POST: Mixed-Use Development At 401 Franklin St.

[EllenOlenska]

As someone who has a habit of musing that parking lots should be turned into arbors or gardens or local parks, I wouldn't undersell the green roof as "buzzy"; mainly because that's a huge roof. 

[Luminare]

Didn't someone post saying that they would be doing a press release. Do we not have it within us to wait till then?

[TheDV]

I am overall excited for this project. In my opinion, I think it built major hype when they first acquired the building and began to host all these cool events (Day for Night, etc). Then, by going MIA for about a year, people automatically became curious about the project. It’s more of a marketing tactic, because now if anything, this project will draw much more attention aka more investors. It is much needed in downtown anyway, maybe it’ll push the homeless people outskirts. I don’t have a doubt they’ll pull it off with great success. People in Houston are very supportive and open to innovation, now more than ever, think about the ION per say..

 

By the way, no one has answered my question about air rights?

[hindesky]

7 hours ago, TheDV said:

Can I please get some information on how to buy Air Rights?

What kind of air rights are you asking about?

[TheDV]

Having in mind that high rises are a hot trend, if someone owns the land (surface), they also get the air rights from the ground up. Well, what if I want to buy someone’s air rights? There has to be a brokerage firm for this, but I can’t find one in htx. Do any of you?

[Luminare]

59 minutes ago, hindesky said:

What kind of air rights are you asking about?

 

Just now, TheDV said:

Having in mind that high rises are a hot trend, if someone owns the land (surface), they also get the air rights from the ground up. Well, what if I want to buy someone’s air rights? There has to be a brokerage firm for this, but I can’t find one in htx. Do any of you?

 

I've heard of this being done in New York, but thats only because space is getting so ridiculously expensive. You'd have to wait for another 100 years to bank on something like that in Houston. Besides thats a purchase that is being done out of need.

Not to insinuate anything, but this seems awfully predatory/unethical. Do you mean to say you simply want to buy air rights so you can make people pay to two owners in order to build skyscrapers? Thats honestly a terrible precedent to set in a town that has been low-rise forever and is looking to finally move up to mid-rises and Downtown starting to fill in.

[TheDV]

Bob Shapiro and Trump did it, top notch developers/moguls. Look, maybe it comes across a bit sharky but there are options in htx, just asking, ayeeeee 🤷🏻‍♀️

[jmitch94]

New York has air rights because they have so many skyscrapers that they have a cap on how high building can be built. A developer will buy the air rights to adjacent properties and pool the height they bought to be able to build a taller building. This means that the buildings that sold their air rights cant builder any higher which allows more sun on the streets and makes them less claustrophobic. 

 

This video gets into it a bit. Also a really great channel. 

 

https://youtu.be/gYLQThUxpvQ?t=301

Edited June 24, 2019 by jmitch94

[arche_757]

23 hours ago, West Timer said:

You may be right about this project. But you're way out of line when you start trashing the whole city. Then it just starts to sound like you're carrying a lot of personal baggage and personal resentment. At that point, you just get thrown in with all the "Everything About Houston Sucks" crowd and nobody's listening anymore. I get it, you're 'passionate'. Good for you, but there are a lot of great looking projects in the works in Houston these days.

I’m as big of a proponent for Houston as any.  I don’t believe I trashed the town - just placed due criticism upon the firms and developers for being less cutting edge than in decades past; and less forward thinking here locally than they are in other cities.  We have a handful of really good developers in town, i can’t put Frank Liu in that mix not in a long shot.  Not yet.  Perhaps some on here can.  Good for them.

 

I’m hoping this project turns out better than is currently advertised, or at the very least is successfully interwoven into the urban fabric.

 

I have to add: I’m merely stating an opinion - my opinion.   Everyone has their own.  Many people seem A-ok with this design. Fine.  Great.  I’m a curmudgeon, and I want the very best.

Edited June 24, 2019 by arche_757

[Urbannizer]

Website is now password protected until the big reveal later today

 

https://posthtx.com

[Urbannizer]

This is it...

 

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/Former-Barbara-Jordan-Post-Office-to-be-reborn-as-14053500.php#photo-17760762

 

Quote

 

Years before it closed, the future of the downtown post office on Franklin Street was the subject of much fascination.

 

In early 2012, students from architecture programs at Harvard, Columbia and other universities spent a day touring the 16-acre complex, gathering information and soaking up inspiration to come up with hypothetical development proposals for the property once it was no longer used for sorting mail and selling stamps.

 

Their ideas, which were part of a national design competition, ranged from creating dense housing districts and public plazas to reusing the sprawling building to house restaurants, a produce market, sports fields and a rooftop movie theater. One proposal combined thousands of residential units with an elevated park called the “the Hill at Houston.”

 

Lovett Commercial, the Houston-based company that purchased the property in 2015, plans to keep the structure and, with the help of historic tax credits, transform it into a coworking, shopping and culinary destination with a concert venue, hotel and rooftop farm. The ambitious project, which will fill more than 550,000 square feet of space, will be called POST Houston.

 

“We envision a catalytic development that will create something very unique, not only from an adaptive reuse standpoint, but what POST will offer in terms of showcasing the talent and entrepreneurial spirit of Houston’s diverse population,” said Frank Liu, Lovett’s president.

 

The developer and architects on the project say it will reinvigorate this quieter, more industrial northern part of downtown. The site is near the corner of Franklin and Bagby, across Buffalo Bayou from the bulk of the city’s office and residential towers. The location may prove challenging in one sense, but it is also a benefit.

 

The site offers postcard views of the Houston skyline, which will be highlighted from a rooftop park with restaurants, shaded greenspaces and an organic farm.

 

“It’s a site where you feel like Houston is a really urban place. Standing on it you have a view of downtown, you feel so metropolitan,” said Jason Long, a partner with OMA, an international architecture partnership founded by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas. The company is designing POST Houston, along with local firm Powers Brown Architecture.

 

The former post office campus is comprised of a sprawling two-story warehouse with a more than five-acre footprint and a five-story administration building facing Franklin Street. Surface parking surrounds the complex. Lovett officials declined to say what they were spending on the renovation of the property, which the Harris County Appraisal District valued at $42.5 million this year.

 

Lovett’s plan aims to transform the now-gutted warehouse with an edgy, urban aesthetic that brings in color and light. The building will be punctured to create three large atriums, each with a unique monumental staircase defining the space as coworking, culinary or retail. In the office section, for example, the “Z stair” zigzags and incorporates platforms where people can work.

 

Food stalls and kiosks will cluster around a staircase resembling a double helix, creating a dense, international-style market.

 

“The stairs are not just a way to connect pieces together, but spaces that could be social connectors in themselves where people could cross paths and intersect with one another,” Long said.

 

The first floor will house restaurants, shops and event space, while the second floor will cater to office users and arts organizations.

 

Lovett, founded in 1980 as a homebuilder, now develops an array of residential and commercial real estate in Houston, Dallas and Austin. Its commercial arm was created in 1994 to develop urban retail and suburban grocery-anchored projects.

 

This project will be different from other mixed-use developments in the way it combines uses, said Lovett’s Kirby Liu, Frank Liu’s son and a Lovett project manager.

“A lot of these mixed-use projects are actually what would be considered adjacent-use projects, in the sense that the way that the different programs interact with each other is still distinct and disparate, whereas our vision for POST is about a melting pot of programs that cross-penetrate and influence each other,” he said.

The project also aims to focus on energy efficiency as sustainability.

 

The atriums will be covered with a translucent roofing material called ethylene tetrafluoroethylene — or ETFE — which acts like an air-filled Ziplock bag to serve as insulation.

 

The rooftop park and garden, to be known as the “Skylawn,” is being designed by Hoerr Schaudt, the Chicago-based landscape architects behind Houston’s McGovern Centennial Park. The property’s restaurant tenants will be encouraged to source ingredients from the garden.

 

“It will be like rooftop-to-tabletop. Restaurants will be able to order from the farm with literally zero carbon footprint, no transportation whatsoever,” the younger Liu said.

 

The redevelopment of the warehouse is expected to be completed by next summer. The administration building will eventually become a boutique hotel, and Lovett is in talks with an operator. The developer is also in negotiations with an entertainment company to operate the music venue.

 

****

 

“When people ask us why we saved the building, it’s because no one in their right mind would ever build a 5.5-acre rooftop that’s cast-in-place concrete,” Kirby Liu said. “This to us was an opportunity to create something like Central Park meets The High Line.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Timoric]

-

Edited July 12, 2019 by Timoric

[CREguy13]

I CAN'T WAIT for this to open, but completely understand the disappointment from some, due to the lack of high-rise development for this size of tract right in downtown.  I live in North Downtown and I will 100% be coming here on the weekends and certain evenings throughout the week.  I know its discussed in other threads, but there really is a high-level of pedestrian activity near Market Square, but IMO it is somewhat closed-in because there is nothing to the North of MSP - this totally changes that.  

 

This should really rev up interest for quality development on the recently listed Chase Bank site, half-block next to Houston Balet, and several other quarter/half-blocks on the south side of the Bayou.  It will be extremely fun to watch the surrounding area develop over the next 10 years.

 

Another fun thought is whether the Bayou and its trails serve as a connection for Post Houston and East River.  

[Urbannizer]

39 minutes ago, CREguy13 said:

I CAN'T WAIT for this to open, but completely understand the disappointment from some, due to the lack of high-rise development for this size of tract right in downtown.  I live in North Downtown and I will 100% be coming here on the weekends and certain evenings throughout the week.  I know its discussed in other threads, but there really is a high-level of pedestrian activity near Market Square, but IMO it is somewhat closed-in because there is nothing to the North of MSP - this totally changes that.  

 

This should really rev up interest for quality development on the recently listed Chase Bank site, half-block next to Houston Balet, and several other quarter/half-blocks on the south side of the Bayou.  It will be extremely fun to watch the surrounding area develop over the next 10 years.

 

I worry for the the meantime. Without the addition of residential components I don't think there's enough people living Downtown as of right now for it to be enough to support the large amount of retail. Don't think that is possible with just an office and hotel component. Maybe we'll get enough people to drive here in their cars with all the surface parking still surrounding the site, like a suburban mall thanks to it not being geared towards pedestrians outside the structure..which in return stills gives it a feeling that it's  isolated from Downtown. Very underutilized for such a prime site if you ask me. With no mention of future phases yet, has Lovett bitten off more than they can chew?

[invisibletrees]

Post HTX Mall 

 

 

Quote

Their ideas, which were part of a national design competition, ranged from creating dense housing districts and public plazas to reusing the sprawling building to house restaurants, a produce market, sports fields and a rooftop movie theater.

One proposal combined thousands of residential units with an elevated park called the “the Hill at Houston.”

 

Quote

“When people ask us why we saved the building, it’s because no one in their right mind would ever build a 5.5-acre rooftop that’s cast-in-place concrete,” Kirby Liu said. “This to us was an opportunity to create something like Central Park meets The High Line.”

 

OK 😳

Edited June 27, 2019 by invisibletrees

[DrLan34]

It’s something new and I appreciate that. I will definitely attend and support Houston’s version of a Grand Central Market.

[lockmat]

59 minutes ago, invisibletrees said:

Post HTX Mall 

 

Exactly. This is a mall.

[CaptainJilliams]

I can echo the disappointments of everyone above. 

 

It's not an awful design, it's just boring and that parking lot surrounding it doesn't help the look.  

[EllenOlenska]

I love how it's like the entire backside is a chain link fence abutting a void. 

[crock]

theres a "new kind of department store" thats opened in dallas and about to open in NYC.    If this was announced as the anchor, I'd feel a lot more confident in this project: https://neighborhoodgoods.com/ 

 

 

The biggest Issue I haven't seen brought up yet is that this will be essentially the groundzero of the i45 apocalypse.   There will be months/years/decades(?) where there will be major highway/parkway construction that will make this impossible to get to on weekends/weeknights.  

Edited June 27, 2019 by crock

[iah77]

Most of the project is office besides the first floor which is retail/food. They aren't separate as the article mentions but integrated into those large atriums since other way they would not get any natural light.  I know two major tenants are both related to entertainment, one just opened in Dallas.

 

Now that Eataly is opening at NorthPark I'm thinking this would be a great spot for them lol.

 

The parking I know is reserved for future high rises. Rendering I saw has like at least 5

[H-Town Man]

I think it is important to appreciate the daunting financial challenge that this represents. They are moving into uncharted waters; keeping the parking lots (at least in the short term) greatly increases their chances of being successful. If this is easy for all the people who live in Midtown or along Washington Avenue to get to, it will be much easier to make it work than if you are just depending on the people living around or visiting Market Square to walk over. They have hired the right people and are doing this with the right mindset, there's just a limit to what can be done at once.

 

[htownbro]

I have mixed feelings about it.  Can they have this completed by 2023 for Final Four which comes back here.

Edited June 27, 2019 by htownbro
grammar

[Luminare]

37 minutes ago, crock said:

theres a "new kind of department store" thats opened in dallas and about to open in NYC.    If this was announced as the anchor, I'd feel a lot more confident in this project: https://neighborhoodgoods.com/ 

 

 

The biggest Issue I haven't seen brought up yet is that this will be essentially the groundzero of the i45 apocalypse.   There will be months/years/decades(?) where there will be major highway/parkway construction that will make this impossible to get to on weekends/weeknights.  

 

This is why I think they are focusing on the assets they have right now, and not ones which are dependent on other changes surrounding it. Its the best possible scenario moving forward.

 

2 hours ago, DrLan34 said:

It’s something new and I appreciate that. I will definitely attend and support Houston’s version of a Grand Central Market.

 

Nearly every big time city has a grand central market of some kind. Downtown greatly needs something like this. I like how its blending the best aspects of the warehouse, with current office/coworking trends, and the best aspects of Malls. Everyone has been wondering when we would get big time retail into downtown, and this will be it. Its definitely a lot more approachable for retail since there isn't enough foot traffic on the streets yet, but getting people either by walking or car to one place is a way safer bet for retail in this growing market. The dynamics look great. We can't always rely on The Galleria to be that only big time market/mall. The biggest and best cities have multiple in major hubs.

 

13 minutes ago, H-Town Man said:

I think it is important to appreciate the daunting financial challenge that this represents. They are moving into uncharted waters; keeping the parking lots (at least in the short term) greatly increases their chances of being successful. If this is easy for all the people who live in Midtown or along Washington Avenue to get to, it will be much easier to make it work than if you are just depending on the people living around or visiting Market Square to walk over. They have hired the right people and are doing this with the right mindset, there's just a limit to what can be done at once.

 

 

Exactly what I was thinking. I think I saw one comment as well that said that they expected better of OMA, and I'm just sitting here wondering, "Does that person know OMA's work?" This is type of reuse and adaptation is staple OMA. The staircase are staple Rem Koolhaas. I also look at all the parking and see nothing, but pure potential. We've been digging up most of our surface lots and redeveloping them and I don't see any reason to think that these parking lots will last long. You're also right, in that they have the right people working on it.

 

The biggest problem for Lovett is that they vastly over-promised the project. If this were the very first image then I think we would all be cheering. Their marketing f.u.c.ked up one key aspect of create any product 'under promise, and over sell' or 'set low expectations, and then over deliver'. They flopped that big time. Now they need to buckle down and just build. Play time is over.

Edited June 27, 2019 by Luminare

[Avossos]

I know one or two posters here work for Lovett... So I want to be sensitive to them.

 

I love the idea and the reuse. I do think this lacks residential. Could you not fit a midrise anywhere on those parking lots? 10 story building would be perfect here with a parking garage...

 

Also - Hotel is cool. Perhaps we can finally get an ACE hotel - super boutique / fun / right vibe for the area.

[HOUCAJUN]

With all due respect, I assume the reason Houston does not have a Grand Central Market is because we are blessed to have H.E.B? I've been to NYC and they're best market can't hold a candle to my neighborhood H.E.B. I stand to be corrected. As for this project, I'm on the fence.

[H-Town Man]

6 minutes ago, HOUCAJUN said:

With all due respect, I assume the reason Houston does not have a Grand Central Market is because we are blessed to have H.E.B? I've been to NYC and they're best market can't hold a candle to my neighborhood H.E.B. I stand to be corrected. As for this project, I'm on the fence.

 

Which market in NYC do you have in mind? A touristy market like Reading Terminal in Philadelphia or Pike Place Market in Seattle offers a different experience from a grocery store. Can't really compare the two.

 

[Houston19514]

Website is open now:

 

https://posthtx.com/

 

1 hour ago, htownbro said:

Can they have this completed by 2023 for Final Four comes back here.

 

From the Chronicle article:  "The redevelopment of the warehouse is expected to be completed by next summer."

[Mr.Clean19]

No gondolas? Disappointing... 

[urbanize713]

Yes it is something new and hopefully it succeeds but this is terribly underwhelming. 

 

I say this for 3 reasons. 

1. Hanover Buffalo Bayou

2. The Allen

3. Regent Square for god sake!

 

Like the three projects above, this fronts the bayou/park and is actually in downtown. In my humble opinion, I would prefer for Lovett to sell (at a profit) and for a developer with a bigger vision(and pockets) to come along. Even if it sits vacant for a couple more years.