The 510 dead oak trees that line Broadway get a week’s reprieve, as Galveston’s oak-removal extravaganza continues: “State officials have said they want new trees planted along Broadway in the same spots as their predecessors to maintain the 100-year-old patterns of the plantings. But forestry experts warn that planting new trees in holes surrounded by webs of existing roots could choke them off and kill them. The city’s tree committee hopes to start planting trees along other roadways in November, but with all of the approvals and agreements needed for planting around Broadway, the historic boulevard could stay bare for another year, Cahill said.” [Galveston County Daily News; previously on Swamplot]
John Nova Lomax reminisces: “This was Oil Bust Houston, and it looked then like Montrose might become a full-on slum. There were no condos along ‘Theimer (as it was often called by the mullet set) and few fancy restaurants. From Montrose Boulevard all the way to what is now called Midtown, Westheimer was lined with little more than one “modeling studio” after another, and it seems like there were even more tattoo shops than there are now. The denizens and visitors to these businesses (not to mention the street hustlers, drag queens, punks and Guardian Angels that still lurk in the area) provided plenty for the hordes of suburbanites – getting their first taste of freedom and big city life – to gawk at from the safety of their Blazers and Cutlasses. . . . on weekend nights, Westheimer would be bumper-to-bumper from Bagby to well past Buffalo Speedway, and sometimes all the way out to the Galleria, a phantasmagoria of teenage hormones and sound-collisions: car-horns, engines revving, and squealing girls, the hiss-and-almost-subsonic bass rumble of ‘Paul Revere’ booming from a Jeep Cherokee interlocking with a Honda CRX chirping out that inane ‘Two of Hearts’ pop ditty or the root canal Teutonic skronk of that ‘Warm Leatherette’ monstrosity.” [Hair Balls]
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).
“. . . 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]
Working from a remote and undisclosed location, the now-expatriate Houston engineer known as Keep Houston Houston puts together a rough diagram identifying the city’s “traditional” walkable neighborhoods, and comments:
Houston has no shortage of gridded, walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods. Thing is, they’re all kind of squished together. And with a couple of exceptions, they were all platted out before 1935. What’s there is there. We’re not adding to it.
Why?
Developer conservatism plays a role, but is ethereal, subject to evaporate as soon as *someone* steps up and proves that suburban [Traditional Neighborhood Development] is sufficiently profitable. But several city standards and rules are standing in the way.
Are Houston’s development rules really the obstacle?
Keep Houston Houston scans through the city’s development ordinance, then throws together a quick design for a residential neighborhood following the basic requirements. What does that end up looking like?
Hundreds of Galveston residents have been calling the city’s tree-appeal hotline, arguing that particular street trees targeted in the massive post-Ike chainsaw sweep should not be cut down. After seeing new leaves on the 3-story Live Oak in front of his Avenue L home, one resident offered the city $1,000 not to chop it down. His tree got a re-evaluation, but didn’t exhibit enough new growth to get a reprieve. “If the city could give the trees more time to recover, and if it rained soon, a few more might stand a chance of survival, [Texas Forest Service urban forester Pete] Smith said. But the city will get reimbursed only for the expensive removal process through Sept. 12. Between now and then, crews are scheduled to remove an estimated 11,000 trees in the public right of way and about 30,000 trees on private property. Live oak tress must have at least 30 percent of their leaves to be spared. Other varieties must have at least 50 percent of their leaves.” [Galveston County Daily News]
HAIF poster Htowngirl, who lives near the new Ei8ht nightclub at the corner of Roy St., complains about . . . uh, parking difficulties in her neighborhood. And posts a few photos of an early Sunday morning scene from a few weeks ago:
The parking for Ei8ht in the neighborhood is already horrendous, I can’t even imagine what it will be like when Taps, Busty LaRoue’s, and this new “country” bar open…
Sample of the parking issues… I live a few blocks off Washington, near Ei8ht…the scene outside my house at 3 AM Sunday Morning a few weeks ago. Drunk suburbanite 21-year-old drove into our ditch.
To think, only a quarter-century ago here, wild Animals roamed the empty Downtown streets at night, and upstanding citizens settled their disputes with a joust.
“. . . the stretch of Kirby south of Rice Village to Brays Bayou is finished. It now has a center median. The tree planting is identical to the Kirby project from Westheimer to Richmond. Tree plantings on both sides of the road and in the median. The bonus of the Westheimer to Richmond section is that all the power lines will be underground. So the trees will be able to grow freely unlike the ones that were removed!” [kjb434, commenting on West Ave School of Loud but Muffled Knocks]
“I sometimes think that Woodway is made nicer by the fact that Westheimer exists. There are certainly numerous suburbs and exurbs where the Westheimers look like Woodways. Oh, there’s retail, but it’s set back from the street, perhaps behind a tree buffer, with tasteful monument signage out front. I’ve always found such environments to be stifling. It’s so obviously contrived. All-night, six- and eight-lane arterials are SUPPOSED to have large illuminated signs. They’re SUPPOSED to have ratty businesses alongside the nice ones. Every suburb has a Target and a ratty convenience store. Westheimer has a Target and twenty ratty convenience stores, plus ‘24 hours video and news.’ I’ve never been in there, but its existence tells me that this strip is whatever it wants to be. This holds true of Woodway. It’s not a pure residential drive; there is retail, much of it even with tasteful signage. The signage follows from the road - Westheimer has large signs because it’s big and straight and a larger sign means higher visibility. Put up a larger sign on Woodway and it’d just be obscured by trees. Some people think of Westheimer (and other streets like it) as ugly. I don’t, but I understand where they’re coming from. Perhaps if they wanted to do something about it, they should plant trees instead of making rules about commercial signage. Proactive versus restrictive. Woodway is a nice drive because it was built to very nice design standards (10′ median with staggered trees) and because the people who own stores and homes along Woodway want to keep it pleasant. And so it is.” [Keep Houston Houston]
Google has rolled out another update to its Street View feature, this time allowing simultaneous views of a property from the air and the street — as shown in this view of a familiar Rice Village site. The button labeled “Street View” that used to sit at the top of most maps is gone. In its place: a character named Pegman who stands at the ready above the zoom slider on the left side of each map, and who narrates this video detailing the new Google Map features:
Good news! The drainage work that’s turned Kirby Dr. between Westheimer and Richmond into a dusty obstacle course is almost over — for the year, at least: “Construction work will pause from Nov. 21 through Jan. 2, said Travis Younkin, capital projects coordinator for the Upper Kirby District. Work along side streets will continue, though. ‘We can’t have construction crews working on the street during the busiest shopping season of the year,’ Younkin said. The $18 million project, managed by the Upper Kirby District Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone, is scheduled to be completed by next November.” [Houston Chronicle, via BlogHouston]
Swamplot covers real estate, home design and renovation, architecture, and the landscape of Houston, Texas. Swamplot did not flood during Allison — or Ike! Honest! Read more
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]