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City Centre made one big mistake in what is otherwise an excellent development. City Centre did not develop a true street grid. Instead, they have a single main boulevard that goes North/South through the development, but no East/West connectivity. As a result, everyone is piled into a single street inside the development. Traffic piles up easily as soon as someone stops to drop someone off, pick someone up or use a valet service. Sugar Land Town Center did a much better job with designing a street grid that flows better and does not have the traffic congestion issue. It is not a volume problem. It is a design problem. And one of the traffic issues with the Walmart development is that it limits street connectivity. The entire west side of the development is a wall. With a mixed-use development, Schuler St. could have connected all the way through to Heights and Bass could have intersected it inside the development to create a street grid instead of having all traffic exit either at Koehler or just before the grade separation.

This store had a solid following. I do not know whether it closed due to financial reasons or whether the owner had personal issues that required them to make the change. It could also be that the landlord had someone eyeing the property and jacked up the rent to clear them out. I think the main problem was the location. It was just to dislocated from other retail/restaurants. They would have had a much better shot if they were on 19th street. I am not a boutique clothing store shopper. But for people with the kind of money to afford to live in the Heights, boutiques are preferred because they tend to be more fashion forward than the large chains. People are willing to pay the premium to get something that is unique and not what everyone else is wearing from the mall stores. Not my cup of tea, but it is a real market. The preference in the Heights for boutiques over chains is not some superficial hipster thing. One Green Street held lots of little events for the neighborhood. That kind of out reach is rare with the larger chains. People in the Heights also appreciate getting to know the owners of the stores they patronize instead of dealing with some annonymous minimum wage employee at the mall. I like going to the Lift and having the owner know my kids' names. The economic efficiencies of large chains serve a purpose, but the human connection of dealing with local/independent stores is also something that has real value. And it is pretty sad that people on this message board look down upon the desire of people in the Heights to have that interaction with the businesses that land in their neighborhood.

http://www.houstoniamag.com/eat-and-drink/gastronaut/articles/lei-low-will-be-houstons-only-tiki-bar-june-2013 And the Heights will finally get a Tiki bar. I really like how these folks are doing little neighborhood bars, like D&T instead of trying to pile more on White Oak and Studemont or along Washington Ave.

This was a clothing/women's boutique on White Oak. Green Painter is a different business. I was surprised to see them go out of business. They moved from a strip mall over by Kroger on Buffalo Speedway to be in the Heights. I thought being somewhat isolated on White Oak was a bad idea, but La Camella is supposed to be doing well.

Except you are just making up this bit about everyone holding properties in the HDs and sales of comparables outside of HDs making big profits by comparison. Here is a real world example of the opposite. The new construction on Tulane in the HD was @2900 sq ft on a 4300 sq ft lot. After a bidding war, it sold for 729k long before it was finished. The same builder listed virtually the same design outside of the HD for 725k. No sale. List price has already been dropped to $719k. http://search.har.com/engine/dispSearch.cfm?mlnum=60497740&v=s Virtually identical house and identical lot size. If there were all these people who were flooding the non-HD areas because the thought of the HAHC made them physically ill, why isn't this housing selling as well as the virtually identical house did inside an HD (the first pic on the har.com listing is the completed house on Tulane)?

You will never get a centralized collection of 35 acres around Washington with the same kind of access and location as the Walmart and neighboring sites. In the 1st Ward, the rail splits into two sets of tracks, making it difficult to put together a large development. It is one thing to have RR tracks next to a development. It is another to have the development split in two by tracks. Only way it would happen is if the RR co got paid to abandon the Winter St. tracks. Just don't see that ever happening. The 1st ward industrial will gradually give way to commercial/retail/residential. However, it will be a slow and piecemeal process. There are a lot of inustrial facilities in that area that are not going anywhere any time soon.

No opinions on the Yucatan thing as I have never been, but there is plenty of demand for more restaurants in the Heights. You cannot get in the door at Teotihuacan on Friday or Saturday night. Yucatan is more upscale and might find a niche in the Heights.

I think you are completely wrong. The only thing you are right about is that people are leasing. But that is because it is a great investment if you are selling and can buy another house without needing the proceeds of the sale of the previous house. Sales inside the HDs are only being tempered by the unmitigated greed of some realtors who tell their clients that they can get off the charts prices for their homes instead of just getting them a semi-obscene markup from where prices were just a year ago. On my side of the HDs on Tulane St. alone, three fixer upper (as in needing to be gutted and completely redone) properties got bought up and one vacant lot was purchased in a split of an old odd rental property. New construction just finished on the 1300 block of Tulane and a big addition is going up on the 1400 block. The warehouse on 1305 Ashland got demoed and has two approved plans for the first of four planned homes. There is also a huge addition underway in the 1300 block of Ashland and new construction of a monster house almost finished on the 1400 block. Up the street, in the 1500 block, two new construction homes are going in where they demo-ed that weird old mult-ifamily thing. A 2-1 in need of a total redo in the 1500 block also just sold in a flash after listing at $315k (I heard it was a bid up AS IS sale). And there is a big addition going in on W 15 and a smaller redo/addition on W 13th. If this is on ice, I would hate to see what on fire looks like.

The amount of new retail and residential in the Heights is not nearly enough to make a dent in the demand on the inner loop in Houston. Also, a lot of the residential redevelopment in the Heights is merely transitional and not new housing. We are just swapping out lower income folks for higher income folks. Large acreage inside the loop, especially between the Heights and Montrose is a precious commodity that has absolutely been squandered with the Walmart development. The strip malls you triumphantly point out that are located around City Centre mean nothing. Most pre-date City Centre. In fact, the new development I highlighted is replacing a strip center. Also, City Centre is well outside the loop with more abundant and cheap land with highway frontage. That is where strip centers should be. Inside the loop, frontage acreage around the Heights is extremly limited by comparison. Taking @35 acres of open land inside the loop and only doing strip malls/big box and one 280 unit multifamily is the definition of nearsighted development that will be regretted in the long run. But who knows. It took less than ten years before plans were underway to demo Archstone Memorial to make way for midrise multifamily. Maybe we will get lucky and this development will see a similar fate. After 10 years, most strip mall developments in Houston look very tired and lose what little luster they had when they first opened.

Wow. Was it really worth it to miss out on a year's worth of rent for this tenant? I wonder whether all the local restaurant talent wouldn't touch the location with a ten foot pole after the dust up with Killen and loss of Stella Sola. I will never understand commercial lessors. On a related note, Torchy's has their build out permits and is doing a lot of work on the interior now. My guess would be 4-6 weeks to completion.

Wow. This is totally coo coo for cocoa puffs crazy. If you want a diversity killer, put in a mid rise multifamily with rent starting at $1,500 for a 600 sq ft one bedroom apartment. The old multifamily apartments are way more accessible to the low and middle income earners. But in all candor, with or without the ordinance, the Heights will gentrify in a big way and will become much less diverse regardless of whether it is lot line 4500 sq ft creole new construction and 5-6 story multifamily or well preserved bungalows and the conversion of old garden style multifamily into single family lots. But, when you equate an architectural committee with the Nazis without blinking, drawing comparisons to the Klan is actually an improvement.

This is the perfect example of the fallacy of the almighty power of the MLS restriction. MLS works great at keeping people from doing what they already do not want to do (divide the lots that they live on or switch from single family to multifamily). MLS is powerless at getting someone else who holds the land for investment from dividing or turning single family into multifamily because they will never agree to sign on and usually own more than enough of a % of the lots to stop the process. There was a very good push to get Morrison to have MLS restriction. They succeeded in getting the 2600 block and 2900 to 3100 block. Of course, the 2700 and 2800 block did not agree because some of those land owners were holding for investment and wanted to be able to sell to someone who was going to divide for townhomes or do multifamily (2700 block has the old folks home which will probably be the next shoe to drop, 2800 block gets Morrison Heights). The push to get the restriction came after someone tried to develop a lot on the 2600 block into townhomes. That development died during the market crash, but appears to be back on track. MLS cannot stop what is already platted because state law says that once you plat, you are bullet proof from any subsequent legislation. I would certainly recommend that everyone do MLS. But, I would never give up the historic district for MLS or say that zoning isn't needed because of MLS. I think we are going to see lots of these projects popping up all over the Heights. I have heard that the developer is ready to do more if this is a success.

Sub (3), the condo loophole, is what I am talking about. There are a lot of old garden style multifamilies and warehouses in the Heights that can be demoed and built into Morrison-esque mid rises even with the MLS. I meant Rutland instead of Allston. But there are townhomes planned for Allston too.

Best Buy and Lowes had nothing to do with this development. That is just silly. If you are going to say that I am not making sense, at least do so without jumping of a cliff like that. This development is practically an extension of City Centre. To say that the proximity has nothing to do with it is just ignoring the obvious. Yale and I-10 are barely 3 miles from Downtown Houston, right off a major entertainment district and between Houston's wealthiest neighborhood, fastest growing rental areas and hotest real estate markets and on the way to the suburbs for hundreds of thousands of Houston commuters. I am not saying that it would be a one to one comparison with City Centre. I am just saying that forward looking development yeilds benefits. City Centre was way ahead of the curve and pushed through the downturn, whereas Walmart is a remnant of suburban development and was a plan B development to cash out after the downturn. Walmart is yeilding minimal development returns in the immediate area while City Centre is hitting it out of the park.

RedScare is clearly of the mindset that, since most people are too stupid to know what is good for them, developers should simply do it for them. He has done more to alert me of the dangers of not monitoring activists than anyone else. This dude's views are truly scary in their overarching scope. I use this thread to educate my neighbors to the perils of letting "free marketers" run wild.

http://fatcatcreamery.tumblr.com/post/53645260344/hard-hats-off-to-c-o-n-s-t-r-u-c-t-i-o-n-c-a-t Looks like things are moving along.

http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/blog/breaking-ground/2013/06/moody-ramlin-to-begin-work-on-new.html And this is the difference between what we get and what the rest of Houston gets. City Centre is spawning lots of redevelopment around the area as a result of maximizing the value of the real estate with a great mixed use development. Meanwhile, I-10 and Yale St., a much better location, will just be a dumping ground for strip mall retail.

Just wait a few weeks and those folks will get their Walmart. There is one going in on Wayside and 45. In 20 to 30 years, Walmart will go the way of Woolworths and we will be stuck with an empty lot on prime innerloop real estate that could have been a great development for the City. But, for you, Houston is a success because it is better than an empty lot. Keep shooting for the stars.

I have seen work on the interior that looks like work for the mechanicals and plumbing. I suspect that this is the heavy lifting that has slowed things down since the first estimate on opening.

Read the discussion and be constructive instead of jumping in and telling me to stop trying to "put my ideas on everyone else". I am talking about broad market trends and am not claiming that no one in Houston likes condos because everyone prefers town homes. Yes, there are people in Houston who prefer condos to townhomes for the same reason you moved into one. My point is simply that the broader market trend has been for people to go for townhomes instead of condos inside the loop because you can get townhomes for the same price as condos. The benefits of condo living are minimized in Houston's car centric neighborhoods as compared to a neighborhood like the Back Bay in Boston. Thus, there are only a smattering of condos inside the loop. However, I think that this project may signal a tipping point where townhomes are getting out of reach for those in the $300k price point. But the problem in Houston with condos is that the resale market has not been very good compared to other places where people read the obits to try to get a jump on a condo sale.

Minimum lot size does nothing to prevent someone from putting up this thing in your back yard: http://www.morrison-heights.com/ And minimum lot size only works if you can get enough people to sign up. If investors own the majority of the lots on a block, you have no shot at getting the restriction. Take a look at what is going on on Allston down by 6th st. to see how well minimum lot size works. Minimum lot size is just the favorite lie of the anti-ordinance folks to try to sucker people into thinking that they should give up the protection of the HDs, much like the lies about HVAC placement, paint color and the Heights turning into a slum because everyone would just let their properties rot instead of trying to get a COA. The fact is that with every abusive development that goes up, more and more people are realizing that the HDs are the only thing that keeps their neighborhood from becoming pocked with midrises and townhomes.

And I was talking to a friend who lives in the HD in Woodland Heights. She said that she is so glad that she lives in an HD after seeing what they are building on Morrison. She said that lots of people just outside the Woodland Heights HD are scurrying trying to find a way to get included or get another HD set up so they do not end up with another development like the thing on Morrison.

Well, you did an excellent job refuting my supposition about the market for condos/townhomes with nothing more than your own speculation and insults. But, that is par for the course for HAIF/Heights. Heaven forbid that an intelligent and respectful discussion break out. The facts are that condo development inside the loop has been virtually non-existent for a city the size of Houston while townhomes have been springing up like mushrooms after a heavy rain. Even before the 2008 crash, condo developments inside the loop were often landing with a thud (see, e.g. Shamrock Hotel replica downtown, 1600 block of Westheimer, the completed, but troubled Tremont Tower etc.). So, while there are certainly people who prefer condos to townhomes, those numbers are virtually non-existent in Houston given the near complete lack of condo development, especially compared to townhomes. But you aren't interested in having an intelligent and respectful discussion of market trends. You just want to fuss. Just another day at HAIF/Heights.

Did you read my post? Big box stores are not sorely missing. There are now three Walmarts within a 3-4 mile radius of most of the Heights. And you completely miss the point and fall back on the old tired argument that no criticism can be made when the previous use of the land was industrial. The fact of the matter is that the land involved represented a once in a life time opportunity for the area. @ 35 acres of land were available for redevelopment. That is about 10 acres more than Regent Square is using. But, instead of building that property up with housing, office, hotel and retail, a large part of it will just be parking spaces. The rest will be big box retail and strip mall retail. Only 280 units of residential when @100 were demoed by Ainbinder and 30 rental houses are going to be demoed by the Yale St Market developers. With 35 acres, you could have easily put in 500-750 units of housing in addition to office, retail etc. But, everywhere else in town gets the good stuff, but the Heights gets the junk. Sure, in 2008 when the market crashed, strip malls seemed like a great way to cash out on that property. But, in 2013, it is now clear that it was a huge opportunity lost for the area. Now, developers are prowling the Heights looking for any little strip of land to put up multifamily when @30 acres were wasted on trying to making Houston's urban core more like the suburbs.

Townhomes have been available to those who would normally be inclined to go with condos. At the 300-350k price point, you used to be able to get a townhome and minimal maintenance fees compared to condos. So, why bother with elevators, parking garages and high maintenance fees and assessments with condos when you can have a townhome for the same price or less? But, I think that is changing. 300-350k pushes you out of a lot of neighborhoods inside the loop for a townhome now. Thus, I wonder whether more projects like this will happen or whether condo conversion might be on the horizon for Houston.