Angostura

Food halls are the new food truck parks.

They give aspiring restaurateurs a chance to test a concept before committing time and capital to a full build-out, and are a vastly more pleasant experience for the diner than a food truck park, which (in Houston at least) are generally in un-shaded parking lots with little to no seating, no bathrooms and lots of generator noise.

On 12/23/2019 at 6:26 PM, X.R. said:

 

Maybe I'm just younger, and grew up in apartments, but why do people hate high-end apartments? I could see why someone in a nice area would be upset at "affordable" housing, but the apartments in such an area would be higher end so...whats the issue? Is it just as simple as the bolded?

I'm generally against single family zoning in cities. And the closer to the city center, the less defensible it is. As a relief valve against city-wide zoning, I suppose the minimum lot size ordinance is useful, but, yes, it's difficult to see it as anything other than exclusionary.

In this case, and in the case of the MLS area application intended to block development of the Fitzgerald's site, it's been deployed as a way to block development of sites already sold or on the market. This should be a lessen to property owners: get your re-plats done as quietly as possible and BEFORE you put the property up for sale.

On 12/30/2019 at 1:16 PM, Luminare said:

 

As a millenial myself this is a constant perception that older generations seem to have. "Oh, don't y'all have all this debt, aren't y'all unable to afford to live in the city?" (sidelining the fact that we have that debt because of previous generations upping the costs of education), but all I can say is that this isn't the case. Millenials are not only making it work, but are doing it while juggling their debt, and the changing of housing stock from single family res to townhomes and apartments is actually making it easier for Millenials to move closer to the city. That wouldn't be the case if the only housing stock was single family residential.

With the possible exceptions of Medicare and Social Security, single family zoning may be the most effective form of inter-generational wealth transfer from low-net-worth millenials to high-net-worth boomers this country has. 

On 12/23/2019 at 1:24 PM, Purdueenginerd said:

Anyone been to that new BBQ place across from the washington HEB? Saw there was a line out the door this weekend I might check it out. I'm not super into BBQ, but the spot looked interesting. Good location at least. 

Went over the holidays, and it's quite good, especially given the size of the space and the volume they're doing. They have 5 (I think) large offset smokers in a glass-walled smokehouse next to the serving line. Brisket, pork, ribs and turkey were all very good, sides are decent, and the dining room is clean and pleasant.

You wouldn't normally need 3 levels of parking for 5 floors of residential.

16 hours ago, Avossos said:

too busy looking. I think it is too trendy and will look dated quickly.

Agree, but the important part of this one is the first floor, not the other 5.

And the Mondrian-style detailing appears to only be on that one corner.

On 12/13/2019 at 12:41 PM, residentsss said:

As someone literally across the street (from where this project is being built) for the last 8 years after moving into a pretty well gentrified neighborhood already (want to correct Angostura's timeline of "5" years) I do wonder how the streets will accommodate the traffic increase (already bad going from 1 house to 6 townhomes and now this). My main concern is parking - I hope they build sufficient resident and guest parking because street parking is already an issue here.

If the first post in the thread is accurate, it'll have 273 parking spaces, which is probably what the city minimums require (1.33 per 1BR, 1.67 per 2BR). 

If every single one of these 273 spots is filled, and they all leave for work between 6 and 8AM, that's about one car every 26 seconds. Seeing as how not all these cars will go the same direction, it's maybe an extra car per minute on surrounding streets.

On 12/12/2019 at 5:14 PM, thatguysly said:

I love this development and the other one as well but man traffic is going to get bad. It already backs up on Shepard during rush hour between Allen and West Gray. This area is pretty much a parking lot during peak hours.

Housing is never a question of "whether" but rather "where". If housing isn't built close to where people want to be, it will be built FAR from where people want to be, which means they have to drive farther to get there. VMT (vehicle miles traveled) per capita decreases when population density increases (and VMT per capita has been decreasing in Houston for a while now).

Also, density is upstream of transit. Transit is only successful if you have the activity density to support it.

Existing thread in "Going Up"

According to HCAD, it still belongs to a subsidiary of Atofina, and hasn't changed hands since 1988.

(BTW, when in doubt w/r/t address, the interactive parcel map is your friend.)

Yeah, calling BS on this. Those three blocks are mostly SF homes and individually owned THs (also a school), none of which have been acquired. I think this is exactly what it says it is, a concept.

Also, the concept shows a zero-foot building line, which, good luck with that.

On 12/6/2019 at 10:13 PM, mollusk said:

FWIW, the ponding issue is something that whoever paid for the parking lot should drum on the contractor about.  Whether it's a permeable surface or not doesn't make much of a difference - poor drainage is poor drainage.

You know what else has a permeable surface and exhibits ponding? Ponds.

On 4/3/2019 at 12:33 PM, s3mh said:

Balls Out Burger has closed.  Never went there.  So, cannot tell whether it was just lame or whether we are getting to saturation on certain offerings.  

Spaced leased by Mico's Hot Chicken.

26 minutes ago, ArtNsf said:

The Ion is caught up in the middle of all of this for good or bad, whether they wanted it or not.  So, I would suggest they not ignore it and face whatever compromises can be made so this project is eventually successful, head on.  We'll be a better city for it and so will Midtown.

 

I'm guessing the Ion, being developed by a university endowment rather than a typical developer, is seen as a "soft target," more likely to buy into the idea of a CBA. The coalition demanding the CBA doesn't really have anything to offer the developer other than to publicly support the project (or at least to not oppose it). In this case, since Houston's rules are generally pretty development-friendly, and this project already has the support of the mayor's office, Rice's BATNA is probably no worse than what they'd get with a CBA, depending on how much they value goodwill from this particular set of community groups.

A traditional developer would probably not want to set the precedent (this would be the city's first CBA), but a university might.

13 hours ago, BeerNut said:

Just heard Planning Department approved the Ion parking garage variances and CoH attorney is now aware of potential development interference from CBAs.

The PC was generally supportive of the idea of a CBA, but recognized that it's not in their remit to require one in order to grant a variance.

21 hours ago, H-Town Man said:

 

Ok, but you didn't really answer my question about the overhead cost for automated parking systems. I am not sure how much the equipment costs for one of these systems (and how often it needs to be replaced, and what its maintenance budget is like), but would it really make economical sense to build an automated garage just to hold 50 cars?

 

Eventually, I can't see why not. You could see a business model where commercial property owners and/or tenants outsource the service, potentially at zero cost to themselves, much like they do with valet parking today. 

20 hours ago, H-Town Man said:

 

I would think that the sunk cost of the automation system also pushes up the feasibility threshold in terms of size. Would it make economic sense to set up an automated system just to park the vehicles of a single restaurant?

 

Let's say you have a 2500 sf restaurant on a 10,000 sf lot. The city requires you to provide 25 parking spaces, at an average of 300 sf each. Business is going well, and you decide to open a second concept so you can serve more people. You can acquire a second 10,000 sf site, and build another 2500 sf restaurant with 25 surface spaces, or you can build a 50-space automated garage on 5000 sf and build a second 2500 sf restaurant on the land you already own.  Which of these options makes the most sense will depend on the relative cost of land and the parking system.

(In actual reality, most restaurants lease their space, so it's the developers who are making these trade-offs, but the numbers are the same.)

20 hours ago, H-Town Man said:

Also, in a traditional garage, doesn't the percentage of area devoted to ramps and aisles stay roughly the same for different garage sizes? The only part of that that seems fixed is the entrance ramp.

The more constrained the site, the less efficient they are. Here's a garage behind a retail/commercial building on Washington, with the ramp, stairways and elevators outlined in red:

The footprint is a little over 25,000 s.f., and I count ~60 spaces on the top floor, which is 420 sf per space. If the site were 40 feet wider, you could fit spaces on the ramp, and the layout would be more efficient, maybe 350 s.f. per space (comparable to a surface lot). 

This is about as small a footprint you can do before the layout starts getting really inefficient, and it's only three levels, so this is pretty close to the minimum size traditional parking structure that's likely to be built. So you wouldn't start thinking about structured parking for anything less than, say 150 spaces, which corresponds to a 30-40k sf retail development. So unless we do away with parking minimums, the only way small developments can feasibly move away from surface parking is with automated systems.

16 hours ago, Luminare said:

 

[...] because, again, this genre of architecture isn't about the building itself, but the architect that is behind it [...]

 

This might be part of the problem.

22 hours ago, wilcal said:

 

My thinking is that surely there would have to be significant size requirements for an automated system to work, but this may not be the case. 

 

The smallest feasible size for automated systems is much, much smaller than tradition parking structures. The smaller a parking structure (in footprint) the higher the percentage of square footage taken up by ramps and aisles, so below a certain number of spaces it becomes either economically or physically impossible to do structured parking. Since automated systems have no ramps or aisles, they can be feasible at very low numbers of spaces.

One of the reason we have very few standalone restaurant sites is that the parking requirement (10 per 1000 sf) results in a lot coverage ratio of around 25%, with the rest dedicated to parking, whereas a strip center (5 spaces per 1000 sf) can have a lot coverage closer to 50%, which gives the developer 2X the leaseable space for the same land cost. But if you can use an automated system to park 3X as many vehicles per s.f., you could put a 4,000 s.f. restaurant on an 8,000 s.f lot and still meet your parking requirement.

15 hours ago, wilcal said:

I think that we probably haven't switched to this model because the electronics would have to cost less than the space savings, and that probably only makes sense where the land is $$$.

 

Nice to think that we're getting there in Houston

 

If you're working within an existing building envelope and want to maximize capacity, or if you have a height restriction, then it may be worth paying a premium for a robotic system. 

But if, as in this case, you're building on a greenfield, without height restrictions, then the reason to go automated instead of traditional is because of construction costs, not land costs. That is, it has to be cheaper to build and operate than a traditional garage. Estimates I've seen (granted these are mostly from parking system suppliers) put the construction costs somewhere between 60 and 100% of a similar capacity traditional garage.

Here's why that's interesting: Currently, a lot of neighborhoods fall into a trap where land values aren't high enough to justify the cost of structured parking, so the spaces required by the city's parking requirements get built as surface lots. The resulting low density prevents the underlying land values from increasing to the point that structured parking is viable. If the lower end of that construction cost range turns out to be true (and it should get cheaper over time as the industry matures) then the land cost at which structured parking makes sense falls from, say $100/sf to $60/sf, and there are already plenty of neighborhoods in Houston with land values in that ballpark, which means more new retail development could include structured parking instead of surface parking, which would add to density, and in turn make the land value higher.

3 hours ago, Luminare said:

I actually think its a good video. Very simple, but helps illustrate the basic functions. In the video it says that retrieval is 2 mins? If thats the case then that is pretty quick considering that at the quickest, in analog, it will take a person 2-4mins to find and get to there car (if its a two story garage), and then you factor the time to get out of the garage manually (usually the the same amount of time with traffic in the garage itself). This also doesn't factor the amount of time people typically get lost looking for their car. I don't know what the cost differences are for this, but while it might be more expensive for the system itself it will definitely save money in the amount of space required overall since you don't have to factor in ramps and the space necessary for a two way drive (24' typically which would be reduced to around 19', or the typical length of a parking stall). If anything, even if it doesn't save money overall it will save money in the long run because you should be able to dedicate more space to people than to cars. I don't know why we aren't switching to this model more and more if its out there, functions, and is already a proven concept.

It's volumetrically more efficient, since you don't need door space, head space, turning space, ramps, etc. And the retrieval time for a single vehicle compares favorably to valet parking or a traditional garage, when you consider elevator/stair time to reach your car, then driving time to reach the exit.

However, where it compares unfavorably is throughput. Assuming there are 8 drop-off/retrieval bays (not sure if that's the right number or not), and it takes 2 minutes on average to retrieve a car, that's 240 vehicles per hour. Which means it would take the better part of 6 hours to fully empty this 1400-car garage. I know it can seem like forever to get out of the Toyota Center garage after a Rockets game, but it's a lot faster than 6 hours.

About that variance request:

The Shepherd RoW is oddly shaped at this intersection. A 25-ft building line along Shepherd would result in a 75-ft distance from the curb to the façade at W. 6th. The developer is proposing a "parklet" in the RoW at that corner.

This has been vacant for a long time. A request to re-plat the site south of 25th as a single reserve was submitted in 2014, but HCAD only shows ownership history on that parcel from 2017, so it may have been more recent. 

The plots on the north face of 25th total $10.6M in appraised value, and $7.8M on the south face, which is a lot to pay taxes on while waiting for land value to appreciate.

13 hours ago, thedistrict84 said:

I’m guessing not very quickly. 1,400 vehicle capacity with maybe a dozen or so loading bays. I guess we won’t know for sure until we see the layout, but I’m not optimistic this will be practical in that kind of scenario. 

Yeah, I imagine it'd be a mess. I think it works in a situation where valet parking works, but in a situation where everyone wants to leave at about the same time (like a baseball game, or 5PM on a Tuesday in an office building), it might not be ideal.