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Walmart is very well know as one of the most penny pinching companies in the world. They would not send a $5 gift card out unless they were very serious about getting the recipient to become a shopper at the new Silber store. Add that to the fact that many getting the gift cards live way closer to the Heights location, and Walmart's business strategy is pretty clear. They want to saturate the Houston market and try to beat the competition not by having the best products at the best price (Target won recent price comparisons promiting a "we'll match competitors" campaign) or by having the better shopping experience (Walmart has lost customers to Dollar stores because they are much easier to get in and out of for purchases of weekly staples than Walmart), but by simply being everywhere. The Target at Sawyer will eventually be surrounded by four Walmarts (counting the proposed Wayside location). Even if Target at Sawyer beats the pants off Walmart on Yale, they will lose the war because Walmart will have a greater market share simply by having so many stores. Walmart has previously used its largesse to increase its profits on the supply side and is doing the same on the demand side.

Novelty may be the reason it thrives. You cannot get most of what they are selling anywhere else, except for the once a week farmer's markets. And the big opening has not been as much a reflection of novelty as it has been familiarity. Many in the growing Houston locavore movement (and foodies alike) are very familiar with what is inside Revival Market from seeing the same stuff at farmers markets for a few years. But, now, you do not have a four hour window each week to pick up goodies from Revival Market, Slow Dough, gunderman, etc. So, Revival Market is starting with more than just novelty customers. They already have a loyal base.

Here is a great example of my point. This post will get a free pass because it takes a swing at the people in the Heights who are against the Walmart. But, there is absolutely no evidence of a single upscale restaurant even being interested in this development. Do I now get to call this person a liar? No. Of course not. It is just speculation. We all do this, but I am not allowed to because I do not fit in with the little club of pro-walmart/anti-preservation people. In fact, I initially posted what was simply a wise crack about the walmart having a fast food restaurant and everyone has picked that to pieces. Why? Not because they care about whether it is actually true whether the Walmart will have a fast food restaurant. It is because they want to shout down anyone who opposes the Walmart, just the same way anyone who opposes the preservation ordinance gets shouted down in that thread.

So, you get to call me wrong 99.9% of the time without citing a single example and at the same time require me to substantiate everything I say? That is nothing more than crying "liar liar pants on fire" in the school yard. And I do not ignore. I refuse to beat a dead horse. There is a time to argue and a time to move on. If you have interpreted my ability to move on as a concession that I am wrong, you are very wrong. And the comment on yard signs was coming from someone holding himself out to be an attorney who made numerous interpretations of the ordinance that were beyond fantasy. He can't back track by claiming that he was not serious.

I am not wrong more often than not. I just take a point of view that is contrary to the prevailing pro-developer/anti-preservation view that is prevalent on this message board. Thus, plenty of people say things that are completely wrong (HAHC being able to control political content of yard signs--actual post in Historic Ordinance thread) and get a pass. But, I make a reasonable argument/observation (Bungalows in good condition at a certain price point sell quickly in the Heights) based on my personal experience of being in the market for over two years (and friends being in the market for another year beyond that), and I get a pile of responses because I do not share the anti-preservation view. Just because my arguments and observations start a debate doesn't mean that they are invalid. I do not have to post links to every sale of a bungalow in the Heights just because someone knows of an overpriced bungalow with a horrible rennovation that won't move. And I do not have to see a link to the bungalow that won't move and won't call that person a liar for not posting one because it is just an argument on a message board. Many who are pro-preservation and/or anti-Walmart have been bullied off this message board by people who pick apart their posts and call them all kinds of names. Debate is what makes message boards interesting. I am all for that. But discounting opposing viewpoints as being invalid because they do not share the prevailing bias is lame.

Above I was referring to fast food going inside the Walmart, not on the pads. But their will be fast food on the pads too. As for your objection to everything I say as lacking verification, I would respond that you shouldn't accuse someone of being a liar unless you are willing to do your own work. If you get on the internet (which by posting on here you concede that you can do so), you will find things like this: http://www.washingtonheightsdistrict.com/site_plan.html AH HA!!! Yes, it shows a pad designated for fast food. So much for the upscale development. And don't start a bunch of crud parsing the term "fast food" as meaning anything with counter service, like Paulies or Cafe Express. We all know that this development is going get the usual strip mall crud thanks to the presence of Walmart. So, next time you call someone a liar, be prepared to back it up, or shut up. Burden is on you, not me. I am free to say what I want. Oh, and if you keep clicking around that website thingamajig you will also find the list of tenants under "retailers". You will see that only Walmart comes up. Sure, they may be waiting for a big announcement where they proudly tell residents that they will be even closer to a Sally Beauty Supply, a Payless Shoes, and Chick-fil-A than ever before. But right now, they don't have squat up on their website.

If you do not see the irony of a commercial leasing agent talking about bringing chef driven restaurants to a strip center that includes a Walmart, you are dripping with pro-Walmart bias that pales in comparison to the worst of the anti-Walmart bias. In the article, the developers talked up the development as being an upscale extension of the restaurant district in the Washington Corridor. Eight months later, they have yet to announce a single tenant, save Walmart. Whether this was PR talk to try to calm the rage in the Heights over the development or whether these people are actually dumb enough to think that Brian Caswell or Monica Pope would be interested in a pres de Walmart concept is debatable. But to think that this development will fill up with tenants any time soon, if ever, is pretty funny. Even with all of the traffic at the Sawyer Target, there are still over a half dozen pads that have yet to be leased. Granted the Yale location is more attractive for leasing, but if you include the neighboring Orr development, you have a ton of sq footage to fill in a development that has pissed off a lot of people in the area. There are only so many Walmart tag a long tenants out there, and not enough to fill up both Ainbinder's pads and Orr's.

Sorry to trip you up with a bit of an inside joke. The leasing agent for the rest of the development (Moody Rambin/Lance Gilliam) told a reporter that he was hoping to fill the pads at the Walmart development with boutiques and (exact words) "chef driven restaurants". Thus, I made a joke when I commented that the fast food restaurant at Walmart was not chef driven. --> . . o That is an emoticon I just invented to replicate the gesture of waiving one's hand over one's head to symbolize a joke that went over someone's head.

Take out the fancy booze, cheese, international and organic food at the W11/Shep Kroger, as well as what you mentioned, and the two stores are probably pretty close in terms of shelf space for groceries. I cannot recall whether Walmart was going to offer a full service butcher or seafood. They sometimes leave that out of supercenters.

Walmart will have @44k sq ft of full service grocery and a total sq ft of 152k sq ft. The grocery is bigger than a typical whole foods, but a bit more than half the size of the giant Kroger on W11 and Shep (@80k sq ft). The term "supercenter" has been used by Walmart to mean full service grocery store combined with all the consumer goods stuff. The Walmart on Yale will also have a fast food restaurant (not chef driven) and a garden center. It will not have a service station or tire & lube. As the article above mentions, Walmart has been building supercenters closer to 150k than the 200k they have built in the burbs in the 1990s and early 2000s. Walmart is spending a lot of money to remodel stores and is buildng smaller supercenters to make them feel less like a warehouse and more user friendly (like shelves that you can see over). But, if names mean anything, the Yale Walmart is very much a supercenter.

Don't count out Bungalow Revival. Not everything they do is high-end. And it may be worth a few extra bucks to go with them. They have really mastered the art of the seamless addition by using reclaimed flooring and closely matching trim and design of the existing bungalow. I am pretty sure these guys worked on my house before I bought it: http://www.morserenovationsandcustomhomes.com. They know there way around old bungalows but are not quite the artisans that the Bungalow Revival guys are. They do a good job of blending modern updates into old bungalows. Definitely worth giving them a ring.

Stick and stones. For every arrow I have shot, twenty have been shot back at me. I can take it. But if you think that you have made a point by calling me out for my tone, then you obviously are not reading all the posts, particularly your own where you rudely referred to me as "chicky". But, I don't mind. It just reminds me that I am right and you are wrong. As for your venture into constitutional law, it is well settled law that historic preservation is a valid exercise of government's police powers. The only issue is whether the ordinance defeats the reasonable investment backed expectations of property owners. And the government is not the insurer of every property owner's investment. Just because you won't be able to make as much selling to someone who will demolish your bungalow than to someone who will remodel does not mean you have suffered a constitutional taking. Anyone who bought while the ordinance was in effect assumed the risk that the ordinance could be revised to become more restrictive. They will have a very, very difficult time trying to show a taking. And anyone who bought before the ordinance will have seen such an appreciation in their property value that they will still make plenty of money selling. And as much as you want to deny it, the reality is that the changes to the historic ordinance were 100% driven by the neighborhood. Long before the realtors put up their website, the preservationist had been organizing and meeting with city officials about the failure of the 90 day waiver. Our elected officials agreed with them and revised the ordinance by a vote of 11-3, even after the realtors papered the neighborhood with fliers and dropped blue signs on every vacant lot they could find.

No. It is very simple. A majority of the property owners formed a historic district pursuant to a historic ORDINANCE passed by our democratically elected city council. By forming a historic district, residents came under the rules set forth in the historic ORDINANCE. An ORDINANCE can be changed at anytime by a majority vote of city council. City council did just that. They revised the historic ORDINANCE because it failed to accomplish what it was intended to do. The anti-preservationists wanted to have an opportunity to reject the revised ORDINANCE. They were given an unprecedented opportunity to veto the actions of our democratically elected city officials. All they had to do was get a majority to return the surveys. THEY FAILED. Instead of moving on with life, they are now claiming that it is not enough that they had the unprecedented opportunity to veto the actions of city council, they want to effectively rewrite the city charter to require a ratification process of any city action that affects a homeowner's property rights. If at first you don't succeed, change the rules. Meanwhile, back in reality, HAHC is working just fine. New construction is being approved. Rennovations are getting approved and moving along. The cricisms of the ordinance are all about what it could be in some imaginary world based on hypothetical interpretations that stretch the plain langauge of the ordinance beyond its logical limits. The real motive for opposing the ordinance was never palatable to anyone in the Heights. No one could put up a yard sign that said "Tear down and new construction=double commissions for realtors versus rennovations" and get any support. So, anti-preservationists went about pouring through the ordinance and coming up with a bunch of "what ifs" to try to scare people into joining their cause. But they FAILED. They could not even get half the amount of support they needed to reject the ordinance. And now, they want different rules because they could not win at the rules they were given. If the ordinance was really as bad as they said, people in the Heights would have canned it by way more than 51%. But we aren't dumb. We could easily see through the pretextual arguments and didn't support the repeal campaign. The result is that everything is going to be just fine in the Heights.

Lame, lame, lame. What in the world would let you take the logical leap that my reference to "anti-preservation" was anything other than historic homes in the Houston Heights? You don't refute someone's argument by taking their argument completely out of context and beyond all logical limits in order to manufacture a point. It is plainly obvious that I am taking issue with the blue sign people who claim to be pro-preservation but anti-ordinance. As evidenced by many of the posts in this thread bashing historic preservation in the Heights, I have more than enough evidence to call out the claim that these people are just anti-ordinance. If they had problems with the ordinance, they would have worked with the preservation coalition to craft a better ordinance. But from the get go, it was about trying to kill off the districts and not about inventing a better mouse trap. The anti-preservationists were even given the opportunity to kill of the districts and failed miserably, for the very reason I call them anti-preservationists--it was clear to everyone in the Heights that their goal was NOT preservation.

No, anti-preservation is accurate. This thread alone is full of posts bashing on bungalows as not being deserving of preservation because they are too small for modern families and have no architectural value because they are out of a Sears catalog. Then there are the arguments about diversity of housing being something that is better for the Heights than preserving historic structures. And tons of talk about how new construction in the Heights is the reason the Heights has been successful instead of the work of preservationists. The argument that people who are anti-ordinance are actually pro-preservation is based on the fake argument that deed restrictions are all you need to preserve the historic character of the Heights. That is like saying that regulating emmissions from the ship channel is a bad way to control air pollution in Houston because people who want clean air should just drive less and use fewer petroleum products. And as I have said numerous times, if the people who were against the ordinance were really for preservation, they would have come forward with ways to make a better revised ordinance rather than sending fliers out trying to kill off the historic districts altogether. The fact of the matter is that there is nothing extreme about the ordinance. There is no great imposition on property rights. People are still building in the Heights. People are still selling their homes for a nice profit in the Heights (although there is a bit of a glut of high-end overbuilt houses). People are still rennovating their housing in the Heights. Thus, the anti-preservationists are forced to make outlandish claims about due process and constitutional law, and find themselves in the company of CM Jones and her extremely ignorant Gestappo comment.

Here is some hysterical language: http://blogs.chron.com/houstonpolitics/2011/03/the_gestapo_at_city_hall.html Maybe CM Jones will be the anti-preservationist candidate for mayor.

The first revision to the ordinance had no change in the language about maintenance/repairs etc. But you all ran around claiming that the City would be able to control paint color, HVAC, and even content of political yard signs under the revised ordinance. This was not based on anything the City had ever done in the past, but pure speculation on reading the ordinance in a vacuum. So there was a case where the law had been practiced, and the anti-preservation people ignored the practice to try to scare people into believing that there was some intent on the part of the City that did not exist. This was largely the reason the anti-preservationists could barely get half the needed votes to do away with the historic districts. They had no good argument for allowing builders to run wild in the Heights and had to resort to scare tactics to try to fool people into believing that the ordinance would do all kinds of things it would not do. As a result, a big opportunity was lost to work together to create a better ordinance. A fast track procedure for minor changes would have been a great idea. But issues like that never came up because the vast majority of the dialog with the City was either all in or all out. As noted above, the HAHC is perfectly reasonable. They have approved three new construction projects in the Heights in the past two sessions (two were 3500 sq ft houses). While lot value for a neglected bungalow will go down, the value of an empty lot looks to be going up ($320k asking price for a lot in the Heights East--probably 40-50k too high, but who knows). In the short run, the building boom in the historic districts will slow a bit as the McVic builders flee to the non-district areas. But that is good for the Heights too. Areas north of 20th and on the periphery of the districts will see more development than they would have without the ordinance. Inside the districts, there will never again be the horrific contemporary odd balls, monsterous fake New Orleans junk packed 4 to a 2 home lot and cruddy, oddball rennovations (closed in porches, goofy circular windows and other oddities that wreck the character of historic homes). The Heights will be even better than ever under the Historic Ordinance. People looking to buy won't have to worry about what might go up next door anymore. People looking to rennovate won't have to worry about ending up with lot value after being surrounded by McVics. Crow all you want about how Eastwood is now better than the Heights because of the Historic Ordinance. Or about how the Heights are "stagnating" because someone thinks they can still get lot value (just saw a great bungalow on Columbia sell within a week of listing--some stagnation). Just like the claims about paint color and HVACs, the reality is nothing like what the anti-preservationists will ever be able to recognize.

So, then the standard is that if you are blindly pro-Walmart/anti-preservation, you get to say whatever you want and cannot be called out on it by people holding a contrary opinion. But, if you are against Walmart and pro-preservation, you have to provide credentials, citations to authority with every factual reference and so on. Furthermore, the credentials thing is just a dodge. The fact of the matter is that I am right about the traffic impact process under chap 15 of the City of Houston Design Manual. Go read it and tell me I am wrong instead of playing credential games. If the guy is wrong, I will call him out on it. Everyone else has extended the same courtesy to me. I can take it. And I will dish it out. It is an internet message board. It is only interesting if people have different views. If you want to be on a message board where everyone agrees with you and never questions what you say, go to Foxnews and crow on about the liberal devils. But if you are going to post on here, prove me wrong if you want to. But do so with facts and real arguments based on logic. "We think you were wrong about ___, therefore you are always wrong" doesn't cut it. "Why should we have to be right if you don't show your credentials" doesn't cut it. In fact, you all are so jacked up that you actually question actual pictorial evidence of a load zone for a bridge. Come on. You all can do better than that. Or can you?

The steel mill brought in raw materials via the rail spur. Trucks came in light and went out heavy. The steel mill always sent trucks down Koehler and stayed off the Yale St. bridge. Trucks for Walmart will generally come in from the east from Walmart's massive Baytown facility. The direct route will be down Yale. There was even talk from Walmart about limiting truck deliveries to Yale to avoid cutting through neighborhoods. The weight limitation sign has been knocked over and is not visible from the street. Plus, if a truck turns down Yale and sees the sign, it is pretty much impossible to back up in the middle of the Yale I-10 feeder intersection to make a correction. As for your Hummer example, that is not how it works. The gross vehicle weight is the maximum amount of weight a single vehicle can safely assert on bridge supports as it passes over the bridge. It is not the maximum amount of weight the bridge can hold. Lastly, if you trust Walmart truck drivers to stay on their proscribed route, that is your problem.

You obviously know nothing about developing real estate in the City of Houston. Traffic impact analysis and mitigation requirements are pre-requisites for permitting. While you may be right that the best data will come after construction begins, traffic engineers operate in a very unrealistic world of traffic counts set by their engineering manual (which severely underrepresent Walmart traffic in an urban area) and projections done using modeling software (as well as some good old fashion guess work when it comes to projecting the feeder traffic) because their work must be complete before the site plans go in for approval. The City doesn't just let people build and deal with the traffic later. The traffic issues are supposed to be resolved (on a planning level) prior to permit approval. Of course when the City sits around and pees in its pants at the thought of another Ashby lawsuit, the traffic impact process may as well not exist at all.

You do understand that the traffic counts will be a moot point once they start to build? We are actually on the same page but come out very different ways on this. The traffic study clearly shows the feeder road ruining traffic conditions. You take the tear drop in a salted sea approach and give the developer a free pass to make a bad situation worse (which is not what the design manual requires). My point has always been that the existing traffic infrastructure is insufficient for a Walmart supercenter. The traffic study agrees. Thus, they are spending millions (of our tax dollars) to attempt to mitigate the additional traffic. So, the developer has admitted that the traffic impact of the Walmart development is significant and is spending millions (of our tax dollars) to try to make it work. So, there is no debate whether the Walmart development will worsen traffic on existing infrastructure. The developer's own traffic engineer admits that. The issue is whether the mitigation proposed is sufficient (it is not) and whether tax payers should have to pay for something the developer would normally be required to pay for, and, in this case, has said that he would pay for. If you look at the proposed mitigation, it is all for the development and virtually nothing for the community. All they do for the I-10/Yale intersection is add a little right turn lane. Yet, they are willing to put in a dedicated left turn lane to the development by widening Yale between Koehler and the grade separation. If they can do that with our tax dollars, they can certainly afford to add a dedicated left turn lane at the Yale/I-10 intersection to keep Yale from effectively becoming a one lane road at I-10 if someone tries to make a left hand turn. But, they don't. If you are ok with that, that is fine. I am not and am going to pound on the City until they do something about it. You can thank me later.

That is exactly the dodge Ainbinder's traffic engineers are trying to use. But even they recognize and take responsibility for mitigation needed as a result of the additional 16,000 car trips attributable to the development (their numbers, not mine). Since you all won't believe anything I say because I dare to speak against the conventional pro-developer/builder wisdom, I will let Kuffner do the arguing (this time): http://offthekuff.com/wp/?p=34179

1. Marksmu said in a post that he thought the ordinance was broad enough that it could give HAHC the power to regulate what political signs you could put in your yard. This was back when anti-preservationists were telling everyone that HAHC would tell them what paint color they could use and regulate the kind and placement of HVAC systems when they were trying to scare everyone into supporting their cause. 2. HEB did not walk away. HEB was ready to close on a deal with the developer, but Walmart stepped in at the last minute and offered to buy the land at a ridiculous price that HEB could not beat. But for Walmart, HEB would be the anchor tenant. They were ready willing and able to open a store, but do not have the corporate largesse of Walmart to be able to operate at a loss just to dillute their competitor's market share (Now who is playing fast and loose with the facts) 3. It is not 1950. But it also isn't 1980. Suburban strip malls and big box stores are designed for the suburbs where there is plenty of land to build wide roads and large parking lots. With the addition of the feeder road, Yale will effectively become a one lane street at I-10 because of the need for dedicated turn lanes. This is not where you put high traffic big box strip centers. This is 2010. Mixed use developments have been proven to generate significantly more tax revenue that single story strip centers, mitigate traffic impacts by not having over the top supercenters that attract consumers from far beyond the neighborhood and lift up neighboring property values, spurring further development in the surrounding neighborhood. Walmart will just bust the streets with traffic, be a wash in terms of tax dollars for at least ten years thanks to the 380 agreement and crush further development in the immediate neighborhood (people are already putting their homes on the market). I don't have to be an expert on anything to know that someone is wrong when they put out a whopper like attorney's fees and expenses being bifurcated in med mal cases. Anyone who read the newspaper during the tort reform debate would have understood that the main argument against tort reform was that it would make it economically impossible to bring all but the most extraordinary medmal cases due to the expenses and attorney's fees that are taken out of a plaintiff's recovery. You can attack me and call me names all day, but that won't make me go away. The anti-preservationists tried to turn the historic ordinance thread into their own little discussion group. Same for the pro-walmart folks. Sorry, but this is a public forum. If you do not want to hear opposing viewpoints, go hang out on the anti-preservationist facebook page.

You don't need to look up the fact that you can't recover attorney's fees and expert fees in med mal cases from defendants to make me happy. You need to do that to save your own credibility. You have claimed to be an attorney on this site and used that to get an audience about the historic ordinance. Yet, you then claim that the HAHC will be able to tell you what political signs you can put in people's yard (constitu . . .). You attack the valid criticism of medmal reform on the grounds that attorney's fees and expert fees do not come out of the plaintiff's recovery. But you refuse to back it up when challenged on the grounds that the person challenging you doesn't have credibility. If you want people to believe anything you have to say, and they shouldn't, you can either come clean and admit that you just made a guess and were wrong. Otherwise, it is clear that you do not care whether you are right or wrong and cannot be trusted 100% of the time. And you did nothing other than strawman an argument on intentional torts. I never said it was impossible to recover from doctors who commit intentional torts. I just said that doctors are human and are not some special species of the human race. I gave real examples of some very human wrongdoing that doctors have committed over the years.

No, sorry. It doesn't work that way. If you are going to get into arguments, you have to back them. You can't just cry "you are always wrong, therefore I must be right that attorney's fees are recovered from defendants in medical malpractice cases and don't have to prove it." And why is it you don't know enough about it to prove me wrong, but know enough to post about it in the first place. Can't have it both ways. Face it. You were completely wrong about attorney's fees in medmal cases. Just like everything else, you have no trouble pretending to be an authority on legal matters but just start calling people names when you go too far and can't back it up. Take a look at Tex. Civ Prac and Rem Code 38.001. Start there and let me know when you find the part about bifurcating attorney's fees and damages (hint: courts bifurcate the issue of punitive damages--might want to admit you mistakenly thought the same for attorney's fees).