- The New Texas Instruments Campus and Other Developments in Sugar Land [Houston Business Journal]
- Houston Industrial Construction By the Numbers [CoStar Group]
- Houston Cracks Top 20 as a Convention Destination — But Still Lags Behind Dallas [KUHF]
- Three Brothers Bakery Opening Third Location on Washington Ave This Fall [Culturemap]
- South Post Oak Rd. Southbound Bridge Closed Next Five Months for Construction [abc13]
- Metro Considering Cutting Back on Disabled Services [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Coyotes Coming in Homes Through Doggie Doors in Fort Bend County [Click2Houston]
Photo of Memorial Hermann: Robert Boyd via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Top20. Not exactly something to write home about for the 4th largest city…
What is that crown on top for?? anybody know? does it have a practical use? Im always curious when I drive by this one.
It’s amazing that Houston still lags so far behind Dallas on conventions. The area around their convention center is depressing to say the least, although the new Omni hotel there is quite the spectacle with the LED lighting, and the Hyatt with its view tower has always been a landmark. But otherwise that area has nothing like the cheerful urbanity of Discovery Green. But Dallas has ALWAYS trounced us on getting its image out to tourists… pick up any old Texas tour guide at your local Half Price Books and most likely Dallas has bought a huge spread, whereas the article on Houston is just marginally bigger than the one on Beaumont.
Once again, a major local news source has published a false report of coyotes as a threatening, malicious force of nature.
They cite no sources other than a back-woods exterminator who hangs meat in the woods to see if coyotoes will eat it (duh). He also claims coyotes will eat your gerbil, and have been entering homes through doggy doors – without a real, concrete example of any such occurence.
For people who know little about nature, this reinforces prejudiced fears of a relatively harmless creature. Please stop posting this crap!
Benny–What I’ve heard is that there are offices in it, and that the owner of MetroNational (which owns all the office buildings and Memorial City Mall) has or had his office there.
@benny: It is a control tower for black helicopters and UFO’s. Shhhhh!
Mike. I think it helps–even now–that Dallas had a hugely successful TV series in the 80s. Dallas has gotten a lot of mileage from that show, helping it attain a reputation as a sexy, glamorous place, while when people hear “Houston,” they still instinctively think “hot” and “petrochemical.” It doesn’t matter that these are out-of-date or incomplete characterizations (well, except for “hot), they still stick in people’s minds.
Is the George R. Brown big enough to really compete at that level?
According to Swamplot:
http://swamplot.com/there-will-be-no-tours-of-the-death-star-and-other-details-about-the-hospital-in-the-belly-of-the-memorial-hermann-tower/2009-11-30/
The top 6 floors (the crown) belong to MetroNational, the building’s owner. The secretive Houston-based developer will not reveal what goes on up there.
People that live along the bayous in Houston can tell you about coyotes, too—my neighbors witnessed a beloved cat attacked and killed right on their porch and carried off. I’ll grant that they’re a misunderstood creature by most, but to insinuate that they’re harmless or not a threat to domesticated animals (and, to some extent, man) is foolishness. I don’t have a dog in this fight, literally, but I do have a cat that sometimes goes out of doors—if it’s eaten by a coyote, that its own problem. But let’s not pretend that—whether it’s expanding coyote populations or encroachment by man—there’s no problem in coyote-human interactions.
We need to have our own TV show named after us, or at least a Real Housewives of Houston. That’ll get the conventions flocking here!
thanks for the info
The professional organizations to which I belong have annual meetings of around 10,000 participants. The location is always East or West coast, almost never Gulf coast (New Orleans once in a blue moon).
The Little Couple lives here. That’s our claim to tv fame at the moment.
more likely a coon or possum comin in the pet door.
We just recently convinced our organization to schedule a meeting in Houston–will be in another 5 or 6 years, I think. Higher-ups are already worried about attendance. Everyone I know who has come to a conference here has complained about lack of transportation options from the airport & the downtown ‘scene’.
My state organization rotates it’s annual convention between Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. I spoke to the director last year and was told that in terms of attendance, San Antonio comes out on top, followed by Houston and Dallas. Dallas has always been a pain because until recently most folks stayed at the big hotels up by the market center and had to be bussed downtown to the convention center. San Antonio gets good business because spouses often tag along and take the kids to Sea World and Fiesta Texas.
There’s always been an unwritten rule, if the convention is mandatory, make it in a cheap place (Houston, Dallas, Fargo N. Dakota) but if you want a big attendance of people that don’t have to go, make it in Vegas or Hawaii… they’ll come.
We may be on the Gulf coast, but if Dallas can be 8th, we can damn sure do better than 19th.
Mike wrote:
…pick up any old Texas tour guide at your local Half Price Books and most likely Dallas has bought a huge spread, whereas the article on Houston is just marginally bigger than the one on Beaumont.
.
.
The first edition of the Insight Guides- Guide to Texas, published around 1992, literally described Houston as the “weirdest city in Texas” (take that Austin!) and thus by far the most interesting city to visit. The lead photo for the Houston section was of a skateboarder doing a flip in front of the downtown Miró sculpture.
Is convention business (and tourism, for that matter) really so important? Why should we care?
The response to that question should not have anything to do with Dallas. Dallas does these things because Dallas is insecure about its image. We should be above that.
The response might consider, however, that San Antonio isn’t exactly the most vibrant or wealthy of the various Texas cities. It seems that San Antonio has historically been far better served by its military presence and by headquartered companies like Rackspace than by the fickle business of tourism.
And who wants to interact with tourists, anyway?
The problem with Houston as a convention location is that there is no easy way to get from either airport to GRB. Get rail from iah and hobby to GRB and Houston will get a nice bump up.
There will be a rail stop next year at GRB, which won’t help the airport connection but might attract a few more conventioneers due to rail connecting to downtown and Reliant.
@Niche: with regards to tourism and San Antonio, it is vitally important to the local economy. The tourism trade that brings visitors to the Riverwalk area, and to the west side amusement parks supports thousands of low level, semi-skilled jobs for people that have a high school education or less. Now these may not be the kind of jobs you or I want, but let’s face facts: there is a high drop out rate in San Antonio, along with Houston and Dallas, and it’s better these people have A job rather than no job at all. Also, occupancy taxes on hotel rooms, rental car taxes, and passenger facility charges at the airport bring in tax revenues to the city that would otherwise be scooped up from homeowners. So to answer your question if conventions and tourism are really that important, yes they are!