zaphod

1 hour ago, ekdrm2d1 said:

The Harris Center is about to build another crisis center if I recall correctly.

 

I was on Nextdoor.com during a Memorial Hermann outpatient clinic development and my neighbors opposed it. They didn't want "crazies" and violent people roaming the neighborhood. It's sad the stigma attached with mental health.  

If anything the eastern fringe of the med center is the best area for this stuff. It's not really walkable, there are few businesses, most residential areas consist of gated apartment complexes, right? So even if there was problem with the people coming and going from this facility(as you say there probably won't be and people are scared of nothing) it won't effect anyone.

The worst thing you can do is concentrate social services in areas like Midtown and the East End(the status quo) because those are such open and exposed public spaces where you want people to feel safe walking or using public transit. That's how you get Wheeler station.

True that. It looks like a completely normal, clean, and safe motel that normal people who are traveling away from home might actually spend the night in.

The other places in the area look sketchy, like hooker/drug hangouts.

Will the public still be able to use the beach or are they taking away a beach to give to private interests?

Is this a result of the demise of the open beaches act? What a shame, I can't believe they would approve something like this.

Hopefully Buzbee and King will split the malcontented conservative vote.

I worry if either of them won, a lot of public services would get cut back(like parks, sanitation, all the misc stuff like animal control) and quality of life would suffer. But hey regarding Prop B, we should just follow the example of such prosperous and amazing cities like Stockton, California, right?

Fast forward 2 years. If Buzbee is Mayor halts the progressive momentum that has been building over the last few years, I will move. I work in IT, a field where everyone is a job hopper and if you are not growing professionally you will struggle so its easy to justify quitting every couple of years. Let us not forget that one of the best job markets in both the nation and the world for the past decade is only a 2 hour drive west on 290.

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(there was a park in College Station that was actually renamed after a sitting city councilman, for instance!). The alternative is of course, the "develop everything" team, but that has made things worse, too. If only life was more like SimCity, where you could keep everything funded with every ordinance and still turn a healthy profit.

Are you talking about Crompton Park across the railroad tracks? I think it serves a purpose. Apartment complexes in the area are full of international and married student families. Those complexes are not friendly to children, so a public playground was necessary.

I was more disappointed in the council caving to NIMBY interests on "stealth dorms"(apparently tumbledown 2 bedroom wood siding rent houses are precious historic relics), killing dockless bike share(where were those people complaining about yellow bikes when there are Target and Kroger shopping buggies strewn all over Southwest Parkway), etc. Sometimes I still check out CS news. They never built a railroad crossing at Deacon, they are going to close and fill in the pool in Thomas Park despite all the neighborhood people who use it, and they keep approving trash development like townhomes behind Sam's in a floodplain.

I guess all cities, big and small, from Houston to College Station, give their citizens some reason to complain

Blow it up and build something else.

I'm glad that a building like that could be saved and reused. I hope they keep or replace the window frames and the awnings with similar looking ones.

What is his platform going to be?

The city has budget issues caused by overspending on traditionally conservative, red meat issues like firefighter pay with the recent passage of prop B.  It can't increase taxes or revenues. It already has low quality services and low quality infrastructure relative other cities. There aren't a lot of parks and libraries and things like that to cut. No magic money tree. No silver bullets.

Republicans always want to go after the mythical "government waste" that apparently represents a huge pile of free money unlocked only when conservative wins office. There must be literally billions spent on illegals getting abortions, lets use that money! /s

IMO I am a "progressive" because conservatives in Texas are small minded about what local government can accomplish. I'm not a social justice person though, justice is not constructive. I would prefer a leader who had a mind like a builder or engineer who can design complicated systems to solve complicated problems. Last thing I would want is a former trial lawyer who is vindicative and punitive. But then again this is a place where there is no public good or civic mindset. It's just all about me and my property taxes and my bigass pickup truck. 

It's called Sterling Northgate.  It straddles the Bryan and College Station city limits. I think part of it is going to be a little shorter than the garage, the other part is going to be 3 or 4 stories. There hasn't been any normal renderings of I believe, only facade drawings in the city documents.

Best I can do: http://wtaw.com/2015/09/14/bryan-council-without-discussion-approves-student-housing-continued-interest-in-former-txdot-district-

So that explains what's ultimately going to be built. There have been a few renderings and they have all been a bit different. I wonder when the buildings closer to University are going to start?

Hey, long time no see!

 

I don't really think any of this discussion on urban planning is really relevant to the current council race. But in any case its not about forcing that sort of planning on the community, rather the city simply allows it through LESS restrictive zoning classifications and the private development industry delivers based on measurable demand.  Over time the area around Northgate is becoming more of a walkable environment and maybe in the future new infill around Eastgate, southside, and along University drive will also create that vibe. IIRC They can do this because we now allow more multi story, more street fronting, less parking, more mixed uses, etc, than we used to before the first Northgate specific zoning classification was made way back; I dunno, you were the one who has a lot more experience with City Hall than I do.

But all that is besides the point.

I was thinking more along the lines of not cutting funds to build parks, bike trails, and other amenities that are attractive to middle class newcomers. They are one side of the equation, the other being the jobs they will fill as more companies move here. The two go hand in hand.

I took the comments made by Pereira in his interview with the Battalion to sort of mean he'd be in favor of cutting property taxes at the expense of community projects because he feels that transient undergraduate students and the absentee landlords who rent them housing have no need for those things. My point is that transient students are not the future of this town.

Also local people have a right to a city that works for them.

But he is the only polarizing candidate. As far as Schultz's work with the biocorridor and medical district, I think at the end of the day that is a mostly econ dev type project, less of a physical planning one. It seems the growth around the HSC is private, master planned communities. I don't see the city literally building out a district by itself, rather it enables the creation of one by being amenable to zoning and comprehensive transport plan changes while making the necessary tax deals.

Although speaking of mass transit, there needs to be a connecting highway (at least ROW and a smaller road for it) between 47 and FM 60 and Highway 40 and Wellborn Road.

 

I was in Brenham today and remembered there's another fried chicken place in the area that flies under the radar; Hartz chicken.

Way back in the day I seem to remember they had some kind of gimmick, like a truck shaped like a chicken that clucked, or something like that? Or am I crazy and thinking of another place? Who had the lit up polyurethane chicken sort of like the jack in the box on the roof of the store?

Who will you be voting for and why?

I ask because I feel like very little information on the candidates is available online and I don't follow council closely enough to decide.

That said, I already know I will vote Blanche Brick over Gabriel Periera.  I don't think his opinion that the town relies on student tax dollars but doesn't provide them services they use is going to result in anything good. The future of College Station is not just in undergrad education, but in A&M creating a cluster of companies and professionals who want a good place to live.  You also have fellow students who might have families(like the girl I work with who has kids and is getting her masters) and those families use parks and want safe neighborhoods.  He is also a college republican; council is supposed to be non-partisan not just officially but also in spirit. Don't want that cancer in city hall. Finally, whose tax dollars exactly? You mean parents' money? lol. NEXT.

Then there is the other challenger race, between Schultz and Harvell. The incumbent has a nice resume, the challenger seems like an unknown but has experience with the CVB. The official Zaphod endorsement will have to go to Schultz because her work with the Biomedical corridor exemplifies the direction I want this city to go. But good on Harvell for actually participating in local politics, we can't have unchallenged seats every single election.

You ought to do a blog post on all this.

Personally I dislike Century Square. All it's streets are insular, it has parking on all sides. For a place that is ostensibly pedestrian friendly.  It looks like Sugarland Town Center.

I am not living in Houston so I can't really comment. This is just for fun, because that is what this site if for.

There is only one new place you can go with metro light rail that has not been really envisioned in any formal real life plan: Inner Northwest. I think in some alternate universe where I-10 did not completely consume the path left behind by the old MKT railroad, there could have been a very long DART-like line from Downtown to the Energy Corridor via the Heights, Memorial City, etc.

In another alternative universe, trains kept running on the set of tracks through the Heights and it was the line to the south that was discontinued instead, at least between the junction at the start of the hempstead highway to the west, and the other near Elysian in the east. Then you could have some kind of transit there.

Cool pic. Doesn't even look like Houston.

I've heard those are called pocket tracks before. Maybe I'm wrong.

The Broadway stop on the Denver Light Rail is laid out in a similar fashion. Their network is more complicated than the one in Houston though, and that stop was the temporary terminus of the first phase of the system back in the mid-1990s too.

I just noticed, there is now construction equipment on the old plaza tower site

What would a Japanese or Chinese person's perspective on this be? Also if it were some third world city with private minibuses, you know those guys would not hesitate to get back out ASAP.

It's kind of a flawed argument to only look at New York and compare it to Houston, and not take into consideration things like the government and public's level of preparedness for a disaster. From a rational standpoint, I think the solution is simple. A city creates a disaster plan where public transport operators determine the least vulnerable depot to move equipment and stockpiled fuel and then runs buses to strategic locations. Maybe temporarily loosen regulations for taxis?

Also in theory, a dense city should be able to repair utilities back to normal(if they are not left vulnerable, like NY's) because the damage should be less spread out. A suburb with overhead power lines is going to take a long time to restore electricity if downed trees on every block are the problem. In a city if a substation is blown out its a matter of fixing it and the power comes back on.

Just to keep this thread going...

Bulldozers Rip Through Albertsons, Making Room for "The Stack":

http://www.kbtx.com/...-164090986.html

User comments on the page suck as usual. Apparently building a high density student housing development across the street from the university is not a good idea?

No, it won't open until early 2013. They are basically done with the structure and exterior, but they still have to set up the inside.

With this large development has there been any additional news on txdot's plans for the Rock Prairie road/SH 6 overpass?

I just ate at the new Huntsville location. It was very good, I'd definitely eat there again.

It's a little different from Chicken Express as far as the rolls, the seasoning, how much you get in a meal, etc, so I can see it co-existing with the competition around town if they ever come back to Bryan-College Station.

A crane with a pile driver or drill of some kind(not a construction guy, lol) has been on the site for a while.

Wonder what that means? I imagine if we are in fact getting the tall building in the rendering it's foundation would be pretty robust compared to the slabs you see typical 3 story apartments go up on. Good news then, maybe

METRO's operating stats have indicated that local buses average 1 mph faster than light rail.

Doesn't that really depend on the routes in question? There are many bus lines and one operating rail line at the present time.

Obviously that's not much of an argument for anything. But yeah, if Metro said they were going to build proper BRT where the buses have their own lanes and nice stops with ticket machines, and the buses were electric, etc, then OK.

The only awkward thing about that area is the lack of connection between Memorial City and City Center. There's the I-10 frontage road, or you can drive through the neighborhood around the middle school.