COMMENT OF THE DAY: YOU’LL REMEMBER THE CHICKEN “All of you are completely missing the forest for the trees. What we have witnessed in the last week is one of the most brilliant marketing campaigns in the U.S. A restaurant chain that is pretty much concentrated in one corner of the U.S. has obtain national notoriety. Chik-fil-a the company already has and will continue to have a non-discrimination policy in regards to sexual orientation (i.e. they don’t discriminate against homosexuality). The president of the company being interviewed and making the statements that started all this was a calculated move. Chik-fil-a knew there would be a backlash and big support along with controversy. For all those anti-chik-fil-a posts in the social media, Chik-fil-a thanks you. Any publicity is good publicity. Because of these events (which the majority will forget in a couple of months), the name chik-fil-a will stick in a vast new audience that never heard of the chain. And all this will little marketing dollars spent. This is playing right into Chik-fil-a’s planned expansion across the U.S. Again, Chik-fil-a thanks all hate filled posts in the social media world. You just helped get it’s name out while knowing the masses won’t remember the controversy.” [kjb434, commenting on Headlines: Finding Ribs at Park Memorial; More Business for Chick-fil-A]
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COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHY THERE’LL BE NO 1301 RICHMOND REDO AT THAT SELLING PRICE “At 2.9 acres of physical land, and a purchase price of X (let’s assume priced to the dirt, likely $50/foot) they are in this deal for $6MM dollars day one. If they wanted to be in the business of renovating (This IS income producing property, not pride of ownership single family housing) and retaining the character of the original complex, look at the math . . . assuming a coverage ratio of 1/1, and average unit @ 1000 square feet, that gives you 120 units and 120,000 to renovate meticulously. Assuming you would have to put $20,000 into each unit to justify buying this deal, you’ve now got $6MM + $2.4MM in renovation dollars, plus the fact you’ve got to kick everybody out of their unit to renovate it, do the work, then relet the unit. So, that puts you at 1 year of ZERO revenue, and whatever associated costs there are there. For the sake of argument, your all-in is $10MM. THEN, after you have painfully restored a garden complex to the delight of yourself (I promise you the neighborhood won’t come out and bring you a check for your efforts to retain transient renters for another 50 years), here is your reality: 1) you would need to jump rents from $800/month to $1200 or greater, lease them all, then sell at a benchmark cap rate exit for such a non-conforming product, and that’s assuming you get your investors interested in the capital and scope in the first place, rather than buiding a 2.5:1 ratio development against $50 dirt 2) you would need to find an exit partner with just as much interest in running this model as you did creating it. institutional buyers that are willing to overlook the latest TCC Alexan product to buy a risky retrofitted low coverage ratio multi family deal in a market that has very little inventory of trailblazing like product. what i’m saying is this won’t exist, so you’re stuck with cash flow now. So . . . you have $10MM in it, and if you are the greatest level of execution here, you are 7 years of revenue before you are whole on your initial investment, and you have a huge chunk of change parked in it, with zero recap abilities. if i run a bank, i’m not cashing you out of that mistake.” [HTX Rez, commenting on Report: Castle Court Midrise Planned for Andover Richmond Apartments Site]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: MONTROSE OVER 40 YEARS “. . . Montrose is getting better by the day and there are NO signs that it will stop. The junk is being removed and improved. The process started in earnest 20 years ago and has another 20+ years to go. Every year the Montrose area gets more dense, more affluent, and more dynamic. Greater Montrose is where people want to live. Close to downtown? Check. Close to Galleria? Check. Close to Memorial Park? check. Close to Rice U? Check. Close to Med Center? Check. Close to bars, restaurants, and night life? Check. Close to museums and cultural events? Check. Smart people with money to invest have spent BILLIONS of their own dollars to buy and improve Montrose. There are mega trends at work here. If you can’t see it you’re not looking.” [Bernard, commenting on Changing of the Guard at a Castle Court Complex]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: REDUCING THE USE OF PLASTIC ON THE TRAIL “why not have designated pooping grounds along the trails and get rid of the useless trash altogether? just treat your dogs like people and kids, kick them along and make them hold it until they can reach a ‘pooping grounds.’ only those that can’t reach the grounds should have to bag it.” [joel, commenting on The Multicolored Poop Bags of the Heights Hike and Bike Trail]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: KEEPING PRESERVATION UP TO DATE “I’m glad to see it’s still standing, glad the wiring and plumbing have been upgraded so that it won’t burn down or rot in place. The rest is just personal taste, and fleeting. In other words, I’m delighted. I just visited San Antonio, where every other building dated back to the 1800s or early 1900s. A lot of them had been reno’d over and over again, at least on the inside. Some had kept a lot of period detail; some hadn’t. This made them alive, much in the same way that the English language lives by constantly changing. One of my tour guides had been born in a hospital building on the riverwalk. The place had long ago been converted to an office building with tchochke shops in front, but the guide was proud that the building was still standing after being the birthplace of a century of San Antonians. If we in Houston make our buildings stay vital, useful, desireable and, most of all, sound, they will live on and make Houston a place we’ll be happy to show to our grandkids.” [Sihaya, commenting on The Plan To Flip Houston’s LBJ House]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: MAKING IT UP WITH QUANTITY “Using numbers to determine what is ‘cool’ is a waste of time. One of the criteria used in the article was the number of pro and college sports teams in the city. Ok, fine, but do you really think the Astros are as ‘cool’ as the Yankees, Cubs, or Red Sox? Yet quantity wise, they each count as 1 and are considered equal. The same goes for museums. Is the MFAH really as cool as the Met? This exercise could be done for any of the categories Forbes used to rank the cities and Houston would come up short on almost all of them. So while Houston may be the coolest when you count numbers, its certainly not the coolest when you’re looking for the coolest things around.” [Walt, commenting on Headlines: Houston as America’s ‘Coolest’ City; Predicting Traffic Jams]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: BUILDING AROUND TREES “. . . If the new construction were built around the tree branches, that could be used as a real selling point for a nice home. But construction is very hard on trees — Directly across the street is a development of new homes, and the property owner and architect specifically worked very hard to build around the huge tree on that lot and protect it during construction. It appeared that they had succeeded. But take a look at it today . . . the tree trunk is tall and fat . . . but there are only a few pom-pom sized clusters of leaves on the tree. It takes a long time for a tree to die, and damage from construction may show up years later. . . .” [Julie Young, commenting on Big Oak Tree in Little East Montrose Park Branches Out]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHO OWNS THE TREE “The location of the tree trunk does not determine ownership of a tree. If a neighbor’s tree hangs over your property, the portion of the tree that is contained within your property boundary belongs to you. You can do with it as you please. The same rule applies to a tree that hangs over the street. The City may do with it as it pleases.” [Bernard, commenting on Big Oak Tree in Little East Montrose Park Branches Out]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE LOWDOWN ON THE ELEVATION BURGER LEASE 
“Update on this corner: Elevation Burger is set to open up in the near future. Jonathan Kagan Properties bought the property and did a fairly extensive update to the structure, then turned it over to Elevation Burger for their build out, which is currently well under way.
Trust me, Mai Thai’s closing was a good thing. I own the property next door and saw a steady parade of roaches, rats, and various other vermin going in and out of that building over the past few years. Anytime you see a blue tarp on the roof of a building for months and months on end, it’s a pretty sure sign that they are in decline. If you don’t have the funds to fix your leaky roof in Houston, the end can’t be far off.” [Jared M, commenting on Bye Bye, Mai Thai? Feeding Another Kirby High-Rise Rumor]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: AND LIVING THERE WOULD DRIVE ME HALF OUT OF MY MIND “I pity the homeowner who has to enter ‘1513 1/2 E. 32nd 1/2 St.’ into any online form where they try to verify an address, or, god forbid, describe it to someone over the phone.” [j, commenting on Daily Demolition Report: Double Barbecue Toast]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SCRAPES OFF A LITTLE EASIER THOUGH “Wallpaper is to houses what tattoos are to people. When you get it, you think that it looks great and cannot wait to show your friends. Twenty to thirty years later, you cannot look at it without going ‘ughhh’ and shuddering to yourself.” [Old School, commenting on Houston Home Listing Photo of the Day: Kitchen Sampler]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT SPRINGWOODS VILLAGE HOTELS WILL HAVE GOING FOR THEM “these hotels will kill it. even WITHOUT the exxon HQ there, hotels in the Woodlands area are underserved, try finding a room on a weekend night @ the pavilion. it’s about $150 to stay @ marriott/hilton/nothing special spots. and you must stay there, or be that guy with a real job who drives 30 miles drunk from the Jimmy Buffett concert. they will have that rarified air of both business travel monday-friday + just about any weekend packed. it won’t be anything architecturally or intellectually inspired, but it will be a runaway success.” [HTX Rez, commenting on Closest Hotel to ExxonMobil, from Scratch]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SELL THE STREET, SLOW THE TRAFFIC “Agreed that we need more “super blocks†about as much as an aneurysm. Why is the Galleria area traffic such a cluster? Because they took the streets out. Why does downtown usually flow pretty well? Because they left the streets in, in a nice neat grid pattern that is only confusing if you try to get too hung up on true north, south, east, and west.” [mollusk, commenting on Finger Minute Maid Apartments To Hang Low, Cut Off Leftfield Block]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT THEY’RE PLANNING TO BUILD IN HOUSTON “I always have to chuckle when people are discussing what is being built somewhere in town. ‘Why don’t THEY build . . .’ or ‘Why don’t THEY put in . . .’ There really is no ‘THEY’ sitting back and ‘planning’ what to put in. When property is up for sale, there are numerous buyers out there who already have their OWN project (whatever it is they do) looking for a place at a price they are willing to pay, and usually in a certain part of town. If it’s a medical group, ‘they’ are not going to say ‘Hey, this neighborhood needs a restaurant’ — unless of course they decide to put one inside the medical building they build. But you get my point. These are not planned communities with someone (called ‘They’) at the helm, making decisions. As long as the citizens let the rich ‘good-ole-boys’ swing the vote every time ‘ZONING’ comes up, people can generally build what they want — where they want in Houston, TX.” [Mr-DJ, commenting on Clearing an Empty Lot in the Museum District]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HURRICANE RITAS “I know there are people who ‘go out for Margaritas’ . . . that is, they are looking for a good ’Rita and don’t care that much about the food. However, I don’t think that means a place can succeed if that’s all they’ve got. No shortage in this town of good ’Ritas or good Mexican food or places that can do both, like Hugo’s or Sylvia’s. On the other hand, I have a fond memory of the Ninfa’s on Kirby because they were open right after Ike when most of the city was still without power. Under those circumstances, I thought the food was awesome.” [toadfroggy, commenting on Out with Mama Ninfa’s, in with Maggie Rita’s]