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zaphod

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Everything posted by zaphod

  1. zaphod
    I would hope that as the residential population of downtown goes up maybe this side could get some kind of convenient grocery. I wonder if Aldi has ever tried an urban format.
  2. zaphod
    They are summoning the creature from the void with a sharpie.
  3. zaphod
    The building that was on the site has been torn down and they've chopped up the parking lot too, and its now an empty field surrounded by a fence. However there are still trees on the site.
  4. zaphod
    I was sad when I found out the Pita Pit on Texas closed I remember going to walk around Hastings, then going a few doors down to eat there. That shopping center is now very different.
  5. zaphod
    I like the brick, its a step up from the other 95% of strip malls that use hideous fake tan stucco.
  6. zaphod
    The things I've been reading about the coronavirus and its effect on work-from-home, hotels, retail, etc, sound apocalyptic for urban development, at least in the near term. In contrast, medical research labs and clinics inherently by their nature favor a physical presence of people and workers. And the people who work in these places tend to be well paid, and for various reasons they like to live reasonably close to where they work. And of course they go and eat and buy things nearby and visitors stay in hotels, etc. Seems like a development like this would be a slam dunk and a really safe bet during all that's going on right now, and I would think investors would be wanting to pull their money out of other projects with less certain futures and throw it behind stuff like this instead.
  7. zaphod
    Maybe they could also try curbs that stick out further, or circular concrete raised areas in intersections. Those would make driving through inconvenient and discourage through traffic as well.
  8. zaphod

    METRORail Red Line

    zaphod replied to ricco67's topic in Transit

    I think this is a pretty insightful observation. I can't really think of a light rail line that has a grade crossing with a fire station adjacent to it. In any case if it was really such a huge problem then the cost of relocating the fire station to an adjacent block couldn't be so difficult. You know maybe back in 2000 whenever they planned for the line they needed to be politically cautious and not ruffle feathers, so while it wouldn't be a genuine deal breaker they saw that as an issue? Well yeah that's what I am saying. I'd prefer the Sams Club shell to go away honestly. The garage could have other stuff mixed in, it could be the start of some kind of transit village. In my ideal world the Astro World site would be used for something cool and not something with a lot of wasteful surface parking.
  9. zaphod

    METRORail Red Line

    zaphod replied to ricco67's topic in Transit

    Some thoughts: 1. It might be easier to just not demolish the older alignment. Have a single LRV that goes to Dryden and back. They could also use the Smith Lands line for rodeo, football, etc. 2. Instead of an automated bus they could use a cheap mini bus similar to Metro Lift. It could be a community connector route. They'd keep the rail alignment for it to drive on. 3. Compare the long term cost of operating a transit service and maintaining current lot versus the cost of building parking garages somewhere else then selling the land. 4. Do an analysis of where the drivers who park at Smith Land come from. If they are coming from 610, then maybe expand the Fannin South Park and Ride and give everyone who parked at Smith Lands a special parking permit. This could be done by either A) leasing the parking on the old Astroworld site from the Rodeo people for a few years or B ) they buy and tear down that vacant Sams Club to the north of the existing lot and then expand the P&R out to the highway.
  10. zaphod

    METRORail Red Line

    zaphod replied to ricco67's topic in Transit

    As we all know, the Red Line hooks west and goes up Greenbriar where it splits in a Y with Fannin, and continues to Braeswood where it turns east and then turns again at the intersection with Fannin. There is one station in between at Smith Lands, which serves a giant parking lot and some apartments. As we all also know, TMC 3 is a massive development proposed east of Bertner between MD Anderson and Baylor. This is quite the walk from either the TMC transit center or from Smith Lands, which has no reasonable direct path. It means people who work at TMC 3 who might otherwise use the Red Line probably won't. WHAT IF we realigned the Red Line to just stick to Fannin, closing the detour onto Greenbriar, the sharp curves, and the station at Smith Lands? This is a shorter route(approx .7 miles vs .9 currently). This would allow a station to be built perhaps around the intersection of Fannin and St. Agnes(one of those side streets that goes to Bertner). Then within the recommended quarter-mile walking distance that most planners seem to agree is how far folks walk, you got MD Anderson and the western Bertner facing side of the TMC 3 complex. And its only a .3 mile walk to the heart of TMC3. Since the red line has more than one depot now, it wouldn't hurt to have to close the southern tail of the line and do a bus bridge for the few days it would take to join the track segments. If this was done, it would ensure even more jobs are within striking distance of Houston's highest ridership transit corridor. So what do ya'll think?
  11. zaphod
    Ah I see. That makes more sense.
  12. zaphod
    It looks like the residential portion above the podium is halfway done, so this is maybe 2/3 of the way to max height? It's got a lot of presence heading down I-10 now.
  13. zaphod
    I think tan/beige buildings do add warmth though, if they use a brick veneer or something. Market square tower is pretty decent looking. Too much white and blue and you get Austin's skyline, which can be kind of austere from certain angles and I mean in a not good way.
  14. zaphod
    I totally forgot about those Albertsons stores. I wasn't living in Houston at that time, I just remember seeing them sometimes when visiting family here. That explains the unusual design of a number of places around here.
  15. zaphod
    Maybe one approach would be to build a shear wall along both sides of the bayou's allowed corridor, and then dig down lower around the channel. Then it could meander within that area but then not get out from beyond that? I am always curious how deep that main channel actually is during drier periods. It could be quite deep at the centerline, but in some bayous on the west side of town it looks like a puddle at best. Without channelization I imagine it would be shallower, which could be problematic for rapid on demand drainage capacity if it turned into a swamp
  16. zaphod
    Looking at the Target upcoming stores website, this store is going to be 63,000 sq. feet. That's about right for how big grocery stores tend to be. Looking through their other coming soons, I noticed a pattern: There are a lot of tiny stores, about 15,000 square feet, which are in the bottom of mixed use developments. That's the size of a walgreens. I wonder how these are going to fare. Walmart tried this approach and then closed all of those stores later. There are some small-medium stores around 25,000 feet to 40,000 square feet being planned in various cities. I can't visualize what these look like. The stores that are the size of this one(63k) don't seem to have renderings but ones that are a little larger are consistent with the "city target" design that generally do have actual hard goods. EDIT: They opened a 50,000 square foot store in phoenix, here is a news article with interior views. Looks fairly normal, just smaller. Not bad. They are only building a handful of "big" traditional suburban Targets planned right now, it looks like Raleigh and Wilmington mostly, which are 114k or so sq feet. This is probably about how big the Sawyer store is if I had to guess.
  17. zaphod
    So about halfway up, now. I was thinking the other day how many decent sized companies we have HQ'd here which are not oil companies, and Crown Castle is a good example. It's also a good sign they chose a building like this instead of sprawling out in a low rise like you'd see in DFW.
  18. zaphod
    Aren't Safeways in other parts of the country usually pretty nice? They succeed in Northern California which must be really tough(high labor costs, unions, an affluent discerning clientele that probably wants to order everything for pickup, etc). Maybe there's something wrong with the expansion model they had or the division they grafted all the Houston stores onto. I went to a Safeway in Denver once and it was pretty nice inside. Albertsons in contrast tend to be moo, I've never seen a "fancy" Albertsons store in the vein of a large H-E-B or Kroger Marketplace, they are always small, windowless beige boxes from the 1970s. Albertsons-Safeway also owns United which is the dominant grocery chain in the Panhandle and those tend to be really great stores. I just have a thing for grocery diversity. I hate to see chains back out of an area. Its too bad they couldn't make it. Hopefully a few stores last a few more years.
  19. zaphod
    Carl's Jr was identical to Hardees, its the same chain operating with two different names due to historical reasons. As you probably noticed they didn't make it here. Hardees was good stuff back in the day. I lived in far south georgia near northern florida(Tallahasee was about 30 minutes away) for a while growing up and there were lots of Hardees down there. But something happened to the chain. I had it a few years ago travelling in the south and wasn't impressed.
  20. zaphod
    That area is kind of odd looking if you fly over it on Google Maps. A big empty gap in development in the middle of the city with a weird mix of ugly townhouse complexes with no yards facing it. Does anyone think in time it will fill in with conventional housing subdivisions?
  21. zaphod
    Now the lack of buildings on the other side of the curve is going to bother me. The rounded canyon of buildings looks so cool.
  22. zaphod
    I think this is going to end up looking nicer than what people had said earlier in this thread(5 years ago...). The location is suburban, so it really isn't a problem the way its laid out. At least its tall.
  23. zaphod
    I realize there is probably a reason why it wouldn't work, but I wish they would get rid of the concrete channel. But I'm the sure the bayou would naturally want to start eroding and forming bends.
  24. zaphod
    That's a big deal. What's Target's policy on having stores close together? I don't think the one on Sawyer would be under threat, but its only 2.5 miles away as the crow flies, similar to the ones at Uptown and by the Med Center. Do we know if this is going to be a conventional store or possibly an urban format(which are honestly like a fancier walgreens with some extra stuff than a real target) location such as the two in Austin? I would guess if anything that if this is a full sized store any Target in midtown would be a little one.
  25. zaphod
    I have a potential solution guys: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tees-48068866 Thinking what I'm thinking 😈
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