Search Results: 75 feet ordinance

Awards
12/28/12 11:14am

The Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate, 2012: The Winners!

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And here they are: the results of the fifth annual Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate! Who won what in this year’s competition? You’ll find the answers below.

This announcement caps an almost month-long process that began with calls for nominations in 7 separate award categories. Official ballots were assembled from reader nominations. Then voting was opened up — to everyone.

Winners of the 2012 Swampies: We salute you for your unique contributions to this city. It takes something special to stand out in Houston’s real estate landscape. On Swamplot, Houston real-estate fans have noticed you!

Big thanks are due the many Swamplot readers who took time to nominate, evaluate, vote, and comment on competitors in each category. It’s your judgments, your descriptions, and your observations that are featured below. Does this honor roll of award winners — along with the list of runners up — provide a good snapshot of the year in Houston real estate? All were determined by reader votes. Let us know what you think!

The winners of the 2012 Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate are . . .

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Comments
05/10/12 11:29pm

Comment of the Day: That Houston Sound

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Quicklink, Sound
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COMMENT OF THE DAY: THAT HOUSTON SOUND “I used to live 750 feet from 610. And before that, I lived 1,000 feet from active railroad tracks and kept my windows open at night. The sound that eminated from these sources would definitely exceed City or State standards, but is exempted. I had no right to silence and nor did I care. I even sort of miss the trains and the booming noises from the hump yard a mile to the south. I wish we had that in the Boulevard Oaks area and the Museum District. It’d make them a little more authentically Houston.” [TheNiche, commenting on Headlines: Noise Ordinance Complaints; Galveston’s Coming ‘Maginot Line’]

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Development Restrictions
07/08/11 7:29pm

Some Potential Setbacks for Tall Buildings in Houston

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A new draft ordinance prepared by the city’s planning department aims to make it tougher to build tall buildings next to single-family homes. The proposal is called the High Density Ordinance, but many of its restrictions would apply to any structure more than 75 feet tall, no matter how tightly packed or slow-witted the folks are inside. Well, with some exceptions: The restrictions wouldn’t apply to buildings in “major activity centers” of the city. Districts could apply for that designation, but the planning department includes maps of 8 of them right off the bat: Downtown, Greenway Plaza, the Galleria area, the Med Center, Greenspoint, the Energy Corridor, Westchase, and the stretch of I-10 between Memorial City Mall and CityCentre. Also exempted from most of the proposed rules: Any tall building where all the adjacent streets are designated major thoroughfares. (In other words, a new office tower built on property in the middle of a Westheimer block apparently wouldn’t have to meet the new restrictions, but one at the corner of Westheimer and a smaller street like Woodway would.)

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IAH
04/26/10 2:53pm

IAH’s New Welcome to Houston Sign: We Hope Your Splashdown Was Pleasant

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Proposed Developments, Public Art
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Newly arrived visitors driving along JFK Blvd. at Rankin Rd. will soon encounter a landscape-appropriate welcome to our marshy city after they land at Bush Intercontinental Airport: three 60-ft. pipe assemblies festooned with animated LED light arrays on cables. New York artist Dennis Oppenheim sees the lights as

representing a giant twenty five foot tear drop falling into a pool, creating the upward sensation of a splash, which rises to sixty feet and consists of a multitude of colored lights cascading and sparkling toward the top and beyond, emerging in bright, spherical globes; representing giant droplets.

No stuck-in-the-muds here! Andrew Vrana of local architecture firm Metalab, who’s coordinating the installation, tells Swamplot the sculptures will have an 18-ft. diameter at the base and a 50-ft. diameter at the top. He says all 3 should be in place and complete “later this spring.”

Metalab’s blog has pix of a few of the pieces:

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Development Regulations
06/10/09 2:10pm

Chapter 42 of the Houston Development Story: Letting Out That Urban Belt A Notch

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Of all the changes the Planning Dept. has in mind for Chapter 42 — the ordinance that governs development in the city — perhaps the most dramatic is the one that moves the city’s “urban” boundary. Chapter 42 currently labels the area inside the 610 Loop as “urban,” and the area outside of it “suburban.” The latest proposed draft would expand the “urban” zone all the way to Beltway 8. You’ll have to get past that to reach the burbs.

What do the urban and suburban designations mean? A lot of little things. And, perhaps, a lot of little lots: In certain circumstances, the proposed amendments would allow developers to subdivide “urban area” land into lots of less than 1400 sq. ft. and as narrow as 15 ft. wide.

Oh, but there’s a whole lot more to it than that.

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