COMMENT OF THE DAY: SAVE-THE-DOME SAGA’S PARKING GARAGE ENDING LEAVES ROOM FOR A SEQUEL 
“I think people are missing the larger view here. Of course there is plenty of current surface parking — but putting parking beneath the Dome begins to open up the possibility of densification on this site and on the old Astroworld site. This is the first, and necessary, step in transforming this entire area. I am betting that in 20 years or so this site will barely resemble the vast wasteland of parking lots and open space that it is today.” [SH, commenting on County Approves First $10.5 Million for Astrodome Basement Parking Garage Plan] Photo: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
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Any new venture for the Astrodome starts with raising the floor to ground level. To do that the lower two levels need to be filled in. Might as well make parking for almost 2,000 cars instead of wasted space. Great move imo!
Go to google maps, make the astrodome the size of your thumb. Move your thumb over 3 or 4 thumb sized parking lots. Marvel at how much that didn’t help the situation.
Now think about how each parking spot will cost more than $50,000.
This is your legacy Ed, you’ll be known as the guy who turned the astrodome into a boondoggle of a parking garage.
In 20 years, the Texans will have already demanded and received $3bil from Harris County taxpayers to replace NRG Stadium* with a state of the art stadium/entertainment/indoor luge complex in Pearland “so that the Texans can compete in today’s NFL.” It was either that or watch the team move to Panama City, which had offered a quite attractive $5 billion stadium/resort/pineapple canning factory complex. The NRG/Astrodome/Astroworld complex will be a barren wasteland with excellent, ample parking facilities.
*In 20 years the stadium will have been renamed three more times, and will then be named an energy company whose name is an unpronounceable series of letters and numbers.
Don’t forget, the Texans and the HLS&R killed the hotel proposal because they didn’t want competition for their concessions. I too would welcome the prospect of some densification, particularly in the form of a retail drag between the LRT station at Holly Hall and the Astrodome. Some kind of transit-oriented development would be ideal there; but as long as the two key tenants informally exercise a cold steel grip on what happens at NRG Park, any such concept is also probably dead-on-arrival.
Right….Good to know $100 million is ONLY the FIRST step. Republicans, Democrats… all of them should attacked at the ballot box for this type of thing.
If only all the tailgating was done underground, we’d be far better off. I mean, NFL fans / goons are the worst.
In case you were wondering:
NRG already has 26,283 parking spots AND the rodeo owns land on the former Astroworld lot.
https://nrgpark.com/parking-map
This makes the Rodeo’s and Texans penchant for tearing down the dome to add parking spots puzzling because there seems to be enough spaces already…. AND their opposition to adding a parking garage even more puzzling because it would add more spaces then tearing down the dome.
I say that we build the parking garage, use the Dome for all the functions of the NRG Arena, tear down the NRG Areana, build parking across 610, and start to fill in the parking lots east of the Dome with parklets and Apartments w/ GFR and bars. Make sure more parking is put in across 610 then is taken away. Everyone wins.
Thanks SH for that: I hadn’t thought about the nrg/dome area ever being anything BUT parking lots! It probably makes it’s own thunderstorms with the heat radiated.
Of course that would be a prime hub for new retail/residential development!
Wait!!! OPEC agrees to a production cut. Houston’s back baby! No need to go cheap on the Astrodome. The oil money is going to flow again. Let’s do that largest indoor park thing with all the pretty renderings. Go big or go home.
Why can’t the dome be sold to someone? The city (who I assume owns it) makes some money on the sale and doesn’t have to worry about the upkeep or demo. Then let whoever buys it do whatever they hell they want with it.
If they decide to let it rot, then that’s on them.
Well, for once I wish Adoile would chime in. I might actually agree.
Dream on if you think the Texans are going to give up any parking spaces at NRG Park for future development. The NFL Revenue Sharing agreement defines parking revenue as non-shared revenue. Every dime of every parking pass ($27-75/space/game) goes straight to the Texans bottom line. 25,000 spaces at $40 ave. per space = $1,000,000 of free cash for every one of 10 home games per year, plus playoffs.
Cody, I believe that kind of was the intention with the previous private/public proposals that went on for years. At the end of the day there was and is no economically viable use for the building. Nobody will touch it unless taxpayers are on the hook for funding/losses.
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What we need to do should be clear, it’s real estate 101.