COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: HOW HOUSTON CAN SPEED THINGS ALONG 
“Can we replace the HOT lanes with hyperloop tubes? Who wouldn’t pay $5 bucks to travel from The Woodlands to Downtown in 5 minutes? It’d be cheaper than gas! That’d be a game changer.
How about a hyperloop tube to Galveston? Think of how efficient evacuation would be with an on coming hurricane.” [Thomas, commenting on Headlines: Many More Dunkin’ Donuts; Free Metro Rides on Labor Day] Illustration: Lulu
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COMMENT OF THE DAY: LISTENING TO THE MONTROSE VORTEX 
“This looks like the tornadic vortex that tunneled through and created the Inversion House and could do the same to any bungalow left in Montrose. I’ve seen some of Renner’s gigantic spheres of the same colorful slats and this seems like the humongous fallopian tube that spit them out. It appears to move faster than the traffic that sits alongside it. I love that the colors reflect the rainbow flags along Westheimer left from the parade. Best of all is that HAA money went to a Houston artist! If I put my ear up to the big end, do I hear the live oaks singing? It appeals to all my senses.” [Mike, commenting on Now Ready To Be Looked At: Montrose “Funnel Tunnelâ€] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: BRINGIN’ DA FUNK EAST 
“The East End is getting Voodoo Queen and Moon Tower while Montrose gets a world-class croissant place, Vinoteca Poscól and The Susanne. The funk and character of Houston still exists but has relocated.” [Dana-X, commenting on Voodoo Queen ‘So Close’ To Opening in the East End] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: LONGING FOR LONG POINT 
“how long until the teardown trend crosses to the north side of Long Point?” [anonymous, commenting on Houston Home Listing Photo of the Day: Global Warming] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: FOLLOWING THE GREAT CHAIN RESTAURANT MIGRATION 
“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.” [eiioi, commenting on Comment of the Day: How We’re Remaking the Inner Loop] Illustration: Lulu
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
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHY THERE’S NO ‘PARKING IN BACK’ REQUIREMENT 
“The idea of requiring on-site parking to be put somewhere else beside the primary frontage along the street was considered during the Urban Corridors process (that led to the current Transit Corridor ordinance). The message from the development community was loud and clear: you cannot prohibit front-door parking within a certain area — that makes properties just outside the boundary of the restriction more valuable and attractive to a greater range of potential occupants, and therefore unfairly diminishes the value of the restricted properties. The idea of making such a restriction mandatory was thus scrapped; it is now an ‘opt-in’ feature of the ordinance in return for the ability to do a reduced setback. Only on streets in light rail corridors though — it doesn’t apply in places like Washington and Rice Village, sadly.” [Local Planner, commenting on Comment of the Day: Too Many Parking Spaces] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: IT’S TOO MUGGY TO WALK HERE 
“IMO people in Houston do not walk as much as they do in other cities. I have a friend who lives at West Ave and drives to Whole foods across the street, stuff like that. This is why Houston hasn’t had more ground floor retail in the past and we require 2375646523 parking spaces per 200 unit apt complex. Now everyone blames the heat for not walking, but I blame it on laziness and crime. If you build a walker friendly area that is safe like on west gray or west ave then people will come.” [benny, commenting on Comment of the Day: Would Ground Floor Retail Work in the Rice Village?] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: TOO MANY PARKING SPACES 
“In my line of work I look at parking requirements for different cities around the country all day long, and Houston’s are pretty high. 10 per 1,000 SF for a restaurant means you need a parking space for every 100 square feet. This means for every 10 ft x 10 ft block of floor space in your restaurant, you’re expecting that the people occupying that space drove ten different cars to get there. Is any restaurant ever so packed that there are 10 people for every 100 SF of space (including the whole area of the restaurant, not just the dining area), and all of them driving a separate car?
I guarantee you this: a city that requires that ten paved parking spots exist every time there’s 100 square feet of people dining somewhere will never be an interesting city. If you need that much flat pavement everywhere that people like to hang out and cluster, you’re going to concrete and asphalt yourself away from ever having an interesting district. You might manage to get something going in the parts of town that were built before the draconian regulations took effect, but pretty soon people are going to want to build new things in those areas, the new requirements will kick in, and pavement will start spreading like a cancer.” [Mike, commenting on Comment of the Day: Would Ground Floor Retail Work in the Rice Village?] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WOULD GROUND FLOOR RETAIL WORK IN THE RICE VILLAGE? 
“If you follow many of the comments on this board, it’s become kind of an inside joke here that everything should have first floor retail. If there was an article about a cemetery, someone here would post that it should have first floor retail.
That said, I don’t know of many other locations in this city that would be more suitable for first floor retail than this one. It’s already an established shopping district, and the building is actually replacing some retail. I’m not a developer, but I would think that in a high density location like this one, retail leases would be a net financial benefit, with a higher $ amount per square foot, and lease terms much longer than the typical 6 or 12 month residential lease. However, there’s two arguments I can think of on why they have chosen not to go the retail route. First, would any new retail businesses be subject to our city’s minimum parking regulations? If so, providing garage space would have a negative impact on costs. Second, perhaps if the plan by Hanover is to convert these to condos in the next 5 years, then retail would not be a net benefit.” [ShadyHeightster, commenting on What Hanover Might Be Building Next in the Rice Village] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE RIGHT TO PROTEST 
“. . . not to say I always concur with my own neighbors, where I live. A ‘greenbelt’ consisting largely of invasive species follows the dry creek behind my house and cleaned up would make a nice trail (she said shyly — she’s much bolder on the internet). But the people hereabouts hear the word trail and think transients, even after I tried to push their dog-loving buttons with ‘dog park,’ so I gave up on that notion a long time ago.
My neighborhood abuts a mall. A group wanted to put a ‘luxury hotel’ on the mall’s anvil-like parking lot with its wasted city view. Terrific, I thought, a hedge against the inevitable decline of the mall. At a meeting of a couple hundred people: I was the only one in support. Neighbors won that one, or rather, the bottom shortly dropped out of the ‘mall parking lot luxury hotel’ business.
Then too there’s a defunct movie theater, returning to a state of nature these ten years, at the edge of the neighborhood. The re-developer — retail, townhomes, offices — is dropping several hundred thousand dollars into a mitigation pot to conserve land elsewhere in the watershed, even though this land is already ruined.
I don’t see this enormous abandoned cineplex as an asset, but the others around here do, apparently, and had lined up to derail its transformation into . . . whatever. I confess that this time my exasperation was such that I contrived some ad hoc ‘neighborhood support’ (i.e. all my friends) to inundate Council and give them some cover for the vote.
I have no ‘rights,’ you say? I figure I have a right to whatever I can take from you, and I assume you’ll do the same.” [luciaphile, commenting on Comment of the Day: Houston’s Master Planners] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOLDING BACK THE ONSLAUGHT ON A GALLERIA MOD 
“There’s not too much respect for older architecture in Houston. I own a three family near the Galleria. My building was designed by Neuhaus and Taylor and was featured in ‘Houston and the Mod House.’ The developers are sniffing around trying to make deals for the whole street. I may reach a point of diminishing returns soon and be forced to sell. One of the reasons is that the city keeps raising the property taxes so high in ‘hot’ areas by comparing old buildings to the new ratables and raising the old assessments by thousands at a time. At some point you can’t afford to pay the bills with a density of three units on the property. A developer will come in, buy the whole cul de sac, and put up a tower so he can make a lot more money per sq. ft. from the land than we can. When you protest taxes, HCAD listens and lowers the amount a tiny amount. Thus, the little guy is eventually forced out.” [Gary Andreasen, commenting on Comment of the Day: How Houston Tears Down and Sprawls] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: WHAT THE HOME LISTING STATUS CODES REALLY MEAN 
“For those of you that think you know about real estate, but don’t, you will find a breakdown of HAR statuses at the bottom of this post. Pending Continue to Show (PS) means that the seller is still willing to have the house shown. It does not mean that there are necessarily any contingencies, it just means that they *might* still allow showings. They still have the right to decline a showing when an agent tries to schedule an appointment, and many sellers do choose to decline the showing, or at least don’t tend to be as flexible as they may have been before the home was under contract. The reality is that most agents don’t show homes that have a PS status anyway, unless the listing agent makes it a point to specify that the seller is willing to accept back-up offers. Many agents don’t use Pending (P) unless the seller absolutely insists on no further showings.
OP — Option Pending: Listings that are under contract and the seller and buyer have agreed to use the ‘Termination Option’ in paragraph 23 of the standard TREC contract, effective 1/1/03;
PS — Pending Continue to Show: Used for listings currently under contract but are still available to show. Listings having a contract with a contingency and taking back-up offers should be Pending Continue to Show;
P — Pending: Used for listings under contact and are no longer available to show;
S — Sold: Used when a property has funded and closed. All sales closed must be reported to MLS. Listings should not be changed to Sold status before the actual closing.” [HoustonRealtor, commenting on Restocking a Converted Grocery Store in the Houston Heights] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW HOUSTON TEARS DOWN AND SPRAWLS 
“. . . In other (mostly northern) cities properties are continuously rehabilitated and repurposed. In Houston, properties are abandoned and demolished and the city sprawls out further from the center. I think that is a fundamental flaw in the mindset (and before anyone starts screaming — I know since I have remodeled properties considered tear downs in the Heights that have proven to be great investments). Granted, it takes guts and money and it may not be worth it to buy something like this, but there are other properties worth saving all over the Heights, Montrose, river oaks, and 6th ward. Every time I see an abandoned property in those neighborhoods it makes my head spin.” [Heights Mom, commenting on Snooping Around an Abandoned Apartment Complex in Inwood Forest] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOUSTON’S MASTER PLANNERS 
“. . . I’ve talked a lot about the bad way some developers approach growth in Houston. But neighborhoods are addressing it wrong, too. They’re too reactionary. They sit around doing nothing until a developer proposes something they don’t like, then they mobilize to try to kill it. They need to ask themselves ‘what do we really want in and around our neighborhood,’ and then create master plans to communicate it. (The master plans wouldn’t be enforced — that would be zoning — but they could be used by developers to get a sense of what the neighbors would oppose.)
The Super Neighborhoods were supposed to be a venue where this could happen — they were originally under the auspices of the Houston Planning Department. But I’ve found that it’s actually the Management Districts that are doing master plans. It’s great that they’re happening, but Management Districts are paid for by and primarily serve businesses; and single family neighborhoods aren’t even trying to get in on the efforts.” [ZAW, commenting on Dogging the Morrison Heights Midrise with Doggerel] Illustration: Lulu
