Original Timmy Chan's

My wife's favorite is Osaka (515 Westheimer). It's good stuff, but I don't eat enough sushi to compare it to others.

I would love for my personal "Houston tunnel vision" to become reality.

Simply an express tunnel under the West Loop either for San Felipe or Westheimer (for thru traffic) dip below ground before the railroad tracks and re-emerges near Sage or just a bit further west. Local traffic could still use above ground grid.

This has the potential to un-clog so much traffic that transits the Galleria/Post Oak area. Obviously costing billion$ and plus the need for new ideas about storm runoff to eliminate flooding.

Unfortunately, surface street traffic enhancements of this magnitute would never be considered.

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ACTUALLY...there are people in high places discussing EXACTLY what you've proposed: the "Superstreet" concept. From what I've heard, Westheimer will be the first "superstreet" in Houston, with grade-separated crossings at BW-8, 610, and other major intersections. I believe the "grade-separated" crossings will be something similar to what you see on Main Street through the Med Center, or OST under Griggs. There will be "thru" lanes where you don't have to stop at a signal, with a signal-controlled intersection at a different elevation.

I swear I heard that the Westheimer-BW8 interchange will become a reality soon, meaning construction is coming soon.

The superstreets are part of HGAC's 2025 transportation plan.

By the way, the flooding issue is not an insurmountable problem. You use a stormwater pump system. It's not perfect, but it works for all but the heaviest of rains. We have numerous examples of below-grade roadways here in Houston...the Katy Fwy inside the Loop, the Southwest Fwy inside the Loop, the I-10/BW8 feeder interchange, etc, etc, etc. These roads are well known because they flood in severe rainfalls, but the pumps are able to handle the rain 99% of the time. The occasional flooding problems are obviously worth the benefits of the grade-separated roadways.

I absolutely hate North Main St. It needs a lot of help. Once the light rail goes through it will look like Main Street through the Medical Center, or was that Fannin. I am not sure because the switch in between Main, Fannin, and Greenbriar through that area and Reliant Park.

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Amen! We also need to bulldoze the East End, the South Side, and the remaining poor pockets around Washington Ave! Soon everything inside the Loop will look like the Med Center!!! Yesssssss!!! [/sarcasm]

Sorry to be an ___ but what's wrong with North Main? I think it's got character and potential. I love the historical buildings along North Main, and the fact that it doesn't look like the suburbs. The area lends itself to a pedestrian lifestyle (which is great, since many of the residents of the area don't have cars). I not saying it's all wine and roses there, but it's not the end of the world. I'd pick living off North Main over the 'burbs any day! (...nothing wrong with the 'burbs, they're just too far out and not my style.)

Yeah, I guess seeing photos of the site helps picture where the development is. A townhome development along the freeway there doesn't destroy the integrity of the neighborhood, but as I said, the tin-roof townhomes on Calumet really burn my butt. THAT'S what I don't want to see.

New developments in 3rd Ward are a welcome addition, as long as they keep with the integrity of the neighborhood. Of course, there are plenty of areas where you see dilapidated homes, but most of the 3rd Ward is full of nice homes that just need some polish (not to be confused with Polish...we don't need no stinking Polish ).

3rd Ward is a historically self-sufficient community (race segregation forced it to be self-sufficient). There are still remnants of the once-thriving commercial zones along major streets like Almeda, Dowling, Blodgett, Southmore, Elgin...I'd hate to see those disappear in favor of big strip centers and Targets and Wal-Marts.

For Greek, the wife and I like Mykonos Island on Richmond at Greenbriar. The food blows One's a Meal away, although you can't get chili and eggs at Mykonos. And of course, you don't get the same "service" that you get at One's a Meal...I always enjoy our waiter at One's a Meal. Between hitting on my wife and our female friends and not allowing us to order what we want, we always have a good time! It's a trip...but all in good fun. Always a blast to eat there, especially with a hangover. They make us laugh.

We used to go to Tony Mandola's Blue Oyster Bar on the Gulf Fwy near Park Place all the time...unfortunately they closed down last year. That was a good place for good fresh Gulf seafood. Anyone have a reasonable replacement for Tony Mandola's inside the Loop?

Maybe take your visitors down to Seabrook and check out all the fresh seafood markets. You're buying it as fresh as it gets at the markets there under the big bridge. Buy some oysters and shrimp and cook 'em up at home for a good fun meal.

Head to Hillcroft for some good, cheap Indian and Middle Eastern. The stretch from US 59 to Richmond is FILLED with good eats. Go to Ashoka on Hillcroft for more upscale Indian, but there are plenty of hole in the walls to get a dosa or some puri's. I like Sri Balaji Bhavand between Harwin and Westpark...good stuff. Abdallah's at Westpark and Hillcroft is a good cafeteria-style Middle Eastern place. You can also get good cheap eats at the gigantic Droubi's near Westheimer.

This would be a renovation of the existing Wortham Theater on the UH campus (main campus). The renovations are part of last year's $20 million gift from George and Cynthia Woods Mitchell, which created the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts at UH.

UH has several other projects under construction right now as well...

-The new parking garage, which will feature retail and administrative space on the ground floor

-Completing the $49 million MD Anderson library expansion (which doubled the size of the existing library)

-New $81 million Science and Engineering Bldg

I hope townhomes don't spread too far in 3rd Ward. There are too many beautiful homes out there, especially in the blocks between Alabama, Elgin, Blodgett, Southmore, MacGregor...

This is what's typical in that area, which is what I think of when I think of 3rd Ward:

I love the old brick homes in 3rd Ward, they're some of the most beautiful in the city if you ask me. Unfortunately, they've already started putting up those ugly-a$$ tin-shack townhomes on Calumet, in the middle of the Riverside Terrace neighborhood. I don't mind the tin-shacks so much, but it kills me every time I see them in Riverside Terrace....they're just completely out of place with the beautiful old mansions in the neighborhood.

This...

...doesn't belong in the middle of this...

or this...

I think that area has unlimited potential. You're not exactly pioneering the area with all the new development going on around Elizabeth Baldwin Park. It's within easy walking distance of light rail (about 6 blocks).

There are a lot of positives in that area.

I wouldn't be concerned that development is taking place slowly. In fact, that's the BEST WAY! I think rapid development, like the 4th Ward/Midtown area experienced, can have unfortunate consequences. I think Midtown suffered from developers buying up and clearing entire blocks of the neighborhood and covering them with one uniform product. I think the area would have looked better with more variety...say a "patchwork" of new townhomes intermingled with older renovated homes and maybe a few small apartment buildings.

I live south of the 3rd Ward. Our neighborhood has been a blue-collar neighborhood since it was built in the 40's...but due to location and the low price of land, it's sloooowly starting to bring itself up the ladder. I'm glad to see new development coming slowly. We're seeing a few individual lots being cleared and new homes being built. We're also seeing investors come in and renovate some homes to resell. Some homeowners have been spurred to renovate and spruce up their own homes. As a result, the neighborhood as a whole appears to be getring a facelift, but it's not a wholesale change. The neighborhood still has the same feel, just better.

The whole "3rd Ward is not for sale" movement is not anti-development in my opinion. They just don't want Perry Homes coming in and buying up entire blocks and changing the makeup of the neighborhood in a wholesale manner.

There's a lot of good in the 3rd Ward. There's a lot of not-so-good too...but in my opinion, it's a great community. I don't want to see it disappear and become just a generic community, or a copy of the suburbs. I think too much of that happened in Midtown. The best thing for the area is for small individual investors who actually care about their finished product to come in and redevelop or improve SLOWLY!

Good luck!

Cool...I'm RIverside (747-xxxx)

That's where my aunt used to take us to see matinees on Saturday afternoons when I was a kid. For some reason all I remember seeing there is "Zorro".

I have no doubt that the theater will be successful. North Pasadena is heavily Hispanic. I would think that something further north and west of there would have been a better location, closer to Old Galveston Rd, so that it's smack dab in the middle of South Houston/Pasadena/East End. But I can't think of a theater in that area...

If I'm not mistaken the Houston area is also home to an Indo-Pak theater, across Hwy 6 from West Oaks Mall.

Are there any other theaters in the Houston area that feature non-English films? It's another sign of the diverse city we live in.

But I bet the other ones are current on their taxes.

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I haven't checked, but it's hard to imagine that these places are current on taxes. These are homes that are not livable...roof falling in, walls collapsing...true safety hazards. It appears that they haven't been occupied or maintained for decades. It's hard to imagine the owners would keep taxes current when they're not willing to keep up the house itself.

Another interesting thing is that, I believe, the end of Westheimer is somewhat near to the relative beginning of Buffalo Bayou.

Westheimer Rd is also known as FM 1093, a TxDOT maintained road. I don't know where "Westheimer Rd" itself ends, but FM 1093 does indeed run out through Fulshear and Simonton, then across the Brazos River and through Wallis. That's as far as I've taken it, but the map shows it continues west all the way to Eagle Lake. It's a pretty drive out there...and full of weekend bikers.

I know "Westheimer Rd" runs at least to Barker Reservoir, which is sort of, but not exactly, the headwaters of Buffalo Bayou. The gates on Barker Reservoir control the flow of Buffalo Bayou, and I'm sure a lot of people think it starts there. The headwaters of Buffalo Bayou are actually somewhere northwest of Katy in Waller County. Of course, it's about the size of a roadside ditch up there.

I believe it's about 150 acres. The project is going by the name of "West Houston Town Center", if that tells you anything about the development.

I'm not intimately involved in this project, so I don't know all the details.

Maybe someone here can explain the "town center" commercial concept to me. It seems like everyone's building "town centers" now instead of malls. Is this just the new name for today's malls? What differentiates a "town center" from a typically big-box shopping center?

If I had continued west on Westheimer, we all know where I would've ended up. Uptown, Westchase... Anyone else want to finish the trip?

Anyway, if I ever have to play tour guide and my guest has only 3 or 4 hours, I think this one piece of pavement would be my choice.

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I used to live off of Westheimer near Voss...driving back and forth on that stretch of Westheimer, I started to realize that you could live your entire life without ever leaving that road, and never lack for anything. If you include Elgin and Lockwood, then you've truly got it all...the industry/Port of Houston, education (Austin HS, Lamar HS, University of Houston), retail (in all shapes and sizes, from the yerberias of the East End to the luxury of the Galleria), restaurants (from taquerias to 3rd Ward soul food to just about anything else you could want...unfortunately you'd miss the Hillcroft Indian/Middle Eastern strip and the New Chinatown out Bellaire Blvd), the nightlife of the Montrose, every economic level is represented from the poorest Houstonians to the richest, the urban to the suburban and beyond.

What an amazing strip of road...about 25 miles of everything under the sun.

According to www.katyfreeway.org, the Katy Freeway serves 219,000 vehicles per day. That's only 1.6% of the total trips in Harris County each day. (Based on 13,477,583 trips per day, from http://www.houstonbuscar.com/docs/BusCARre...e24-8-26-03.doc)

So we're spending $2.67 BILLION, or $133.5 MILLION PER MILE(!) to build a road that serves only 1.6% of the total trips in Houston? And the taxpayers are subsidizing it?!? Call Tom DeLay and John Culberson, they'll be interested to hear this! I bet they shut down highway funding in a heartbeat...By the way, did we have a voter referendum before we spent that $2.67 BILLION?

Our so-called "representatives" are a bunch of hypocrites. My solution? VOTE FOR KINKY! I bet he'll fix things right...

I love grackles, especially that sound they make.  When I was a kid growing up in Victoria, I was chased by a couple grackles, and it freaked me out.

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Grackles are definitely one of my favorite birds too. I love watching 'em puff up and strut around with heads held high. It's a crazy dance they do.

Are there any Grackle Fan Clubs in Houston? If not, maybe we should start one up.

DON'T FEAR THE GRACKLE!

I use it mainly for recreational jaunts downtown. I live inside the loop, but there's convenient parking (for free) at Main and Alabama. From there, it's about a 6-minute ride downtown.

I've used the rail on several occasions to save on parking downtown. A $2.00 all-day pass is much better than paying $15.00 for 2 hours at 1100 Smith, or pumping quarters into a parking meter downtown while drinking beer on a Saturday afternoon

I'm sure the free parking at Main and Alabama won't last forever, and I'm not sure I'll pay to park in addition to paying to ride MetroRail. If I'm gonna pay to park, I might as well just drive to where I'm going.

I will say this about MetroRail...every time I've taken it (usually Friday and Saturday afternoons), it's been standing room only. It looks like they've already hit the capacity. That's good and bad...I love the fact that rail is being used (up yours Messrs. DeLay and Culberson), but what's gonna happen when they start tying more segments into the Main Street line? It looks to me like capacity will be a HUGE problem.

The land is owned by Simon Property Group. I didn't see anything on their website about the development, and I don't have any pretty pictures to share.

Here's an aerial of vicinity, though. It gives a good overview of the area. Interfin still owns the land between the proposed mall and Mason Road, and their history would suggest that they'll do some quality things there as well.

I'm running into a problem. Does one have to be an architect to develop a parking lot?

This might not be the topic to post questions, but it did say help wanted.  :-)

Thanks!

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Anyone can "develop" a parking lot. This developer typically hires consultants to assist in the process, though. I think a civil engineer would be more necessary than an architect...then again, I'm a civil engineer, and we usually find architects to be unnecessary.

Assuming this is a brand new parking lot, you may or may not run into some of these issues:

-Platting of the property (if necessary)

-Boundary and topographic surveys

-Site layout and planning

-Driveway location and permit

-Drainage and pavement design (keep in mind, you may lose a good portion of your site for storm water detention)

-Design of storm water quality practices

-Geotechnical investigation for pavement design and geotechnical testing during construction (you want to make sure you're getting a parking lot that will last more than 6 months)

-Construction staking (you want to make sure you're putting your parking lot in the right location)

Those are some of the things that come to mind at 4:00 AM...there will be other issues that will come up that are specific to the site, but this is a general laundry list of things that need to be considered. On top of this, you may consider a landscape architect to make things pretty. Civil engineers aren't good at that part.

We need to do something about this.

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I wonder if we can get our elected representatives to tackle this important issue. It's just another example of Hollywood liberals run amok. Have they no decency?

I got to watch a house four doors down from me get knocked down Saturday morning. My wife, who grew up in the house we live in, said the house has been vacant for close to 15 years. The house was not worth saving, but it appeared structurally sound. I never considered it a safety hazard, and there has never been a problem with vagrants there or anywhere else in our neighborhood.

I find it interesting that the city chose this particular house to knock down, when there are probably at least 10 others in the neighborhood that are in worse condition. There are a good number of buildings in the neighborhood that are literally falling in on themselves.

I wonder if the home's location next to two vacant lots had anything to do with the city's choice to knock it down. With the demolition there are now three empty lots at the end of our street, primed and ready for redevelopment. It will be interesting to see what takes place there in the coming months. Personally, I'd be happy to see the lots stay undeveloped...we see red-shouldered hawks roosting in the trees there, and yellow-crested night herons feed in the ditches in front of those lots. I prefer the green space. Not to mention the fact that the empty lots are a convenient place for the residents of our street (including me) to put out items for heavy trash pick-up. The buckets the city uses to pick up heavy trash have damaged our front yard on more than one occasion.

Timmy Chan's - not very good.

Or - its cheap for a reason.

You can find 1000 other places to eat in Houston 10xs better, it seems Timmy Chans has a reputation - if you havent eaten there then your not really a "good houstonian" or something along those lines.

In my opinion your missing very little by avoiding it all together - but then go ahead and try it for yourself......

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Timmy Chan's isn't exactly fine dining, but it's a good cheap meal. I eat at the Original Timmy Chan's at Scott and OST every so often. I can feed my wife and myself 2 meals a piece for $6.06 (that's four egg rolls and an order of vegetable lo mein). I've been happy with the veggie lo mein, plus it's about the "healthiest" thing they offer, so I haven't delved any farther into their menu.

Keep in mind that there are billions of Timmy Chans, and they're not all the same restaurant. There is a chain of Original Timmy Chans, not to mention New Timmy Chan #7 on Main Street by Reliant Stadium, Jimmy Chans over on MLK, Chicken Chan over on Cullen near Yellowstone, Chick N Chung's, Timmy Dangs... I can vouch for Original Timmy Chan's, but the others sound like imposters to me.

I think you are refering to the mall to be build at Grand Parkway and I-10.  The last I heard there is still a committment of the project, but specifics had not been released.  Currently JC Penny is builing a new format store similar to Kohls just on the other side of the Cinimark Theater.  The walls are up as well as a sign with the JC Penny logo, this store will be a free standing store similar to what you see in a Kohls development.  There is also work on putting a new road into the "mall" area off of Westside Parkway.  They have also been doing quite a bit of utility work in the area as well.

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Plans are underway to bring this mall (formerly known as Houston Premium Outlets) back to life. The HPO mall, on the north side of I-10, east of Grand Parkway, was going to be an outlet-type shopping center in its first incarnation in the late 90's. For those that don't remember, around 1998 there was a race between HPO and the Katy Mills Mall to see who would get on the ground first. Katy Mills had invested tons of money (and plenty of politics), and when Houston Premium Outlets started getting a leg up in construction, the Mills group bought out HPO and shuttered it. HPO had already built a lot of its infrastructure when it was shut down, including utility lines, detention ponds, entrance road from I-10, and part of the ring road around the mall.

Fast forward to 2005...the mall is cranking back up, with a new name and a new concept. Instead of an outlet mall, this will be more in line with a traditional mall, with your standard mall retailers like JC Penneys, Dillards, Nordstrom, etc. From what I understand, the Katy Mills mall is more of an outlet mall, and it has not been entirely successful.

My understanding is that the new mall will be part open-air, and partially enclosed. I'm not a big fan of malls, but I think the end product will be much better than what was proposed back in 1998. I think this mall will benefit from the fact that there is no "arms race" anymore...everyone involved can take a little more time to put a good finished product on the ground, rather than rushing to put just anything on the ground, as things were headed back in 1998.