Houston19514

I understand that, but that's the geographic distribution of the newest complexes, wherein Venue Museum District and Camden Travis are actually really good datapoints. The only other datapoints influenced by light rail are going to be Camden Midtown ($1.45 psf, estimated) or Ventana at Midtown ($1.38 psf), each a fair bit older. Compare them to Midtown Arbor Place ($1.91 psf), Post Midtown ($1.42 psf), 2222 Smith St ($1.54 psf), Calais at Courtlandt Square ($1.52 psf), or Camden City Centre Ph. I ($1.48 psf).

Again, I feel like there is not sufficient evidence to conclude that light rail access commands a premium rent, primarily due to noisy data and limited sample size. Do you agree?

The fact of the geographic distribution surely tells us a lot about the value of proximity to the rail line (or at the very least the value perceived by the apartment developers).

The MetroRail ridership January numbers are available now in detail:

agreed that Lanier spent dedicated METRO money on police by a technically legit switcheroo, but 20 years later the alleged reasons for that have been simplified and lost is the civic/political context in which he acted.

No doubt Lanier was hardcore anti-rail but he was also a 1st term mayor faced with 2 huge problems - Houston was not yet recovered from its 1980s oil crash depression, so revenues and reserves were down, and there was a serious crime wave that peaked in the early 90s. His alternative would have been a tax hike, but that would have been political suicide given the shaky post- depression state of the local economy.

So IMO his prospects for future reelection drove a lot of what he did.

As a resident here at the time I had no problem with taxpayer money dedicated to an amenity like LRT being diverted to put more cops on the street and fix deteriorating streets.

Since he was elected for a 2nd term with 92% of the vote I don't think I was the only one that felt that way.

Not only that, but Lanier pretty explicitly campaigned for his first term on the platform of killing the monorail and diverting Metro funds to police and roads.

1.5 acres? How can that possibly be the case? That land must be at least 200-225' by 1,000' - roughly five acres. Is the entire contiguous space not being developed into the park?

No, it is not. Camden already owns roughly half of the space and plans to build apartments I believe. But the 1.5 acres does seem too small. I found an old Chron article that says the entire parcel was roughly 6.2 acres. If the park will be 1/2 of that, we'd be talking about 3 acres. That seems more likely than 1.5

I'm with infinite jim. This is like a Discovery Green part II. We need something a little more interesting and swanky this time around like in Uptown Dallas and maybe a Victory style development.

A Victory style development is just about the last thing Houston needs.

I love Tranquility Park. It could use a few revisions to make it more accessible/used. Like take down the walls blocking it from the street view. Put in some table and chairs maybe, so people could sit down for lunch?

I especially love the fact that it IS a parking garage and that fountains incoroporate the vent stacks providing ventilation to the parking garage.

I think Tranquility is likely to stay much the same. I'm sure that the people running City Hall and the federal detention center across the street like the enhanced visibility a park provides.

There is no federal detention center across the street from Tranquility Park. I presume you are referring to the Federal Court House.

Gotcha. I thought you were referencing the prior post, which had nothing in it about

I'm guessing you weren't very good at word problems in school. Or I was poor in communication.

If you read the information on TxDot, they state the time/speed from Hempstead Station to Houston Station is 65 minutes at 50 mph. And I'm asking, who is this helping? If a person lives around Hempstead and we assume, just because we can assume things in life for fun, a 5 to 15 minute drive from this persons house to the Hempstead Station. Then we assume, once this person arrives at the Houston Station, he/she travels 5 to 15 minutes to their place of work. The result is a 75 to 95 minute commute from home to work (twice per day because they have to then travel back home).

I guess I'm missing the point of this rail system as far as helping people and eliminating traffic, when this doesn't seem like a benefit to me. Not saying I'm right, just wondering out loud.

Gotcha. I presumed you were referencing the prior post, which had nothing in it about the speed from Hempstead to Houston...

That does seem like a bit of a problem, to say the least. I can't make sense of spending millions upon millions of dollars for transportation that is worse than we already have...

To be fair, the TXDOT study did not actually even study the Hempstead-Houston portion of the route and said that the 50 MPH was preliminary based on information from someone else.

65 minutes @ 50 mph from Hempstead to Houston, really? Add 5-15 minutes to drive from your home to the station in Hempstead. Add 5-15 minutes to somehow get to work from station in Houston. How is 75-95 minutes helping anyone...and then do it twice per day?

Huh?

GGP is buying the Sears building at The Woodlands Mall, and apparently Sears plans to close the store sometime in 2013 or after.

Maybe Nordstrom will finally come to The Woodlands?

props to Nole for first posting this, but after talking to the developer, i think this deserves it's own thread

All the parking will be in the back (42 spaces), the development will have the same building line as Post Midtown, and the 2 story section features a patio on top with a view of the skyline.

Nice.

Sounds great! Finally, someone has figured out a better way to build retail in midtown??

At right around a billion dollars , this seems like a great bargain.

Had I invented Facebook, I'd fund this myself. Having only invented a few crappy affiliate review and adsense sites, I'll keep funding my cheap Canadian whiskey habit instead.

:-)

One minor problem with that roughly $1.25 Billion price tag . . . It only goes from Austin to Hempstead. They did not study the Hemstead-downtown Hoston portion.

Apparently, yes. Maybe they've refined their useless projection methodology even more uselessly. That's my speculation.

Yes it does. Look at the population distribution. You can clearly make out where the county lines are between Harris and Waller/Liberty/Chambers. That it isn't a sharp line is only due to the fact that they're displaying a grid by the square mile, which takes a weighted average of growth projections at a finer scale. There are even spots along the Montgomery county lines with Waller and Liberty and along the Galveston county line with Brazoria where you can see demarcations.

What are you smoking, dude? ;-)

These meetings are for input on the RTP? Are you sure? Seems like a lot of the subject matter is peripheral or off-topic.

That's how H-GAC explained it to me when I brought up the issue of the county lines being such hard-and-fast demarcations. I actually had to use that data, and therefore had to understand how and why it was worthless.

It indeed seems as though the current meetings are for a plan other than the RTP. Nevertheless, your comments regarding their "current plan" were apparently related to the growth forecast.

Their growth forecast does not show any hard-and-fast demarcations along county lines such as you described.. I provided the link to the growth forecast.

There's another spoke that never got very far. Spur 5, it was supposed to go down to Alvin along Mykawa, any news on how that's going? IIRC, the La Porte freeway was supposed to penetrate farther into the loop but they killed it.

It's still in HGAC's Regional Plan as a tollway.

H-GAC's current "plan" is more of a non-scientific projection. They mostly just interviewed elected leaders at the County and City level, assigned a percent share of regional growth according to whether the elected leaders wanted or expected it, and then crammed it into any open or re-developable space that they could identify. So, the folks at Harris County were really aggressive and the resulting projection requires that every square inch of the county gets developed right up to the county lines on all sides...beyond which (because Liberty and Waller were so complacent in their projections) there is zero growth and agrarian economy. But that's not realistic, especially to the far northeast and northwestern tips of Harris County. Another tendency was for the outlying counties to project growth within small towns like Angleton and Dayton, even as the surrounding countryside remains countryside, but that's unrealistic too.

It was a bad plan, and it was not actionable.

1. You are apparently referring to HGAC's Regional Growth Forecast, not the Regional Transportation Plan.

2. Your description of the methodology is inaccurate, as is your description of the results of the forecast.

Likewise, I ride Metro buses and MetroRail regularly, including after dark. I have not once felt the least bit unsafe.

Yes, the park n ride numbers are in Metro's monthly ridership reports. Average daily ridership is running 28,007.

This is really close to where the new train station will be.

There will be a station (east-bound) directly across Rusk Street from this building and a (west-bound) station adjacent to the property on the Capitol side.

Maybe so. But if that's true, then why would they not have them embedded in concrete on the Red Line between Fannin South and Reliant Park stations? I've noticed that trains go considerably faster on this portion of the Red Line as well. As you can see here:

These rails aren't embedded at all.

I know this isn't really a big deal, I just find it strange.

Interesting. I had not noticed that before.

Thank you for posting the link to the full article. You may be right about the historical tax credit component, however some people may still see it as controversial that the City would provide subsidy to enable State-administered federal subsidy.

JJxvi nailed it as to why I don't think that this project can rely upon One Park Place as a rent comp. But in addition, I'd point out that One Park Place has better view corridors, a nice large new park that seems to flow from it, and that it is within an easier walking distance to the Houston Pavilions and the Park Shops. Its probably the best single-block site in all of Houston. I'd argue that Humble Tower and Post Rice Lofts have better locations too, one fronting Main Street and across from the Pavilions, the other nearer to Market Square Park.

So yeah, I think that the pro forma rents are too aggressive.

I never suggested it would not be controversial. No doubt it will be. (The Dallas developer may be surprised at that, since up in Dallas they just upon the city vaults for anyone who whispers the words "downtown residential".)

You may be right on the pricing. I have to agree the location is not quite as nice as One Park Place, but not so sure it's much lesser of a location than Humble or Rice (perhaps a little quieter location than either of those). Depends on what one is looking for. Finished out correctly, it could be a VERY attractive property, IMO.

It may depend on the amenities (which they are saying will be high-end) and finish levels. Probably a significantly different product than the loft-like Rice apartments and probably higher-end finsishes than Humber Tower.

Nancy stated that a tax credit developer was backing the project. I'm not trying to imply that qualifying applicants would be "poor", but they sure aren't rich.

As for $2,200/month on 1,000-square-foot units ($2.20 PSF), I'd be interested in knowing where you get that! That's very aggressive. Post Rice Lofts averages $1.51 and Humble Tower averages $1.72. The only redeveloped historic building that gets rents like you've described is 1414 Congress, which gets $2.22 PSF...but they're all 207-square-foot SRO housing units operated by a non-profit. True enough, Finger does better at One Park Place, but this is no One Park Place. Finger's market for tenants is altogether different.

I got the rental and square footage numbers from the Chron.

You have apparently jumped to the conclusion that the tax credit financing is for low-income housing. Not likely. It is almost certainly an historic rehabilitation tax credit.

Why have you assumed that this is "no One Park Place"?

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

--Ben Franklin

Is voluntarily giving a little personal information (e.g., home address, email address or phone number, and preferred language.) in advance of a flight really giving up an essential liberty?

And of course, do it without spires or a crown!

That would be ideal. But I would accept a spire to reclaim our rightful spot. ;-)

In my dreams, Hines will do a career-capping "gift" to Houston, by developing a multi-use project downtown, including a super-tall tower. Something unique and ground-breaking in the way that the Galleria was unique and ground-breaking when Hines developed it.

http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/east_montgomery/news/wakeboard-park-shooting-range-coming-to-east-montgomery-county/article_bff7b91f-6abb-51ef-bc0c-b0f79f9014cf.html?mode=story

For the love of mud. Allen, TX got the wake board park from this group and it didn't cost the public a dime.

.... other than the fact that the Allen wake board park is located in a city park

What is proposed is an $82 million project of which the current taxable value is $16 million, so that any yield on investment would be the difference of the two, $66 million. However, if the project is not viable without $14 million of subsidy, then its contribution toward fair market value would be only $52 million. (Remember, the only value that is taxable is a building's fee simple fair market value, meaning that value of the building alone without any financial agreements such as leases, debt financing...or direct government subsidy, especially when that subsidy is a non-recurring event.)

The City's (and thereby the TIRZ's) current property tax rate is 0.63875%, so annual tax revenue would be $332,150. It would take 43 years to recoup the dollar amount of its investment. However, that does not account for the time value of money. If the City (or more accurately, the TIRZ) were willing to give up a dollar today for a riskless dollar and three cents a year from now (which given its cash-strapped budget and the undeniable fact that HCAD's appraised values are inherently risky and chronically below actual market value, seems unlikely) then a perpetuity of $332,150 would be worth approximately $11 million. But then...perpetuities can be sold for liquid cash. Direct one-time subsidies to developers in Dallas are forever!

The savvy HAIFer might rebut that the sales tax would make up a portion of the difference, however the TIRZ would be funding the subsidy and the TIRZ does not collect a sales tax. A differently-minded savvy HAIFer might also point out that 1) "workforce housing" is unlikely to spur any economic windfalls in the downtown area, and that 2) to a large extent, this expensive housing for poor people in the downtown area would only undercut the market for inexpensive housing for poor people in the rest of Houston, hurting the remainder of the City's tax base, not that the TIRZ would care, and nor should support this project in the first place for reasons previously stated.

Where do you get "housing for poor people"? These are slated to be approximately 1,000 square foot apartments renting for $2,200/month.