porTENT

What does the base look like? That's really the most important issue regarding downtown's urban fabric. It is a shame that this couldn't have been built another block over instead of wasting such a unique parcel on such a boring and cheap design. Hopefully this gets torn down in the long run and we get something unique relative to it's site like the Flatiron building in NY.

/wishful thinking

It looks like a composite manufactured stone and the stucco is EFIS. Nothing wrong with trying to fit in with Houston as we don't take kindly to architectural stand outs and will punish accordingly.

http://www.chron.com...ff/7206728.html

The developer, meanwhile, is pre-leasing another office building it plans to develop in Montrose.

"It's a boutique building in a unique market — one that's been largely underserved," Brinsden said.

Located at the northeast corner of Montrose Boulevard and the Southwest Freeway, the site currently houses a parking lot and a small house.

The new building would be 88,000 square feet in 12 stories.

^Thanks for the positive comments. A contextual thread is definitely in the works, I just need a little time to get some visually interesting case study examples together.

I was also in town for Des Cours research, hopefully my project will be ready for 2011.

You can thank law firm's like Mostyn for your rates going up. Most insurance companies are too cheap to properly defend themselves against lawsuits and try to quickly settle. In many cases the damages are mostly due to homeowner's neglect to properly maintain their homes &/or have little to nothing to do with real damage caused by natural acts. The insurance companies are literally push-overs and the plaintiff billboard's metastasize the scale of fraud.

Yeah, so how does that paradigm mesh with cap rates in 2010?

I am honestly am out of my depth here and am generally hoping your handle-sake of a niche market exists city-wide for this type of office space. Even if this particular project doesn't get off the ground, this site will likely spawn another project of similar height/size later in time.

There's shade along the north side of buildings, so stick to the south side of streets and you'll be fine. ...besides which, nobody of importance to an office lease was going to walk anywhere to begin with.

LOL,not trying to dog pile with the rest of the posters, but what time do you eat lunch?

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Another thing I was thinking in terms of the site is that it will close a cul-de-sac street, meaning less city maintenance and more so that the city will get more taxable property sqft'd in the exchange. I would take the next logical step by closing Woodrow Ave's T-interesection with Montrose, but realistically they will employ HPD to let office workers out. Highway access is a beautifully veiled cinch, with the Richmond exit off the Spur northbound and the Fannin exit off US59 southbound. I'm just glad Ewald didn't get to design this! J/K, Also if anyone's been to the site recently there's a nice quiet niche behind the art gallery with a lofty cantilevered concrete flat roof with 20' bamboo's underneath. I want to say Peter Zweig designed it.. my memory's a little fuzzy but the tactile nature of that space is worth checking out.

I can't wait till they declare the turbines "job" as done and eventually abort the top of this building in some heavy handed haircut job. That's Houston architecture. LOL @ building crowns as PR, seems like a narrow tightrope to walk.

@theNiche:

A Shepard/59 site would diminish the sexy allure the 59/Montrose site has from the auto-motorist's perspective. Imagine traveling down 59 and submerging as a tower rises over the freeway, that is architectural drama. Versus an exposed and oblique POV much like Greenway Plaza's towers. No drama, no value, and in effect blending in with Greenway and eastern ancillary developments.

City wide identity and desirability are the long term goals at play here (which explains the bldg's height & planar slenderness), and if catching onto pedestrian/street retail perceptual inertia in an upscale enclave while providing that enclave with a freeway barrier/visual distraction is what makes this site a shoe-in. Remember how area archipiles wanted to get Santiago Calatrava to design the Montrose bridge, but TXDOT turned a deaf ear? Houston has a long long history for being bad neighbors of those who would try something different, so in this case it makes sense to "get in where you fit in," considering it's contextual neighbors are much more affluent than say Whataburger. Your right that this would not appeal to the group-think of institutional investors, this project is more akin to the wild-catter developments of Houston's former glory days.

P.S. Not to mention mature oaks, hard to put a consensus valuation on shade in Houston. Shepard/59 = no shade.

Here's my map

Some pics from the map locations:

Victory Arch

United Methodist Church

Holy Name of Mary Church

Napoleon House

There was also some interesting MCM's in context:

Private Spaces in the Vieux Carre:

That's all..

I was in New Orleans last weekend and went to the St. Mary St. Wal-Mart in the Lower Garden District, although technically it was in the industrial waterfront. Place was packed. The area around it was blighted before and was perceivably still blighted but provides the poorer areas of Central City, the Treme, and anybody else in the city with affordable wares.

I guess the opposition should ask themselves If New Orleans can do it, why can't Houston?

http://www.austincon...d-addendum.html

But Donald Shoup makes another important point in The High Cost of Free Parking. Merely looking at current costs and prices understates the full impact of minimum parking requirements. MPRs have legacy costs. One legacy is that decades of free parking have artificially driven up the demand for driving and artificially depressed the demand for dense, walkable development. Parking lots increase the distance between businesses, which makes walking less practical, which in turn makes driving more attractive. Thus, the marginal value today of a parking spot is much higher than it would have been without decades of MPRs.

http://www.austincon...ons-matter.html

The "direct" test is hardly definitive. So the authors also ran an indirect test. They used fancy econometric techniques to estimate the marginal value of a parking spot for commercial properties in the suburban parts of Los Angeles County. In other words, they determined how much value the "last" parking spot adds to the sales price In a competitive market, developers should add parking until the value of that last spot equals the cost of building it. Developers who build parking at a loss are either very stupid or -- more likely -- doing it only because the city makes them do it.

It turns out that 88% of commercial properties in suburban Los Angeles have parking spots that cost more to build than they're worth. The percentages vary wildly by type of property, though. "Only" 80% of industrial properties have more parking than one would expect. But 99% of restaurants and gas stations -- 99% -- and 91% of shopping centers have more parking than they'd voluntarily build.

They keep the grass mowed & most residents use it as a dog park. Have you seen the other side of the Spur behind the Shipley's donuts?

It's a shame about the lack of affordable housing in Montrose but that's just the shadow of the beast.

Kinda makes for a decent green space to be honest. Those old apartments had squatters if i recall correctly.

What is that building you posted?

1111 Lincoln Rd, it's primarily a parking garage/mixed use building for an upscale commercial area similar to Highland Village in Houston.

I have my summer vacation coming up and my wife and I have booked an apartment on Bourbon St near the intersection at St. Ann St for a week. What suggestions would you fellow HAIFers recommend we that must see. Last time we had the place we drove around town in areas like Gentilly and the 9th Ward to see post Katrina progress, so this time around we're doing everything on bicycle. We'd like to dig deep into the historical well with Latrobes on the top of the list, so any suggestions are welcome, thanks in advance.

403 Royal St (architect Benjamin Latrobe, ca 1822)

Here's one for sale by Fed Nat'l Morgage.

Why would someone want to buy one of these properties? Does individual ownership of each condo make it difficult to condemn the entire property? Why would the existing owners hold onto something like this and for how long?

Go here: http://www.youtube.c...h?v=9EAc4xci64A

Are you planning on driving?

Ironically, academic cost-benefit analysis that would convert to a dollar equivalent such a breadth of possible impacts is normally done on the basis of theories developed by Vilfredo Pareto, an ardent socialist whose support of fascism in Italy led Karl Popper to describe him as the "Theoretician of Totalitarianism".

To the extent that government (or the public at large) must evaluate the effect of various policies or projects, it should endeavor to identify and quantify all possible human impacts that could be bestowed (or inflicted) upon its citizens. And people may have different ideas about how much involvement the government should have on the private lives of citizens, but most of us can probably agree that an attempt should be made to weigh easily observable material transactions alongside or against human transactions. And to that end, there has to be a conversion factor so as to make the comparisons like-to-like. It can be done.

http://www.ara-pacis-museum.com/

This is a very favorable angle I'll admit but I reference this particular building because this museum represents a deliberate echo of that era's fascist architecture machine. The museum was also reportedly panned by both critics and residents but I think it will age well in context to Vittorio Ballio's nearby trendsetters.

(from wikipedia, 1937)

Granted, Meier's design is just as heavy handed as it's predecessor it is a conservative design by keeping the scale of it's predecessor. More importantly and to the point of all this, is that this is the architectural product from that era's outlook on lives. So in a way the critique of late Internationalism (like that of the Pennzoil towers or Meier's entire projects list) is not so much it's sterility but the image of distant power that strikes any casual observer or Ebert as alien in contrast to his non-ADA compliant churches rich in detailed ornamentation. People see the architecture of old world as it is expressed in the new world, or as tourists/voyers. It's an image or mental construct that has been tamed by an unending machine of economy to where things are today, style wise. So much that the image of "Rome in Houston" or "Houston in Rome" has become the common transaction of many new builds. However, I would not put it above recognition that Attica could theoretically live/work in an architecturally interesting home/office of timeless preservation representing not only the parlance of our era but also in his own terms it's "utility."

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I am more convinced that I am fortunate for not being part of a society that builds very many memorable things.

That's funny because PVDF's aren't going anywhere's much like the proverb of the oak tree and the blade of grass during a hurricane.

There a difference between an interaction and a transaction.

^

Exactly, everyone draws a moral line in the sand. To equate and then leverage domestic experiences as commodities, inherently will devalue such human phenomena. A value judgement that only the morally debased would traverse, however are we to believe this is where capitalism is trending our social mores towards? What is the end game then? I'm thinking something along the lines of the sci-fi movie, Surrogates, where everyone buys and sells virtual experiences.

That's an expensive plan. It would require them to acquire the apartment complex on Heights blvd, demolish it, extend Koehler St, & then create a new block by cutting the newly acquired parcels with an avenue. Terminating the axis at the store. Apparently also according to the conceptual site plan posted above, the metal warehouses in the northwest corner of the site are going to remain as existing. I suppose if you were bored enough you could scale a transposition of his plan over an ortho google map.

Go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EAc4xci64A