samagon

you mean the place that used to be late night pie? that had been a burned out husk for a long time, and I think they are rebuilding it to some extent now. but for 1/2price books, that takes a fair amount of SF is what? 8k sf? to get that much contiguous space when a landlord can lease the same volume to 3 restaurants and probably for more money? yeah, let's do restaurants. or in the case of the location on Westheimer, tear down the building, reduce their expenses (building maintenance, property tax, etc), set up a weekend market and probably make more money from that while they wait for the right time to do whatever to the land that they want. it's sad, but it's progress.

I drove by there early Saturday afternoon, there were people with flags waving cars into the lot to park there for the club across the street. did they make an agreement with the owners of the land for parking exclusivity, or were they taking advantage of the situation?

rebuilding and rebranding isn't cheap, they've got rich benefactors, or a lot of debt. doesn't matter too much if they are successful and make good food, it's still expensive.

it's roughly 1 mile to get from N MacGregor Way to Wheeler and MLK on a bike path. as opposed to less than 1/4 mile down Calhoun Road, and hopping on sidewalks. depends if you're cycling for exercise or for getting places

looks like they'll be doing some very needed updates for the entire road, but also including a bicycle element. it will be great since MLK is fairly updated, and the bridge over the bayou is brand new. hopefully the intersection with N. MacGregor Way will be updated, it's awkward to turn right from Calhoun onto N. MacGregor Way.

I don't think that it could be stated enough that one of the standout features of the Summit was the glass facade. I can't count how many times I would drive by the Summit in the evening and see people walking around with the lights on inside and want to be a part of whatever was happening. architecturally, it may have been a bunch of beige boxes with dark glass facade, but it absolutely seemed to always want to invite you in. if they could do something similar to Toyota center, that would make it worlds better in my estimation.

I'm not sure whether it's nightmare fuel, or should be classified as fond memories, but I remember sitting in the waiting area with my mom in the early 80s while new tires were fitted to the car, or a new battery was put in. it always felt an eternity, and I knew that when we were done we would be going into Sears and I could dream about playing all of the Atari games that lined the shelves, so that made the waiting even more excruciating. probably nightmare fuel.

@monarch what's wrong with MMP? as a baseball stadium, it's great. the exterior looks fine, walking through the mezzanine near the Crawford boxes sets the tone of baseball really well. actually, that whole left field area has an energy to it that reminds me of other classic ballparks that I have visited. walking around the entire first level it is built in a way that pretty much anywhere you walk, you can see the field. it is a really great design. and I wholeheartedly agree with whatever we're calling the soccer stadium these days being another amazing venue for the sport. if we're going to compare all venues to play major sports, then I would also say that NRG is a really fun place to watch football. there again, from a lot of the mezzanine areas you can see the field, or at least there's an opening view of the volume of space. TDECU is a really great field too. which leaves us with the Toyota center as the oddball venue that kind of sucks. it doesn't particularly look memorable from the outside, and when you are inside there's not a lot to it either. it's not memorable. as a venue, in my unqualified and unrequested opinion, whoever designed it really phoned it in. for as old as the Summit was, I miss that place for an arena. if they could have built a duplicate of that where Toyota is now that would have been best. the glass walls served two purposes (and actually you can see this in play at MMP and also NRG), people inside have a sense of openness and expansiveness, even when cramped in with thousands of other people all trying to leave the place at the same time. if you're claustrophobic, it's not so bad. and from the outside, you look in and see a lot of action, people moving about, and you wonder what's going on, you even want to be there. anyway, point of all this is, really the problem with Houston's major sports venues is just Toyota center being a sucky place. MMP, Shell, MMP, even TDECU are all great examples of places that create and build excitement for whatever you are going there for.

someone said once, I have no valid verification, but it was said that the easement for the railway is necessary to be empty for liability. if a rock is thrown from a railcar and hits someone or something within that easement, the railway is on the hook, so they just don't let anyone use it. there'd have to be agreements in place like what there is with the city and CPE for the powerline easements for bike trails. the problem is there's no incentive for the railways to do it. again, this is all what I remember from one comment years ago that someone said. so it could be completely off base.

Townhomes! Townhomes everywhere!

that's going to be good for pedestrians actually, it will allow for a bit of a pedestrian bump out, and narrowing the lanes will slow traffic. this will be messy when someone in a big vehicle wants to turn right onto Taft from Westheimer and there's a car sitting at the red light on Taft. not a lot of space for maneuverability.

I bet we are crazy high on the drivability study though. not to mention we have a very bright future momentum for drivability. /s it's great to compare US cities only against other US cities, but comparing cities of the world, that's far more valuable, just to see how far we all need to come in the entire country before we start patting ourselves on the back for being above average in the USA. https://pedestriansfirst.itdp.org/ it's interesting to see what is found to be important for the US for calculating the walkability score vs the global initiatives. https://pedestriansfirst.itdp.org/methods

the Houston Polo club is going to fight elevated lanes so close to their property. looks pretty cool though.

if someone has concerns about how another project and this one will intermingle then why wouldn't this be the place to discuss it? we're clearly not going to agree, and we don't have to, so please have the last word.

they are very separate and unique projects, but when you review how they will both interact with the local traffic flow the need to review them together is important.

we need to stop letting people run our various levels of government just because they have 'experience' being a politician.

the west belt project changes are very much intermingled with the i45 project so it is very much topical to this thread. siloing the data so you don't have to read it if you don't open the thread isn't going to make it less of a negative impact.

I would guess the foundation of the roadbed would be the primary constraint, I'd guess the foundation needed for the heavier LRT vehicles are probably more substantial than what would be needed for BRT vehicles. if the roadbeds are only designed to accommodate the BRT vehicles, then they'd probably have to redo the whole thing to switch to LRT.

rebuilding the Gulf/610 interchange was very recently just done. I think because this freeway (35) is eventually still planned they presume that when they do build it that it will relieve pressure on the Gulf/610 interchange and so they won't need to realign the main lanes of Gulf Freeway traffic to be more efficient once this is built, or at least it will relieve pressure for a bit and they can kick the can down the road. as far as what they do need to worry about from an interchange perspective, and maybe I'm not thinking about it logically, but it seems to me that when this extension is completed the more beneficial interchange will be at 610, rather than 45. my line of thinking is it will allow medical center workers an alternative to 288. 35 > 610 > Almeda, or Fannin exit. or 35 > 610 > 288 toll > Holcomb exit. inbound to downtown, unless the i45 realignment really changes traffic patterns seriously, currently, from the spur to 45 sucks for getting into downtown. if it were me (and actually, I did this quite frequently when I'd go from UH > downtown), spur 5, follow the signs for the 59 exit, then exit on Scott street and take the 45 feeder the rest of the way to Live Oak street and jog over to Leeland. and that was to get to my office in Chase tower. it was quicker to not even get on 45, and take streets through downtown to get to that area. once 45 is realigned, I just don't see how getting to that side of downtown on the freeway system is going to be any faster once you are in the area. exit as soon as you can and take surface streets. I really think if they want to have an additional freeway dump right into that, they will need to expand the main lanes on 45, at least until the 'downtown destination' exit. outbound from downtown, right now, no one uses the spur 5 exit, so traffic in that lane is easy to get onto spur 5, but once it goes all the way to old Pearland? maybe it gets more crowded. edit: I also think if they have an exit at Airport Blvd that it will also relieve a lot of airport traffic from 45, which as well will help immensely with the Gulf/610 interchange (and again, maybe a great reason for them to need to nail the 35/610 interchange).

yeah, I think the idea for Leeland grade separation and Cullen closure was tabled very early in the process. that it still exists in their documents though is very worrying.

I suspect that the F1 race later this year will pip CES for the #1 slot. but that's far afield of the Hardy extension. perhaps I missed other posts, but are they going to wait and time this with the i45 realignment, or are they going to do 9/10ths, and when the i45 realignment is ready to be connected, then they do the other 1/10th?

lots of action on just that block right now. awesome, and very cool that you have pulled some photos of how it currently sits, I'd guess one, or both of these buildings (402 and 406) are going to be gone. and then, they might be acquiring them so they have them now, rather than never (or much later for much more money). scoop rent from the current tenants. over the course of a few years, do some improvements and raise the rents. and eventually tear them down and build out something else.

4:16 sorry sir, doors are locked, better luck next week. but yeah, I think if you show up at 4, what is meant is that you might have to hang around until 4:15 for the veggie pack to be ready, but if you show up at 4:18, they will have been ready for at least 3 minutes.

we will call that a "nice rich patina".