- Houston Community College To Move Missouri City Campus To New Building, Increase Its Size by More Than 50% [Houston Business Journal]
- Mapping Which Houston Development Projects Are Moving Forward or Stalled After Oil Prices Drop [Houston Chronicle]
- Landmarked Home at 2126 Pine Valley Designed by Claude E. Hooton Hits the Market for $2.115M [Houston Chronicle]
- Unnamed Asian Fusion Restaurant To Replace Just-Closed Osteria Mazzantini in the Galleria, To Open in May [Culturemap]
- Chipotle-Esque Garbanzo Mediterranean Grill Opening First Houston Location, in Gateway Memorial City [Culturemap]
- Old and New Collide in Houston’s East End [Houston Chronicle]
- Debating the Merits of Houston’s Suburban Sales Tax [Houston Chronicle]
- MFAH Expansion Aims To Make the Museum District a Real, Walkable Neighborhood [CityLab]
- Plan To Expand Metro Park and Ride Lot at I-10 and Grand Pkwy. Nixed To Avoid ‘Traffic Headache’Â [The Highwayman]
- Downtown Construction Affecting Bus Routes in the Heights, Residents Complain [The Leader]
- Flooding a Problem for Residents Living Near Hwy. 288 on Pembrook St. and Richmeadow Dr. [MyFoxHouston]
Photo over Montrose Blvd.: Jackson Myers via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
GEEMD bends over backwards to highlight the hispanic culture in everything they do but it is never good enough. Take a look at the yard behind Our Lady of Guadalupe and see the landscaping disaster in that area. I’ve found that people will complain about keeping the neighborhood “culture” alive during gentrification but what they really mean is, keep the area looking like crap. Anything remotely new looking will be frowned upon.
GEEMD has a difficult job. Its a push-pull between people that cherish a place like Magnolia Park and other people that I have actually met that show up for their meetings and publicly advocate for every single building there to be torn down. There are plenty that are in-between, sure, but it’s a broad spectrum of constituents and they try to serve everybody. I don’t envy them their task, but I respect them for not being one-sided dicks on the order of Garnet Coleman or some such.
Heights Residents complaining about something? What else is new.
I love that a Grand Parkway park n’ ride lot was killed because it would draw too much traffic. Oh sweet delicious irony.
I love that the highlight of the east end is of it’s Mexican background, but the article even mentions (yet glosses over) how it was originally a place for German, Jewish, and Irish immigrants.
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A similar article could have been written in the 80s with my Grandmother who lived on Dismuke. She watched as all of her neighbors moved away and were replaced by people of Mexican origin. She had a similar situation to a lot of folks, living on a fixed income provided by social security and her southern pacific pension.
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I guess maybe in 50 years people will look back on articles like this and think that they are no better than the anti-integration articles of the 50s/60s.
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Point is, change is natural, and what we might look at today as a tragedy will be completely ignored in 2 generations when the landscape changes again.
I have to agree with Toasty and Mr Clean on the East End. Same with Semper Fudge.
On another note, I am surprised Ashby is going through. The Lot has been empty for a while, and it makes little sense to build when so many projects are still in construction. I wonder if it is just posturing.
I think the new Steven Holl building for MFAH is worse than I could have imagined and I imagined pretty awful. It too bad they didn’t hire Piano or Calatrava, they may have gotten something elegant and fabulous instead of some crazy looking tin pile of crap, that glows. A glowing tin pile of crap. 450 million for this?!! Total disappointment.
Maybe it’s not made of tin, perhaps it’s concrete, who know, it’s hideous all the same. The more images I see the worse it looks. I’ve seen his hot mess in Kanas City and that horrid pile at MIT. I’ve never been a fan of Holl, I was disappointed what they hired him, I thought well at least it’s not Michael Graves. I was hoping for Meier, I love the Getty. We are getting some really bad designs in Houston. This building is terrible.
The east end, 3rd ward, 5th ward…they’re all becoming more diverse! And that’s a good thing, right?
True, the MFAH renderings aren’t very awe-inspiring. I’m not as interested in seeing a bird’s-eye view of the facilities from an awkward angle in order to frame downtown in the background as I am in seeing what they’ll look like from the street. Hopefully the full plans are being vetted by staff and other architects. For now…I’m inclined to withhold judgement.
I don’t like that they’re tearing down the old Glassell, though. I can say that for sure!
@TheNiche: I believe some photos are posted in the article:
http://www.chron.com/entertainment/arts-theater/article/Museum-of-Fine-Arts-Houston-unveils-dramatic-6011568.php
@Joe Dirt – Economic diversity is more critical than cultural diversity IMO. The end of segregation led to the downturn of 5th ward due to all of the affluent AA’s moving to other neighborhoods and bringing their businesses with them. Brining economic diversity to a neighborhood increases quality of schools and infrastructure. That is a very hard concept to bring across to the people that were “left behind” in the ghettos of the 80s and 90s.
“She watched as all of her neighbors moved away and were replaced by people of Mexican origin.”
The difference is that the German, Jewish and Italian residents were not displaced. They chose to move. And I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they moved because they did not want to live with Mexicans. The current and diminishing Mexican American residence of that area are not leaving by choice. They actually want to stay, but can no longer to afford to.
In any case, the issue isn’t simply new, new, new. It’s an issue of displacement.