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Angostura

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Everything posted by Angostura

  1. Angostura
    This is the 2nd proposed motorized parking garage I've seen in the last few months (the other on White Oak). Without that structured parking, all that park space would be a surface lot. If these types of motorized parking structures take hold, it reduces the land value per sf at which it makes economic sense to go from surface to structured parking, and can potentially increase commercial density by a factor of 2x.
  2. Angostura
    This shows what's possible when you build a compact street grid in what used to be a large industrial site. Contrast this with what's happening west of downtown, where similar (albeit smaller) sites are developed as surface parking lots dotted with big box retail and pad sites. And Midway will end up making a lot more money per acre.
  3. Angostura
    The Braun flyer for the Waterworks development shows the Chase site as "future multifamily development". https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58cc240cbf629aaf4858104e/t/5aa2a7340852292620ddfae5/1520609090180/Braun+Enterprises+-+Heights+Waterworks.pdf
  4. Angostura
    Downtown/EaDo are 330-ft from center of ROW to center of ROW; 250-ft plus 80-ft of ROW. (43% city-owned land area) I think 4th ward is the tightest: 200 x 250, plus 30-ft RoWs. (22% city-owned land area)
  5. Angostura
    How about 300-ft? The only parts of the city with compact grid layouts and reasonable-sized blocks are the areas platted pre Ch 42.
  6. Angostura
    Conservatory (Prairie St), Finn Hall (Main & Rusk), Bravery (Aris Mkt Square), Lyric Market (Lyric Center)
  7. Angostura
    Ridiculous, but not entirely incorrect. Clinton Dr is a major thoroughfare. Chapter 42 allows for intersection spacing of up to 2600-ft along major thoroughfares, and the Clinton Dr frontage is around 5000 ft. However, there are already two public N-S streets on the property, so to provide only one would require the city abandoning the other one.
  8. Angostura
    "Future Regent Square Development" I call false advertising.
  9. Angostura
    Info on the variance request, including street cross-sections and a site land-use layout, are in this week's planning commission agenda. (Item 99, pg 125) The ask is pretty modest: 50-ft RoWs on some of the internal streets. Layouts would be 70-ft between facades, 36-38 ft between curbs. It's only a 10-ft reduction in Ch 42's RoW requirements, and 50-ft RoWs are already permitted for SF-only streets. The site layout shows 6 streets taking access from Clinton (for the most part aligned with the existing street grid north of Clinton), and one each taking access from Jensen and Hirsch. There are six easements ranging from 15-ft to 40-ft in width, between the internal streets and the bayou for Hike & Bike trail access. Most of the Clinton Dr frontage appears to be dedicated to townhouses. The site also includes 8 multifamily sites, 10 office sites, a dozen or so retail sites, a theater, a hotel and a museum.
  10. Angostura
    If the street is a pedestrian space (not a car space) then it is inherently pedestrian friendly. Think of a city as divided into three kinds of space: people space (destinations; places where people on foot predominate; homes, shops, restaurants, parks), car space (roads, parking, etc.) and empty space (places where nobody ever goes; highway medians, the insides of cloverleafs, "green space"). Great, memorable, pleasant cities tend to maximize people space and minimize the other two. The problem is, like the lady who swallowed the spider to catch the fly, we tend to fix the problems of not enough people space by adding more non-people places. We build our roads to wide, which means more and faster car traffic, which is dangerous and frightening for pedestrians. So we build segregated sidewalks (a people place) with landscape buffers (an empty place) to keep pedestrians away from the road (a car space). People don't like street parking in their neighborhoods, so cities require off-street parking (more car space). This makes everything further apart, so we have to move a lot of people longer distances. So we build roads for high speeds. No one wants to be right next to high-speed traffic, so we institute building setbacks (empty space) to separate homes and businesses (people places) from car places. Now things are EVEN FURTHER apart, so we need freeways (car space) with sweeping on-ramps and cloverleafs (car space), surrounded by empty space. All of this is built at ruinous expense and is expensive to maintain. At the same time, the parts of a city that generate the tax revenue to support it (people places) occupy an ever-smaller proportion of land area. So when it comes time to rebuild all this infrastructure (when it comes to the end of its design life) there's no money to do it. Narrowing the streets (making them for people) is a good way to start counteracting this tendency.
  11. Angostura
    Yes. Hausmann was a fascist.
  12. Angostura
    Most of Europe has SOME wide streets, but not ONLY wide streets. London: Oxford Rd and the Strand are 80-ft or so between facades. Surrounding streets are closer to 20-25 ft. Paris: the grand boulevards are around 100-ft between facades. Surrounding streets are closer to 20-25 ft. Rome: some main streets are 60-70-ft between facades, side streets as little as 10-15 ft. In EaDo, the blocks are 250-ft on a side, with 70-ft RoWs. That means 39% of land area is publicly owned. We put another 5% off limits by imposing a 5-ft building setback. So the other 56% has to generate enough tax base to maintain all that public infrastructure, AND pay for every other city service. Point is, not EVERY street needs to be this wide. My residential street in Heights (a numbered E-W street) sees about 20-30 cars per hour. Why design this street the same way, with the same width, as one that gets 500 cars per hour? By all means keep Clinton Dr's wide RoW, but the internal streets can and should be a lot narrower.
  13. Angostura
    Yes, please. Most of our streets are too damn wide. I'd like to see them do something like 20-ft between facades, but I doubt they'll be that ambitious. In EaDo, even with 5-ft setbacks 40% of land is not buildable. Hard to achieve decent density without high-rise construction unless you get the RoW widths down.
  14. Angostura
    Demo permit for Scootersmith (next building north from Barrio Antigo) issued yesterday. That property and the one next door (Chic Warehouse) were acquired last December by an entity called "Yale Grove".
  15. Angostura
    Some info on the tenant search for this development in CultureMap. One tenant will be a taco concept out of Mexico City called "La Vibra". Still looking for a 2nd restaurant tenant.
  16. Angostura
    Possibly unrelated, but Barrio Antiguo appears to be having a going-out-of-business sale this weekend ahead of demolition next week. (Demo permit issued yesterday.) This project could be getting bigger (or maybe it's just parking).
  17. Angostura
    Where this tower is sited, it'll end up roughly diagonally adjacent (corner to corner) with its neighbor, not directly side-by-side. See the rendering here. W/r/t zoning preventing this sort of thing, I'd say zoning is just as likely to encourage it. See, for example, the stretch of Wilshire Blvd in LA between the 405 and Beverly Hills. Properties directly on Wilshire are zoned for high-rise, but anything adjacent is zoned for single family, which has resulted in a lot of high-rises side-by-side along Wilshire surrounded by blocks of low-density single-family houses. It looks kind of ridiculous.
  18. Angostura
    One other thing: No idea what will be built here, but it'd be really nice if it included some kind of structured parking, rather than surface parking. If you put a 4-story parking structure on 1/4 of this block, you'd have enough space for ~500 cars, which would be enough to serve the entire development, plus the new bank, plus the Waterworks site across Nicholson. That would allow for development of the new surface lot going into the Waterworks site, and activate more pedestrian activity along this stretch of 19th.
  19. Angostura
    I think when Alliance paid as much as they did for the Waterworks site, it caused Chase to look at the opportunity cost of holding that much land for such a low-density use. Whether or not they reduce their actual useful square footage depends on how they build. The land retained by Chase includes the 19th St frontage from Nicholson up to and including one of the two small bungalow-shaped buildings (the one without the tacked-on brick facade). That's about half again as big as the current bank building footprint. However, included with the land transferred to a separate LLC are the parking lots across 19th (~60 spaces) and across Lawrence (~24 spaces) from the site. If they go for structured parking and build 3-4 stories, they'll probably end up with about the same square footage. Otherwise, they just build a neighborhood bank branch with surface parking and relocate the other staff. If I had to guess, I'd expect it to be the former. If all they wanted to build is a neighborhood bank branch, then they wouldn't need that big a footprint. They could just negotiate a lease in whatever the new developer builds.
  20. Angostura
    My understanding is that the main building will stay for now. A new Chase building will be built on the SE corner of the block, at the corner of 19th and Nicholson, and the other 3/4 of the block, including the current bank building, will eventually be sold for development. I haven't seen plans for the new bank building.
  21. Angostura
    Back on topic: demo permits issued today for the Chase bank drive-thru and the two small buildings in the middle of the 500-block of W 19th. My understanding is that Chase will build on the NW corner of 19th and Nicholson and sell the remainder of the block for development.
  22. Angostura
    I've been told it was a reaction to the "canyon-ization" of Woodway, but I have no actual evidence of this. I, for one, find Woodway delightful, and would like more of our major thoroughfares to look like Woodway does. Oh, and while setbacks differ between MTFs and local streets, all public streets outside the CBD have a building line requirement.
  23. Angostura
    So, a couple of quibbles: First, in addition to civil enforcement, there are most definitely criminal penalties for violating Chapter 42 (planning) and Chapter 26 (parking). The penalties are fines, not jail time, but they are criminal penalties nonetheless. Second, while variances to both Ch 42 and Ch 26 ARE possible, I can't think of a single project that sought and received variances allowing for zero setbacks and zero parking minimums outside the CBD (where no such restrictions are imposed). Third, EVEN IF variances were occasionally granted to allow zero setbacks and zero parking, the uncertainty involved would still influence the kind of development that actually happens. It's much easier, faster and lower risk to just propose a "compliant" project. Finally, the relationship between setbacks and fire safety is tenuous. Houston allows 3-ft lateral setbacks with no fire-rating, yet requires 25-ft front setbacks. And there are zero setbacks in the CBD, where, I guess, fires don't happen. In fact, planning and zoning standards are, almost without exception, tools to limit density, or at least to restrict density to certain areas, and are usually sold as such. (They are much like historic preservation in this respect.)
  24. Angostura
    Everything west of Ashland on 19th complies with our current regulations (Ch 42 and Ch 26) regarding setbacks and parking minimums. The good parts of 19th would be illegal to build today.
  25. Angostura
    I wonder if they might move BCN to River Oaks District, and open MAD in the current BCN space. Given the other restaurant tenants in ROD, BCN might be more of a match, whereas MAD could serve as a useful neighborhood restaurant in the current BCN space.
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