REV HOUSTON: STREET ILLEGAL “REV Houston does not have a special license to drive the electric carts. Already, the city has given the company three tickets with numerous citations, including operating a taxi without a license. The city defines a taxi cab as any automobile or motor-propelled vehicle used for the transport of passengers for hire, explained Blanton Daniels, manager of the city’s transportation division. . . . ‘They’re trying to circumvent the regulation by saying they’re working for gratuities,’ said Daniels, adding that he sees no difference between a taxi for hire and a taxi that works for tips. It’s still money changing hands.” [Houston Chronicle, via Off the Kuff; previously]
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Downtown
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?
Houston’s Downtown wireless-access experiment is now up and running, with a network of 20 free hotspots, identified in the city’s interactive map above. The hotspots offer download speeds of up to 2Mbps and uploads of up to 1Mbps, which is in the ballpark of cable and DSL service. Brave iPhone tester (and Chronicle Tech columnist) Dwight Silverman reports coverage is pretty spotty between Wi-Fi hotspots:
I’d get a decent signal on my iPhone in one block, then turn a corner and get bupkis. But if I walked a few more feet, I could usually get enough of a connection that I could check e-mail.
Silverman also offers this tip:
If you want a good connection and you’re not near a hotspot, look for one of the dual-antenna access points mounted atop street lights. Get close it for a stronger signal.
- The city’s free Wi-Fi is fast – if you’re in the right place [TechBlog]
- Surf the Web for free in 20 downtown ‘hotspots’ [Houston Chronicle]
- Updated: It lives! City of Houston turns on free downtown Wi-Fi [TechBlog]
- Houston WiFi [City of Houston]
Map: Houston WiFi
DOWNTOWN TUNNELS FOR WHEELCHAIRS “Eighteen years after the Americans With Disabilities Act became law, several spots along the 6.5-mile downtown tunnel-skywalk system, used by more than 150,000 downtown workers, remain blocked or altogether inaccessible to those in wheelchairs. These areas haven’t been made ADA-compliant because it would be difficult or impossible to put in ramps and still leave enough headroom for pedestrians, said Bob Eury, director of the Downtown District, a public-private association that promotes and manages downtown development.” [Houston Chronicle]
The Downtown music venue is giving it a rest on Pease St., according to the club’s official MySpace page:
Hey everyone Yes the Engine Room is closed down now. All dates have been canceled. We know it’s frustarting to some but we are doing our best to let everyone know who has a date booked with us. We are having a hard time getting a hold of everyone who has a date booked here so please spread the word. We apologize for the inconvenience and any confusion this may have caused anyone. The Jet Lounge will remain open. Once again the Engine Room has been closed down and ALL DATES HAVE BEEN CANCELED!!!
- Engine Room is closed down ALL DATES ARE CANCELED!! [MySpace, via HandStamp, via mikemcguff.com]
Photo: Flickr user Stacy Davidson
All hail MainPlace! All hail mighty MainPlace! Your towerishness is so . . . smooth and strong!
Videos of Hines’s new office tower at Main and Walker Downtown and its 10 lower molar-and-bicuspid trees are out. If you can’t hear the John-Williams-for-Real-Estate soundtrack, you’re missing half the fun.
When you’re done munching on popcorn and watching the movie above, be sure to catch the slightly more sober second feature, which includes actual information about the building.
- Videos [Hines Mainplace, via HAIF, via the Swamplot tipline]
- Previously in Swamplot: Mainplace: The Pipe Wrench That Ate Downtown Houston, MainPlace: Hines’s 46-Story Green Pipe-Wrench Dream
And now you know the kind of thing that gets left out of the evening news: Fox 26 TV reporter Isiah Carey spots a man “just hanging out” inside a billboard over 59 near the George R. Brown downtown, grabs a camera, and . . . reports it in his blog a week later.
What’s that say on the billboard?
The new MainPlace website features a bunch of snazzy new and revised rendered views of Hines’s 46-story Downtown office tower. Also included: plans of the building showing 2 street-level retail spaces — big enough maybe for a sushi restaurant plus a small postcard shop for tourists.
Promised to come soon on that website: videos. We hope they’ll play up some of the 1950s-era Japanese horror movie theming going on in a few of the new images.
After the jump: Plans! Sky Gardens! Shiny Glass! Run for your lives!
“A group of doctors and entrepreneurs” calling itself New Era Hospitality is the mystery buyer of the long-abandoned 31-story former Days Inn-former Holiday Inn-former Heaven on Earth Plaza Hotel on St. Joseph Parkway between Travis and Milam, reports Nancy Sarnoff in the Chronicle:
. . . demolition has already started on the interiors, which are being gutted and will be replaced with 340 modern suites, 60 standard guest rooms, 32,000 square feet of meeting space and a swimming pool and bar on top of the attached garage.
That’s down from 600 rooms in the original structure. New Era is hoping either Sheraton, Marriott, or . . . Holiday Inn (again!) will operate the property when it’s finished, in January 2010.
- Hotel owners look for brand [Houston Chronicle]
- Heaven on Earth Sells Again [Swamplot]
Photo: arch-ive.org
Forwarded by a helpful reader: an email from the Downtown Y that includes the above image of the new Downtown YMCA. The new building is planned for a site that’s just a knight’s jump away from the current 1941 building on Louisiana St., which is now slated for demolition.
The new site is on the block bordered by Travis, Milam, Pease, and Jefferson — currently a surface parking lot. However, the YMCA email says “a new location has not been purchased.” So can y’all please keep quiet about this so the sellers don’t raise their price and ruin the whole deal?
The image comes with a clear message about the building’s schedule, too! The email has a slightly looser concept of “now”: “Doors are scheduled to open,” it says, “by the end of 2010.”
After the jump, more images of the proposed new building . . . from Kirksey’s website.
The 10-story brick YMCA on Louisiana St., which has been taking up valuable space Downtown for more than 65 years, will at last be torn down, reports Nancy Sarnoff in today’s Chronicle. The Y will move to a new glass-and-brick building now being designed by Kirksey — apparently intended for the nearby block bounded by Travis, Milam, Pease, and Jefferson.
The best part of the story? The Y is being very polite about the whole thing. Having determined that its own building is not worth the $25 million a report determined would be necessary for repairs, the organization will go out of its way to demolish the structure itself, so no future buyer will have to be burdened with similar defensive and wasteful studies — or cleanup. And that future buyer has already been determined: Chevron, which already owns the former Enron building next door, says it has no current plans for the new 85,000-sq.-ft. vacant lot it is purchasing.
At 100,000 square feet, the new YMCA building will be less than half the size of the current facility, but will come with 250 parking spaces. And it will be rated LEED-Silver, which means its construction and operation will conserve energy and resources, unlike the wasteful current building, which was designed by architect Kenneth Franzheim in 1941.
In addition to continuing its mentoring, educational and other life-skill programs, the new facility will include a teen center, child watch area and women’s wellness center, as well as racquetball courts, a basketball gym, swimming pool, state-of-the-art fitness equipment, a chapel, meeting space and a food vendor.
Not included in the new structure: replacements for the 132 “short-term” residential units in the current building.
Below: A photo that illustrates the story!
This hazy image of a new office tower planned for the northwest corner of Downtown, unveiled from the depths of the interwebs by HAIF user nate, is apparently meant to be the new Five Allen Center. It’s listed as a 1.2-million-sq.-ft. “near-term future development” in a Brookfield Properties document from this month.
A Brookfield executive described the project at a panel discussion on Downtown development earlier this year, according to a Houston Business Journal article by Jennifer Dawson a tipster alerted us to:
Brookfield is planning a 50-story office building on a 2.5-acre site west of 3 Allen Center, but will not begin construction until it is at least 50 percent leased, said Paul Layne, Brookfield’s executive vice president over the Houston region.
Layne predicted that by the time Brookfield’s all-glass, planned LEED Gold-certified building is finished, Class A rental rates downtown will be roughly $50 per square foot on a 10-year lease.
The project is referred to as the “Gateway Site” on Brookfield’s website:
A 2.5 acre parcel, the Gateway site would have a sky bridge connection to the Allen Center and unobstructed views to the west. The Gateway site is surrounded by historical parkland to the north, low-rise residential to the west and the Metropolitan Racquet Club garage to the south.
That looks like the northeast corner of Houston Ave. (the I-45 northbound feeder, at that point) and West Dallas.
- Corporate Profile (PDF) [Brookfield Properties]
- Development [Brookfield Properties]
- Houston CBD Poised for Building Boom [HAIF]
- Downtown office towers jump off starting block in tandem [Houston Business Journal]
Image: Brookfield Properties
New drawings and details appear of Discovery Tower, the 30-story office building now under construction at the northwest corner of Discovery Green Downtown.
The wind turbines at the top of the building are still there. The brochure also mentions solar panels on the south face of the building, a green roof on top of the entrance pavilion, 2 stories of retail, as well as some old Houston favorites: 2 floors of underground parking (151 cars), and a 10-story, 1,350-space parking garage one block north, connected by . . . . an air-conditioned (phew!) skybridge!
After the jump, more green-hot Downtown tower architectural rendering porn!
A Chrysler GEM all-electric vehicle is now shuttling passengers between the Rice Lofts Downtown and the Coffee Groundz coffeehouse and El Patio restaurant on Brazos St. in Midtown. If you’re trying to get from one to the other, you can catch a free ride.
Well, almost free. REV Houston drivers happily accept gratuities — in the form of cash, credit cards, or prepaid “key tags.” To order service, you can call the REV Houston hotline (1.877.Go.REV.Go) or send a text message indicating your location. Details are on the REV Houston website.
How long is this gonna last? As long as the startup can sell ads on the vehicles. And REV Houston hopes to expand. Reports Startup Houston:
[Cofounder Erik] Ibarra also mentioned that the company plans to test additional markets within Houston for expansion, such as Rice Village, Washington Avenue and Westheimer in the future.
- free | green | transportation [REV Houston]
- Going Green in Houston with REV Houston [Startup Houston]
Photo: REV Houston
Hines has “finalized the acquisition” of the Main Street block between Texas and Capitol Downtown, Nancy Sarnoff reports. That’s the site of the secret new 742,000-sq.-ft. office tower reported here a week and a half ago.
- Apartment abundance could signal trouble [Houston Chronicle]
- The Secret New Downtown Tower Hidden on the Web [Swamplot]
