Angostura

20 hours ago, ADCS said:

I'd say that would be the perfect spot for a SPUI. Only question is if you keep running Waugh over Memorial, or elevate Memorial, keeping Waugh at surface level and facilitating development in the areas freed up by the removal of the outside ramps.

Another of the configurations floated for this was "right-turn" ramps only, with michigan lefts (u-turn lanes on Waugh).

The only real area opened up for development would be on the NW corner of the intersection. The NE corner would probably be an expansion of Spotts Park, and the SE and SW corners would probably be given over to BBP. But selling the land on the NW corner could defray part of the cost.

17 hours ago, Ross said:

I don't go to places with parking in the back, it's too hard to tell if there's an open space. And this is too far away to walk to.

This is why we can't have nice things.

2 hours ago, EllenOlenska said:

As I was driving down 610 it occurred to me that the overhaul which would suit Uptown most (other than a damned train) is turning the malls into street grids. 
 

1: Yes.

2: However, that runs counter to what seems to be the entire development philosophy outside the loop, which is to drive traffic onto major thoroughfares, and discourage thru traffic on secondary streets.

3: It's really expensive to do this. Take the area bounded by Westheimer, Post Oak, Sage, and San Felipe. To put in 8 east-west streets and two additional north-south streets, with 70-ft right-of-way, you need about 1.5M s.f. of land. At $150/s.f. (current assessed value on HCAD), that's $22.5M in eminent domain payments before you even consider the extra payments for the buildings you need to knock down, plus the cost of building the streets themselves. 

52 minutes ago, j_cuevas713 said:

So what exactly is the city of Houston's planning and development dept doing?

They're not really empowered to do a whole lot. They enforce Chapter 42, and can allow variances under certain circumstances, but that's about it. When someone sells a site like this for development, they don't have a whole lot of say in how it gets developed.

In theory, back when Sawyer Heights was being developed, the City could have used eminent domain powers to secure rights of way to extend Spring, Shearn and Crocket Streets to Oliver, then replatted the area as smaller reserves. They could then have extended those streets further, to Studemont, when the additional parcels became available several years later. Now, however, there's no street grid to connect to, so it's very hard to make a convincing eminent domain argument for this parcel.

However, in order to have done this for Sawyer Heights (where Target it now), in addition to an uncanny ability to see the future, the city would have had to pay for the RoW. At $40/sf, it'd be $9M; more if they acquired ROW for north-south streets as well. In addition to paying for the RoW (and the lawyers for when they have to defend the taking in court), the city would be forgoing its portion of the property tax on the land they acquired for RoW, plus its portion of the sales tax revenue on a pretty big commercial development, as presumably much of the development would shift to residential after the re-plat.

So for it to have made sense, the additional property tax revenue from denser development and subsequent appreciation in value would have to compensate for the cost to acquire the RoW, PLUS the forgone property tax revenue, PLUS the forgone sales tax revenue. And that additional property tax revenue probably wouldn't have kicked in until well after the end of the then-mayor's term. Oh, and the city would have had to have several million dollars laying around to do all this.

On 5/18/2017 at 10:51 AM, Angostura said:

Didn't see it on the agenda. I assume it got deferred.

It's on the agenda for tomorrow. (Item 109)

15 hours ago, s3mh said:

 

Right.  But where is the next step going to be?  Looking at all the great development along Washington Ave in the 1st/6th wards, the arts district on Summer St., and the redevelopment of the Ravinia rice plant and you have to wonder where else in that area is there space to do something big? 

Part of the problem is that IS big. The existing and announced projects along lower Washington and around Sawyer St are better because there's an existing street grid to engage with, and they're smaller. This development would probably be better as 20 1-acre projects instead of one 20-acre project.

That said, that development along Washington is still an archipelago of street-facing buildings in a sea of surface parking.

This looks amazing, and fits in well with B&B and 1902 Wash (the building w/ Tacodeli).

Also love the improvements on Center St., including the angled parking. What I'd really love to see is a parking management district for this stretch of Washington, say from Liberty Station to Sabine St. A couple of well-placed parking structures would allow another half-dozen developments the size of 1902 Washington to replace surface lots in the area.

15 hours ago, Ctaf said:

So the parking garage is in the middle with the stores on each side facing the garage? Something seems weird, like from the outside of this development all you'll see is the garage and the back of the stores wrapped around the garage. Maybe I'm picturing it wrong?

There looks to be some engagement with the Kroger to the West, but the north side, which faces the freeway feeder, the south side, which faces the railroad, and the east side, which faces the back of the Target, will be essentially blank walls.

However, if they were to use the spaces on the ground floor of the parking structure as restaurant spaces, fronting a pedestrian mall, with the retail across the way, it could potentially be not terrible.

19 hours ago, JJxvi said:

The neighborhood codes mean something to the CAD to separate comparables, not just only by geographic boundaries, so yes they can overlap.

 

From just looking at it, 8305.06 are original houses on the original standard size lot comps in a certain area and 8305.10 seem to be the new townhouses on smaller lots within a certain area.  If you find an industrial/commercial building within the same boundaries those will have another set of neighborhood codes as well.  If you are in a townhouse (and looking at their map viewer, I already found one on 21st St that appears to be wrongly coded) and are coded as in 8305.06, then I think that is probably wrongly coded, and it looks like both land (60/ft vs 45/ft) and improvement values are higher if your house is coded in 8305.06 (meaning that the district thinks the bigger lots and older homes are worth more per square foot)

This explains why there are so few "true" comps in the neighborhood we're coded to, despite the type of house we're in (3/2.5, 2-story, detached garage) being ubiquitous in our part of the Heights. I stopped counting when I got past 100 within a 5-block radius.

Something I found out while putting together info for our protest hearing:

HCAD's system looks for comps based on a neighborhood #. It turns out some of these "neighborhoods" overlap. For example:

8305.06: Bordered by 23rd, 16th, Yale and Nicholson

8305.10: Bordered by 20th, N. Main, Shepherd and 610.

Which of these neighborhoods HCAD codes your house into makes a BIG difference on valuation. We're coded as 8305.06. Our next door neighbor (same floorplan, same year, same builder, same finishes, same Grade and CDU in HCAD's system), is coded as 8305.10 and has an appraisal $175k less than ours.

My understanding is that the central building is all parking, and the retail is on two levels. 

I'm not sure I'd call this walkable, but aside from the apartments next to Target, there's not really anyplace from which to walk to this development. The Heights bike trail cuts across the NE corner of the site, though, and it looks like they're trying to connect it to the Kroger next door.

22 hours ago, Triton said:

 

Hunky Dory and Bernadine's closing!

 

Both of these concepts were very much tied to the chefs that created them. Once both of the them left, closing them was probably the right thing to do.

Here's hoping someone snaps up these (still pretty nice) 2nd generation restaurant spaces quickly.

On 5/16/2017 at 7:53 AM, samagon said:

 

You know how you jinx a baseball team?

 

This, this is how you jinx a baseball team. If the Astros don't win, it's all your fault

I figured it's OK, since Sports Illustrated beat me to it by 35 months.

Didn't see it on the agenda. I assume it got deferred.

Why is it that everytime a spa shows up in one of these videos, it's a shot of the door opening and someone behind a reception desk?

22 hours ago, H-Town Man said:

 

Those are some crazy concessions.

 

Works out to $2450/mo, which, after 13 months, kicks up to $3250, which is more than PITI on a $500,000 house.

I understand the strategy of offering free rent instead of just lowering the rate to $2450: no one values the apartment more than the person living in it (there are costs associated with moving). But I wonder how many people move out after the lease is up.

I wonder if you can negotiate a diplomatic clause into one of those leases.

Yes. It will be somewhere between $13/month and $20,000/month.

15 hours ago, JJxvi said:

Herkimer is an oddity.  It's really only a glorified back alley (look at the plat maps), with a narrower ROW than other streets in the Heights, but because its gutter and curbed its actually wider than most other streets in terms of actual pavement

I'm guessing the width of the block between Herkimer and Nicholson is due to the fact that there used to be a railroad between what is now Nicholson St and the lots on the west face of Nicholson, and they wanted those lots to have access to a street without a bunch of grade crossings.

Nicholson's pretty narrow along that stretch. Seems like it'd be easier to put the entrance on Herkimer.

On 4/27/2017 at 11:17 AM, Timoric said:

 

One more thing to add to the list, contributed by the neighbors.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/209130/would_you_believe_get_smarts_cone_of_silence_is_real.html

It looks like outdoor shows have to end by 10PM. At least last night's did (might be later for Fri/Sat shows).

As someone who had to work the next day, it was nice to enjoy a show (on a beautiful evening, BTW) and still be home by 10:15.

We live in one of three, essentially identical houses on 4400 s.f. lots.

Apparently our land is worth $60/sf, but our neighbor's is worth $45.

The value of our improvements went up 15% year-on-year (43% over 5 years), whereas our neighbor's went DOWN 13%.

Full flyer is here.

Two rows of surface parking facing 11th.

If rents are so high, why not double the size and put structured parking in the back.

That looks phenomenal. If it ends up anything close to that, I think a lot of people will be happy.

Yale from 5th to 12th could become a pretty interesting corridor. There's a lot of existing and upcoming zero- or low-setback construction. I'd actually like to see more street parking on Yale, making it effectively a 2-lane street, to make the pedestrian experience seem a little safer.

It makes a lot more sense to combine the water works site w/ another retail or mixed-use building across Nicholson, rather than the catty-corner site on the NW corner of 20th and Nicholson, since a lot of the parking for the restaurants/retail on the waterworks site would have had to go on the companion site.

Best case scenario is that the Chase branch is a GFR tenant of a residential building on that site, not a standalone building.

Other potential use would be another medical/professional building.