Arabian or Royal Jordanian in the next 5-10 years. I would love to see Auckland service on Air New Zealand (I was so excited when Continental announced that route, but alas, United killed all our hopes and dreams), but I'm not banking on it. Overall I'd say expect to see more Mexico additions than any long haul flying other than Taipei. But you never know, Korean Air was certainly a surprise, so maybe we will get some more nice announcements.

Wow, that was fast. Somehow I thought the Micro Center hadn't even started yet and the building on site was for something else. Hopefully that means the other one can be demolished soon and Amegy can start. Still no renderings for that one, right.

Thanks for all the pics Hindesky! Good to see so many projects moving forward.

Agreed. Swtsig has proven himself in the past on many occasions with information before it was public. In fact, I'd say he's the number 2 source of info after Urbanizer on this board. On the other hand, I haven't seen anything that htownlive has asserted come true yet. This may be because the W/Ritz and the Bloomingdales/Macy's/Dallas Street shopping district are huge projects that need more time, but I'm going to remain skeptical until we see some actual info. This isn't to say that those projects wouldn't be amazing, of course I'm praying that they happen just like everyone else on this board.