- Construction Starts on Pearl-Brand Apartment Complex at Washington and T.C. Jester [Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot]
- JLB Partners Still Picking Up the Pieces From Axis Apartments Fire, Hoping To Rebuild [Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot]
- Inside Springwoods Village’s Unfinished Apartment Complex The Belvedere, Now Housing 15 Residents [Houston Business Journal]
- Nearly 30 Years After Closing Last Store, El Pollo Loco Opening 5 Houston-Area Locations Over Next Few Months, Planning 15 More [Food Chronicles]
- Pax Americana Officially Open in Former Thai Sticks Space in Montrose [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot]
- Shawn Bermudez’s Stone’s Throw Set To Open on Lower Westheimer Today [Eater Houston]
- Home Brew Shop Farmboy Planned for Garden Oaks Shopping Plaza [The Leader]
- Texas City’s Fork & Spoon Bought by ShyKatZ Deli & Bakery Owners, To Reopen as ShyKatZ Fork & Spoon Later This Month [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- How the Convention Center Sparked East Downtown’s Transformation [Prime Property]
- Once Again, City Council Set To Vote on Vehicles-for-Hire Ordinances Surrounding Uber, Lyft Today [Houston Chronicle]
- Stewart Beach Master Plan Proposal Features Raised Boardwalk, Restaurants, Retail, Pavilion [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- Galena Park Residents Call For New EPA Pollution Controls on Refineries [Houston Chronicle]
- Years-Long Drought Contributing to Texas Oyster Shortage in the Gulf Coast [Houston Chronicle]
- AT&T Bringing Ultra-Fast, All-Fiber Network To 100 Unnamed Houston Locations [Houston Business Journal]
- Find Out Tonight If Montrose Rollerblader Juan Carlos Restrepo Moved On to Semi-Finals of ‘America’s Got Talent’ [Houston Chronicle]
- Baron Enrico di Portanova’s Former River Oaks Mansion with an Indoor Pool on the Market for $19M [Curbed National]
- Video from Burglary of 3-Story Closet in The Woodlands Shows Unidentified Man Shopping for Handbags in the Dark [abc13]
- ‘Art Everywhere’ Project Brings Artwork to the Billboards of Houston and the U.S. [The Great God Pan Is Dead]
Photo of University of St. Thomas’s Link-Lee Mansion at 3800 Montrose Blvd.: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
I love the crazy chicken
“How the Convention Center Sparked East Downtown’s Transformation”
and it only took 25-30 years …..
“Convention Center was the catalyst for east downtown’s transformation”
hahaha.
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“There was no convention center, Minute Maid Park, Toyota Center, Discovery Green, One Park Place, Hilton Americas or the three-block-long entertainment/office/retail development GreenStreet.”
“More downtown east end development is on the way, including the Marriott Marquis hotel, Greater Houston Partnership Building and more restaurants, sidewalk cafes and landscaping.”
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Billions spent by public or semi-public entiities to get One Park Place and heavily subsidized/failed GreenStreet/Pavilions development.
The decision about the location of the convention center was a strategic blunder used as an excuse to heavily subsidize at least a half dozen major projects in east downtown that come to mind off hand. In that very limited and somewhat humiliating sense, yes it was a success.
That house of the “Baron” was completely redone after his death, so I don’t exactly see how it reflects him. This guy was hilarious, with his ill fitting toupee and his dubious title along with his busty wife straight out of central casting. His fights with the Cullen estate were legendary. Hugh Roy Cullen gave away 90 percent of his estate, easily in excess of several billion dollars, but Ricky got his hands on what was left. Their house in Acapulco, Arabesque, was over 20000 square feet, it made this house look like the maid’s quarters.
@TheNiche, can you go into more detail about GRB being a strategic blunder? I mean, I can guess what you mean, that the location was far away from the heart of downtown, but is there more to the story than that? I really hate how it cuts off the EaDo area from eastern downtown.
What good is boosting the download speed to customers if the government allows providers to throttle the bandwidth on the other side?
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Yippee I get 1Gbps download! wait, the throughput on my modem says 24Kbps for netflix :(
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I’m not wasting my money even if they offer it, yes, it would look sweet to have inflated numbers when I do a network test on speedtest.net, rest assured the providers won’t throttle THAT sites bandwidth.
I had the same ‘coffe-spitting’ reaction to “Convention Center was the catalyst for east downtown’s transformation†article as most comments here.
Using the logic of the piece, one could write an article about how “59 elevated freeway was the catalyst for east downtown’s transformationâ€
The real catalyst was the park. Not the convention center. Not Minute Maid. Not Toyota center. So the next time some sports or real estate billionaire tries to extort public $ to build some shiny building by telling us it will spur development, we should tell them to go fly a kite. We’d be smarter to use our public $ to build big public spaces.
Funny how real estate gets expensive around nice parks.