And 4 more blocks to go: Site work began last week here in East Downtown to chunk up the pavement into such tidy piles and clear the way for that 5-block pedestrian path known as the EaDo Promenade. These photos show what the very north end of the path, at McKinney and Bastrop St. a block south of BBVA Compass Stadium, looks like, as of yesterday:
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You can see the stadium in the background of the photo. From here, the ground will be cleared and graded and Bastrop, going south, widened . . .
. . . until Bell St. Anton Sinkewich, the director of the EaDo Management District, has said previously that the first phase of the promenade — to include a crushed-granite path and trees — is intended to be modest, so it might include more amenities as need or want demands them.
- Previously on Swamplot: Stadium Walking in East Downtown
Photos: Allyn West
This will be an excellent edition to Eado, however I can’t help but notice all the graffiti, it looks like Brooklyn in the 70’s, let’s hope they don’t tag all these new paths etc.
This will likely spur higher-end development.
I can see in the third picture down that they have already acquired some seating amenities for the new strip park! And it is already fitted with a cup holder for those on the way to or from the stadium!
I guess the incidence of tagging will eventually drop off to zero here as the area gentrifies. Not necessarily because tagging will become passé, but rather because they kids’ will families move off to other neighborhoods when the rent gets too high.
Err, I live in Southhampton and even we deal with tagging, and we’re about as “gentrified” as you can get.
Brooklyn in the 70’s is A-Ok because Brooklyn is awesome NOW. I hope that EaDo turns into a mini-Brooklyn someday. Prospect Park, Williamsburg, etc.
That heavily layered graffiti is what we up-and-coming DINK yuppies refer to as “street art”, it is “cool” and gives the area that easily-marketed “urban cred” that we long to spend our dollars to partake in. They can remove it at their own peril.
“Tagging” refers to the five-second monochrome scrawl that wannabe-gangbanger teens might leave behind as a residue of their recent presence at a Southampton/BOCA street corner, much like a single cockroach leg found in a dusty corner of my apartment.
That “graffiti” is commissioned artwork decorating the side of Francisco Studios, the rehearsal building where a large chunk of Houston’s best bands and visual artists work.
Pretty sure that street art graffiti was encouraged by the music studio inside the building. You can see where they painted over the small tagging next to the murals.
n8d0g, SH, I suspected as much, given the “EaDo”. Didn’t realize that was a studio.
wait, gang graffiti isn’t that colorful and artistic?
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it’s spraypaint on a wall, it must be gang related!!!!!!
Street art makes me happy, Coolidge being the best. Graffiti is blight.
Having a public, open, park-like area will be great for giving the area a place to congregate not only before/after sporting events, but for open markets and entertainment opportunities found at the adjacent Watershed Market (on the block between Bell and Polk). New in-fill development will no doubt follow and probably look to be in play by the upcoming Super Bowl.