- Phillips 66 Switches Contractors for Its Corporate Campus Already Under Construction in Westchase [Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot]
- South Carolina-Based Edens Investment Trust Will Pay $26.55 per Share for Uptown Park Owner AmREIT in Deal Valued at $763M [Houston Business Journal]
- Job Boom Helps Drive Up the Cost of Apartments Across the Region [Houston Chronicle]
- Fiesta Mart-Anchored Retail Center at FM 529 and Fry Road in Katy Set To Open in January [Prime Property]
- Chicago Deep-Dish Pizzeria Gino’s East Coming to The Woodlands, Willowbrook [Eater Houston]
- Liquid Gold Hospitality Group Proceeding with Plans for Webster El Tiempo Despite Lawsuit [Food Chronicles]
- Shuttered Polovina Restaurant Plans To Reopen Downtown [Eater Houston]
- The Story Behind the Family That Expanded Pappas Restaurants into One of the Largest Family-Owned Restaurant Chains [Houston Chronicle]
- Fourth Ward Residents Protest Plans To Dig Up Historic Freedmen’s Town Brick Streets; Leader Promotes Idea To Turn Area into Tourist Destination [Houston Chronicle]
- City May Spend More Than $1M from General Fund To Settle Red-Light Camera Lawsuit [Houston Chronicle]
Photo of Dolce Living construction on West Gray: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
i’d like to see newer articles start noting that the jobs boom is already over and at this point it’s just the construction industry finishing off contractual commitments before we wrap it up and call the show over. past this it’s only retail & service sectors jobs growing which have a negligible impact on the overall economy anyhow due to the large supply of non-workers in the population and readily available labor.
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i’m not calling a downturn or anything here, but with drilling activity in the gulf starting to ease up (see hercules note this morning about cutting personnel) and falling oil prices barring new onshore fields from starting up i’m not seeing any way for current growth trends to continue. fed pulling out of buying bonds will start hitting mortgage rates and drying up the cash closings that have helped stoked the fire as well so will be interesting to see if any slack appears in the market in the coming year.
I’ve got to agree with joel. All of Houston’s most relevant leading indicators (both domestic and global) are terrible right now and nobody wants to admit it publicly without attempting to rationalize it away. That’s how it was leading up to the last recession, too, except that this time the energy sector is unlikely to be spared the hurt.