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Angostura

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Everything posted by Angostura

  1. 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?
  2. 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.
  3. Angostura
    Duplicate post.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. Angostura
    There was a Little Creatures logo on one of the early renderings, but I think it was just a placeholder.
  8. 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.
  9. Angostura
    This is why we can't have nice things. This is part of a walkable shopping district, with zero-setback storefronts covering the entire blockface. Providing ANY parking onsite disrupts the streetscape. This entire district should be parking-exempt so that this site can be re-developed in the same style as its neighbors.
  10. 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.)
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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
  14. Angostura
    A replat of the long block face along 25th St (N side of the street, from Nicholson to Rutland) into a single unrestricted reserve was requested back in 2014. Not sure if it was approved or not. The block bounded by Rutland, Ashland, 25th and 24th is platted as a single reserve. Would seem to indicate multi-family, but haven't heard of any plans. Original thread here: https://www.houstonarchitecture.com/haif/topic/28671-national-flame-forge-site/
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. 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
  18. 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)
  19. 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.
  20. Angostura
    Conservatory (Prairie St), Finn Hall (Main & Rusk), Bravery (Aris Mkt Square), Lyric Market (Lyric Center)
  21. Angostura
    Not sure if that's real retail or "office lobby café" retail. If the parking levels are design to flood, what about the ground floor retail?
  22. 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.
  23. Angostura
    "Future Regent Square Development" I call false advertising.
  24. 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.
  25. 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.
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