Update, 8/26: The headline has been corrected.
If you’re wondering what the late-night traffic holdup is in and around Main St. and Texas Ave. over the weekend, here’s your explainer: 180 mixing trucks are going to be lining up to pour a continuous stream of concrete onto this site surrounded by Main, Texas, Fannin, and Capitol streets downtown, where D.E. Harvey builders is putting together a little office building — now slated to rise 48 stories —Â for the Hines CalPERS Green development fund. The action starts at 7 pm on Saturday and should finish up around 3 in the afternoon the next day.
In all, about 14,000 cubic yards of concrete will go into the mat foundation of the 609 Main St. building during those 17 hours. The Texas Tower, formerly known as the Sterling Building, was dismantled on a portion of the site earlier this year.
- Previously on Swamplot: The Crane for the Crane for the Texas Building Demo Is Here; How the End Is Coming for Downtown’s Texas Tower; Bigger? Taller? Hines To Redesign Proposed 609 Main St. Office Tower; Does New Hines Highrise Mean Old Texas Tower’s a Goner?
Photo: Hines. Rendering: Pickard Chilton
Concrete is composed of 5% of worlwide co2 emissions. Perhaps we can create a system that offsets the co2 savings in density with the massive amount of co2 incurred during construction: but this would imply having a free market system that accounted for climate change, which we only hypothetically have in the mind of a few economists!!!!
Duston, you first have to be deluded enough to think CO2 is an actual pollutant.
I cannot wait to see this gorgeous building on the skyline. I was very impressed when I had a meeting at BG Group Place, I went up to the outdoor terrace; it was amazing. I’m a huge fan of Pickard Chilton and think 609 Main is arguably their best building to date. Next I hope Hines gets them to design a tower over 1000 feet and please add a spire, downtown lacks a tower with a spire.
Duston, Hey man don’t sweat it. The world can stand to loose about 2-3 billion people. That is the only thing that will save the day.
CO2 is a pollutant, kjb, when it’s released as a result of human activity. It 1) is being artificially increased by human activity at rates far faster than natural systems remove it, and 2) this increase will (and is already beginning to) have large-scale effects on the environment that will harm human civilization. That is the very definition of a pollutant. Practically all respected scientists and even the EPA and Supreme Court have agreed on this.
Someone is ignoring reality here.
Sid….I took kjb’s comment to be so absurd as to be sarcasm…????
Bubba, I am sweating it. Do you see the world loosing 2-3 billion people in the near future? Sure, at the rate we are going the earth will bring us back down to carrying capacity but that will a grim future…. but maybe you are also being sarcastic..
I share the enthusiasm and anticipation for this building in its finality. I think downtown’s momentum is where it is due to the city’s incentivizing construction of residential buildings as well as light rail finally achieving good build-out. From a citizen-perspective, the only downside I see about 609 Main (and the soon-to-be private, pedestal-ized area of Chevron’s 3-building campus) is the isolation of thousands of office workers from street-level due to the garage-top outdoor area and the retail/restaurant/air-conditioning of the tunnel system. From street-level, I eventually see “two” downtowns: the commercial highrise area that continues to be sedate and 9a-5p Mon-Fri and where little else beyond corporate activity takes place and a distinctly separate area unconnected to the tunnels and pinned by the residential buildings where the potential for spontaneous, creative, and less pretentious interactions occur. Perhaps each half this potential CBD scenario becomes a magnet for the other half’s growth. Too bad it can’t be a homogenous mix but i can’t imagine the tunnel amenities to ever lose appeal.
Did a story about a skyscraper foundation pour really turn in to a Malthusian overpopulation screed?
If I told you it has ground floor retail, would that counterbalance the prescribed overall reaction within Urbanist Outrage Orthodoxy Framework?
I assume there are piles under that hole. Haven’t been following the construction too closely.
Nate- Yes, when the first poster hopped up on his soapbox.
I assume GW=farce is in reference to our 43rd president?
Still Bush hating after all this time? Grow up.