Jump to content

s3mh

Full Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    2,145

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    13

 Content Type 

Everything posted by s3mh

  1. s3mh
    This was a bakery long ago, but was being used as a warehouse up until about two years ago. The owner cleaned it out and was supposedly going to lease it to a couple from Round Top who were going to open a cafe and antique shop. Someone put in new windows, but then everything stopped and nothing happened for over a year. A few months ago a new "for lease" sign went up. People who inquired with the owner did not get much of a response. General impression was that the owner was not very motivated to do anything with the property. There has been a little activity recently, but it looks like they are just using part of the property to store stuff. So, this property and the Happy All Cafe remain enigmas of underdeveloped Heights commercial property.
  2. s3mh
    Having a different LLCs for each real estate development is standard and very sound practice. If one project fails, it does not affect the others. Fisher cross collateralized his projects. That effectively negates the liability protection of the different LLCs.
  3. s3mh
    Cause No. 2016-64847, KAVAC Holding Company, LLC v. Paull Partners, LLC et al. Look it up on the Harris County District Clerk's website. Summary: cross collateralized loans, cash crunch, foreclosure, injunction, bankruptcy removal and remand, and enough defendants to field a football team. One. Hot. Mess.
  4. s3mh
    Richard Knight is taking over Harold's in the Heights. I liked Chef Ware, but thought that he was phoning it in the past year or two. The menu was a bit watered down (no Beaufort stew) and a little like a high end Luby's. Richard Knight is the best and deserves a good break after the clowns running Treadsack submarined Hunky Dory. http://houston.culturemap.com/news/restaurants-bars/03-01-18-harolds-heights-new-chef-richard-knight-feast-hunky-dory-alli-jarrett/#slide=0
  5. s3mh
    Neighbors tried to maintain a feral cat colony over there. A lot of the cats have been caught and fixed and people were leaving out food. But I think some other neighbors were having problems with the cats and got BARC to shut it down.
  6. s3mh
    Just like how Walmart and other Katyville I-10 developments are being underbuilt on valuable land, right?
  7. s3mh
    You do not appreciate historic architecture. If you did, you would want to preserve it. That is the BS conservative argument that you can appreciate something but let free markets ravage it at the same time. "I appreciate classical music, but we shouldn't have public radio to actually make it accessible to people" Same logic. I appreciate historic architecture, but so what if it all gets torn down. You aren't subsidizing anything. Your taxes are the same whether people in a historic district get a tax abatement or not. If you live outside a historic district, you do not have the burden of getting a COA. If you live in the district, you do and it only makes sense to give those people a very small tax benefit to offset the burdens of complying with the ordinance.
  8. s3mh
    The abatement for the historic districts were put in place to compensate people for the extra time, trouble and money it takes to restore a historic building versus tearing down and building new. It has a direct relationship to the burden imposed by the ordinance. I can see how council is raising their eyebrows because property values have shot through the roof since the ordinance passed and there is no longer an argument to be made that there needs to be an incentive to get people to restore old homes. But for those of use who bought in when prices started with a 2 and can barely budget a very modest addition/renovation, the tax abatement is still needed. It is only fair to keep it in place for the old timers (which in Houston time is people who moved in before 2010) The money for luxury condos and apartments is just a pure wealth transfer. The rest of the 380 program is even worse. As for your inability to appreciate historic architecture, you will just have to deal with that on your own.
  9. s3mh
    The city gave developers $15k per unit tax abatement to build luxury apartments and condos downtown and now they are all flustered about giving a few pennies back to people who do historic renovations.
  10. s3mh
    Moku Bar (poke bowl place in Conservatory downtown) is opening somewhere on White Oak.
  11. s3mh
    https://houston.eater.com/2018/1/23/16924532/ripe-cuisine-food-truck-permanent-location My vegetarian wife will go nuts for this. I guess this is needed to balance out the food karma of Hugs and Donuts, Pinkerton, Lee's Fried Chicken and other belly busting delights in the neighborhood.
  12. s3mh
    Go to 19th St. on a Saturday afternoon and count the number of people out walking between Bliss and Carter & Cooley and compare with the number of people walking along the strip malls that straddle Nicholson on the south side of 19th. There is no comparison.
  13. s3mh
    There is more to "walkability" than "is it close enough to my house". Walkability is also a question of whether a street lends itself to people parking in one spot and visiting multiple shops/restaurants. If I park at Torchy's to get lunch and also need to get a gift at Big Blue Whale, I would not think twice about walking down there along 19th street. It is fun to window shop and people watch to see who is out and about. But, if I needed to get something at Penzey's, I would probably just drive over a two blocks because there is nothing interesting about walking along the sidewalk in front of a strip mall. So, on a retail corridor like 11th or White Oak, the more you put retail fronting the street, the more likely you are going to have people want to walk up and down the street and visit multiple shops and restaurants. The more it is just parking lots in front of strip centers, the more likely it is that people will just park where they need to shop and move on.
  14. s3mh
    What is going on with this thing? There is a big pile of trash in front of the building next to a crane/lift with the front window punched out. It seemed like for weeks nothing was happening, but I have recently seen a handful of workers go up into the parking garage in the building.
  15. s3mh
    It will be parking. They tried to do something with the house, but gave up when they ran into too many structural issues. The biggest problem was getting to the side of the building that was just a few inches from the main building. They would have had to jack the house up, move it over a few feet and then move it back after it was done.
  16. s3mh
    Maison Pucha is open for dinner. Menu is mostly French classics. We will see whether the jinx can be broken.
  17. s3mh
    Might be related to Taqueria Barba food truck.
  18. s3mh
    Snooze and Golden Bagels and Coffee are pretty much built out and are staffing up.
  19. s3mh
    Oh, get off your little soap box already. There are two restaurants (Local Foods and a wine bar) that have not opened yet. And they are also doing a "phase II" across the street where the scooter store and Chic Warehouse used to be. So, it will probably just be a matter of time before the nextdoor threads start complaining about the piles of cars overflowing the lot once Local Foods and the wine bar are open.
  20. s3mh
    Well. Didn't see that one coming. There will be a nice pile of dead birds at the base of the big window. HVAC and sound proofing will also be interesting. And there will be a heckuva glare in the winter months. But why not. I always liked how Mark's repurposed the church except that there were no real windows (I guess back when it first opened you really did not want to see what was happening on Westheimer). So, this could really be great if they can catch a really top notch restaurant tenant. Might be a little over the top for another Le Peep.
  21. s3mh
    People were saying a few years ago that the lumber yard and Matheson Gas were on the verge of selling so they could move out to the beltway for cheaper dirt. I guess there is still enough value in being centrally located or they are just waiting for a really big check.
  22. s3mh
    The owner of the strip center that houses Slowpokes is supposed to be doing something on the adjacent property. That caused a ruckus over plans to knock down trees and add parking by Slowpokes. Is this development in addition to that or the same thing? There is already site prep going on over there, but I cannot tell whether it is two different developments or one big one.
  23. s3mh
    Happy Fatz is closing. The owners are going to open a restaurant in Canyon Lake.
  24. s3mh
    http://www.chron.com/entertainment/alison-cook/article/Melange-Creperie-to-open-long-awaited-12256136.php?ipid=happening It is crepe time! October 16 is opening day.
  25. s3mh
    I am no fan of the New Orleans-ification of this building, but have to admit that the work they did looks to be pretty high quality. This project could have been another Houston wrap with hats multifamily apartment complex. So, keeping the original building and putting in town homes on the neighboring lots was as good a result as could be expected.
×
×
  • Create New...