Conn. governor slams downtown Houston; forgets he's from Hartford

[editor]

There was an article in the Chronicle this past Thursday about the governor of Connecticut, Ned Lamont, slamming downtown Houston on a couple of radio stations in the nutmeg state.

On WTIC:

Quote

You're walking around downtown Houston, it's kind of godforsaken, not very pretty…

On WPLR:
 

Quote

 

You walk around downtown Houston, which is butt ugly, not much there…

Everywhere you'd hear bouncing off those big, empty walls, 'Let's go Uconn, Uconn Huskies.'

 

 

While downtown Houston isn't perfect, Mr. Lamont forgets that he's from Hartford, which invented rolling up the sidewalks at 5pm.

Sadly, the best civilized retort came from Lina Hidalgo, who tried to tout downtown's "fabulous restaurants, historic buildings & massive murals" — all things that every other city can claim, including Brownsville. 

The restaurants aren't open very much.  Every city has historic buildings.  And the murals are nice, but 91% of people file them under "who gives a shit."  Hundreds of other cities have been using massive murals to disguise the urban blight of blank brick walls  for the last half a century.  Welcome, aboard, Houston!

Hopefully, this acerbic opinion from an importantish outsider will act as a little kick in the pants of local officials to get them to stop staring at their bellybuttons and understand that Houston needs to step it up. 

 

 

[hindesky]

He is also a hard core Yankees fan so that probably had something to do with his hatred of Houston. Our Astros have been  the Yankees daddy for almost 5 years.

[HtownWxBoy]

14 hours ago, editor said:

There was an article in the Chronicle this past Thursday about the governor of Connecticut, Ned Lamont, slamming downtown Houston on a couple of radio stations in the nutmeg state.

On WTIC:

On WPLR:
 

 

While downtown Houston isn't perfect, Mr. Lamont forgets that he's from Hartford, which invented rolling up the sidewalks at 5pm.

Sadly, the best civilized retort came from Lina Hidalgo, who tried to tout downtown's "fabulous restaurants, historic buildings & massive murals" — all things that every other city can claim, including Brownsville. 

The restaurants aren't open very much.  Every city has historic buildings.  And the murals are nice, but 91% of people file them under "who gives a shit."  Hundreds of other cities have been using massive murals to disguise the urban blight of blank brick walls  for the last half a century.  Welcome, aboard, Houston!

Hopefully, this acerbic opinion from an importantish outsider will act as a little kick in the pants of local officials to get them to stop staring at their bellybuttons and understand that Houston needs to step it up. 

 

 

While I obviously agree Downtown Houston has a long way to go, it is important to focus on how far Downtown has come over the past several years.  Also, as someone who grew up in the Northeast (Northeast Pennsylvania), I wouldn't pay much mind to what the Governor of Connecticut thinks ..... while Connecticut is a nice state, the only thing they (the entire state) are known for is being a suburb of NYC.  Unless you have friends/family there, there is literally no reason to visit. 

Also, as a supporter of Lina Hidalgo, her response was unbelievably sad.  I support her and Downtown but literally cringed when I read that. 

Edited April 9, 2023 by HtownWxBoy

[staresatmaps]

On 4/9/2023 at 5:54 AM, HtownWxBoy said:

Also, as someone who grew up in the Northeast (Northeast Pennsylvania), I wouldn't pay much mind to what the Governor of Connecticut thinks ..... while Connecticut is a nice state, the only thing they (the entire state) are known for is being a suburb of NYC.  Unless you have friends/family there, there is literally no reason to visit.

He actually lives in Greenwich, CT which is as close to NYC as you can get and has a history of growing up in extremely wealthy areas and going to school at the prettiest campuses in the US(Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard, and Yale). So I kind of empathize with his struggle of nowhere being as pretty as where you've been.

[bobruss]

I think it goes;

If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.

Especially after you just won March Madness.

No manners. 

Typical

[j_cuevas713]

On 4/8/2023 at 3:07 PM, editor said:

There was an article in the Chronicle this past Thursday about the governor of Connecticut, Ned Lamont, slamming downtown Houston on a couple of radio stations in the nutmeg state.

On WTIC:

On WPLR:
 

 

While downtown Houston isn't perfect, Mr. Lamont forgets that he's from Hartford, which invented rolling up the sidewalks at 5pm.

Sadly, the best civilized retort came from Lina Hidalgo, who tried to tout downtown's "fabulous restaurants, historic buildings & massive murals" — all things that every other city can claim, including Brownsville. 

The restaurants aren't open very much.  Every city has historic buildings.  And the murals are nice, but 91% of people file them under "who gives a shit."  Hundreds of other cities have been using massive murals to disguise the urban blight of blank brick walls  for the last half a century.  Welcome, aboard, Houston!

Hopefully, this acerbic opinion from an importantish outsider will act as a little kick in the pants of local officials to get them to stop staring at their bellybuttons and understand that Houston needs to step it up. 

 

 

I hope it does. A few Super Bowls and other big events haven't shifted much. I'd say a lot more has come in the form of private development than the city getting it's act together. The problem with Houston is it moves way too damn slow. I hear it all the time from people from other cities. One lady I met from NJ asked me why it seemed like people didn't take their job serious enough down here. It was actually one of the reasons she left Houston and went back to NJ. At the time I was like screw you you're from NJ, but now that I think about it I get what she was saying. It seems like city leaders move at a pace of "we'll get it done at some point" instead of having a sense of urgency to get it done TODAY. If I'm the city, I would find every available dollar to get reconstruction going on a lot more streets. I'm still waiting for W Alabama and Emancipation to finally kick off, but who knows when they actually will. While we don't have the most extensive transit system compared to other cities, we also don't provide enough incentive to walk and use what we have. We need to start enforcing our sidewalk ordinance where property owners are responsible for maintaining them. The city can work with property owners who have more serious sidewalk issues but basic cleanliness shouldn't be an issue. We also need to get rid of parking minimums inside the Loop and the city needs to quit being scared to force people out of their cars. 

Edited April 10, 2023 by j_cuevas713

[hbg.50]

1 hour ago, j_cuevas713 said:

The problem with Houston is it moves way too damn slow. I hear it all the time from people from other cities. One lady I met from NJ asked me why it seemed like people didn't take their job serious enough down here. It was actually one of the reasons she left Houston and went back to NJ. At the time I was like screw you you're from NJ, but now that I think about it I get what she was saying. It seems like city leaders move at a pace of "we'll get it done at some point" instead of having a sense of urgency to get it done TODAY.

You know, I think you might be right.  Case in point…The Houston Botanic Garden…first it took decades to actually open and now it is developing at a snail’s pace.  There is literally nothing to see there (after 2 1/2 years)…It makes me mad when I compare it to the Dallas Arboretum and Fort Worth Botanic Gardens.

[Nate99]

He's right, it's awful. Cockroaches so big they steal your shoes in the summer to avoid the scorching hot pavement themselves if you are so ill-fortuned as to have to get out of your car. Stay far, far away. 

Then again, if it weren't for people conveniently fleeing from the Dark Knight reboot going on in NYC, Connecticut might be further down the list of net out migrants.  But at least there are plenty of walkable neighborhoods with fewer residents than there used to be for those unimpressed by CoH's efforts to emulate them by coercion (as is right and just). 

 

[Tumbleweed_Tx]

this is like when those elitist, condescending buttholes (I can say buttholes, right?) from New York bitched about what a hellhole Houston was during the playoffs back in 95.

I'm like, f**k off, we're full, at least we're not yankees. Houston may be a hellhole, but IT'S OUR HELLHOLE.... .

[Naviguessor]

Cannot Wait, until this topic just blows over.  It's embarrassing insisting on an apology and shows everyone just how insecure we can be.

Just let the breeze of time carry it away already.  

[j_cuevas713]

On 4/13/2023 at 9:09 AM, Naviguessor said:

Cannot Wait, until this topic just blows over.  It's embarrassing insisting on an apology and shows everyone just how insecure we can be.

Just let the breeze of time carry it away already.  

I agree. Mayor Turner should have never called him back expecting an apology. 

[__nevii]

On 4/10/2023 at 7:39 PM, steve1363 said:

You know, I think you might be right.  Case in point…The Houston Botanic Garden…first it took decades to actually open and now it is developing at a snail’s pace.  There is literally nothing to see there (after 2 1/2 years)…It makes me mad when I compare it to the Dallas Arboretum and Fort Worth Botanic Gardens.

Perhaps. But the comparison is quite flawed, since those DFW gardens have been present/growing in for decades, as opposed to the Houston site that you acknowledge is only 21/2 years old. It might simply be that the recent winter events across Texas have stalled the aggressiveness that might otherwise have taken place in the garden, though Houston's climate profiles are better off in that regard compared to pretty much the rest of the state (everywhere else statewide is either hotter/drier and/or gets colder during winter, both factors that limit plant diversity).

[__nevii]

On 4/8/2023 at 3:07 PM, editor said:

Hopefully, this acerbic opinion from an importantish outsider will act as a little kick in the pants of local officials to get them to stop staring at their bellybuttons and understand that Houston needs to step it up. 

I agree. At the same time though, what does "stepping it up" entail? There's too much subjectivity and "humptydumptyism" that comes with terms like "ugly" or "soulless." The particular reasons that "Ned" might have had in saying what he said about downtown Houston would differ greatly from what you or some others might feel. This is why lots of discourse like this becomes an unproductive circle-jerk of "Houston sucks:" no concrete paramaters are given, nor are sound arguments addressed thoroughly.

Anyway, if we assume that "Ned's" comment was referring strictly to the lack of active vibrancy in downtown Houston compared to what he was used to in the Northeast, then I do not disagree: there's no doubt lots of work to be done on that front by the city officials.

That said, how much of the control comes purely from the local officials? If they don't know what they are doing, then the leadership is a pure kakistocracy that needs to be replaced (whether democratic or republican). However, I don't doubt that local residents can have a say in what policies get enacted: I guess we need to get enough people on board with urbanism and YIMBY to relinquish things like parking minimums.

 

[__nevii]

On 4/13/2023 at 9:09 AM, Naviguessor said:

Cannot Wait, until this topic just blows over.  It's embarrassing insisting on an apology and shows everyone just how insecure we can be.

Just let the breeze of time carry it away already.  

 

On 5/10/2023 at 1:18 PM, j_cuevas713 said:

I agree. Mayor Turner should have never called him back expecting an apology. 

I haven't seen much of what became of this topic other than the initial remark, tbh. Ned did eventually apologize, although I'm not sure if Turner took it personally to reach out for that, or if the apology was simply given after the responses from Turner, Lina, etc.

If Turner reached out personally, then it was indeed overdone. But I will say that addressing Ned's remarks, especially in disagreement, isn't necessarily "insecurity": that stuff is just irrelevant ad hominem/affirming-the-consequent fallacy, no different that MAGAs crying "WOKE" in response to pushback against their policies.

[__nevii]

On 4/10/2023 at 6:23 PM, j_cuevas713 said:

I hope it does. A few Super Bowls and other big events haven't shifted much. I'd say a lot more has come in the form of private development than the city getting it's act together. The problem with Houston is it moves way too damn slow. I hear it all the time from people from other cities. One lady I met from NJ asked me why it seemed like people didn't take their job serious enough down here. It was actually one of the reasons she left Houston and went back to NJ. At the time I was like screw you you're from NJ, but now that I think about it I get what she was saying. It seems like city leaders move at a pace of "we'll get it done at some point" instead of having a sense of urgency to get it done TODAY. If I'm the city, I would find every available dollar to get reconstruction going on a lot more streets. I'm still waiting for W Alabama and Emancipation to finally kick off, but who knows when they actually will. While we don't have the most extensive transit system compared to other cities, we also don't provide enough incentive to walk and use what we have. We need to start enforcing our sidewalk ordinance where property owners are responsible for maintaining them. The city can work with property owners who have more serious sidewalk issues but basic cleanliness shouldn't be an issue. We also need to get rid of parking minimums inside the Loop and the city needs to quit being scared to force people out of their cars. 

I mentioned this in response to @editor's post, but I do wonder how much of the city is purely from the leader's disgression, versus how much depends on feedback from the locals. Because if the leaders are slow and inefficient as suggested, then the whole thing is a kakistocracy that needs to be thrown out. On the flip side, the latter predicament would mean that we need to get as much urbanists on board in order to get the city to abolish things like parking minimums.

I'm really not sure the delay with respect to "parking minimums," because that stuff looks like it is easily solved with the stroke of a pen. The city already made the efforts to extend exemptions into EADO and Midtown back in 2019: so I don't know if the delay is them trying to figure out how to address the more autocentric portions of the city outside of the 610 Loop (especially since places like Kingwood are inside Houston city limits).

[j_cuevas713]

 

58 minutes ago, __nevii said:

 

I haven't seen much of what became of this topic other than the initial remark, tbh. Ned did eventually apologize, although I'm not sure if Turner took it personally to reach out for that, or if the apology was simply given after the responses from Turner, Lina, etc.

If Turner reached out personally, then it was indeed overdone. But I will say that addressing Ned's remarks, especially in disagreement, isn't necessarily "insecurity": that stuff is just irrelevant ad hominem/affirming-the-consequent fallacy, no different that MAGAs crying "WOKE" in response to pushback against their policies.

Yeah he ended up calling him to ask about his comments and then from what I understood, asked for an apology. If we're going to tout ourselves as the 4th biggest city, we need to quit crying over spilled milk comments from random people. From what I gathered, a lot of people liked Houston and had a great time. Now I do personally believe his comments were nonsense. Downtown was alive, and people were everywhere. If he had a bad time, that's his boring ass fault. 

[__nevii]

14 minutes ago, j_cuevas713 said:

Yeah he ended up calling him to ask about his comments and then from what I understood, asked for an apology. If we're going to tout ourselves as the 4th biggest city, we need to quit crying over spilled milk comments from random people. From what I gathered, a lot of people liked Houston and had a great time. Now I do personally believe his comments were nonsense. Downtown was alive, and people were everywhere. If he had a bad time, that's his boring ass fault. 

Also, the city released a climate action plan back in 2020 that called for parking minimums to be abolished city wide no later than 2030 — I updated the one parking minimums thread that I saw elsewhere on the forum.

I'm thinking that they are extending exemptions piece-by-piece through the decade (startng inside 610 first, before gradually expanding to Beltway8 and beyond to even annexed Kingwood, Clear Lake, etc). I just don't want a situation like you mentioned, where they are too slow and "twiddle-their thumbs," only for politicians like Abbott to swoop in, and enact even more stringent controls against the cities than he is already is doing (i.e. the election laws in Texas Senate targeting Harris county being the most egregious).

[j_cuevas713]

28 minutes ago, __nevii said:

Also, the city released a climate action plan back in 2020 that called for parking minimums to be abolished city wide no later than 2030 — I updated the one parking minimums thread that I saw elsewhere on the forum.

I'm thinking that they are extending exemptions piece-by-piece through the decade (startng inside 610 first, before gradually expanding to Beltway8 and beyond to even annexed Kingwood, Clear Lake, etc). I just don't want a situation like you mentioned, where they are too slow and "twiddle-their thumbs," only for politicians like Abbott to swoop in, and enact even more stringent controls against the cities than he is already is doing (i.e. the election laws in Texas Senate targeting Harris county being the most egregious).

Man I'm very afraid that cities in Texas are going to lose all control of doing what they feel is best for themselves. It's a really scary time in Texas to have a single party try to take so much control. Now as far as city leaders moving with a sense of urgency, I hope we see 610 parking minimums lifted soon. We're literally shooting ourselves in the foot trying to build dense urban neighborhoods because developers are having to accommodate cars and not people. It's so stupid. 

[__nevii]

@j_cuevas713 Indeed. Many a buisiness owner would like to open their bakeries, coffee shops, book stores and other such niche botiques nestled within the burgeoning townhouse neighborhoods. But they can't, because the parking minimums, setbacks, and other such nonsense rules mean that they have to include more spaces than they'd want, limiting them to fewer options across the city: and dealing with the legal hassles can eat up money, especially for immigrants whom mom-and-pop businessse are the most accessible option for making money.

In fact, even the townhouse developments themselves are stymied, since regulations force them to include garages that limit the street level from what it'd otherwise be. The rules could possibly be preventing other middle options (duplexes, triplexes, etc) from becoming more common too.

If there are any new townhouse/building developments in Eado and Midtown that have occured between 2020 to now, those should be a bit different from the previous wave given the 2019 exemptions in those areas. Hopefully, the city takes the data into account.

But, yes. The city already lacks zoning, so it might as well go full free-market and abolish the remaining regulations that it does have. 🤷‍♀️

[Houston19514]

18 hours ago, __nevii said:

In fact, even the townhouse developments themselves are stymied, since regulations force them to include garages that limit the street level from what it'd otherwise be. The rules could possibly be preventing other middle options (duplexes, triplexes, etc) from becoming more common too.

If there are any new townhouse/building developments in Eado and Midtown that have occured between 2020 to now, those should be a bit different from the previous wave given the 2019 exemptions in those areas. Hopefully, the city takes the data into account.

But, yes. The city already lacks zoning, so it might as well go full free-market and abolish the remaining regulations that it does have. 🤷‍♀️

Outside of the exempt areas (downtown and parts of MIdtown and EADO), townhouses are required to provide off-street parking, but I don't know of any regulation that requires them to have garages.  Is there one?

But more importantly, even if they weren't required to provide off-street parking, it's pretty unlikely many townhouses would be bult without garages, the vast majority with two-car garages.

Edited May 19, 2023 by Houston19514

[__nevii]

1 hour ago, Houston19514 said:

Outside of the exempt areas (downtown and parts of MIdtown and EADO), townhouses are required to provide off-street parking, but I don't know of any regulation that requires them to have garages.  Is there one?

But more importantly, even if they weren't required to provide off-street parking, it's pretty unlikely many townhouses would be bult without garages, the vast majority with two-car garages.

The garages for the townhomes (and the driveways that lead to them) are part of the offstreet parking requirement. That said, there are some workarounds regarding shared driveways.

Edited May 19, 2023 by __nevii

[Houston19514]

6 hours ago, __nevii said:

The garages for the townhomes (and the driveways that lead to them) are part of the offstreet parking requirement. That said, there are some workarounds regarding shared driveways.

Yeah.  But there’s no regulation requiring them to have garages.  

[__nevii]

On 5/19/2023 at 10:11 PM, Houston19514 said:

Yeah.  But there’s no regulation requiring them to have garages.  

You know, I never actually said that they specifically mandated garages: more that those features were often the byproduct of the remaining pedestrian-unfriendly regulations still in city code. (setbacks, minimum parkings, etc).

Edited May 22, 2023 by __nevii

[Houston19514]

2 hours ago, __nevii said:

You know, I never actually said that they specifically mandated garages: more that those features were often the byproduct of the remaining pedestrian-unfriendly regulations still in city code. (setbacks, minimum parkings, etc).

Here are your exact words: " even the townhouse developments themselves are stymied, since regulations force them to include garages".   They can easily comply with the regulations by providing parking spots. Nothing in the regulations even hints at forcing them to include garages.  

The fact is, builders put garages in townhomes because the market requires garages. If the entire city of Houston had zero setback regulations AND zero minimum parking requirements, it would still be a VERY rare townhouse that did not include a garage.

Edited May 22, 2023 by Houston19514

[editor]

On 5/22/2023 at 12:41 PM, Houston19514 said:

the market requires garages

Though I agree with you that garages, currently, are popular in Houston townhomes, the mythical "market" doesn't always know what it wants, and citing "the market" is usually a cop-out. 

"The market" wasn't clamoring for an iPod, until suddenly there were iPods.  You can lead, or you can follow.

[Houston19514]

9 minutes ago, editor said:

Though I agree with you that garages, currently, are popular in Houston townhomes, the mythical "market" doesn't always know what it wants, and citing "the market" is usually a cop-out. 

"The market" wasn't clamoring for an iPod, until suddenly there were iPods.  You can lead, or you can follow.

There is no cop-out in saying that there is no significant market for townhomes without garages.  Just an acknowledgement of realty.  Nothing mythical about this market.

Edited May 23, 2023 by Houston19514

[__nevii]

 @editor is correct.

The front-loading garages ARE a by-product of laws requiring offstreet parkspaces, because they are a follow through of builders from the general offstreet parking (and I did grant that there were options, hence the shared-driveway workarounds as mentioned earlier).

Hence, your mentions of the "market" are only correct in the abstract: unfortunately, the reality is that "the market" in this case is perverted by the litanny for car-centric government regulations that have occured for decades in Houston (and other US cities in general due to government subsidies).

Abolishing all those regulations in the city will not change car-centricness overnight ... but the groundwork would indeed be solidified in constructing a true pedestrian city, especially as transit options improve: including townhomes, MFHs, etc with true street presence, without any garages, setbacks, etc.

Edited May 26, 2023 by __nevii

[Houston19514]

Again, there is simply nothing in the regulations or the car-centricness of the city's development, that requires townhomes to include garages, as was originally claimed. Those regulations and the car-centricness of the city's development could easily be addressed by carports, parking spaces, or common lots for townhome developments.  But the market requires garages.