Houston19514

Our tax rates in this country, especially in Texas, are at historic lows.

This is simply not true.

What Texas tax rates are at historic lows?

Sales tax rates? No.

Property tax rates? No.

On a national basis, what tax rates are at historic lows?

Income tax rates? No.

Wasn't this where the baggage claim before the last baggage claim was?

The press release said:

"It is the same footprint of the original baggage claim area that had been open since the airport opened in 1965."

Yes, the baggage claim is in the same place it was before the remodel started.

I can't get a legit response whether this is a rumor or not. Got a response from the mayor that said the project is not being delayed and they were just responding to minor comments from the city. She did not, however, specifically deny that one of the comment was to add a third line.

Adding a third lane would be stretching the definition of "minor comments" beyond recognition, and almost certainly would require significant delays.

Regarding the Four-Leaf Towers, I do think they look a bit dated. However, as far as I'm aware, it's also the last major project here that put their parking completely underground and capped it with a parklike setting. It might have been this project, but I remember a developer saying that would never be done again, due to the cost.

Don't both Villa d'Este and Montebello have underground parking capped with a parklike setting?

Rode them several times last week going back and forth from my office to the GRB. Nice buses. Great service.

There is a large dumpster on the sidewalk. Looks like some serious interior demolition work going on. Hopefully, they have finally gotten back to work on the conversion to a hotel.

This is one case where it may actually be useful to read the comments. The last comment, posted at 11:26 AM:

I reached out to Daniel Krueger (City of Houston Director of Public Works) asking him about the status of the project. Below is a copy/paste of his e-mail response to my inquiry.

Thank you for writing with your concern. Unfortunately, the anonymously offered blog entry is highly inaccurate. The Public Works and Engineering Dept has recently addressed project issues to the entity responsible for the project, the Midtown Redevelopment Authority in conjunction with TIRZ 2, regarding the conformance of the already constructed and proposed improvements with the City’s Major Thoroughfare and Freeway Plan. These issues can be readily addressed by the project’s sponsor with minor revisions to the project. With such revisions the project can conform with the Plan and yet provide for vehicular mobility, pedestrian mobility, and use of street space for parking, overall still fulfilling the project purpose. Such revisions need not be cause for delay, reconstruction, or significant additional expenditures.

We appreciate your interest in these public improvements.

I guess my comment is as accurate as fox 26's reporting. Womp womp.

My guess is you misunderstood the report. They quoted the Menil spokesman, who happened to be in Germany at the time. The people doing the restoration were in Houston.

I'm not sure what the method is, but the art hospital it went to in Germany said they got all the spray off. The Menil said the painting had ”to rest”, before it's back on display.

The Menil did the restoration in their own conservation lab. In Houston, Texas. The painting did NOT go to Germany.

"Most of the damage, virtually all has been taken care of,” he said. “But you have to wait and see.”

I honestly don't see how this is a debate. Voters approved the FULL 1 cent tax to go towards METRO. End of story.

But that is NOT the end of the story.

Voters also approved diverting part of the 1 cent tax to the cities for general mobility project.

Great news!

Don't they know that, come 2015, there will no longer be adequate traffic at Bush to sustain such expansions of international service?

I spoke with someone very close to the project and they gave me the following details on the sale of 6 acres to Apache:

All areas to the left of Blvd. Place Ln. (which runs through the center of the property) with the exception of Building #6 (which is where RDG, Philippe & Hermes are now located) have been sold to Apache.

This means that Buildings #4, #5 and the South Garage as illustrated in the renderings on the Blvd. Place website are no longer a part of Ed Wulfe's project.

What this means? Hermes which had signed a lease for a 2 story flagship location in the Northeast Corner of Building #4 facing Post Oak Blvd. has lost their long planned space. There is no word on what this means for the French luxury boutique which has flourished during the recession.

Additionally, other retailers "penciled in" for Building #5 were rumored to have been a new 20,000-25,000 sq. ft. Bloomingdale's location.

It makes one wonder how cohesive the development will be with Building #6 off on its own next to the Apache office tower.

As for the rest of the development, Hanover is breaking ground on a nice high-rise rental building and of course, the Whole Foods location will break ground late summer/early fall 2012 which a planned opening of February 2014.

The sale of the southern side of the development to Apache allows Wulfe to break ground on buildings #1,#1N, #1W, #2 & #3. Unfortunately, the only leases of note in the new buildings are:

Pinkberry

Ocean Prime seafood

an Aveda salon

These developments really leave me wishing that Houston could shed it's 1985 "Boom to Bust" reputation and attract the type of deep-pocketed investors who have the national and international reputation to secure a mix of "high end" and destination retail.

One has to wonder why the local leasing team has been unable to secure any high-profile leases after marketing the project for almost 6 years.

It's a shame as a prime parcel of land like this only comes into play once in a generation.

I'm pleased about the Whole Foods location, however at 48,500 sq. feet it now has the footprint of many of the suburban locations that the chain is building.

Where of where is Gerald Hines and his vision and international reputation when we need him?

Oh, that's right. He's developing a large commercial warehouse project near IAH. Things have changed so much.

Development X

I had gotten the impression that the Apache property would still be part of the Blvd Place development, and that, while obviously requiring a substantial redesign, there might still be a continuous flow of retail from end to end of the development. Is that not the case?

Exactly. 2018 is not as far away as it sounds.

So your refrigerator got way more efficient and incidentally no longer has to be unlatched, but your big-screen TV eats up that gain, and all your electronic gaming collectively uses as much power annually as the city of San Diego.

Your car's fuel efficiency has improved, but overall you are filling it up a lot more than you did in the eighties, because then you looked cute driving around in a Nissan Maxima, but now for some reason you need to drive a small bus.

Your little thirties-era Sears kit house was much draftier than what others are unkindly calling your "McMansion," but since you made no real effort to cool it, just opened the windows, turned on the fan, and drank lots of tea, or fell asleep from the torpor, it didn't really cost much, energy-wise. And in winter, Meema shut the doors to all but the living room and lit the "stove," whose roaring heat and gassy fumes were sort of like the atmosphere of Venus, but effective.

But hey - you're recycling your giant plastic jug of detergent, your big plastic jug of OJ, and your 64-oz container of sour cream from Costco, and several dozen Dasani bottles a week! They're becoming plastic park benches and, uh, other stuff, probably. And you've cut way back on red meat. You're eating mahi-mahi flown in from Hawaii instead. You're so damn green.

LOL Post of the day.

It remains to be seen which nonstop routes, if any, get pulled by UA. We can only speculate on the impact on planned routes, although one of the graphics in UA's report did show a few unidentified intercontinental routes (trans-Pacific and Atlantic) as future possibilities that could be at risk. The problem comparing the Houston situation with Miami is on a couple of levels. Primarily, MIA has MUCH larger demand to/from Latin America - no other US city is close. So even though FLL competes with Miami, Miami's Latin dominance is large enough to more than offset the competition. And the connecting AA hub at MIA is just an extra benefit, since Miami can support most of its Latin destinations on local traffic alone. This is why even though Houston is arguably the #2 hub city for Latin America, it doesn't have nearly the same capacity or extent of destinations (outside of small RJ destinations in Mexico) that Miami does. Where it gets very risky for Houston is that Houston's O&D (Origin and Destination) traffic numbers are relatively small for a city of its size, and the array of nonstop destinations served from IAH are largely a result of the artificial connecting hub Continental built here. This is similar to ATL and DFW, which are also overserved in nonstop destinations for their city cizes due to large connecting complexes. However, even Atlanta and Dallas have more O&D traffic than Houston - and all of Atlanta's traffic and DFW's international traffic is constrained to one airport. So if United does decide it needs to pull back routes, Houston could very well find the loss of nonstop options that are not supported by O&D numbers alone. Another carrier is not likely to serve a low O&D destination nonstop unless it feeds a connecting hub for them, so nonstop destinations that currently only exist due to connecting possibilities could certainly be at risk of being lost and not replaced. This same situation doesn't exist in other multi-hub cities like NY, LA, the Bay Area, Miami, Chicago, or DC since the O&D traffic is so much greater in those cities that massive connecting fotress hubs aren't as necessary to support their various non-stop destinations.

All very interesting. And yet more evidence that Southwest's international service will help grow the international O&D market.

You are quite correct that Houston historically has had pretty low O&D numbers. I don't know why. But I recall years ago reading that is one of the reasons Continental saw so much potential to grow their hub here... because the O&D market had huge room for growth.

And as Tory mentioned above, if it is loss of connecting traffic that is going to kill our routes, the effect on United (and therefore, on Houston) would have been identical whether Southwest's flights are operated out of Hobby, Austin, or even had they been operated out of Bush (which United very dishonestly pretended to welcome with open arms).

Any thoughts on why Houston's O&D traffic is relatively low? That has always struck me as odd. (Currently, it is no doubt at least partially attributable to the monopolistic pricing imposed by United... but not sure that explains the historical pattern.)

Beautiful! Thanks for posting.

For some reason, I'm starting to agree with conclusions such as these:

Houston: You Blew It on United Hub

http://www.thestreet...united-hub.html

In my opinion, Houston airplane travelers may have won, but the Houston economy and employees lost out in the long run.

The most obvious problem with that analysis, is that United, and especially its Houston hub, will have to compete with Southwest for connecting traffic to Latin America/Caribbean destinations and would have had to do so no matter what decision was made by the Houston city council.

Southwest will fly to those destinations. If not from Houston, then from Austin, San Antonio, Atlanta, New Orleans. Maybe even Oklahoma City. In any case, connecting passengers don't give a hoot which of those they connect through and would have provided the same competition to Houston's connecting traffic as it will by coming through Hobby. Was Miami's international traffic hurt be the establishment of low-fare international service from Fort Lauderdale Airport? No.

Meanwhile back to the construction.....

Nancy Sarnoff posted some interesting numbers over the weekend from an "unnamed source". Still makes for interesting speculation.

http://www.chron.com...uld-3621219.php

$1.2 billion in costs broken down by:

"1 $700 million for 3.5 million square feet worth of buildings, including their interior finishes.

1 $150 million for parking garages.

1 $100 million for site development.

1 $200 million for furniture, fixtures and equipment.

1 $75 million for architecture, engineering and related fees."

This is an awesome development, with amazing architecture and will be beautiful when completed. The relocations from Virginia and elsewhere are obviously great news for Houston (and I still think the corporate HQ will end up on this campus as well).

But, still, every time I read about it I get a little sick to my stomach thinking about they could have done on the vacant blocks surrounding their current downtown tower. Building structures containing about 2.5 million square feet of space added to the existing approx. 1 million square feet of space in the current tower... Could have added 2 or 3 major skyscrapers to our downtown. :-(

H19514 - from the landscaping plans approved by the city. It has the caliper inches on them too.

Thanks. Link?

I'm pretty sure the interchange was not completely rebuilt the last time around (the West Loop project that was completed circa 2007). As is often the case, the interchange is a major choke point for both the Southwest Freeway and the Loop.

What is surprising about this plan is that it does not appear to address the major backups on the 59 Southbound to Loop Northbound ramp.

They are removing a total of 19 trees from Yale. They are adding a total of 13 trees to Yale. Net loss: 6 trees. Net loss in tree caliper inches on Yale: 176.5.

The 12 extra caliper inches will not be on Yale, but on the Heights esplanade.

Not saying you're wrong, but how do you know how many trees they will plant along Yale?

You can click on the warning points to see details.

Nah. I wish I could set up something like that, though. lol

My mom is in Houston for a few weeks, and she knows I was following the demolition so she took it upon herself to snap a picture and email it to me.

Awesome! Way to go, Mom!

From the good folks at BisNow -- a massive new development is coming.

Highlights:

• 3,635 acres -- 1/4 the size of Manhattan.
  
• Called "Generation Park" because it's so big, the next generation will have to finish developing it.
  
• Winfield Road becomes Generation Parkway
  

Linky: http://www.bisnow.co...ory.php?p=24803

OLD NEWS. This information was posted April 27, 2012 in a thread titled "Generation Park"

Also, I feel like this detail has been under reported, or not at all by Houston reporters. Not only is the employee head cout increasing because of Fairfax, so is the campus itself http://goo.gl/14B7D

Leave it to Houston reporters to miss half the story.