COMMENT OF THE DAY: GALVESTON OFFSHORE PLATFORM ECO-GAMBLING ESCAPES “. . . a ‘Santa Monica’ pier at The Flagship location would be golden, would be the DESTINATION for a lot of folks! But couldn’t there ALSO be an offshore gambling venue?? Imagine an elevator takes gamblers to a secret bullet-train in a tube, which whisks them to an oil derrick with gaming (no horse-racing, of course, haha!) The Island needs an injection of edgy intrigue since The Balinese is gone. Also, George Mitchell is another Player on Galveston; the gambling train could offer eco-tours to see Gulf habitat and thus receive some federal matching funds or something…” [movocelot, commenting on Roller Coaster on the Pier: Crunch Time for the Flagship Hotel]
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Tag: Attractions
Maybe this is the industry that’ll bring in . . . all those bargain-seeking tourists from Austin?
- Houston Taco Tour 2009 [Vimeo]
- Previously on Swamplot: Houston Taco Truck Tour by Camera Phone
Video: Nelson Flores
What’s a struggling mall to do these days? How about turning off the air conditioning . . . and hosting a comic-book convention! Robert W. Boyd reports from the scene:
Despite a great location [on Highway 6 between Westheimer and Richmond] and not bad interior, West Oaks Mall is plagued with vacancies. And unlike malls like Memorial City Mall, West Oaks is not able to hide the gaps. . . .
West Oaks needed to occupy its empty stores (even if temporarily), or at least cover them up. And it needed to get people in the mall who could at least potentially patronize the remaining stores. So that’s where Comicpalooza came in.
The giant inflatable-boat-like structure shown here afloat in an otherwise-empty East Downtown six-pack superblock is the latest rendition of . . . the new Houston Dynamo soccer stadium! The Houston Chronicle‘s Bernardo Fallas has details:
The Dynamo want to have the roughly $85 million, 22,000-seat stadium ready for opening day 2011. They envision an all-round two-level, all-seater venue with 34 suites, 86 concession point-of-sales, a 3,000 square-foot club level and a party deck on the southeast corner.
Loving that subtle “soccer fans on a life raft” imagery? It gets better: The open-air stadium’s playing surface will be a full story underground!
Noting that negotiations intended to turn the Harris County Domed Stadium into a convention-center hotel have “not progressed in recent months,” County Judge Ed Emmett suggests an entirely new idea for reusing the shuttered structure: How about turning the Astrodome into . . . a giant indoor, air-conditioned space where people could hold . . . events?
Emmett writes in a Chronicle blog:
. . . as we saw only too clearly last weekend, we in Harris County are extremely vulnerable to the vagaries of our weather. The International Festival suffered a pretty serious setback with the torrential rainfall we had Saturday. Having the Dome available for such eventualities seems to me a potential solution worth investigating.
Some of the major festival organizers have responded eagerly to the idea in informal discussions, so I’m now soliciting input from other organizers, civic groups, preservationists and the public at large.
At the same time, other groups are discussing museums, planetariums, studios and all sorts of public venues, but having the Dome as a multipurpose facility for everyone to enjoy would be tremendous. Of course, I imagine the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo would find it a useful venue too.
- Judge Ed Emmett: Reserve the Astrodome for public use [The List, via HAIF]
- Astrodome coverage [Swamplot]
Photo: Jeff Balke
THE ASTRODOME AND THE COLOSSEUM Ken Hoffman returns from Italy with a little perspective: “The Colosseum was originally called Amphitheatrum Flavium, and it was built by the powerful emperors Vespasian, Titus and Domitian. The Astrodome was originally called the Harris County Domed Stadium, and it was governed by former Houston Mayor and Harris County Judge Roy Hofheinz. He just thought he was an emperor. The Colosseum, after several expansions (mostly to honor a new emperor), had a seating capacity of about 65,000. It had 80 entrances and could completely fill and empty in less than five minutes. The Astrodome, after several expansions (mostly to stop Houston Oilers owner Bud Adams’ whining), had a seating capacity of 62,000 for football. It would take an hour to get out of the parking lot because of a lack of exits. Parking was cheaper in ancient times, too.” [Houston Chronicle; previously in Swamplot]
Hey, what happened to Monday? Swamplot spent most of it fighting off a few tech demons. But hey, here’s some news!
- Opened: The new and expanded Children’s Museum had its grand opening this weekend. Now twice its original size, the 90,000 sq. ft. museum features exhibits of children in various states of play. Also inside: an expanded branch of the Houston Public Library.
- Opening: Backe’s Bullpen, a fine drinking establishment in Dickinson, will open with the backing of Astros pitcher Brandon Backe, reports the Galveston Daily News‘s Laura Elder. Last October, Backe was arrested after a run-in with police at a Galveston bar.
- Closed: Mike McGuff notices that the Meyer Park Chili’s, once “the big teen hangout in southwest Houston,” shut down in February.
The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion will have twice as many seats, and a greatly enlarged tension-fabric structure to cover them, when it reopens for its first concert on May 1.
A new section of about 2,000 additional reserved seats is being constructed behind the existing uncovered seating area. The new canopy structure will cover all 6,387 seats. The result will be 2,147 fewer seats on the lawn, cutting the venue’s overall capacity by about 460, to 16,040.
The original Teflon-coated Fiberglas-fabric roofs were torn to shreds — and their support structures seriously damaged — by Hurricane Ike:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOME OF THE 150-FT. BUDDHA “I don’t think there would be outrage over a Buddha. Everybody would think it was ‘cute’ and look for the adjacent Chinese restaurant.” [EMME, commenting on Sagemont Cross: New Higher Power Lines Beltway 8]
THE ASTROLOT: HOUSTON’S NEWEST TRANSIT HUB Another scene from the active afterlife of the former theme park: “The 150 acre lot formerly known as Astroworld has been empty for a while, but is expected to be packed on Friday when it will be available for rodeo parking. . . . Lighting towers will be brought in and parts of the property not suitable for parking, such as areas with holes in the ground, will be marked off. There will be entrances along the 610 feeder between Kirby and Fannin and exits off of Belfort. After the rodeo, all entrances will be used as exits so all traffic will flow out of the lot. There are only about 12,000 parking spaces on the actual rodeo site. Officials welcome the new 5,000 space parking opportunity. . . . The lot is not paved and is bumpy, two factors that do not bother some rodeo patrons. . . . ‘We think it’s great that people will be able to cross the bridge and it will bring back memories of when Astroworld was here,’ [Andi Devera of the Fazeli Group, owners of the leasing rights] said. The Astrolot opens this Friday.” [abc13; previously]
What’s this? A new clean, modern design for the high-voltage power line structures along the Sam Houston Tollway, just west of I-45 South?
Naah — it’s Sagemont Church’s new 170-ft.-tall steel cross, viewed in its natural setting. Plus: It lights up at night!
WHERE’S A STINKIN’ FEMA TRAILER WHEN YOU NEED ONE? Trailer sculptor Paul Villinski, on the difficulty of procuring the raw material for his Emergency Response Studio, now on display at the Rice Art Gallery: “I thought, OK I’m going to go get a FEMA trailer, because they’re selling them online through the government – you know, the GAO Web site – at that very moment, it seemed, FEMA basically stopped releasing the trailers into the marketplace. And not only did they do that, they bought back all the ones that they had already sold. . . . And the back story with that is basically that the plaintiffs in this class-action suit need a couple of FEMA trailers so they can really study the indoor air quality and FEMA and the manufacturers do not want them to have them. So they’ve been ordered by the judge in the case to release the trailers, and they haven’t done it yet. So that made it impossible for me to actually get a FEMA trailer, which is why I wound up finding a 30-foot Gulfstream Cavalier, but it was built a couple of years before the FEMA trailers were.” [Arts in Houston; previously in Swamplot]
Still waiting in the wings, the long-promoted but as-yet-unmade proposal to turn the long-vacant Astrodome into a giant indoor movie lot is almost ready for its closeup, says Christine Hall in the Houston Business Journal. Astrodome Studios co-executive directors Elise Hendrix and Cynthia Neely
along with a laundry list of supporters, including “Dazed and Confused†director/writer Richard Linklater, are one month away from presenting a proposal to Harris County that would put a major soundstage and movie production studio into the proclaimed “Eighth Wonder of the World.â€
“We would have absolutely everything a creative agency would need to film a movie,†Hendrix says. “With 140,000 square feet, you wouldn’t have any problem building a city in there if you needed to.â€
But what would an Astrodome movie studio look like, really? To help unimaginative county officials picture the transformation, Astrodome Studios has prepared the dramatic photo-illustration above, along with a series of similarly rich diagrams:
A few fun pics from around and about town! First, this crowd of black vultures ponders its next real-estate venture from atop a communications tower parked in a gated community in Cypress. Photographer Karen Morris happened upon the scene on Eldridge near Grant Rd.:
It was an awesome sight. Personally, if they adorned my rooftop every evening, I’d clean the roof, sell the house and move to the other side of town. . . . Black Vultures/Buzzards are a bit smaller and less colorful that the Turkey Vulture. They tend to follow the Turkey Vulture because it has a keener sense of smell and can find it’s meal through use of that sense. They eat dead animals and occasionally capture small live animals (field mice, etc.). Although they do not build a nest, they will take an abandoned nest. Often roost together as seen in this set of photos. If startled while roosting, they will regurgitate with power and accuracy.
More local habitat:
11 News is showing some rough images of that new Dynamo soccer stadium planned for a site just east of Downtown, bordering Texas, Dowling, Hutchens, and Walker:
“We think it’s about an $80 to $85 million stadium. (It will have) 21,000 seats, but nothing fancy though. It’s very functional,†said Dynamo GM Oliver Luck. . . . “It’s gonna be much more fan friendly in terms of concessions and restrooms and some of those things that we just don’t really have over at Robertson Stadium. Most importantly, it’s going to be much easier to get to in terms of the parking and access. A rail line will literally run right next to the stadium,†said Luck.
