arche_757

1 hour ago, Montrose1100 said:

It's a 4 block walk to Green Street, 1 block from the YMCA, 1 block from Main/2 blocks from both Skyhouse Retails, 3 blocks from the restaurants in the Hyatt Garage, 2 blocks from Chevron/Ex-Enron/Allen Center complex, 5 blocks from the law School. Granted, it is surrounded by a small sea of surface lots. But, that is a sea of potential.

Hamilton's location stinks, but people still rent there.

I can imagine whatever rents they charge at Hamilton it would be lower than what it would take to do a proper renovation to this former corporate tower.  So, there is that.

Would be a good buy for Rice/Ion etc. could turn it into a vertical emerging tech incubator of some sort.  Perhaps that’s a stretch, but I’d be happy to work on that for any would-be developer!

4 hours ago, Subdude said:

What does FF stand for?

Floor-to-Floor

or sometimes finish floor when used on a drawing. 

I’d imagine the floor heights would be challenging, but nothing is impossible.  It is the location that stinks.

Such an inspiring back yard 😐 

Want to give a shout out to China Stix!  They’ve been there for decades now, and have been serving solid Chinese food without missing a beat.  They may not be the most entirely authentic Chinese food in town, but I don’t think you can go wrong ordering from them if you’re nearby.  Quick turnaround & solid to-go game!

9 hours ago, hindesky said:

Looks like a scene straight from “The Crows Have Eyes III - The Crowening”

Ah!  I was thinking that wasn’t within that view. Thanks!

26 minutes ago, tigereye said:

I’d guess that’s Catalyst (behind Alexan Downtown) 

11 hours ago, Urbannizer said:

It’s probably just there because the renderer added it - but there is a residential looking high rise just to the left of the Marriott that doesn’t seem to exist yet?

I’d say there has most certainly been a slowdown.  It’s not like the city was experiencing a boom prior to the pandemic.  Perhaps it’s just from my experience within my own office, which has seen layoffs and countless projects either canceled or postponed.  There were a number of foreign backed preliminary developments that just vanished.  Future work getting pulled out from under you is doom for an architectural office.

Maybe you’ve been busy?  I have not.  I know that is the case for a large number of design firms.

Seeing these bigger projects that were paused for almost a year come back online gives me confidence -and hope- that we will continue to see new development.

I’m glad to see big projects kicking off.  Been a reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally long time since last March with very little actually starting up here in town.  Here is hoping we continue to see proposed projects start-up!

Then I misunderstood you.

To your other point then - it is interesting that work continued for architects.  Things didn’t get dicey, or even bad.  Go back in time just on this board and you’ll see that while there was a slow down (certainly Houston was in a boom cycle for 4 years) nothing stopped.  In the 1980s things stopped.  Oil & Gas was a much larger percentage of the economy than it is currently.

The fact the city did not stop - even a little - is to me, interesting.  And projects of any scale take years.  Literally. Years to come to fruition.  I can name 6 I’ve worked on that didn’t materialize overnight, they took years.  I’m sure the other architects on here can do the same.

But not all construction financing for a office space requires 250,000 SF from one company to work.  If you’re saying - and I believe you are - that we won’t see another 609 Main or the likes till we see some additional office vacancy rates drop, then yes, you’re right.  A lot of projects going up right now are infill projects.  We have 1 trophy tower under construction.  The rest aren’t all dependent upon oil and gas.  If they were then they wouldn’t have begun construction, or secured financing 12-24 months ago as it is.  Considering how long it takes to put these sort of projects together (2-5 years) many were dreamt up during the height of the last oil bust.

We have a glut of office space downtown, Energy Corridor and elsewhere because Oil was on a building spree from 2013-2016.  The market crashed and many of those same companies either do not exist any more or they cut thousands of jobs; the economy that is building in Houston currently isn’t one tied to oil like in the past century.

All of this is pure speculation by everyone.

How many of the 75,000+ who were let go in ‘15-‘17 have been rehires in the oil industry?  A continued downturn will hurt, but it won’t be the end of the city.  Of course the depth and size of the global recession we are seeing signs of will ultimately determine how bad things get all over.  Interestingly this is all occurring in an Presidential election year here in the States.

the TMC and tech incubator projects aren’t going away, and they have funding regardless of what oil does.  If anything this virus may spur investors into medics/bio-medical more than tech or other industry?

...that said, I guess we will all see.  For once I’m going to try and be optimistic since s&?* could get REAL bad if Covid-19 mutates into a higher mortality rate virus, or another flu strain comes about next fall!  Ironically it was just a tad over a century ago when Spanish Influenza wrecked havoc, of course there aren’t many parallels to that since we don’t have a global war and famine caused by blockades.  Imagine how bad this would all be if MERS was running amok!!!  30% mortality rate.

57 minutes ago, H-Town Man said:

 

The office market is tied to them. If oil companies are contracting, it will hurt new office development. They may not be the ones signing leases in the new office buildings (except for Marathon at City Centre), but if they start vacating large blocks of Class A office space, office rents will tumble and there will not be any new buildings.

 

We have it now!  The office markets are a shell of what they were.  Big oil has contracted.  That is why we’ve seen so many empty older (circa 70s/80s era) being renovated and updated.

If these companies go under - then yes, yes we will see trouble.  I’m trying to be optimistic and reason that many of the companies are already lean and mean, there will be losses but does it get as bad as 5-6 years ago?  I’ll wager it will not.  SA and Russia can’t sustain a price war for the sake of their own already shrunken economies.  It’s not like oil rebounded and they’re both flush with money.  Don’t get me wrong things could get very bad, but I’m trying to be optimistic since the health of the local economy determines whether people build stuff - and as an architect if people don’t build then I’m out of a job too.

We used to be tied to the hip, I would say we are more or less connected at the knee now.  Which is a big improvement. The oil business hasn’t exactly recovered from its previous slump.  What current growth is from oil related companies?  And I realize I’m oversimplifying things a tad - but we haven’t seen any developments locally in years from O&G companies.

Its starting to look like a pretty terrible time to be any business in Midland, Texas!  I think overall the Houston economy will be ok -  not great, but not destroyed like the bust of the 1980s either.  I hope!  It is always a puzzlement to me that the medical and oil booms in this town don’t occur together.  We are all watching as the TMC is about to pop with development while O&G is about to tank...again.

I’ll imagine it made plenty of others on the job site nervous too!  Architects on here can probably attest to plenty of moments in their careers where they were reaffirmed in their choice to be the architect and not the builder.

Additionally, observation towers that have been successful are also typically landmarks associated with something akin to a Worlds Fair.  Think Space Needle, Hemisphere Tower etc.  Now I’ve been to the Hemisphere Tower and it isn’t a great experience, and frankly spending time riding up to the top is wasteful when one could easily walk the streets of San Antonio and get a better feel for the city.

Form follows finance.

I never said The Galleria was dying, merely that change is inevitable.  In 20 years it’ll be vastly different from what it it today - it will have to adapt (or be adapted).  Those big box stores and the sea of parking lots on pretty much every side of TG will eventually be redeveloped into places like ROD or any of the others we’ve got springing up all over town.  I’m not saying it will be demolished, but it will be different.
 

I foresee a more interactive indoor/outdoor component, and an actual street scene.  At least I hope that these changes happen by 2040!

28 minutes ago, Trae said:

 

.... It's not circling around a mall. The Galleria has luxury retail for sure but the real high-end stuff is locating in ROD...

The Galleria is a great mall, but malls are a dying breed.  It won’t happen overnight but I’ll wager in the next 20+ years we will see the big box centers along Westheimer disappear and convert into walkable districts like the ROD.  These will continue to pull tenants from the Galleria.  Eventually it too will be redeveloped.  

8 hours ago, Luminare said:

 

This is actually big time news (I don't believe we knew who the architect was). Knowing that the renders, previously shown, are from PickardChilton definitely gives me more confidence that what was shown is something that will actually be constructed. For those that want to see what they have done in the past look no further than the Exxon Mobil Campus. The dude loves cantilevers, so that one tall building with the top cantilever might actually be legit, and the material palette is also something that is consistent with PickardChilton.

Gensler had a big hand in that project! Pickard has produced better high rises in my humble opinion...but they do add more credibility towards the realization of this project. 

I wonder who the architect(s) of record will be?

Hence why everything is raised off the ground, or built directly over parking.  But we’ve all seen that design answer prove to be inadequate multiple times over the last five years.

14 hours ago, bobruss said:

...Maybe they'll cover up the Embassy Suites building. 

I recall the original design for that particular hotel being of higher quality than the end result.  Value engineered no doubt to its current form.

You didn’t throw off the flow.  Glad to see the Shops at Houston Center take on new life.  
 

I personally think 4 Houston Center might be a worthy renovation into residences someday.  It’s a big bulky building, but would afford some nice indoor/outdoor space for residential, as well as more loft-like floor/ceiling heights.

Watching the decent (and sorta hokey) Brookfield promotions video of the proposed work...er... I think I see Brandon Taubam (former Asst. GM for the Astros).  He looks ...happy.  Seems to have landed on his feet.