Shade, Houston Chronicle columnist Lisa Gray writes, is “cheap, efficient, and delicious.” Spurning the air-conditioned tunnels on a walk Downtown, Gray stops to cool off beneath “the deep sheltered walkway in front of the Post Rice Lofts,” she writes, and starts to heat up with questions: “If Houston knew how to create such excellent, pedestrian-friendly shade in 1912, when the Rice Hotel was built, why don’t we make more shady places like that a hundred years later? Where are new buildings’ sheltered walkways, their canopies and loggias, their arcades and awnings? . . . Why do we make do with little patio umbrellas, scrawny canvas awnings over doorways, narrow overhangs that work only if you hug the building at noon?” [Houston Chronicle ($)] Photo: Finding Camelot
Read more about: 77002, Downtown, Pedestrians, Shade, Streetscapes
Yesterday, city council approved an ordinance requiring Houston drivers to play nicer with others. That means: No throwing things at them anymore, and no passing “vulnerable road users” without maintaining at least 3 ft. of space (or 6 ft., if you’re driving a commercial truck). And how are you supposed to know which road user is vulnerable? Maybe you can print out and keep in your car this list — not organized, presumably, by order of importance — from the city press release: “walkers or runners; the physically disabled, such as someone in a wheelchair; a stranded motorist or passengers; highway construction, utility or maintenance workers; tow truck operators; cyclists; moped, motor-driven cycle and scooter drivers; or horseback riders.” [City of Houston] Photo of cyclists on Fry Rd.: Flickr user josephkynguyen
Read more about: Bicycles, Ordinances, Pedestrians, Public Safety, Streets
January 31, 2013 – 12:00 pm
An online petition aimed at Mayor Parker’s desk has just one demand: Block off a street, once a week, for pedestrian use: “Options abound,” the petition states: “McKinney downtown (between City Hall and Discovery Green), Rice Boulevard (between Main and Kirby), or Harrisburg. Westheimer between Shepherd and Bagby . . . . After seeing such a street in Ciudad Victoria, Mexico, one Houstonian wrote, ‘Just let pedestrians take over once a week. Let a thousand Sunday night walks bloom. Just a simple avenue for families to walk a stretch in the company of others. A boost for local businesses. A reason to get out on a Sunday night no matter the time of year. A space for performance artists and musicians and writers to interact directly with a wider public.’” [Sign On; previously on Swamplot] Photo of utility pole on Harrisburg: Swamplot inbox
Read more about: Mayor Parker, Pedestrians, Quickink, Streets
October 12, 2011 – 1:56 pm
A new 6-story apartment building is being planned for the now-cleared Midtown block surrounded by Elgin, Smith, Rosalie, and Louisiana streets — one block north of the Calais at Courtland Square apartment complex and a block west of High Fashion Fabrics. A variance request for the 147-unit building doesn’t name the developer or show any renderings, but indicates that the bottom 2 stories of the building will consist of a parking garage, topped by 4 floors of apartments wrapped around an interior courtyard.
That’s similar to the configuration of some sections of the Calais — notably the dramatic arched streetfront along Smith St. (shown in the photo above), which contributes a dynamic tableau of headlights, bumpers, license plates, and the occasional hood ornament to passersby at street level. (The view changes daily.) The developers of this new apartment building are looking to recreate some of that Calais streetside magic, according to the variance:
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Read more about: 77006, Apartments, Building Setbacks, Midtown, Parking-Garages, Pedestrians, Proposed Developments, Retail, Variances
The intersections of Milam and Dallas, Milam and Prairie, and San Jacinto and Congress St. Downtown; Westheimer and McCue near the Galleria; and Bellaire and Corporate Dr. just inside Beltway 8 in Asiatown rank as the top locations for auto-pedestrian accidents, according to a Chronicle review of city records. A grand total of 2,204 collisions involving cars and people traveling on foot have taken place in Houston since 2008, resulting in a total of 174 pedestrian deaths. The deaths were concentrated differently, “along the U.S. Highway 59 corridor near West Park and along Interstate 45 North and I-10 East,” with 43 percent of them taking place on freeways or major highways. [Houston Chronicle]
Read more about: Asiatown, Downtown, Freeways and Toll Roads, Galleria, Hazards, Pedestrians, Traffic
April 21, 2011 – 12:41 pm
Houston’s own Hanover Company wants to build this 5-story apartment complex on the current site of the Tavern on Gray, just east of the shopping district that extends along West Gray to Shepherd. And it’s hoping to get a variance from the planning commission that would allow the buildings to have smaller setbacks than current regulations allow: 15 ft. along Waugh (where 25 would otherwise be required) and just 5 ft. along West Gray (otherwise they’d need 15). Sure, the Hanover West Gray project would have 2 floors of parking (one of them underground) underneath 4 residential floors — but the extremely persuasive variance request kinda makes it hard not to wish the place had conditions that were less — you know, tough and urban:
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Read more about: 77019, Apartment Complexes, Development Restrictions, North Montrose, Pedestrians, Proposed Developments, Variances
Urban-design nerds, street-festival fans, and earnest neighborhood do-gooders will converge on a block of Holman St. near LaBranch this Saturday to play a little game of make-believe: They’ll be imagining what it might be like if Houston had some sort of street life. From 10 am to 10 pm, they’ll be hanging out on a Third Ward Midtown block quickly made up to look as if it did: with painted-in bike lanes, instant street trees in planters, a pop-up cafe in a portable building parked on the street, food trucks, and maybe even a farmers’ market. And they’ll be smiling pedestrian-friendly smiles.
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Read more about: 77004, Midtown, Pedestrians, Street-Life, Streetscapes
November 16, 2010 – 11:40 am
H-E-B agreed several months ago to wall off the ends of Sul Ross and Branard streets, which dead-end into the site of its future Montrose market at West Alabama and Dunlavy, and which served as entrances for the Wilshire Village Apartments that were torn down there last year. But what about devotees of that obscure local Montrose pastime known as walking to the supermarket? If they’re coming from the neighborhoods to the west, should they be able to get through that way?
Over the weekend, the Lancaster Place Civic Association worked out a “compromise” between homeowners on the dead-end portions of Sul Ross and Branard — mostly opposed to having pedestrian gates at the ends of their streets — and homeowners and renters in that neighborhood to the south and southwest of the site, most of whom wanted them included. H-E-B Houston prez Scott McClelland says he’ll have H-E-B’s in-house architects design what the association came up with: A pedestrian gate on Branard, with a timer that will lock it after dark. Sul Ross, which is closer to the store entrance, won’t have a gate, but will have a panel in the wall that would make it easier to put one in later.
Read more about: 77006, Gates, Grocery Stores, Montrose, Montrose H-E-B, Neighborhood Disputes, Pedestrians, Proposed Developments, Retail, Streets, Wilshire Village
Note: Story updated below.
The owners of the original Carrabba’s Italian Grill on Kirby between West Main and Branard plan to demolish the restaurant, rebuild it, and construct 2 more restaurants on adjacent blocks. First step: building a new 275-car parking garage one block to the north, at the northwest corner of Branard and Argonne. Next, a new and larger Carrabba’s (marked [A] in the site plan above) would go up directly south of the existing building, which would remain open during construction. Once the new digs are complete, they’ll tear down the existing restaurant and put in a parking lot and porte-cochere in its place. Two more restaurants — one possibly named Grace’s, and one with office space upstairs — are planned for blocks north of Branard, one facing Kirby and the other at Argonne.
The Kirby Carrabba’s is one of 2 still owned by the family of co-founder Johnny Carrabba. All other Carrabba’s Italian Grills — more than 200 in 27 states — are owned by OSI Restaurant Partners, the same company that runs Outback Steakhouse and Fleming’s.
The new Kirby restaurant complex may be the first in the city to take advantage of the “transit corridor” incentives passed by city council last year. In return for building a 15-ft.-wide pedestrian area and street-front entrance along Kirby, designers get to push 2 of the buildings close to the street, well into the normal 25-ft. setback. The planning commission approved the site plan earlier this month — along with several related parking variances — even though the transit corridor itself (the University Line on Richmond) hasn’t even started construction yet.
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Read more about: 77098, Demolitions, Mixed Use, Parking-Garages, Pedestrians, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment, Restaurants, Retail, Upper Kirby, Variances
Following in the footsteps of groundbreaking Houston Press adventurers John Nova Lomax and David Beebe, an acolyte named Brent Zius has chosen today as the day he’s gonna walk the entire length of Westheimer, starting a full 3 miles west of West Oaks Mall and ending in Midtown, where the road gives up its name to Elgin. Zius, who claims he’s made “no real training or preparation” for the trek, is at least bringing his Twitter account with him: Already, he’s checked in with this photo showing the western limit of Westheimer’s pedestrian paving. [Twitter; details on Hair Balls; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Brent Zius
Read more about: 77082, Pedestrians, Streetscapes, Westheimer
April 14, 2010 – 12:47 pm
A number of readers have been asking what’s up with the new construction office set up on the former site of the Robinson’s Warehouse at the southeast corner of Montrose and Allen Parkway. The Aga Khan Foundation bought the low-lying property in 2006 with plans to build another of its Ismaili Centers on it — featuring lecture, conference, and recital facilities, a prayer hall and a social hall, and offices and gardens. Is that building ready to go up?
It doesn’t look like it. In the meantime, the construction office was parked on the property for a different project entirely, across the street: The new Rosemont Bridge, meant to connect the north and south sides of Buffalo Bayou Park. When Mayor White first announced the bridge project in late 2008, it had a different name and a different design. Called Tolerance Bridge, it a featured Moebius-strip-like superstructure that was meant to appear impassable from a distance:
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Read more about: 77019, Bridges, Buffalo Bayou, Montrose, New Construction, North Montrose, Parks, Pedestrians, Proposed Developments, Public Art
November 10, 2009 – 1:36 pm
“On Airline Drive, for example, up to 40,000 people arrive every weekend to visit flea markets that line both sides of the road. The neighborhood’s management district is gearing up to spend $2.9 million on pedestrian improvements, including two new, signalized crosswalks on Airline, as well as sidewalks on nearby streets that are heavily used by local residents. . . . [Harris County] has a policy of not installing sidewalks when it builds a new road, unless a group or city provides the extra money. ‘It’s an expense that doesn’t have to do with transportation,’ said Mark Seegers, a spokesman for Harris County Commissioner Sylvia Garcia. ‘The county does not do sidewalks; it’s not what gets cars from point A to point B.’ . . . In the eight-county region that includes Houston, an average of 100 pedestrians died every year between 2003 and 2008, and an average of 1,175 were injured, mostly within Harris County, according to statistics compiled by the Texas Department of Transportation. More than half of all pedestrian deaths occur on [high-capacity, high-speed roads called 'arterials'], often as people are trying to cross to reach retail shops or bus stops.” [Houston Chronicle]
Read more about: 77022, 77037, 77076, Airline Dr., Pedestrians, Public Safety, Sidewalks, Transportation
Comment of the Day: Why Walk, When You Can Drive?
“If I live in a ‘walkable’ neighborhood I have access to a couple of restaurants and maybe a couple of services but with my CAR I have access to THOUSANDS of restaurants, services, venues, malls, etc. without having to use the same one twice . . . Why would I give a sh*t about a ‘walkable’ neighborhood?!?!??!?” [commonsense, commenting on Apartment Building Replacing Tavern on Gray Won’t Have Any Retail, But Really Wants To Hug the Street Anyway]