Angostura

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Looks like the footprint stays the same. Mostly a facelift and (some) new tenants.

Wow. For some reason I never thought the 4-story house and the bungalow were the same property. It's like a 6000 s.f. garage apartment.

The problem lies in the fact that they ARE large parcels of land. We'd be much more likely to end up with dense, urban development if these parcels were divided up into chunks from 1/10 to 1/2 acres with a street grid overlaid and platted for 5-ft setbacks. Individual buyers could then mix use to their hearts' content: commercial, retail, single-family, small multi-family, small vertical mixed-use, etc. Big chunks of land end up getting big boxes and big parking lots because it's 20 times easier to lease 60,000 s.f. at a time than 3000 s.f. at a time.

Try parking at City Centre on a weekend night. Let's say you have a project like the Alexan apartments at 6th and Yale, with 350 units; say, 550 residents. Let's 60% of those residents opt to go out for a sit-down meal on a given Saturday. If that building had a restaurant, and the residents really liked it, they might choose to go there one out of every five times they eat out. So that's 66 patrons who don't need to arrive by car. But a lot of those people will have someone meet them there, so let's say a third of those people split a table with someone who arrives by car, so it's really 44 truly car-free arrivals. To survive in a high-rent, mixed-use building, a restaurant needs to be successful. Let's say on a Saturday night, they do 2.5 turns of their 200 seat dining room. That 500 patrons, fewer than 10% of whom (based on pretty generous assumptions) came from the residential building above. I have 5-6 restaurants within convenient walking distance of my house (3-5 blocks) that are open for dinner. Cumulatively, those restaurants probably represent less than 10% of our dinners out. Less if you only count peak (weekend) nights. Locating a restaurant underneath a residential building doesn't really have an appreciable impact on parking demand. Locating a restuarant in an area with a lot of very dense multi-family buildings does, whether or not the restaurant itself is in a mixed-use building.

From what I can tell, MLS restrictions in Sunset Heights tend to be 3000 s.f., even though most houses sit on double lots. This prevents Shady Acres-style townhouse developments (6 townhouses with a central driveway), but doesn't prevent replacing one house on 50-ft frontage with two on 25-ft frontage. Additional details here, including an Excel file of approved and pending applications, and a phone number for CoH to ask further questions.

Because it makes things a lot more difficult. Even oft-cited mixed use models like City Centre or Woodlands Town center have very little vertical mixed use. Instead they have purely commercial use adjacent to residential uses. West Ave and (most of) Post Midtown are vertical mixed use, but these are much larger than this site, which means the cost of additional complication from mixed use can be spread over a larger base. Adding retail (esp. bars/restaurants, which are the most common tenant in mixed-use developments) also means you need a lot more parking, and it has to be segregated from resident parking. Most areas with prevalent ground-floor retail have very low or zero parking minimums for retail development. Even in very dense areas, only a small proportion of residential buildings have ground floor retail. In Manhattan, for example, only about 1/3 of residential acreage is mixed use.

What else? The site on the NE corner of 7th and Yale is about 40,000 s.f. Pappas also owns (owned?) the building on the SE corner, between 7th and the electrical substation, which sits on about 13,000 s.f. By way of comparison, Berryhill on 11th is a 4300 s.f. restaurant on 12,500 s.f. of land. Despite being on the bike trail and catty-corner from 350 apartments, two 6000 s.f. restaurants will require 120 parking spaces in order to get permitted. That's almost certainly more than they can fit on site, and neither of the two parcels are really big enough for a multi-story parking structure.

Reference to Davis-Bacon requirements in the ITB document would seem to imply that this project has at least some federal funding. That, and there are very few 3-BR apartments in new market-rate developments.

First picture is in the middle of a high-density neighborhood near downtown Seattle, surrounded by residential high-rises and offices, along a light rail line. None of these descriptions apply to the Grocer's Supply site. The nearest equivalent neighborhood in Houston is Midtown, where something very similar to that picture is getting built.

So, a lot of commenters are disappointed with the low density and the extent of surface parking. Many commenters on Swamplot (myself included) would like to see HEB/Central Market on this site, so let's compare the two. The "broken-L" half of this development is 66.3k s.f. on 4.9 acres. Central Market on Westheimer is also 66.3k s.f., but sits on 8.2 acres. The land value per square foot under all that surface parking at Westheimer and Weslayan is probably double that for this site. The additional surface parking at CM is roughly equivalent in size to a Walmart Supercenter, yet at the same time, it's often difficult to find a parking space there. This is despite being in a much more pedestrian-friendly area (next to Highland Village) with a lot more residences within walking distance. (Despite its central location, the Grocer's Supply site is all but inaccessible to pedestrians or cyclists.) I'm also not optimistic about the Tarkett site, given its feeder road access and its location between Kroger and Target. There's a reason this area was industrial, squeezed in between a freeway and a railroad. When you remove the industry and add a feeder road, you tend to get feeder-road development.

Lots of interesting info to be had in the TABC tax data. Cedar Creek has almost 3X more alcohol sales ($305k in the most recent month) than the next highest in 77008 (Down House, at $121k). Heights General Store narrowly outsold Torchy's ($39.9 vs $37.7). People don't tend to have wine with their Mac & Cheese (Jus' Mac did jus' $2539 in monthly alcohol sales). Yucatan Taco Stand apparently holds a license for 1001 Studewood (the Stella Sola building).

[inadvertent double post]

The appeal of the denial of a CoA for the 3-story mixed use office/residence at 17th & Yale is Thursday. Details at the end of the current planning commission agenda. (Click on "current agenda" here.)

Hey, it's got a bank AND a drive-thru restaurant, that's a little bit mixed. This site reminds me of the Walmart site on Yale in that it's a very central location, but also kind of a no-man's-land, with nothing anywhere near it. Despite having two large-ish multifamily sites relatively nearby (Sawyer Heights Lofts and 4th & Oxford), there is essentially no way to walk to this site without crossing a freeway, a bayou or a RR track. In that sense, I can see why you wouldn't bother to make it pedestrian-centered. Disappointing, but understandable.

As long as they need a building permit (which they will, since the interior was gutted), they'll need to re-approve the parking plan.

Potentially. Less than 3000 s.f. it's 8 spaces per 1000 s.f., and less than 4500 s.f. it's 9 spaces per 1000 s.f.

Parking minimums may also be an issue. Since Stella Sola closed, CoH increased the parking requirements for restaurants of this size from 8 to 10 per 1000 s.f. This means that any new tenant will have to find 20+ additional parking spaces. That basically means 6000-7000 square feet of land, which doesn't exist sufficient close to this building to fulfill the requirement. This is why we can't have nice things, CoH.

Yeah, this makes no sense. One has to assume that the property owner has some unrealistic price expectations.

I have a passionate hatred for blanket parking minimums. They are a pox on our city, and, together with our minimum setback requirements (albeit now relaxed somewhat), have contributed to making most of the inner loop look like low-density suburbs. We can't have walkable urban neighborhoods if we also require huge parking lots and 25-ft setbacks. Those regulations incentivize unattractive strip-mall and big-box development. There is no earthly reason to require, say, Whole Foods and Home Depot to have the same number of parking spaces per 1000 s.f. And requiring bars to have 14 spaces per 1000 s.f. is basically subsidizing drunk driving. I also have very little patience for people who complain against the Yale St. Walmart as being too suburban, but at the same time place those mini-boulders in the right-of-way in front of their house to keep strangers from parking there. Here's my modest proposal. All blocks are by default free parking, but if 50% or more of the homeowners on a block agree, allow residents to opt for one of the following options, on a shall-issue basis (i.e. unlike current ordinance, no requirement that x% of cars during y% of the day be non-residents): 1 - Resident-only parking. Residents must pay for the signage. 2 - Metered parking. Residents pay for the meter station, but keep, say, 70% of the revenue, distributed pro-rata based on frontage. I live pretty close to 19th St. There are a couple of times a year when my street fills up with parked cars, but most of the time, I'm happy to have free parking on my block for myself and my guests. If I lived near White Oak, and it was a daily occurrence, I might think differently.

Heard something about being non-compliant with parking minimums. Can't confirm.

Let's start some irresponsible rumors about HEB replacing the Grocer's Supply on Studemont.

I would have thought that given the size of the replacement, Usener would be a net increase in total units. I haven't seen the newest plans for 5th and Yale, or any plans for 24th and Nicholson, but both could be in the 300+ range, and 6th and Yale is ~350. I'd still guess net it's >1000.

I think the comment was about Heights retail in general, not just N. Main. There are large multi-family projects either in process or planned for: - Yale b/w 6th and 7th - Yale b/w 5th and 6th - Watson & Usener (Skylane site) - 24th and Nicholson Over 1000 units combined.

Location and signage. That's a very heavily traffic piece of road, but most people had no idea there was a restaurant there.