s3mh
-
Posts
2,137 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
13
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Everything posted by s3mh
-
Quite to the contrary, 19th street is an example of something old becoming new again. It is one shop away from being fully leased. Ainbinder's strip mall on 19th still has two empty pads. People like 19th street because it is different. Houston has miles of retail strip malls with national retail chains and restaurants. 19th street is one of the few places in Houston where you can find unique gifts, home decor, boutique and resale clothing and other interesting things all in one walkable area. Peolpe come in from the burbs to shop 19th street because it is so unique. Braun Enterprises understood this and turned down a national restaurant chain in favor of Torchy's because of the character of 19th st.
-
The facebook site was taken down a while age. So, it is not so interesting after all.
-
WLN was marketed to 19th st businesses as a way to promote their businesses, but was not started by 19th street businesses as a way to keep 19th st from "drying up and dying out". 19th street's success is that it has been able to quickly replace outgoing businesses with new ones. The polar opposite of drying up and dying out. If 19th was drying up and dying out, it would have been emptied out, sold and demoed. Instead, it is attracting more and more interest. If all those awful nick nack shops were such a pox on the neighborhood, you would not see 19th street just one shop short of being fully leased. Harold's closed because Harold Weisenthal retired and merged the store with Norton Ditto. Harold's son managed the store, but eventually left. The Norton Ditto folks had no interest in investing in the store to update it and make it competitive and closed it. Harold's simply had run its course.
-
White Linen Nights has always been a Heights-wide celebration that had 19th st. as a focal point. Katrina relocated artists from New Orleans worked with Heights artists to recreate the New Orleans event in the Heights. 19th st has seen some turnover but has always had good success in leasing. It has never been anywhere close to "drying up and dying". It has just improved steadily over the years and is almost 100% leased.
-
The Heights is bounded by railroad tracks to the north and south. I can hear the trains up north and outside of the quiet zone in the south at 3 am. There is a rail yard just next to the TX Jester bridge. Everything between White Oak Bayou and the bike trail is warehouse/industrial. The First Ward is just on the other side of I-10 and is almost all industrial. Eastwood has seen industry expand while the Heights saw it contract. But that is because the neighborhood kept areas like 19th street, which attracted redevelopment. I am not saying that 19th st is the only reason the Heights redeveloped or that everyone came to the Heights because of 19th st. I am saying that it is a major factor in the redevelopment of the Heights and a major reason that the area is seen as desireable and worth the high premium. According to people on his board, 19th st. is some sort of liability that people tolerate when they move to the neighborhood. That is completely off the wall wrong.
-
There is plenty of industry and trains in the Heights. There is a chicken plant and two large warehouses on my side of the Heights. There is also the Shepherd tote-the-note automile. And we have major highways on three sides of the neighborhood. There are no big petrochem plants near Eastwood. You cannot see any of them from Eastwood at night. The Heights was held together through the bad times and pushed in the direction of redevelopment by many of the artists who kept 19th street going through the years. None of that happened in Eastwood.
-
Never said it would be bad. My point is that 19th street is a better neighborhood amenity than a strip full of stores from the mall and much better than a bunch of bars and clubs. And 19th st is what everyone identifies with the Heights. They do not say it is a "small town in a big city" because many of the streets have open ditch drainage.
-
Bad comparison. Afton Oaks has larger lots, bigger houses and is more like a suburban subdivision with curbed and guttered streets throughout. Better comparison is Eastwood. Identical housing stock, same distance from downtown, if not closer, and same economic downfall after the original inhabitants moved out. The Heights came back because it was able to keep 19th street in good condition and full of interesting retail. Eastwood completely lost its original retail developments and is light years behind the Heights in property values and gentrification.
-
Sparke Pony is from the show Portlandia. It was a fictitious indie band on the show and was a play on Sparklehorse. Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein were indie rockers (Trench Mouth and Sleater-Kinney, respectively) before SNL and Portlandia. And I am not making a stereotype. I am simply describing consumer behavior. When people go to shows, they go out to eat, head over to the show and go to a bar afterwards. You may be interested in adding shopping for home decor on your list when you go to see the Sparkelhorse reunion tour, but you are very much in the minority.
-
Here is all I said: "If 19th street was full of stores from the mall, people wouldn't be beating each other over the head to buy a house in the Heights." The obvious point was that if the retail section of 19th street looked like a chunk of Willobrook Mall, the neighborhood would not be getting the huge premium it is getting. 19th st. is a signature section of the Heights that is a major selling point for the neighborhood and sets it off from all other neighborhoods in Houston. Of course, you cannot argue with that point so you change it in order to suit your needs, as usual. That is the only thing that is ridiculous.
-
Yeah, you are right. Everyone I meet who moved to the Heights thinks that 19th street is a dump and can't wait for it to be demoed and replaced with bars and clubs. Only when that happens will the neighborhood ever take off.
-
If they did not spend/incur all 6 mil, I will leave this board forever. They did not do all they originally promised to do because it cost too much.
-
Apples and oranges. Rice Village has about 10x the retail sq footage. A few mall shops mixed in with majority boutique/non-mall retail and restaurants is not the kind of thing that Marksmu is advocating. He wants to pluck a strip mall from Pearland and slam it on top of 19th street. Also, 19th street has a small town vibe (art market, festivals, etc.) that is very much a major draw for the Heights. It has been written up in a number of national publications over the years.
-
Without the 380 agreement, Ainbinder would have had to do the improvements anyway. Ainbinder would have passed the cost on to Walmart and the other tenants. With the 380, Walmart and the tenants basically get free improvements as long as they front the money initially. To say that Walmart comes out the same with or without the 380 is to deny economic reality. But the real issue now is the fact that after all the promises about how the 380 would make sure that all the infrastructure upgrades would be at or above City standard, we get to the finish line with blatantly substandard infrastructure with another 250k sq ft of retail and 640 units of apartments on the way. I wonder whether things would look different had the developer been forced to foot the bill for the infrastructure.
-
You would be shopping at a resale shop for children if you went to where Buffalo Exchange was on 19th st. Depsite popular opinion on message boards and the comment section on the Chronicle, there are not that many hipsters in the Heights. Buffalo Exchange did not last in the alleged hipster haven of the Heights.
-
The leasing agent for 19th St. is a big for profit broker (Fidelis?) not some hipster/preservationist collective. Those "junk" shops are making them good money. If 19th street was full of stores from the mall, people wouldn't be beating each other over the head to buy a house in the Heights.
-
The good news is that Mr. Ainbinder has got you covered. Add the Yale St. Markets 250k sq ft of strip mall/suburban retail and you will have a hipster free zone in the Heights. 19th street is actually very successful. What you think are junk shops and hipster trash bins are actually very successful antique shops and boutiques that attract people from the suburbs on the weekends. The big thrift store and "fire sale" store on the far east end of 19th by Yale will not be there much longer. But the rest of 19th st. is just fine as it is. But, oddly, we are actually in agreement on restaurants. I am all for more restaurants in and around 19th St. I do not want large bars or a live music venue.
-
If one can only make an ad hominen attack in response to a good argument . . .
-
Shade has had no trouble packing them in after 6 pm even though the rest of 19th is dead. The tea house failed because the food wasn't good enough to get anyone to eat there except out of convenience and tea houses never really caught on in Houston. Restaurants in Houston that are counting on foot traffic to drive sales are restaurants that will be short lived. If the food is good, people will come. Places like Mockingbird Bistro, La Fisheria, and Roost are completely out of the way and would only be found if you were either were specifically looking for it or got lost and stumbled across it. Just Dinner doesn't even have a sign. 19th doesn't need nightlife if that term is to mean live music venues or large bars. Neither will do anything for the retail on 19th street. None of the few retail spots on White Oak are open after 6 pm on the weekends. That is because no one going to bars or live music clubs is looking to shop. They come into the neighborhood to drink and party. That is it.
-
Check out White Oak and Studewood on a Friday or Saturday night. I cannot think of anyone who wants that for 19th street. More restaurants would be great. Everyone wants that. Another low key bar like Down House would be great. But some club packing in tons of people to see Sparkle Pony would do nothing for 19th street after 6 pm except to leave a mess to clean up at 6 am the next day. No one going to a big bar or live music club is going to shop for antiques, boutique clothing, or home decor on 19th street before they go to see Sparkle Pony. When was the last time you heard someone say "dude, I am so wasted. Let's go shop for a credenza!!!!".
-
Many people think the best part of 19th street is the lack of nightlife. Many are not happy with how the bar scene on White Oak has created a little Washington Ave in the Heights. I would like to see a few more restaurants on 19th and maybe another low key bar like Down House. But a live music venue or big bar like Christian's would not be a good thing for 19th st. Repurposing the church buildings would be very difficult. It is such an odd configuration of buildings due to the ad hoc nature of the growth and expansion of that church. The 1912 building actually has a first floor that is a few feet under the street level. Getting it to be ADA compliant would be a major undertaking. I would love to see someone take a shot at it, but it would take more money than a local private investor is going to want to put up.
-
The post is accurate. You are just playing juvenille semantics because I did not spell out the terms of the sale in exquisite detail in typing out a title to a post. The reason I did that was because it would be plainly obvious to anyone who read the article what was happening. And it looks like the dreaded dry restriction isn't the death of all commerce after all.
-
Got it. When you said "flow", you really meant further exageration of original manufacturing imperfections. All I said in my original post was that I can see through my windows just fine and have not had any deterioration in the glass affect the visibility. My house is fairly well shaded. So, my windows have been spared a lot of heat from the direct sun. But even in the most sun soaked house, I have never seen a window that had to be replaced because you could no longer see out of it.
-
Actually, although I had previously been told that the rumple was a sign of flowing, I just read up on the subject and the rumple was actually a remnant of the old glass manufacturing process that is no longer in use. JJ is right. Glass does not flow. So, it looks like you have blatant signs of something that does not happen on your windows.
-
From Heights Baptist's press release: "We look for opportunities in areas that are good or getting better," said Dan Braun, president. "The area around 19th and 20th Streets has not changed much in the last 20 years, but we love the demographics and the neighborhood. The strong interest in our Harold's space indicates that the church property could draw the same attention." Braun said the firm was predisposed toward building new retail and restaurant space on the site in keeping with the character of 19th Street. He said the firm recently passed on a national restaurant chain that expressed interest in the Harold's space in favor of a lease to Torchy's Tacos, a quirky Austin-based eatery that plans to build an outdoor patio and a small organic grocery store there. It seems like Braun has a better feel for the neighborhood than others. As for parking, I wonder whether the church is selling the lot on 19th street for parking? There is certainly no way to put in enough spaces on the lot on 20th for new restaurants/retail.