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Angostura

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Everything posted by Angostura

  1. Angostura
    The GFR requires parking, too.
  2. Angostura
    5 months later, same chicken-or-egg comments on the new revision of the plans. This is going to get stuck in a recursive loop and never get approved.
  3. Angostura
    Very reminiscent of Vancouver-style podium towers: a mid-rise podium provides an engaging, human-scaled streetscape, with relatively narrow laneways between them and lots of ground floor retail, while the towers provide residences with a view and add to the skyline. Best of both worlds, and infinitely better than tower-in-a-parking-lot style highrises.
  4. Angostura
    ...as long as we don't screw it up. That infill on the 300 block of West 19th requires a ton of variances (incl off street parking) to be built to match its neighbors on either side. The planning commission's walkable places pilot is doing this, sort of. The current optional performance standards (setbacks reduced to 5-ft, parking in rear, wider sidewalks, minimum levels of transparency in the facade, limited curb cuts, entrance facing the street) will become mandatory in those areas, though parking minimums will still exist outside the CBD. Currently this is limited to a couple of pilot areas (near Northside, Midtown and Emancipation Ave in EaDo), but could expand.
  5. Angostura
    Honestly, I'd be more likely to trust random development than zoning. Zoning done well could theoretically lead to very good results. The problem is that zoning is almost never done well. It ends up being captured by special interests like large-scale developers, big box retailers and single-family homeowners (and yes, single-family homeowners are a special interest). More often than not, zoning leads to use segregation; use segregation leads to car-dependency; and car dependency leads to parking minimums and low density and a really unpleasant pedestrian environment. With a few tweaks (setback rules, RoW widths) Houston's sometimes chaotic development rules may be the best way to migrate from car-dependence to non-car-dependence, since you can add density by right, without needing zoning approval. The problem is, there will be pain along the way. When you start with relatively low-density suburban style development, it's pretty comfortable (as long as you're in a car): there's not much traffic, it's pretty easy to park, and there's a lot of space. When you add density to this development pattern, things start getting less comfortable. It's still pretty shitty to be a pedestrian (lots of cars around, hard to cross streets, things are still pretty far away from each other), and it gets harder to be a driver (more traffic, harder to park, etc.). But if you keep adding density (and we're going to keep adding density, because that's what growing cities do), eventually you get to a point where vehicle miles decrease because things are closer together, demand for parking decreases because there are other ways to get where you're going, and quality of life increases. Traveling between neighborhoods is often still difficult, but within neighborhoods, it's pretty easy to get around. Very few places that start out as car-dependent have managed to get over this hump. Usually because zoning locks them into a certain density level, or people resist additional housing construction and convince their elected representatives to block it, or cities impose parking minimums that make it difficult to develop to a walkable density. So if automated garages can resolve the issue of complying with parking minimums while STILL providing levels of built square footage per acre compatible with walkable density, it's a big deal.
  6. Angostura
    I counted about 100 apartments on the drawing. Assuming it's 3 stories (typical for suburban-style apartment complexes), that's 300 apartments. By eyeball, it looks like about 500 surface parking spaces. Which would be about right w/r/t CoH parking minimums. If they could make a 4-story wrap work on the corner of the site next to Elysian, why is it so much lower-density on the part closer to the light rail line? It's kind of laughable that they use the terms walkable and transit-oriented in a variance request for a project that is over half surface parking.
  7. Angostura
    AKAIK, where CoH holds sway, they've mostly been removed. Where TXDOT has jurisdiction, they're allowed to stay.
  8. Angostura
    It's tricky. Even in the absence of city-mandated parking minimums, tenants are going to demand a certain amount of parking, since they're aware that most of their customers are likely to arrive by private automobile. You can only really reduce the amount of parking consumed when arriving some other way becomes cheaper, faster and/or easier than temporarily storing your car at your destination. There's a certain level of activity density at which it becomes no less convenient to walk than to drive for daily necessities. It won't necessarily get commuters out of cars, but you're more likely to walk to a restaurant or grocery store than to drive. It's pretty much impossible to get to that level of density when there's high levels of surface parking. So parking structures are a gateway to getting to the kind of density needed to be a truly walkable neighborhood. The problem is that, since all that parking limits density, most neighborhoods never achieve land values high enough for structured parking to make sense economically, so they get stuck in a suburban development pattern where car dependence never really goes away. Which is why a parking system that can make structured parking economical at land values of $60/sf rather than $100/sf (not to mention on smaller footprints) has a real chance to transform how neighborhoods develop. (BTW, this can be done without going THAT vertical. There are a lot of very dense, walkable neighborhoods in cities around the world with typical heights of 4, 5 or 6 stories.)
  9. Angostura
    At least the parking (and it's a LOT of parking) isn't along the street, but this is a real wasted opportunity. Would make more sense to continue Chestnut and Gentry streets across Burnett to get some smaller block sizes, then build all the way to the lot line. This much surface parking this close to downtown is kinda gross.
  10. Angostura
    Spoiler alert: it'll be parking.
  11. Angostura
    And every restaurant where valet parking is really the only option is effectively paid parking. Even when it's "complimentary". And I'm not sure the robot parking system is any less trustworthy than your average valet parking operator.
  12. Angostura
    Oh, and there's ALREADY paid parking on White Oak. The lot on Threkeld is $7, I think.
  13. Angostura
    They don't (necessarily) have to charge for parking for this to make economic sense. Consider the project announced late last year for the site between Fitz and Barnaby's. That was for a 2600 sf restaurant on a 12,500 sf lot. If you move the required 26 spaces for that project, plus another 78 into the new structure, you can now build 4 restaurants on that site instead of 1. Building ~100 spaces in this parking structure is like creating an ADDITIONAL 37,500 sf of develop-able land. At $70/sf, HCAD's current valuation, that means that if you can build parking at less than $28,000 per space, you come out ahead, even if you don't charge a nickel for it. Some lazy Googling indicates that robotic parking systems can come in around $20k-30k per space. I assume that includes margin for the provider of the parking system, but in this case, the developer is also the provider, so the actual cost may be even lower. Why do this in Houston, instead of NY, DC, SF or other places with much higher land values? I can think of a couple possibilities: 1 - In Houston you can change land use and add density by right, without having to ask for zoning changes, so it may be possible to get a demonstration project like this in place faster than in other jurisdictions. 2 - The land value in those other cities is already high enough to justify traditional structured parking for any new development, whereas this part of Houston has a land value right in the sweet spot: not quite high enough to justify traditional structured parking, but high enough for robotic parking to make sense.
  14. Angostura
    There was talk of extending the area exempt from parking minimums all the way to 59 on the south and the spur on the west. Did this make it into the final recommendation?
  15. Angostura
    Same entity has acquired Fitzgerald's. https://www.chron.com/business/article/Fitzgerald-s-property-in-the-Heights-has-new-13152404.php Confirms suspicions they have plans to use the automated garage as a way to add a lot more commercial density to this area. Really interesting case study.
  16. Angostura
    Duplicate post.
  17. Angostura
    Individual buildings aside, for the purposes of neighborhood feel, I think the distinction between old and new is less important than the distinction between fine-grained and course-grained. By fine-grained, I mean places like the northern end of Main St downtown, the good parts of 19th St, or the area around Natachee's and the Continental Club, where each tenant/owner occupies only a fraction of the block face. So every ten steps or so, you're passing by something different. Course-grained, on the other hand, is when a single use (apartment building, office tower, parking garage, CVS) takes up an entire block face. There's so little good fine-grained development in Houston, it's important to preserve what we have and encourage more. Fine-grained correlates with older buildings, and course-grained with newer development (there are a number of reasons for this, including complexity of regulations, setbacks, parking rules, availability of financing, etc.), but I would give up an old-coarse-grained block for a new fine-grained block with very little hesitation. Back to the topic of the thread: what I like about the "tower on a podium" development style is that you get the feel of a midrise building from the street level, but the density of a high-rise. And if done well, by keeping the laneways narrow and including well-done GFR, you can even get some faux-fine-grained development.
  18. Angostura
    I understand that to be the new footprint of the bank branch. Once completed, the current Chase building will likely be demolished for whatever is going up in its place.
  19. Angostura
    The size of that parking lot is heartbreaking. You could take the middle half of that space and build enough structured parking to serve this development and the former Harold's site (also owned by Braun), then develop the 19th and 20th St frontages with additional retail or residential. Instead, you have a couple acres of concrete separating this site from the highly walkable parts of 19th St.
  20. Angostura
    There was a Little Creatures logo on one of the early renderings, but I think it was just a placeholder.
  21. Angostura
    Lee Ellis left Cherry Pie Hospitality (the group that owns both places) a few months ago. And Anthony Calleo, the guy who started the Pi Pizza food truck, left the brick and mortar version in January. I suspect other things are going on behind the scenes at Cherry Pie that we haven't heard about yet.
  22. Angostura
    Sorry, Metro, but density is upstream of transit, and density is out of your control. Maybe lobby CoH to eliminate parking minimums and building setbacks, reduce RoW widths, encourage road diets, and tax surface parking. Then build light rail where density can make it viable. At current per-mile costs, it's important to reduce the number of miles by only serving areas of sufficient density. (Also, a 20-mph light rail line to IAH strikes me as an especially dumb way to provide this service.)
  23. Angostura
    True, but the order of construction would still be the same either way. In the absence of parking minimums (and even with them) providing sufficient parking would be a lease obligation of the owner (tenants are often fanatical about parking), so they couldn't just build on the parking lot without providing an alternative.
  24. Angostura
    Not entirely certain. Normally, in a retail development you can build the parking and the retail concurrently. You just need the parking to get your occupancy permit. In this case, however, I believe that if they eliminate the parking at 2805 White Oak without the automated garage in place, the businesses across the street will fall out of compliance w/ parking requirements. So I think the order it has to happen is parking garage first, then the new retail in place of the old parking, unless they come up with an alternative arrangement for the businesses on the north side of the street.
  25. Angostura
    When they originally submitted the plans for permitting back in March, among the comments they got back was that the garage needs to be permitted before the retail can be permitted, since it's required for compliance w/ Ch 26 (parking minimums). Appears plans for 2805 White Oak were re-submitted last week. You can check on status here: https://www.pdinet.pd.houstontx.gov/cohilms/webs/Plan_LookUp.asp Project number 17144910
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