- Buildings with Shops, Restaurants, Grocery Stores Will Better Withstand the Oil Price Drop, CBRE Claims [Houston Chronicle]
- Estimated Annual Lease for Downtown Exxon Tower for HPD and Courts Would Cost City Approx. $25M, Says Newly Discovered Memo from December [Houston Chronicle]
- Gardere Renews Office Lease in Downtown’s Wells Fargo Plaza, Downsizing To New Gensler-Designed Space [Prime Property]
- Historic Garrow House Designed By Birdsall Briscoe Built in 1913 in the Montrose Area on the Market for $2.395M [Houston Chronicle]
- Seafood Restaurant Black & White Moving into the ‘Cursed’ Stella Sola Space at 1001 Studewood [Eater Houston]
- Vote on $350M Bond Proposal That Extending Woodlands Pkwy. to Hwy. 249 Scheduled for May 9 [HBJ]
- City Council To Consider Parking District Plan for the Menil Collection [Prime Property]
- 4 Closings, Including Northern Part of Hardy Toll Rd., Northwest Segment of Sam Houston Tollway, Planned This Weekend [The Highwayman]
- Slideshow: The Construction That Changed Houston’s Skyline [Houston Chronicle]
- Teachers at Condit Elementary Hope To Find Places To Park During Construction [West U. Examiner]
Photo of Westpark Tollway at S. Rice Ave.: Bill Barfield via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
That Exxon Building deal stinks to hell. It’s the kind of dumb-ass, probably corrupt stuff you see in Baltimore or New Orleans.
About that justice complex. Some things are better off being built-to-suit rather than being extensively remodeled into an structure with lots of incurable functional obsolescence. That applies to a lot of institutional uses. Another thing. For the purposes of security and the continuity of this particular city service in the event of a disaster, its probably not a great idea to put essentially all of the key functions and key personnel of a City’s law enforcement effort into a single really tall and high-profile structure. Its not likely that anything crazy would happen, but it would really compound the scope of the event if it did.
On the other hand, the existing justice complex is on a really fantastic site and that also presents an opportunity that is presently being wasted. It is very VERY easy to conceptualize a scenario where the Houston-Dallas bullet train could be brought into that site and where the light rail that terminates merely hundreds of feet away from it could get routed into the site to provide a seamless set of transfers along parallel tracks. Its hard to imagine that happening at the Post Office site, Hardy Yards isn’t along the preferred rail corridor, and the long shot — METRO’s bus barn — is similarly out of the way from transit interconnects.
There’s still a fair bit of land in the downtown area that would be suitable for a new justice center. It doesn’t need to be in a prime location. Arranging to sel their prime land for redevelopment and buying land that’s less prime for a new facility would get them half-way into that new facility.
@Niche
What you said… X1000
I wonder how the area south of Toyota center would work for the justice complex. Lots of small parcels to acquire, but condemnation would help that process.
I heard a rumor a few weeks ago that Fred Griffin has the option to redevelop the Reisner facility if the City were to vacate it for another property. I haven’t been able to verify it, but if so then Fred’s making money on both ends of the transaction.
The residents of The Woodlands are reaching their breaking point, questioning the so-called leadership. People are paying higher and higher property taxes, yet decisions are all about supporting and attracting more unneeded businesses. The imbalance is now starting to destroy what attracted everyone in the first place. Shortsighted.