COMMENT OF THE DAY: MAKING A U-TURN ON REROUTING I-45 
“I was for this reroute plan early on initially, but as time has gone by I’ve grown against it. This massive freeway is going to ruin an up-and-coming scene happening currently in EaDo, all for the sake of meshing Midtown/Downtown. The best alternative is to tunnel the Pierce underneath its current route. It’s the least destructive and will make all parties happiest I.M.O. And don’t give me this crap excuse that nothing can be underground here because of floods. If everything is supposedly so ‘big’ here in Texas, then please think bigger when it comes to this project.” [Eddie, commenting on TxDOT’s Plans for Freeway Expansion Around and Below the Newly Protected Cheek-Neal Coffee Building] Illustration: Lulu
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STARTING OVER ON BIDDING FOR A BILLION-DOLLAR IAH TERMINAL EXPANSION 
Mayor Turner announced this week that bidding will start over for the first few contracts for a $1.5-billion expansion to United’s international Terminal D at IAH. Mike Morris of the Houston Chronicle reports that both the former and current city controllers have refused to certify the contracts, citing possible irregularities in the procurement process. Current controller Chris Brown noted that some proposed vendor prices did not match the funding numbers submitted for approval by the council; a particular contract for which the winning bidder was initially ranked lowest in the first round of scoring caught his eye as well. Former controller Ron Green previously expressed concern over the same contract, “on which Marsh USA, which employs Councilman Dave Martin, was the winning bidder, and state Rep. Borris Miles’ insurance agency was included as a minority subcontractor. Martin has said he had no contact with the Marsh employees involved in the bidding.” [Houston Chronicle] Rendering of planned Terminal D replacement: Houston Airport System
COMMENT OF THE DAY: UPPING THE VOLTAGE ON HOUSTON’S DOWNTOWN VIEWS 
” . . . I wonder, if the property management companies downtown would illuminate the Houston skyline with LED lighting, how cool it would look? With Houston’s strong artistic community, it would be great to see a curated lighting of the skyline that’s different when you drive in from every angle. As they stand in the dark every night, you can’t at all see the pyramid atop Heritage Plaza, the outlines of the “kissing†Pennzoil Place towers, or hardly see the three tiers and spikes of Bank of America. At night, the Energy Capital of the World’s skyline is hardly . . . yawn . . . energetic.” [Austin, commenting on Shining a Little More Light on the Williams Tower Beacon, Now Back in Action] Illustration: Lulu
CITY OF HOUSTON WATER UTILITIES WEBSITE HACKED OVER THE WEEKEND 
A reader sends a screenshot of the Houston water utilities customer service website as it appeared around 1 AM on Sunday. A source working for the city confirms that the page was briefly redecorated over the weekend; the hack was reported around 5:30 AM that Sunday and resolved later that morning. Prior to discovery of the switchup, all links to city information and services were replaced by a black screen that appeared to spin into place, containing only the graphic shown here, a few online handles taking credit for the takeover, and a short message taunting the site’s administrators. A cached version of the nonfunctional but admittedly edgier homepage was still accessible through a Google search for the page as late as yesterday afternoon. Screen capture: Swamplot inbox
COMMENT OF THE DAY: A 64-STORY HOLDOUT TO UPDATING THE HOUSTON VERNACULAR 
“I’ve wondered why this building has maintained its old name socially but other buildings in town haven’t. Many residents still refer to the building as Transco Tower instead of Williams Tower. The name change was in 1999. Why don’t folks in Houston call the JPMorgan Chase Tower the Texas Commerce Tower? The Bank of America Building is formerly known as the RepublicBank Center, the NCNB Center, and the NationsBank Center. Enterprise Plaza used to be called the Southwest Bank of Texas Building. Gulf Tower became Chevron Tower and is now the Fulbright Tower. I guess because the building is [one of] the tallest in Houston, and the most recognizable.” [Walker, commenting on Why the Williams Tower Beacon Was Off Last Fall] Photo: Russell Hancock
COMMENT OF THE DAY: A TALL TALE OF A THIRD WARD 6-PACK 
“I’m one of those townhouse dwellers in the Third Ward, and one of my six-pack neighbors got around the problem of obstructed views in a literal sense: She built an observation deck on top of her house that’s only accessible by a ladder. Good for views . . . bad for late-night, outdoor drinking.” [Evan, commenting on Comment of the Day: Jockeying for Position in Houston’S Vertical Future] Illustration: Lulu
TEXAS A&M WEIGHS HOUSTON EXPANSION AS UT COLLECTS LAND FOR ITS PLANNED CAMPUS 
Following the University of Texas’s recent start on buying up that land in southwest Houston for a proposed campus of yet-ambiguous-purpose, Texas A&M is now sizing up the city as well, writes Benjamin Wermund of the Houston Chronicle. A&M president Michael Young suggested that those watching the university’s plans for the Houston area “stay tuned” as the school weighs strategy. UT’s November announcement that it would buy around 300 acres at W. Belfort Ave. and Buffalo Spdwy. triggered responses from University of Houston supporters including Texas senator John Whitemire. Whitmire’s December letter to UT chancellor Bill McRaven cited fears that a new UT Houston campus would pull resources and top-tier faculty away from U of H, in part due to the structure of the state’s Permanent University Fund allocations (which go only to UT and A&M campuses). Young, however, suggested that backlash over UT’s ongoing purchases south of Reliant was premature (as, perhaps, was UT’s broadcasting of its plans): “I guess I’m a little confused about the spat at the moment, because I don’t know that UT has really said what they’re going to do,” Young told the Chronicle. “So far it’s a land deal, and I must say an amusing one, because I didn’t know you announced you were going to buy property before you actually bought it.” [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Conceptual rendering of UT Houston campus: Houston Public Media
COMMENT OF THE DAY: KEEP CALM WHILE WAITING FOR FINAL GRADES ON MULTIFAMILY HOUSING 
“Yup. I saw another apartment crisis coming in Houston, and true to form, it’s here. . . . If you managed to keep your job, you’ll find that you can now afford a better apartment for the same rent due to concessions. But it could be a terrible, awful thing for older Class D apartments and the neighborhoods around them. Tenants in Class B apartments will find that they can now afford a Class A apartment, and so on down the line. The Class D apartments that lost their good tenants to Class C apartments will have nowhere to turn. Crime on the property will skyrocket as they give up on what little tenant screening they had. Maintenance will be deferred even more as they try to control the financial bleeding. Worst case scenario, the two problems will feed each other until the complexes are totally derelict and need to be condemned. Granted, this is just a worst case scenario. The damage could be limited to only a handful of complexes. Fingers are crossed.” [ZAW, commenting on Houston’s Multifamily Problem; River Oaks District Apartments Open for Business] Illustration: Lulu
BUILDING AROUND 1 CEMETERY AND POSSIBLY OVER ANOTHER IN CYPRESS’S ALDEN WOODS 
“I said to the county attorney’s representative, this looks like the spot, this looks like a cemetery,” University of Houston anthropology professor Ken Brown told ABC 13’s Ted Oberg, discussing a visit two years ago to the land currently being developed as the Alden Woods subdivision. Darling Homes is developing the 70-acre tract off Huffmeister Rd., just north of the intersection with Maxwell Rd. in Cypress, into a gated community of 3,000-to-5,000-sq.-ft. homes with interior courtyards. Brown investigated another old cemetery on the land for the Harris County Historical Commission; neighbors took him to a site on the other side of the project area rumored to be the burial ground of the slaves held by nearby landowners (some of whom are thought to be buried in the graveyard Brown was sent to check out). The landowner’s cemetery got legal protection from development with the help of the county attorney’s office and still sits in a forested area in the subdivision. The slave cemetery site was not further investigated archaeologically, despite the alleged presence of an employee of the attorney’s office on the site with Brown as he identified groups of east-west-oriented depressions which “[suggested] family type plots within a cemetery.” A statement from the Harris County Attorney’s Office to ABC13 says that the office will now work with the subdivision’s developer to investigate the site. [ABC13] Alden Woods site plan: Darling Homes
IMAGINING A PEOPLE-FRIENDLY ALLEN PKWY. CROSSING 
“Texas is not a safe place to walk and bike,” writes Allyn West on OffCite this morning, taking a closer look at one of the entries released by architects at Gensler as part of a January exhibition of speculative design projects for neglected sites and structures around Houston. The Integrated Urbanism plan sets a towering mixed-use commercial and residential development on a narrow 11-acre plot of land along Buffalo Bayou; the entire complex is sewn together by a zig-zagging “park link,” which connects areas of greenspace and culminates in a bridge across Allen Pkwy. into the Buffalo Bayou trail system. West notes that projects in Houston can only do so much to make themselves pedestrian-friendly if pedestrians can’t get to those spaces: “Even our best mixed-use projects tend to be islands — walkable from within, once you arrive, but disconnected from the city. Houston, it seems, is good at fences, less so at bridges.“ [OffCite] Rendering of Integrated Urbanism from Buffalo Bayou Park: Gensler
COMMENT OF THE DAY: JOCKEYING FOR POSITION IN HOUSTON’S VERTICAL FUTURE 
“77004: THE new construction hotspot for townhomes, low/mid/highrises . . . Of course , the funny part is all of the leasing/real estate agents are going to tout the “views†from their respective buildings — which will probably get blocked by newer highrises. Just like on Post Oak Blvd., between Loop 610 and San Felipe Rd: The Hanover highrise apartment building had killer views south down Post Oak to the Galleria. Now Randall Davis built another awful high rise: the Astoria, which has some heinous, cheap-looking aluminum “crown†on top. And Interfin is completing its Four Leaf Place tower #5, where 24 Hour Fitness used to be . . . That stretch of Post Oak is becoming crowded. Thank Goodness my dentist’s office on the upper floors of the Wells Fargo Tower is on the NORTH side of the tower. Sitting in the chair, his patients have unobstructed views north over Tanglewood (which can never be built up) . . . Anyway, Houston keeps growing by leaps and bounds. Change: get in front of it, go with it, or get left behind. [Padraig, commenting on Strip Center Art Gallery Makes Room for Installation of Highrise in Museum Park] Illustration: Lulu
MAPPING URBAN METHANE LEAKS BY DRIVING GOOGLE’S STREETVIEW CARS THROUGH THEM Meanwhile, in Los Angeles: Researchers are teaming up with Google to outfit Streetview camera vehicles with sensors to detect methane gas leaks in urban settings. The project, coordinated by the Environmental Defense Fund, found an average of 1 leak per every 4 miles driven around Pasadena, CA, and 1 leak per 5 miles in Chino and Inglewood. Drives through Boston and Staten Island registered as many as 1 leak per mile. The project is expanding to map more cities; no maps of Texas or Gulf Coast cities have yet been published. Researchers connected to the mapping initiative have also turned similar methane sensors on the neighborhood near the ongoing methane plume in Aliso Canyon, which has been uncontrollably leaking thousands of tons of natural gas since late October. [EDF via 538; Atlas Obscura]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: IT’S NOT THE SIZE OF INFRASTRUCTURE, IT’S HOW YOU USE IT 
“This is less about the size and population of cities, and more about growth and how it’s handled. . . . Growth has terrible problems; rapid growth makes those problems worse, and poor planning makes them worse. But the alternative of urban decline is far worse than even rapid, poorly planned growth. It’s easy to complain about traffic and overcrowded schools, higher housing costs and overextended public services. But would you really rather live with a decaying, unused infrastructure that local government can’t afford to maintain, and schools that are shutting down and neglected? Would you rather watch as the tax base erodes and the City government goes defunct? Would you want to sell your house at a steep loss? Not me. Look at Chicago. Look at what Detroit went through. Sure, the traffic jams are a thing of the past, but at what cost? One other thing to note is that small cities and rural areas can struggle with growth, too. Look at what happened in Karnes County when the Eagle Ford Shale boom was going on. They had problems with traffic, dangerous roads, a lack of housing and skyrocketing prices, overcrowded schools . . .” [ZAW, commenting on Comment of the Day: Drawing a Line on Urban Expansion] Illustration: Lulu
HOUSTON IS THE UBER OUTLIER 
Houston appears to be the only market in Texas in which Uber is willing to put up with regulations that complicate its business model, writes Madlin Mekelburg in the Texas Tribune — following the rideshare company’s abrupt cessations of service in Midland and Galveston on Monday. In Austin, Uber and competitor Lyft are currently funding a campaign against a recently passed city ordinance that would require more intensive background checks involving fingerprinting of drivers — a safeguard Uber accepted in Houston. “Sarfraz Maredia, Uber’s general manager over Houston, declined to say Tuesday why the company wouldn’t accept the same policy in Austin,” Mekelburg writes. “‘It has become clear that Houston is the outlier in how it has chosen to regulate,’ Maredia said. ‘The rest of our markets have focused on passing modern ride-sharing regulations. As a result, our expansion strategy in Texas has changed to focus on launching only in markets that are consistent with that policy.'” [Texas Tribune] Photo of Houston Uber HQ, 5714 Star Ln.: Uber Houston
COMMENT OF THE DAY: DRAWING A LINE ON URBAN EXPANSION 
“Here is a thought: Cities are just too big. Look at Shanghai — great public transit system, but streets are choked with traffic. People on scooters ride almost shoulder to shoulder. People pay over $20k a year for a permit to be able to use the highways because you simply cannot move on the side streets in a passenger car. London has crazy vehicle congestion charges. Overnight garage contracts in NY, Boston, etc. cost as much as a decent sized house in the suburbs. Yet, every city in the US jumps up and down at the idea of growth. Maybe it is time for civic leaders to just tell people to stay away — no room on the roads. Or state legislatures could pass bans on moving to certain metro areas and require people to move to smaller towns/cities to help them revitalize. La Grange is a lovely place. Next time someone tries to move to Austin and choke up I-35 even more, Gov. Abbot could order them to move to La Grange instead.” [Old School, commenting on Comment of the Day: On the Other Side of the Tracks] Illustration: Lulu
