Never mind the virtual obstacles: The website for Discovery Tower has a new promotional video that pays silent homage to Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Also: more fancy renderings of the office building, now under construction.
More interesting to Discovery Green fans, though, will be a few new aerial renderings that depict the Downtown park in urban glory, surrounded by a crowd of real, planned, imagined, and soon-to-be-axed new projects. But . . . uh, which is which?
That orangish tower perched on Discovery Green’s southwest corner: the stalled 22-story Embassy Suites hotel. That sorta-identical but mirrored Hilton Americas on the north side of the park? The Convention Center Hotel Part Two!
So . . . what’s going on behind Discovery Tower?
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Just north of Discovery Green, it doesn’t look like a lot of daylight is reaching La Branch St.:
- Discovery Tower [Trammell Crow via HAIF, via Swamplot Inbox]
- Builders here hit by credit crunch [Houston Chronicle]
- Houston sees room for another big hotel [Houston Chronicle]
- Previously in Swamplot: More Discovery Tower Drawings Discovered, Discovery Tower: Yep, They Are Wind Turbines, Discovery Tower: Ready for Closeup?, Discovery Tower: Ready to Climb
Renderings: Gensler
It’s kind of freaky how none of the people in the video are moving until we get to the building’s front door, where some of them are moving and others aren’t. You can almost imagine the conversation in the office upstairs: “Miss Reynolds, the mannequins are back.”