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Angostura

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Everything posted by Angostura

  1. Angostura
    This. As long as most people drive most places, the market will demand a significant amount of parking (whether city-mandated or not). And the #1 predictor of how many people arrive at a given destination by private vehicle is activity density (the number of residents + jobs in a given area). As long as 1/2 to 3/4 of the land area of even the most valuable parts of our city are dedicated to automobiles, the activity density will never be high enough to result in people choosing other forms of transportation. So every s.f. of structured parking is a s.f. of land freed up for other development. We need to build more parking garages so that, someday, we won't need so many parking garages.
  2. Angostura
    Here's the site layout submitted to the planning commission. A little different than the brochure.
  3. Angostura
    Some additional detail in today's planning commission agenda (the development is requesting a setback variance). There's an additional 12,750 s.f. retail building at the NE corner of Center & Silver, and the rest of the frontage along the north face of Center St looks to be reserved for non-parking use. Space count on the northern lot is now 330, not 542. There's also an additional 9000 s.f. retail building at 1900 Washington (West of the Tacodeli/Platypus building). Total retail square footage, including B&B and 1900 Wash, is just under 103k s.f.
  4. Angostura
    Variance request for reduced setbacks on this week's planning commission agenda. Deferred two weeks.
  5. Angostura
    CoH plan review comments are a rich vein of insight into the experience of interacting with city bureaucracy. Traffic comments: "Furnish parking analysis and planning approval prior to traffic approval." Planning comments: "There must be traffic approval before our department can approve your site plan."
  6. Angostura
    First build-out plans have been submitted for review. Looks like the barbershop and one of the restaurants. By the square footage, I'd guess it's Ripe.
  7. Angostura
    Tower crane base is in place for the apartment building. Slabs for the small parking lot (NW corner of the site) and new building (Bldg A: Hopdoddy) have been poured on the retail site.
  8. Angostura
    Permit for the full build out approved last week.
  9. Angostura
    Anyone notice that 244 spaces is way, way more than the city minimums would typically require? Even at 10 per 1000 s.f., they'd only need 100 (minus the 5 onsite, plus whatever they displace) I think this is the first salvo in a major densification of this district. For example, the site next to Fitzgerald's could have three restaurants instead of one by leasing parking in the new garage.
  10. Angostura
    Some activity on this site, at the corner of 25th and Nicholson. Appears to be a 6-pack of townhouses, with a shared driveway taking access from Nicholson.
  11. Angostura
    That site appears to have been completely cleared of its previous contents. Not sure what's planned for the site.
  12. Angostura
    300 units means ~400 parking spaces. Not sure why you'd want to put a 400-space surface lot in this area.
  13. Angostura
    So, Fisher and his web of LLCs and other legal entities became either illiquid or insolvent. His lenders attempted to foreclose (August 2016). Fisher sued, alleging bad faith in the structure of the loans (September 2016), and asked the court to restrain the foreclosure sale (which it did). Much legal wrangling ensued. A number of Fisher's entities declared bankruptcy (Jan 2018), at which point the case was removed to federal court. I would expect the site to remain in its current condition until the bankruptcy gets resolved and the property is sold to another buyer.
  14. Angostura
    I believe it's the current parking lot, plus the wooded area between the parking lot and the bar fka Jimmy's Ice House
  15. Angostura
    Laneways are basically Narrow Streets for People.
  16. Angostura
    I saw the Little Creatures logo and chuckled. I've only been to the one in Freo, but apparently there's another outside Melbourne. The Crafty Squire is also a brewpub in Melbourne.
  17. Angostura
    Yes. The taxable value per acre of those areas is undoubtedly far less than the high-density residential neighborhoods surrounding them. Big box retailers have a financial incentive to build as shitty a structure as possible. A land value tax would make big-box retail a lot less economically viable.
  18. Angostura
    The bungalow getting is currently getting subsidized by being underbuilt on valuable land. The city is paying for upkeep on roads and sewers and water lines and storm drainage, the cost of which scales pretty directly with acreage (or street frontage). A bungalow appraised at $700k is consuming the same amount of that infrastructure as the new-build appraised at $1.5M or the 6-pack of townhouses appraised at $2.4M, and is therefore receiving a tax subsidy from its denser neighbors.
  19. Angostura
    Could be even higher. Footprint is around 7200 sf, which wouldn't be much more than 24 spaces per level. I would guess something like 80-ft high, unless they do something like this.
  20. Angostura
    Feature not a bug. Would make it much less economically viable to keep a surface parking lot in a high-value area.
  21. Angostura
    They'll have to. Can't get a permit without demonstrating adequate off-street parking (also would put the businesses across the street out of compliance w/ Ch 26).
  22. Angostura
    This is the parking lot across from Barnabay's/Christian's. It appears like they'll do structured parking in place of the current single-story parking enclosure next to Tacos a go-go, which will open up this land for development. This is kind of huge, and may be the first of it's kind in the Heights: infill development of a surface lot by going vertical with parking. If this kind of development catches on, it could really add a lot of pedestrian activity to major commercial corridors.
  23. Angostura
    There IS a small loophole in the way the exemption is worded. IF you spend more than the appraised value of the structure on restoration, and IF HCAD increases the appraised value of the structure by more than the cost of the restoration, the value of the exemption can also exceed the cost of the restoration. That said, at the current city tax rate (I understand the exemption only applies to CoH, not the county, HISD, HCFCD, etc.) the exemption amounts to about a 6% subsidy to the (mostly upper middle class) people doing the restoration. Historic preservation may be a value to the city, but a discussion about whether a tax subsidy to a subset of the top few percent of taxpayers is the best way to encourage it isn't out of line. My own opinion is that much of what is called "historic preservation" in Houston is just a roundabout way to limit density and establish exclusionary zoning without calling it zoning. (The design guidelines for the Heights establish maximum lot coverage and floor area ratio for, I think, the first time in the city. These are tools many communities use to keep the poors out.) Whole problem could be avoided if we switched to a land value tax, rather than the current system, which disincentivizes improvements to structures.
  24. Angostura
    Apparently it's vietnamese food for white people. Semi transparent white people.
  25. Angostura
    We don't have use-classification zoning, but we do have a bunch of rules (minimum lot sizes, minimum setbacks, etc.) that achieve some of the same things. We'll also have FAR caps in historic districts in the very near future. That said, I was only saying I wouldn't mind a height cap if we could get rid of some other stuff that artificially limits density. And since eliminating parking minimums isn't even within the realm of possibility (not even the Walkable Places committee is considering it) it doesn't need to be feasible to implement height restrictions in return.
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