COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW WE’RE REMAKING THE INNER LOOP 
“Can we just rename the Washington Ave area ‘Little suburbia’? It’s got a Target, Walmart, sonic, Kwik Kar, Chilis, Chick-fil-a, mega-Kroger, Petsmart, a McDonalds, 4 chain sandwich shops, 2 chain burrito places, and both an IHOP AND Denny’s. All pretty much off of a major 8 lane highway. Put a Best Buy & Bed Bath and Beyond and I’m pretty sure it would be a clean sweep. The only difference being that in the suburbs, the city of Houston doesn’t hand out money to build these kind of stores . . . oh wait . . . .” [DNAguy, commenting on Headlines: Dancing in Midtown; Drinking at UH] Illustration: Lulu
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This is simply supply following demand–ever take economics–I for one am glad for Target et.al, it was sorely needed
It still needs a CVS AND Walgreen’s and throw in a couple of banks.
Needs a Whataburger…just sayin’
Some of us who took economics remember the concept of “market failure.”
Nobody demanded any of this crap. The developers followed the middle-class and rich people moving into the area.
Meanwhile, in the burbs, developers are building mixed use town centers.
Pretty pathetic for Houston.
The ironic thing is that surburbanites get made fun of for a supposed lack of urban sophistication, and are portrayed as thinking Chili’s/Applebee’s is the pinnacle of good cuisine.
Now, a lot of ethnic cuisine cannot be found inside the Loop and you need to go to the Beltway to find it(Indonesian, Peruvian, Nigerian, Malaysian) but we get a Chili’s and an evil Chick-Fil-A right near downtown.
Funny thing… I have a neighbor in the Woodland Heights who is moving out for a few reasons. A driving reason is that the neighborhood is too gentrified. All the things that made it a fun area to live in are slowly being replaced by white bread, I want it cool but looking like the ‘burbs types.
I would hope to see a cutbacks in city-paid incentives. Why do we need to pay people to move in during a boom?
Why not just rename the area ‘The W’? There is no better letter for this area:
-Washington Ave.
-Walmart Heights
-Wannabe Suburbia
-Wannabe mixed use, pedestrian-biker-hipster friendly
Let’s see, it’s a boom market where credit is still relatively scarce. Banks aren’t going to lend to mom and pop to build a neat designer grocery store on Wash Ave. They’re going to loan to Target to build on Sawyer and make an actual return.
The plots where the big boxes are moving in near downtown were empty or underutilized as old industrial or simply dirt. No reason to let them sit and rot while waiting for what the self described experts consider “appropriate for the loop”.
eiioi, there has never been an Indonesian restaurant inside the loop. So far as I know at any given time there’s between 0 and 1 Indonesian restaurants as a matter of fact.
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Currently, the only Indonesian restaurant is at Bellaire and Hwy 6, and they are primarily a Chinese restaurant (you have to ask for the Indonesian menu).
.
So by that count, Houston’s not any worse or better than it has been. It’s not like this is the beginning of suburban style places inside the loop, look up and down 59 near greenway, there’s all sorts of nasty chain places, yet the area seems to do just fine.
I think Midtowner makes one of the strongest points about access to capital markets. These were substantial pieces of land that commanded credit worthy entities to develop. How long must we wait until an investment vehicle is aggregated to get chic architects in to form some kind of City Centre type development. Not that, something similar would be terrible, but I doubt the mom and pops would be able to afford the rent.
I for one loath Chili’s but do not mind having a Target or Walmart there for dry goods. Probably don’t need both, but a force such as Walmart is probably pretty hard to deny.