COMMENT OF THE DAY: WOULD’VE KNOCKED IT IF I HADN’T TRIED IT “Normally, I’m all for jumping on the ‘this is why we’re fat’ bandwagon, as well as the one that’s opposed to Austin imports. But having sampled a Tootie Pie, they are dang good. I’m actually excited about this one.” [MJ, commenting on More Houses Wanted for More Pies]
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COMMENT OF THE DAY: A CITY THAT HELPS TO CLEAR THE MIND “One nice thing about living in Houston is that if you have bad memories of a place, eventually someone will tear it down.” [clairedammit, commenting on Daily Demolition Report: Nail Columbia]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE TACO CURE “they need to talk to torchy’s to find out how they broke the curse of that shepherd location.” [spiteful, commenting on Another Turnover in the House of La Strada]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: A BETTER USE FOR THAT SPACE ABOVE THE FRIDGE “I agree that they did a great job remodeling this house, and an even better job photographing it. However, the thing that drives me nuts is the requisite wine-rack-above-fridge. Wine shouldn’t be kept at room temperature in Houston, unless you can afford to keep your house far cooler than I keep mine. Regardless, refrigerators cool by removing the heat inside. Where does that heat go? Out the back, and up! Heat rises, right into that wine. We need to find a better use for this space, maybe one that could even benefit from the heat. Built in crock-pots? Egg-incubators for backyard chickens? Anything but wine!” [Soulfinger, commenting on Spruced Up in Spring Shadows]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: IN DEFENSE OF IKEA’S STARTER SOLAR PANELS “1) The electricity amount is irrelevant. What better option is there for using their rooftop real estate? 2) All energy projects are subsidized. The main differences with solar is that homes and businesses can access energy subsidies generally reserved for much larger corporations who work further upstream. 3) Assuming an install cost of $2.50/W, an effective generation rate of $0.08/kwh, the Fed ITC of 30%, and depreciation, the project has 12 year payback on a 25 year warranty. It’s not great investment, but its a secure, has markting benefits, and increases the resale value of their building. Also, I imagine the recession has curtailed IKEA expansion, which implies IKEA is running out of depreciable assets. 4) Most state and local incentives are giant wastes of money, but Houston has none. In fact, it is the largest US city without a net-metering policy, and as such you can’t eliminate your electric bill with 100% on-site power generation in Houston anyway.” [SolarWonk, commenting on Houston IKEA Going Solar]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: DIMENSION DOOM 101 “The floorplate is the set of measurements and parameters that you have to design the floor plan within. If its too large or too small, too narrow or too wide, or if the elevators and stairs are awkwardly situated, it will make the floor plan inefficient in terms of squeezing the most net rentable area from the gross floor area. In addition, what often happens is that there are awkward rooms within apartment units that have little functional utility, which then affects the rent per square foot that can be achieved from those units. To compensate, the developer must purchase the property for a lower price than if the building were ideally configured. But if these adjustments to the financial model drive the value of the property below the value of the land (which is determined by the model for new construction) net of the cost of demolition, then the old building is not the highest and best use. It is doomed. Problems such as these are common in situations where a building gets re-purposed for a completely different use.” [TheNiche, commenting on Finger Going After Finger’s Ben Milam Hotel Downtown]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: MANHOLE MATCHMAKER “Ironically I have a 100lb cover sitting on the corner of my property. It’s not covering anything, it’s just sitting there. I’ve put out scrap metal in the same area that gets quickly picked up. I asked a few scrappers why no one never takes this cover, and they said scrap metal companies won’t take them (I guess for obvious reasons they’re not allowed and could get fined). So here I have a homeless cover, and there we have a coverless hole. If only there was a match.com for road equipment.” [Cody, commenting on A Sidewalk Hazard’s Social Media Strategy]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SETTING THE STANDARDS TOO HIGH “Have people gone from midgets to monsters in the few years that this place went from being fully occupied to empty? Before it closed were people banging their heads on the roof? did any of the previous tenants died of melanoma due to asbestos? Should we blow up any building that has asbestos in it? Do you realize that would be just about every building in the city? I realize the ceilings are lower than what is considered to be in style today, but that doesn’t mean the place needs to be torn down. The price of the building, plus the cost of demo, is much higher than the land alone was worth. There is no way that the value of the structure doesn’t warrant it being saved. If you clean the place up and turned it into offices, it would be full in about 15 seconds. Low ceilings and all. It’s not the asbestos or low ceilings keeping it from being taken care of and fixed up. It’s unrealistic expectations of what the building needs to be in order to be considered satisfactory to the city.” [Codys bar, commenting on Will 3400 Montrose Rise from the Dead?]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: TO KILL A GIANT COCKROACH “It’s not really dead. While we’re asleep it will emerge from the scrap heap and continue to wander under the cover of night. Somewhere a husband will find it and attempt another violent execution, only to have the wife frantically call him home when it crawls back out the next day.” [mek ju, commenting on Giant Neon Cockroach That Haunted Southwest Freeway, Eradicated at Last]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW DOES THE COIN-OP STRATEGY WORK? “Speaking of quarter car washes . . . how much money do those things make? There must be 6 of them on Studemont sitting on some pretty valuable real estate. Do they even make enough money to cover the property taxes?” [Walt, commenting on Meanwhile, at the Corner of 11th and Studewood]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHY THEY WOULD HAVE HAD TO GUT JERRY J. MOORE’S MANSION ANYWAY “By the way, I still have the interior room keys to that house. Each was unique and labelled in French. Plain nickel plated keys for the utility areas, bronze keys for the secondary bedrooms and elaborate sculpted gold keys for the formal areas. It was quite a unique place.” [John McReynolds, commenting on On Second Thought, Nevermind: The $5 Million Gut-and-Flip of Jerry J. Moore’s Little French Castle in Houston]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE BEST IDEAS FOR REINVENTING THE ASTRODOME WILL COME AFTER IT’S DEMOLISHED “. . . Yes, it’s hard to find a profitable idea for it now, but if we tear it down, we could spend hundreds of years saying ‘Oh, why didn’t we just think to do this?’ Most buildings that we think of now as grand and historic went through a long time when people thought they were worthless. They came close to tearing down Notre Dame cathedral and Grand Central Station . . . and they actually did tear down Penn Station and the Abbey of Cluny. And looking back you say, ‘How was it possible?’ But almost all great buildings go through phases where it’s not obvious why it should remain standing. Better to hold off on the trigger finger.” [Mike, commenting on How Harris County Has Been Letting the Astrodome Rot]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHEN UH FOOTBALL GOT LOST IN THE ASTRODOME “I was at UH in the late 80′s when interest in football among students, alum and faculty was non-existent. Home games were held at the dome, where UH would be lucky to fill even 10% of the seats. The NCAA wouldn’t let UH use Robertson because of its size and condition. Despite that, calls for a new stadium were met with almost universal derision and open hostility from all but the most ardent athletic supporters. At the time, I was among the majority that ignored the football program and as the chairman of the student service fee allocation committee I successfully fought to cap its share of the student service fee. Despite that history, I’m glad UH fought for and succeeded in moving games to Robertson, and I’m glad that the boosters were correct in predicting such a move would rejuvenate interest in the program and the school as a whole. Kudos on the successful program and for the new facility!” [PaulP, commenting on Goodbye, Robertson Stadium: Replacement UH Football Venue Gets Go-Ahead]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: COME BACK NEXT WEEK AND YOU’LL FIND THE ASTRODOME GOOD AS NEW “That’s not the turf . . . it’s carpet they put down for the Houston Rodeo after-hour parties! They use it every year! And the trash is because the rodeo just ended and they have not cleaned it up!” [snf, commenting on Comment of the Day: They Owed It to the Astroturf]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THEY OWED IT TO THE ASTROTURF “Man. They used to be so hyper-protective of that turf! I’m surprised it was left ‘out’ and not rolled up in the troughs. It’s probably too late now (anyone still care?) – but they should have cut it into little squares & sold it. Like the Rockets did with the Compaq Center court. Maybe the money could have gone to charity (it sure wouldn’t make a dent in the debt on the building!).” [cwize, commenting on What I Saw When I Snuck Inside the Astrodome]