Moonb007

The true question is it going to be guitar shaped like the one in Flordia. 

I wonder if this means the "Bethany Weekday School" at the same location is closing.  I can't see them running two schools in the same spot, but it makes sense to take over that location since the church part folded. 

On 5/31/2016 at 2:36 PM, cloud713 said:

I wonder if this is the same football countdown sculpture thats been in front of IAH, or if there are multiple countdown sculptures?

 

They have one by NRG too.

At the rate they are working in the Village it's going to take 5 years before all this work is done.  I figured we would see big changes over the summer before the holiday rush...guess not.

Moving on up

23 hours ago, j_cuevas713 said:

Use public transportation... you can't complain about parking yet favor more pedestrian friendly development and expect them to invest more to build a parking garage so you can neglect the transportation system you have in place to use. I ride the 36 to RedLine South every day and it's great.

I am all for more pedestrian friendly development and projects that don't have massive parking lots between them and the street.  But, parking is important and can be well designed to be hidden.  Personally, I also love public transportation and take the light rail often.  However, it's not realistic option for me to take two buses when I want to run to Rice Village for a quick bite to eat.  More importantly, the average person would not agree with "just take the bus" and if the average person does not then business start the fail.  I am also not bashing the plan as I don't think they have provided enough information to make a valid argument, I just hope they are thinking about it.  I do love the rendering of turning the plaza by Victoria Secret into some type of bar.

I drove in the Medcenter today and noticed a tent in the parking lot that is closed.  Maybe they will be doing a groundbreaking ceremony in the coming days.

I can't image all of these hotels being full.  This is like the 7th hotel project announced in this area. 

These are horrible renderings and don't seem to show consistency for the whole project.  I love the fact they are looking to make it more pedestrian friendly, but if they are getting rid of all that surface parking then it's going to be impossible to find parking.  Already that whole area is a nightmare, but I can't image what it would be like without the surface lots.  I guess time will tell....hope the put a stop sign at Kelvin and University.

I have been wondering what will happen here ever since the old Stables restaurant was torn down.  After googling CDA Architects, the seem to do a lot of education and strip centers.

Looks like the will be taking out the parking garage and classroom space for Texas Women's.  I bet this is somehow the same hospital group.

That building came out so much better then the rendering they originally had.

I'm really surprised that this is actually happening. I was told that the City of Houston would not issue any further permits on these properties unless the developer paid for the purchase of the Burger King property at the end of Travis, so that the street could be opened up through to Holcombe Blvd.

 

Guess that was untrue.

That can't be true as the city can't force a developer to buy another property that they don't own nor does the city own.  Also, even if they did put a street in at the Burger King it would be way to close to the Main intersection.  I will say traffic will increase on main as if I remember correctly those neighbourhood streets are almost all blocked at Travis.

Those pictures look like stuff for utilities.  I bet those power lines are going to be coming down and that is what they are working on.

UH will be fine.  Even if UT opens a school here it will take a long time before they can build out the campus infrastructure to the level of UH or Rice.  Plus the UT system school will always be a secondary school to Austin, so I don't see a student who just wanted to go to UT for the sake of the name saying Houston is an acceptable alternative.  It's mostly about research dollars in the end, but as long as UH keeps growing that should not be an issue.  For example, UTA is easy the second largest UT system school and it was a big deal in DFW when the UT president said they are going to do a mass expansion on UTD as everyone said it would hurt UTA.  In the end, UTA is still by far larger and only lost a little research money and if anything it made the school more focused on staying a top tiered institution.  I don't ever see A&M building a main campus school in Houston because their main campus is basically a suburb to Houston.  I think they will just focus on their specialty schools that they already have.

I use to live in the neighbourhood off West Belfort and Metro had plans for a commuter light rail running out to Missouri City.  So I don't see them commenting on this unless it changes what they had planned.  They have already modified W. Belfort in some areas that will be how the traffic pattern will become after the rail, but it is not going to happen for several years.  It's nice to see something other then apartments proposed as that is how the lots seemed to get getting built out in that area.  Below are links to the metro info.

https://www.ridemetro.org/MetroPDFs/AboutMETRO/CurrentProjects/90A%20Southwest%20Rail/US90A_Newsletter_May2012_06.pdf

https://www.ridemetro.org/Pages/90A-Southwest_RailCorridor.aspx

will Metro itself ever make an announcement on these "potential plans"? They've been pretty quiet in regards to anything new for a while.

The Houston Rodeo owns most of the land now so it's going to be a grassy parking lot for years to come.  Heck, they don't even pay taxes on the land since its non-profit.

That rendering spans from Montrose to Roseland Street. If you look at the rendering you can see part of the arch of the Montrose bridge in the background.

Not sure if it is new, but I was coming in from out of town on Sunday and noticed on the Southern end of the pedestrian bridge they had put up the framework (2x4's and plywood) of what looks like a sign, possibly announcing the project. If anyone passes by soon, maybe you can take a peak and see if they do make an announcement.

That went up last weekend...they also fixed the fence from Ike and mowed. I have a feeling they are going to allow cars to park there for the Rodeo...that is what I bet the signs will say.

Sorry to be critical, but why would you waste 20% of the land on a parking lot, and not build a garage? Is that was I see on the bottom right?

Ahhh, don't worry about being critical...after all it was just a school project with is a mix of compermize between the teachers will, fellow students, and your own ambitions. But no, that's not parking, those are homes. All the red are some sort of buildings, parking is all done underground with limmited street access. The idea was two mini rail lines run on the two arcs that you see...something like a hop on and hop off. We tried to provide a mix for all types of living, private homes, condos, hotel, office, entertainment. The other requirment, which I don't think is right for the site was the extremely tall highrises. The class was a high rise class and not a size planning, so we had to work those into the program. Below are a lot more images of the project.

uGh..

Who thought of this design..??

Please reply Moonb007

Yea, its not the worlds best. It was suppose to be a gate way into the site from the bridge. The orginal idea was you where to pass between these two clean angled towers, but the prof. did not think that was interesting enough....so next thing you know it has this ugly skin....hahahahaha

It won't be the first one... There are at least 2 others, one of which is right here at Katy Mills Mall.

Edit: Just found a list of their locations. It appears that close to 1/2 of their approximately 37 locations are currently in malls.

I have only seen them in malls, but I personally think its over priced crappy food. I will just go upstairs to the cheese cake factory

There was NEVER a Rainforest Cafe in the MarqE, the one opening is in the old Beniggans spot. I don't think its going to be as big as the one in Katy. I always wondered why The wasn't like a flagship Rainforest Cafe in Houston since its based there.

Was that not a Rain Forest Cafe across from Cafe Adobe in the MarqE....Only reason I ask is the outside kind of looks like one of their places.

I have been watching the forum for a while now, but I had to join for this thread. Yes, this is not a hoax as I have personally meet the developers with two of my fellow classmates. The project has been in the works for a while, the website went up over a year ago (Its not new). In 2006 I meet with the developers, Mr. Angel and Mr. McIver at their offices. We developed the site for our finial project at the UH masters program and the gentlemen wanted to get an idea of what we thought of the site (They keep our model). When we meet with everyone at that point the architects of the project was SPA architecture, but it looks as if that might have changed now. I would be shocked if it got built, it will take a while after all due to the scale of the site...but considering the current economy don't count on anything soon. Currently they have not even cleaned up from the hurricane, I live very close to the site so I go by every day on my way home. I bet it will be 5 years before you see one building on the site. Below is some images of our project (note: we took the car dealship and the metro land in our school project). I have more images of our project if anyone is interested in seeing them.