infinite_jim

It looks like there is an large mock up of the bldg at their staging site at 2211 Travis St.

McDonalds has finally lost it relative safeness. Now it will be one of those scary parking lots, novel at first, but when stains come fears follow. I like it as an architectural space but would consider the incident of  "things dropped from above" as an agent provocateur. I wouldn't wanna live there thou and I live across the street from a McDonalds too; but it's across the street like I said..Hopefully the Post Oak upgrades bring more lunchy crowds on foot and it basically stays the same. 

 

I'll try to snap pic too before leaving town this weekend. I noticed it yesterday morning they were removing the curtain wall bottom-up vertically.

Fence goes up today; soil remediation will begin.

^I'm assuming he's referring the escalator overheads since they were originally designed with a green roof in mind.

From the facebook page

love how the wedge tower is framed out the pics

I'm amazed that the Houston Post building is still standing.

wiki

Downtown Houston from Uptown Park by Baldheretic on Flickr

This will be a good perspective to see 1111 Travis under construction.

Anytime you have to walk along a road with a speed limit greater than 20-25 mph qualifies as the worst pedestrian place to be (especially on north-south feeder roads in Midtown and Downtown).

It would have been nice to see this building either be a converted storage facility like that small office bldg off Kirby Dr. with the flashing over the vertical strip windows or converted to a cenotaph-like mausoleum in the sky. Hotel is pretty useful too. 

Why not just call it a 16 story building?

B/c you can't have an office in the parking garage; plus the height differential between a parking level and an enclosed storey are off by about ~4'.

They'll have great views of the surrounding parking garages!

This is why people hate poetry and swamplot.

Obvious answer is "how do I get that game day, parking lot cash money?" 

Houston House grows on me more and more... they must be loving all the adjacent development.

The only units worthwhile are the PH and the upper levels and even then the units are long and slender. The lower units were pretty bad last time I was up in there (2008ish); major plumbing problems which was probably the main impetus for the renovation.

I work downtown, just a couple blocks away from the event site, and yet was completely unaware that it was going on - even on its opening day.  If you have zip for publicity, it's danged hard to draw a crowd.

Same here; it just seemed boring and uninspired from a distance, plus I'm not paying cover, ever.

i can see anadarko from uptown on a clear day.

Ditto from downtown.

If you look at the rendering closely it appears that they have masked the corners and ends of the garage to keep it from looking so much like a garage. I could be wrong but it looks like they have altered the facade on the ends to be  a little more appealing. 

Is there another rendering out there showing the reverse angle? I see the edge definition of a different facade system on the south extending over as the roof so it could look like anything from the TxDot bldg off Washington/Hempstead to the downtown Metro bldg by PGAL. It's not a bad rendering but the angle is not very flattering. 

 

 

Good location, midtown has great north-side roads and ok east-west roads. Lots of stuff to do afterwork close by. An office lobby works as a natural fit between a church, theatre, and resturant/bar/club scene. It's close to the HCC bldg in height which is on par with most other midtown midrises. Nice infill, ready for the other renderings showing site ingress/egress.

I think greyhound only uses 1/4th of that block. Enterprise rental uses another 1/4th.

Greyhound leases that 1/2 block along Webster St. from Rice U.

Is that the lot south of it?

Yes, 914 Gray St.

 

Midtown Redevelopment Authority was the buyer. 2016 Main's lease ends on 06/30/2014 from Central Parking. The proposed bldg was in the long term planning phase, which to me suggests they are looking at acquiring another parcel on the block.

 

Also, GFR. 

ahhh, arche, you need to develop the unique Houstonian skill known as "blocking off the merging lane without leaving your own."  It takes much practice, Grasshopper.

This is just good architectural practice. We all have invisible spatial buffers around us whether it's driving or walking through a crowded room. A seasoned driver knows when to hedge and when to use a turn signal (not mutually exclusive)

Edit:

As a pedestrian I like to piss off drivers downtown who speed in the far right or left lanes by pretending to step off the curb. They notice and try to compensate which usually enrages them. What they don't grasp is that the physics involved in speeding in the far left or right lanes is that at 40mph you're going to jump the curb. It's only 6-8" high off of the road grade. See it all the time, especially in T-bone accidents. I have no problem with people going that fast in the middle two lanes but without regular bollards at intersections or an extra 6" height to the existing curbs it's plainly obvious the traffic engineers who designed it did so with speed in mind and not safety. Which leads me to believe that insurers should sue the state to improve road safety or petition to lower the speed limit downtown to 25mph. When all these new apartments start filling up, you will find my opinion stated here can and will move the needle on pedestrian and bike safety much faster than the current pace.