Tag: 77002

Disaster Aftermath
07/20/09 1:47pm

When the Spindletop Stops

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Downtown, Openings and Closings, Restaurants
8 Comments

A longtime fan of the rotating Spindletop Restaurant perched on top of the Hyatt Regency Hotel Downtown writes in to note the passing . . . of the restaurant’s website:

I last called them in January to see about a reservation but they were still closed from Hurricane Ike. The gentleman who answered insisted they would re-open someday soon and I was intrigued. I continued checking their website for an announcement every few weeks but it never arrived and then the site itself disappeared Sadly, when websites revert to parking pages, it’s all but assured the business behind them has folded.

If the Spindletop is indeed gone, a slowly revolving icon of Houston’s oil boom days, what would the Hyatt do with such a, umm, unique structure perched atop it’s hotel? Landry’s Heliport and Cloud Bar? Rennovate it to become *the* foremost penthouse in the city? “Hey baby, not just the bed rotates, but the whole penthouse!” Perhaps just another semi-adequate restaurant with a unique and stunning view?

What was the city perch like in its glory pre-Ike days?

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Apartments
07/17/09 12:54pm

Spreading the Wealth: Annotated Midtown Apartment Walking Tour

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Development Strategies, Midtown, Parking, Streetscapes
7 Comments

Blogging at NeoHouston, Andrew Burleson declares that the connections a building has to the world around it — what he calls its interface — have a big effect on value:

A house may be great, but if it doesn’t have a nice front yard it won’t be worth as much as the house next door that does. Likewise, homes in an area with lots of big trees tend to be valued higher than places without them. The interface is better.

Well, sure. Big trees is nice! But Burleson also claims that the value effects of interface success — and suckage — can travel:

Interfaces are highly radiant, they have a significant impact on the values of surrounding properties, and this value has a tendency to spread. If a street is truly beautiful, every adjacent property is likely to be highly valued. If a street is very ugly, every adjacent property is likely to be somewhat undervalued, even if some individual structures on that street are highly valued.

So why are we jumping over fences in Midtown? It’s all part of Burleson’s photo tour of the “interfaces” of 3 apartment complexes within a few blocks of each other: The Post Midtown Square (the good), the Camden Midtown Apartments (the bad), and 2222 Smith Street (the so-so).

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Comments
07/16/09 4:52pm

Comment of the Day: The Midtown CVS Domino Effect

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Development Regulations, Midtown, Mixed Use, Quicklink, Retail, Streets
43 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE MIDTOWN CVS DOMINO EFFECT “. . . CVS didn’t follow Post Midtown’s urban scale approach even though its lot was right across the street and the collective wisdom at the time was that Gray and Bagby would be built out with mid-rise, mixed-use developments right up to Main and the new rail line. It seemed so obvious and for those who longed for true urban living in this town, it was a dream coming true. CVS didn’t play ball simply because they didn’t have to. No code required them to build in any way, shape, or form that might have benefited the collective vision of Midtown. So be it, that’s Houston. However, after CVS bucked the urban trend, so did most every developer after them. So instead of all or most of Midtown being walkable, populated with street life like just the 3 blocks developed by Post ultimately became; Midtown’s blocks are populated with suburban style apartments complexes with no street life whatsoever, just block after block of gates and fences. If Houston had had the guts to enact urban design strategies then, Midtown would be the success that similar areas have become in Dallas, Atlanta and other cities. Houston punked out and we are all the losers for decades to come. Ironically the very same developers who fought urban guidelines in Midtown were building successful urban properties in all those other cities at the same time. . . .” [John, commenting on Cul de Sac City: Houston’s Ban on New Street Grids]

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Downtown
07/01/09 8:48am

Houston Pavilions Goes Office

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Leasing, Mixed Use, Office Space, Retail
5 Comments

And suddenly, Houston Pavilions gets some action:

NRG Texas and Reliant, NRG’s retail electric company, have agreed to lease 240,000 square feet of the 11-story Pavilions Tower, which comprises most of the building at 1201 Fannin.

NRG/Reliant will take 10 floors. The law firm Sheehy, Serpe & Ware has the top floor.

The bottom three floors of Pavilions Tower have always been designated as “swing space,” which could have been used for retail or office space, Houston Pavilions co-developer Geoff Jones said. NRG/Reliant will take all of the swing space, as well as some additional space on the second floor that initially had been designated for retail, Jones said.

How much of that lonely and vacant retail “additional space” on the second floor is being turned into office space?

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Crime
06/19/09 3:42pm

5K to the Fifth

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Fifth Ward
6 Comments

New Fifth Ward resident James M. Harrison follows the Astros’ “Race for the Pennant” 5K to the front steps of his own neighborhood:

After running the 3.1 mile race with a friend, I decided that 5K’s should be the next topic on [Christian] Lander’s blog, “Stuff White People Like.” Hundreds of people (many of whom were caucasian), rose with the sun for the big race at 7.00 AM. They came outfitted in their lightweight synthetic clothes and hot-to-trot running shoes– the perfect accessories for the meaningless number we all slapped on our chests to make us look like we were about to compete in the Boston Marathon (mine was 2757).

Nobody trains for a 5K. But if you’re up at daybreak, among the crowd of socially aware locals who are in good enough shape for 25 minutes of running, thanks to their motivated lifestyles (and the iPods strapped to their arms, cued to amp the jam for the blitz across town)– then you must be doing something right with your life. It’s so important to be a part of the healthy crowd, that you’ll even pay $25 to get in on the action for a morning. I am a victim of this system.

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Downtown
06/10/09 4:28pm

Why Houston Needs a Dome

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Hazards, Proposed Developments
7 Comments

Too bad we can’t embed the video here. So here’s a transcript of the rationale — presented by the writers of the Discovery Channel’s Mega Engineering series — for building that massive, mile-diameter geodesic dome over Houston (or at least the Downtown part):

Houston, Texas — the country’s fourth most populous city — is in peril.

Houston has always been vulnerable to killer hurricanes: From the great storm of 1900, the deadliest in U.S. history, which killed 8,000 people, to Hurricane Ike in 2008, which caused more than $10 billion in damage, and forced the city center to shut down for nearly a week.

And it’s not only hurricanes. Searing heat and humidity also oppress this great city. On nearly 100 days each year, the temperature climbs above 90 degrees, which in muggy Houston feels even hotter.

Air conditioning provides relief, but at a cost. Houstonians’ soaring electricity use has nudged the city ahead of Los Angeles in the race to become the country’s number-one producer of greenhouse gases — a dubious distinction. And the problem is only getting worse.

Forced to spend a fortune in a losing battle against nature, and with energy costs spiking unpredictably, Houston finds itself square in the path of an environmental juggernaut, which threatens to make the city unlivable.

That’s why some think that the only way to save Houston is to move it indoors.

Diagram of Houston Dome: Engineering, Discovery Channel

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Comments
06/09/09 8:20pm

Comment of the Day: Floating That Houston Dome Idea

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Downtown, Proposed Developments, Quicklink
2 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: FLOATING THAT HOUSTON DOME IDEA “This TeeVee show and Gus both imagine the enclosure extending all the way to the ground, in which case it has to withstand surges or deflect bayous or whatever, but Fuller did not: by WWII it had been discovered that a dome that was very open around the base, and vented at the crown, would actually set up a standing current that sucked cooling air into the top and expelled hot air at the bottom (counterintuitively). I believe this was used to turn Midwestern grain bins into instant comfortable barracks for GIs serving in Asian desert theaters of operation. As for whether it could work “around” here, my own scale model tests have been inconclusive, but I know that after the war Fuller set up something like a 30′ radius dome in Kenya and the visitors complained it was too cold – though probably not to the point of condensing the humidity and dribbling it on you.” [Neil, commenting on We’re All Astrodome Now: The Mile-Wide Dome Over Houston]

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Construction Materials
06/09/09 11:55am

We’re All Astrodome Now: The Mile-Wide Dome Over Houston

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Downtown, Proposed Developments
28 Comments

Okay, Discovery TV engineers, we’re all on board with your idea of building a ginormous, 1-mile-diameter, 1500-foot high dome over Houston. Dibs on the thermostat!

Too bad, though: It looks like all that lightweight geodesic Buckminster Fullery goodness only gets you coverage over . . . Downtown. Isn’t that all air-conditioned already?

We’re especially looking forward to the next episode of Mega Engineering, where you describe that giant ring-moat bayou drainage bypass carved through swathes of Midtown and the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Wards they’ve gotta be planning to go with this.

So . . . how’s the Houston Dome supposed to work?

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Downtown
05/29/09 10:47am

Where the Dinosaur Bones Are Hiding in Houston

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Transportation
9 Comments

It doesn’t take long for Covenant Community Capital Corporation summer intern James M. Harrison to learn where Houston’s oldest secrets are buried:

. . . for having not known a soul in Houston 24 hours ago, I feel like maybe I’m doing decent. Part of why I feel this way is thanks to Leon, a homeless man at the Amtrak station who sat and talked to me for an hour while I waited for my ride to come.

Leon is a treasure-hunter, a “modern-day Indiana Jones.” He walked up to me and said, “I’m a rock collector, check these out” and proceeded to show me some of his latest finds. Rubies, emeralds, amethyst, and gold, so he claimed, all embedded in pieces of railroad track ballast. He didn’t want to sell them to me, because he knew that I couldn’t afford any of them. “I charge top dollar,” he said.

I asked him where the rocks came from. “The Rocky Mountain,” he said. “These stones just fall off the train when it rolls through.” He also told me about a secret mine in Colorado that he knew about called “The Gold Nugget,” and explained how he and his friend were going to go up there and excavate the largest piece of gold in the world. “It’ll fill up six railroad cars,” he said. I asked him how he was going to do it, and he replied, “I don’t know man, but two hands are better than one!”

Leon is also a hunter of dinosaur bones (“there’s a few down there in that parking lot,” he told me), 16th century books, and ancient coins, among other relics. He talked my ear off.

Leon the treasure hunter was the first person I met in Houston. I think he introduced me to the place pretty well. “Treasures are all over this city, you just have to look at what’s under your nose,” he said.

Photo of parking lot at Amtrak Station, 902 Washington Ave.: James M. Harrison

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Downtown
04/24/09 11:16am

Downtown Warehouse Rehab: Houston’s Next Permit Office

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Flooding, Green Design and Development, Public Buildings, Renovations
No Comments

This 1923 former rice warehouse at the far eastern end of Washington Ave., used more recently as an annex for the Downtown post office on the other side of I-45, will become the city’s new permit office, reports Monica Perin in the Houston Business Journal. The building will replace the current 2-story office at 3300 Main St. in Midtown — which Public Works officials consider flood-prone — and consolidate permit offices from 3 other sites.

A LEED-certified renovation of the 4-story concrete-and-brick building, which sits on a 2 1/2-acre site Downtown — and which sat on the market for several years — is expected to be complete by the fall of 2010.

The property purchase is expected to close in July, along with council approval of a contract with Trammell Crow Co. as the developer, and Studio Red Architects as the design firm. . . .

“A building of this age and being a warehouse is relatively easy to recycle,” [Studio Red’s Bill Neuhaus] notes. “It lends itself to an open plan and lots of daylight. We can do an economical job here, and it will be an extremely pleasant working environment.”

Permitting offices eventually will share space with the city’s new Green Resource Center, which is opening this week at 3300 Main St.

“The re-use of existing buildings is one of the greenest and most sustainable things we can do,” Neuhaus says.

He says the building’s prime location is part of the civic campus, next to the police department, the post office and rail station.

Photo of 1002 Washington Ave.: LoopNet

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Downtown
04/10/09 11:56am

Uptown Traffic Grid

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Galleria, Quicklink, Streets, Traffic, Transportation
16 Comments

UPTOWN TRAFFIC GRID “As we all know, traffic is incomparably worse in Uptown than it is in Downtown. Downtown has more of everything: more streets, more freeways, more transit, more pedestrian use. The most important part, though, is that Downtown has the grid, and Uptown does not. Uptown is a lot less dense than Downtown, and yet it’s reaching a breaking point. There are critically few ways in and out, and even though those are mega-roads, they concentrate traffic BY DESIGN rather than diffusing traffic as the grid does. If Uptown had a fine-grained local street grid the traffic there would be a fraction of what it is today, but it’s too late to put in a grid now. The best we can hope for is for benevolent developers to include new connecting streets to break up some of the super-blocks when they come up for redevelopment.” [NeoHouston]

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Construction Materials
04/07/09 2:21pm

Not Preston Hard Enough: A Shade Loose Downtown

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Downtown, Hazards, Public Buildings
6 Comments

The brise-soleil modern Harris County Administration Building at 1001 Preston Downtown — across from a Metro Rail stop on Main St. — has been having a little problem holding it all together, reports the Chronicle‘s Liz Peterson. And it’ll take a little fixing:

Employees noticed the first bits of fallen concrete in February 2008, prompting the county to hire Walter P. Moore and Associates to evaluate the extent of the problem, said Mike Swain, the county’s deputy director of architecture.

The firm’s workers spent the next several months removing the most dangerous loose concrete and studying the rest of the 31-year-old building’s façade, he said.

Their report urges the county to install protective scaffolding around the building’s perimeter as soon as possible. Doing that and removing the rest of the loose concrete is expected to cost about $175,000.

Repairing the concrete façade is expected to cost at least $4.5 million, while waterproofing all the windows will eat up another $460,000.

Photo: Harris County Purchasing Agent

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