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19 hours ago, Fortune said:

How does this work? How is this enforceable? 

Probably need to ask a real estate attorney about the rule against perpetuities.  

Looking at old maps and google earth, it looks like much of Timbergrove was just undeveloped flood plain up until it was cleared to build homes.  The neighborhood was developed in conjunction with the White Oak Bayou channelization projection.  So, pre-channelization of the bayou, the land was probably too prone to flooding to farm.  

Is this the building with the mod-ish diamond trim around the top of the building or another spot?  Seems a bit odd to rip out Michael Hsu's design instead of working with it.    

I thought 11th and Heights would be a problem especially when the lanes were first changed and the signage was a bit improvised.  But now it actually flows better because right turn traffic on Heights NB and SB does not hold up traffic going straight when waiting for a pedestrian to cross.  And you can cross Heights on the trail on foot without having to worry about traffic on Heights turning left.  Most everyone is respecting the left turn restrictions.

Crossing 11th street is so much easier that it is not hyperbole to say that the changes will save lives.  My kids used to be afraid of crossing 11th street on bikes.  Now, I would not have any problem letting them cross on their own.  The only traffic snarl I have encountered is at 11th and Shep.  I had to wait out two cycles on the light at 11th WB to get through at around 6pm.  But a couple of days later, I went through at about the same time and there was no traffic.  

29 minutes ago, J Money said:

I wasn't a fan of them tearing down that house when there's 3 large parking lots adjacent. You'd think they could negotiate some sort of parking agreement with the owners of those lots. 

Or the garage at the medical building on 20th, which is never more than half full.  And they could make it valet parking.  

I think this is actually an elaborate setup.  They are going to get their variance denied and then announce that they are partnering with Unitronics to build a 9 story automated parking garage (and whatever happened to the one that was supposed to be built on White Oak?).  

Also, the redesign of the hotel is lame.  It is now 5 stories instead of 4 and is more boxy.  I actually kind of liked how the original design had a big patio fronting 20th st. with the hotel rooms set back a bit.  

While I can see this hotel getting bookings as being an alternative to downtown or galleria hotels with the benefit of a walkable area with restaurants and shops, I thought that they would make bank by being a wedding and event venue.  But the blown up version looks like it minimizes some of the event space in favor of more rooms and retail space.  

Smart move switching from Maison Robert to Hotel Daphne.  The odds of people using the French pronunciation of Robert (Roe Bare, but with French Rs which are different at the beginning of a word and in the middle) successfully are pretty slim and using the English pronunciation of Robert makes it sound silly such that it may as well be Maison Kevin.  

2 hours ago, skooljunkie said:

Texans drive perfectly through the roundabouts in CO ski towns.  I have been to Copper, Vail and Beaver Creek over spring break.  The roundabouts function well when the Texans are in town.  

Yeah, right.  The Texans who regularly play bumper cars all across DFW, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, etc. suddenly are on their best behavior when in the mountains even though most Houstonians can barely get through the Washington Ave roundabout without scraping metal.  This may be the only thread on the internet where Texans are accused of being good drivers.  

Croissants are very good.  

Looks like the hot chicken restaurant boom is getting a run for its money with the bubble tea boom.  There is Feng Cha going in on 19th and Moge Tee on Shep where Chick'n Cone used to be.  Not sure whether there is that much demand for bubble tea or whether there is a bubble tea . . . bubble.  

10 hours ago, chempku said:

Why not? If someone on the trail got hit by a car while crossing 11th St, s/he immediately get taken care of here. 

No, they would writhe in pain on the ground while the administrative assistant verified insurance coverage only to then be told that the next available appointment with the Dr. was in three weeks.  The only good news would be if it was one of the doctors who hit the pedestrian.  Then there would be deep pockets for the plaintiff's lawyer instead of having to just take the auto policy limits.  

59 minutes ago, editor said:

While tourism can be a driver, I don't think that tourists necessarily cause luxury hotels.  There are plenty of luxury hotels in non-touristy places.  Business happens everywhere.  Some businessmen are door-to-door salesman who are fine with an EconoLodge.  Some businessmen are C.F.O.'s, or company owners from other parts of the country or the world, who are used to something a little better than the basics.

Expense account travelers sustain the high end hotels, steak houses, etc.  I had a client who was an importer of manufactured flooring from China.  It was a relatively small business, but profitable.  They were in California and had to come to Houston for mediation.  They probably spent more on the trip than on legal fees to get the lawsuit resolved.  But when you run a small business, that is how you get to live large.  You expense it all because you own the company and no one can tell you not to do it.  

1 hour ago, cspwal said:

Colorado ski towns are full of roundabouts, and everyone just seems to get them, even though they all are tourists - mostly from texas

Texans make a mess of the roundabouts in CO ski towns.  I have been to Copper, Vail and Beaver Creek over spring break.  The roundabouts are a mess when the Texans are in town.  

There was a plan to build a medical office on the north side of the street, but it was met with opposition when the plans had the main driveway crossing the hike and bike path.  It fizzled and nothing has happened since then.

2 hours ago, skooljunkie said:

To me, it functions better than almost any other signaled intersection around. 

At rush hour, it is the motor vehicle equivalent of Fight Club.  

I bet this intersection could be reconstructed to make it into a four way intersection with a traffic light.  Arnot really should be widened as it is a well trafficked entrance to Memorial Park.  Eminent domain Shipleys to give some room for Westcott and Washington to come together.  It is just a fact of life that people in the south will never be able to figure out how to drive through a rotary.  

The retaining wall facing the bayou is collecting some choice graffiti.  

2 hours ago, IntheKnowHouston said:

Local burger restaurant Hubcap Grill closed over the weekend. The closure was shared in a Saturday post on Nextdoor.

Hubcap Grill was located in the Shady Acres neighborhood at 1133 W 19th St.

They have been month to month on their property as the land is being bundled up for a residential development.  They finally decided to bail as they are shifting to the burbs with a big new location in Santa Fe, TX.  

I am actually glad to see someone use a color on a house instead of mindlessly falling into line with the white and black modern victorian farmhouse craze/"aesthetic".  And most realtors take the same kind of photos as this guy did.  It is pretty much industry standard for HAR listings.  

I think Brutalism gets a bad rap because it was used a lot in higher education buildings in the 60s.  The architects were often instructed to make the buildings very maze like on the interior with few windows so it would be more difficult for students protesting the Vietnam war to occupy the building.  So, I think everyone since then has had the experience of being a nervous college freshman scurrying around a Brutalist building trying to find their biology 101 class.  You go down one hallway to find room 406 and the hallway snakes around going from 401 to 405 but then dead ends.  You scurry back to where you came up the elevator/stairs only to find that there are two other hallways to choose from.  Of course, you pick the wrong one and end up late for class.  

But the really great Brutalist buildings are usually very symmetrical and elegant in their design.  So, it is unfortunate that so many are introduced to Brutalist architecture through these awful college buildings with their labyrinth like hallways.

1 hour ago, chempku said:

"Those streets have minimal ROW”

Not true. The ROW is never an issue for shared-use trails. 11th appears to be wider, however ROW width is not pavement width. If you measure it on HCAD maps, you will know the ROW for 10/11/12th streets are all 70'. In fact, 10' shared-use trails have been planed in streets only have 50' ROW in nearby neighorhoods. The only need is to cover the open ditches. 

Having cut-through bicycle traffic in those neighorhood streets are way better than cut-through motorvehicle traffic. I feel sorry for them for the lost opportunity. 

 

 

Covering the ditches is the reason the ROW is insufficient.  You have to curb and gutter the street if you are going to cover drainage ditches.  Otherwise the streets will turn into lakes whenever there is a decent downpour.  Curb and guttering streets is about a million for a few blocks.  It would be infinitely more expensive to put a bike path on the cross streets.

Having gone on 11th st a bunch of times during morning and evening rush hour since the build out and living near the alleged cut through streets, I am actually quite surprised at how well it is working and how little change in traffic there is (other than eliminating the Death Race 2000 that used to take place on 11th every day).  

The problem with adding freeway lanes as a way to reduce traffic is that there is no perfect way to do it.  You cannot take a highway and split the earth open to uniformly add lanes on new land that appears out of nowhere and then have every exit automatically increase capacity all along the way.  You will always have bottlenecks that cause congestion despite the increased carrying capacity.  That is what happened on the Katy freeway.  EB at 610 is always a mess because the 610 exit was not expanded enough to be able to handle the increased load from the Katy Freeway.  Then, there are numerous instances where exits and merges create bottlenecks.  Washington Ave and I-10 EB is also a mess because 610 NB traffic is merging while at the same time there are exit only lanes for Washington Ave.  Merging and exiting traffic around Dairy Ashford and I-10 EB always makes a bottleneck even off of rush hour because there isn't enough room to get traffic to merge onto the highway before people trying to exit get in the way.  And the merge WB before the grand parkway when the tollway lane drops out is also a bottleneck (EB I-10 merge with grand parkway NB traffic is also a mess because the merge is too close to exiting traffic).  Finally, the number of lanes doesn't matter when there is a wreck.  Urban highways are just too complicated of a system to be able to add lanes without having any blowback due to design flaws.

Highway widening is the go to traffic congestion remedy because the real estate developer, construction and engineering lobbyists know how to do their jobs and there really is no opposing force that can go toe to toe with them on behalf of public transportation.  It just took one house rep (Culberson) to kill off any chance at federally funded commuter rail from the west part of Houston.  

To its credit, the Houston area has been making adaptations by moving employment centers out into the suburbs.  I used to work with a guy who would commute in from the Woodlands every day to downtown.  It would take him a solid hour unless he left for work before 7 am.  He got a job in the Woodlands and cut his commute time down to 15 minutes.  But that was 20 years ago.  Now, it can take him twice as long due to all the traffic in the Woodlands during rush hour.  My boss lives in Kingwood at the far end of Kingwood Dr.  It takes him longer to get to 59 than it does to go from 59 to downtown.  

So, we are basically screwed in Houston.  We have reached capacity on most of the major arteries and even people who do the right thing and live close to work have to fight through traffic.  We will not see any meaningful alternatives for public transportation in our lifetimes in Houston.  Traffic will just get worse and worse and worse.

35 minutes ago, chempku said:

Not true. I drive TC Jester and 11th St (West of the road diet) everday. 

At the construction site you mentioned, where 11th st are temporarily reduced to 2-lane from 4-lane, there is no increase in traffic west bound at all, but signicant increase in east bound traffic just after 11th st got one car lane taken away east of shepherd/durham. Before that there is way less traffic along 11th eastbound, even with the construction along 11th st between Ella Blvd and TC Jester. 

Many people may not realize that 11th and 20th are the only numbered streets cross TC Jester. Permanently taking away 50% of the capacity from one of the two streets is a huge impact. 

I don't know why planners won't consider building off-street trails along either 10th or 12th streets. There are plenty of underused ROW by open ditches. Spend less money, make everyone happy, and also improve drainage as a side benefit. Someone please educate me on this. 

I have been in that traffic jam many times.  Once you get past the light at TC Jester, traffic flows just fine.  Bike lanes have nothing to do with it.  

Bike lanes on 11th st made sense because 11th st had become like FM 1960 with people hauling ass at 40-45 mph and weaving in an out of lanes.  Crossing the street at the bike path on Nicholson and just about anywhere else between Shep and Michaux was a nightmare.  

Also, putting bike lanes on 10th or 12th would have been exponentially more expensive and may not have even been feasible if they wanted to do it.  Those streets have minimal ROW and the ROW is all messed up in spots where fence lines are right up to the drainage ditches with no sidewalks on parts of the street.  And then there are utility poles all over the place in the ROW.  You would probably have to curb and gutter the street to be able to install bike lanes next to the sidewalks.  

2 hours ago, chempku said:

Now I feel that the best solution could have been building some hike and bike trails along some neighborhood streets, just like the one on Nicholson St. Way less impact to vehicular traffic in this way. Property owners along the trail should like it also. 

I once saw the east bound traffic west of TC Jester extend all the way to Ella Blvd during afternoon rush hours. This is even outside of the project limit. Before the road diet was applied, there were already fewer options for drivers along W-E direction than N-S direction, based on how Greater Heights is designed. 

This project does not affect me, but I can feel the frustration for those who have to stuck in traffic longer. 

This has nothing to do with the bike lanes.  The traffic at TC Jester is due in part to unrelated construction (drainage project) and a poorly timed light.  The bike lanes are not going to go past Durham.  

So far, the bike lanes east of Heights Blvd are working great.  Traffic along 11th is moving along just fine, but without people ripping along like it is FM 1960.  I will say that it remains to be seen whether the changes to the intersection of Heights and 11th St. are gong to work.  Temporary signage is confusing, but the city has cleaned it up a bit with a big no turn sign on Heights SB and NB.  Hopefully, when complete, the signage will be easier to follow.    I am not sure that no right turns from 11th to Heights and no left turns from Heights to 11th is going to work that well.  But if it gets through traffic off of Heights and on to Yale, that would be good.

If you are looking to buy a car, don't.  The market is set to go off a cliff.  2023 deliveries of new vehicles are finally getting caught up with demand. Default rates on loans are rising and will keep going up through 2023 as people realize that they cannot afford the payments on the Ford F150 that they paid $10k over sticker for.  So, if you can patch together what you are currently driving for another year, you will probably save thousands compared to what you would spend right now.  

I have notice a lack of diversity in restaurants in the Heights.  

On 9/15/2022 at 3:40 AM, IntheKnowHouston said:

Photos of restaurant Cherry Block at Stomping Grounds, 1223 W 34th St, Ste A-100.

The photos were supplied to Papercity by POP Studios PR.

https://www.papercitymag.com/restaurants/cherry-block-smokehouse-new-garden-oaks-houston-restaurant/

 

 

That was fast.  

https://houston.eater.com/2023/1/3/23536941/cherry-block-smokehouse-garden-oaks-closed