- Houston Economy Saw Third Consecutive Month of Expansion in January [Houston Chronicle]
- NAI Partners Sells Off Southeast Houston Office Property [HBJ ($)]
- Inside Skanska’s Private Event Space for Capitol Tower Tenants [HBJ ($)]
- East Hampton Sandwich Co. Opening First Houston Location at River Oaks District in April, Followed by Montrose in May [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- Harris County Commissioners To Vote Today Whether To Move Forward on $105M Astrodome Revamp [Houston Chronicle]
- Houston NAACP Initiative Aims To Increase Home Ownership Among Black Families [Houston Chronicle]
- City Council, Civic Leaders Question Timeline To Vote on Mayor Turner’s New Flood Control Regulations [Houston Chronicle]
- Nearly One-Third of Houston-Area Residents Reported Serious Flood Damage To Their Homes from Harvey [University of Houston]
- UH Study Suggests Harris County Residents Would Be Reluctant To Shell Out for Judge Emmett’s Proposed Flood Control Bond [Houston Public Media]
- Houston Officials Approved a Plan for Handling a Natural Disaster — Then Ignored It [ProPublica]
Photo: o texano via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Re: $105M Astrodome Revamp.
Just bulldoze it and let developers build
Re: $105 Million Astrodome Revamp
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Skip spending $105 million on the Dome – and put it toward flood control. That much less for a bond election.
Re: $105 Million Astrodome Revamp
The Dome isn’t going anywhere soon. It’s a protected landmark. I supported saving it with my earlier vote and I would vote again to do so.
The Astrodome plan needs to be voted down. Nothing drives comment traffic on Swamplot quite like Astrodome plans. If they finally go through with something, the loss to Swamplot comment traffic could be devastating.
Well, the Astrodome plan passed – unanimously! Construction will begin later this year. I’m proud to finally type this on Swamplot, after all the years of comments and whining to tear it down. The Astrodome is saved… and Houston has finally become a city that preserves its history.
@HBTX, Wolf, and Old SChool
Saving a historic landmark is not worth 70 million dollars? I mean the options are spend $35 million and get ~700 parking placers or spend 105 and have usable space and 1400 spaces. IDK, I like the idea of saving the structure.
The idea of a private entity buying the land and developing something is ridiculous. This gets floated around but there has never been an option to sell the county land. The dome is surrounded by land that the Texans and Rodeo need / would never give up. So who wants to buy a large piece of property surrounded by parking that you can’t use behind a fence that cuts off your access to roads / transportation?
Dome vote is hilarious. This is going to be the next Bayport cruise terminal, guaranteed.
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Texans and the HLSR are laughing all the way to the bank though.
@dnaguy – why would you disregard the 3rd option, 700 parking spaces plus $70M to spend on keeping your fellow residents and businesses from being flooded out or to spend on development with a guaranteed return on value.
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It’s the ONLY option that is guaranteed to have a multiplier on it’s return on value and help the region’s productivity. The other is a complete gamble (re-building) and the other is a safe bet as the de facto standard for worthles stadiums (demoilition). I wouldn’t gamble with my money and I sure wouldn’t be proud of other people doing it with mine. This makes a mockery of history far more than it does to preserve it.
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“The dome is surrounded by land that the Texans and Rodeo need / would never give up. So who wants to buy a large piece of property surrounded by parking that you can’t use behind a fence that cuts off your access to roads / transportation?” – everything about this statement is exactly why we should not be using public money on the astrodome
Mayor Turner the obvious solution to the flooding problem is public infrastructure, not passing the buck to individual property owners. Using large public projects to tackle flooding with a three prong attack, retention using underground cisterns, detention in reservoir parks and diversion into canals built along utility and railroad right-of-way. Everybody keeps pointing to the Netherlands but Toyko, Japan and its “Metro Discharge Tunnels” are the solution. The cost of improving the city’s ability to respond to flooding should be collectively handled and in doing so a bond election of just about any amount would pass easily. People want to see change and ordinances requiring people to add a foot of dirt to their lot is not going to cut it. Innovation and Houston use to go hand in hand, now we wonder why we had no chance to get Amazon or Apple.
I love that this was already voted down by Houston residents yet Harris County commissioners decided to go along with this farce.
Let the dome go. It was once the biggest stadium in the 60s but Houston can’t be defined by some old stadium
Yet our streets and sidewalks look like that of a third world country, and the city floods numerous times a year, and they do nothing. Instead they choose to flush $100M down the toilet. The dome is not a historical landmark, im sorry. Its an eyesore. NY (a city filled with hystorical landmarks) can tear down Yankee stadium which had 1,000 times more history than the dome, then surely we can do the same.
@Jim Adler
1. A poorly conceived, more expensive plan was voted down. This is does not constitute a referendum for its demolition.
2. The Eiffel Tower was once the tallest structure in the 1880s. It lost that title almost 90 years ago. Yet, Paris seems happy to be defined by some old temporary structure built for a World’s Fair.
The Astrodome remains among the most (if not THE most) recognizable buildings associated with Houston. And even in its current condition, it’s a hell of a lot prettier than NRG Stadium.
The cheapest alternative would be to keep it in mothballs, as-is where-is. A discount rate of 3% only brings the $170,000/yr. cost to a net present value of $5.7 million. The people on here who say that it should be torn down are clearly big-government liberal blue-staters or they are shills for some big demolition company. Or they are stupid. Yes, probably that. Almost certainly that.
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Good god, people. You all suck at democracy so much.
@TheNiche: Jesus God Bless. How do you feel about gay people though?
“Nearly One-Third of Houston-Area Residents Reported Serious Flood Damage To Their Homes from Harvey” Really????? The sample in the survey was only 2K resident homes. Title should have been “One Third of those surveyed…”
@TheNiche – The Texans and Rodeo leases are now past their midpoint and I expect some final resolution of the Dome would be on the table as a part of any renewal. Just mothballing the Dome would probably detract from future bids for Super Bowls, Final Fours, etc.
@ HIBTK: I feel just fine about gay people. I was only just sarcastically mocking the chest-thumping variety of “fiscal conservatives” that have been obnoxiously calling for the demolition of the Astrodome at every opportunity and turning their own put-downs of choice against them.
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Mind you…I think of myself as an actual fiscal conservative. I think that the demands of the Texans/HLS&R should have been wholly ignored and that the Astrodome and a strip of land connecting to Holly Hall should have been sold by the County to a private developer (for money) and then taxed (for more money). If those organizations didn’t like it, so be it. Neither is worthy of public subsidy, either directly or indirectly.
@ Skeptic: The Astrodome being in mothballs hasn’t seemed to have hampered Houston’s ability at luring big sporting events in recent history.
@TheNiche: and, of course, trends never change. QED.