COMMENT OF THE DAY: MORE THAN READY FOR THE NEXT BIG BOOM DOWNTOWN 
“I cannot wait until they implode the Houston Club Building. Everyone who works in Pennzoil Place is currently on the verge of losing their minds because of the constant jackhammering on the building to prepare it for demolition. We’re happy the end appears to be in sight, but another six weeks of this is going to be tough to handle. I hope the construction workers are well-protected from the noise and dust this project is creating. If we’re going nuts, then I can’t imagine how they must feel.” [Courtney, commenting on Blowing Up the Houston Club; Dismantling a Radioactive Barge in Galveston] Illustration: Lulu
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Tag: Comments
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE STRANGE ALLURE OF THE SHINY SHINY NEW NEW HOME 
“Houston is a strange place for real estate, where a surprisingly large number of people want ‘new’ homes, not ‘new’ as in less than 10 years old, but ‘new’ as in ‘never lived in, built just for me, uncontaminated by someone else’s use.’ I don’t understand this freakish (to me) thinking, but I’ve heard people express that thought, and it shows in the pricing of ‘slightly used’ houses. To me, a used house is one where the initial and inevitable builder snafus will have been fixed by a previous owner, and there might even be some mature trees.â€Â [GoogleMaster, commenting on A Modern Colquitt Townhome’s Gently Lowering Price Tag] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WELCOME TO HOUSTON! WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE WHILE YOU’RE HERE? 
“Sorry, I think there is a big difference between ‘tourist’ and ‘visitor.’ ‘Tourist’ makes me think of someone on vacation, while ‘visitor’ as someone stopping by on his way to someplace else, or visiting for business and leaving ASAP. Who on earth would see Houston as a tourist destination?” [GlenW, commenting on Dumping Suburban Water Features; Houston’s Growing Tourism Haul] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: POLLUTION CREDITORS 
“It’s good to see that the Feds will help clean up the CES Environmental Services site. I’m of the opinion that bankruptcy law should be revised to require that environmental clean-up be paid for before creditors can be paid. It would help in cases like this, but it would also make lenders push dirty industries to clean up their act. Companies with bad environmental records would feel it in their ability to get credit.” [ZAW, commenting on Predicting Houston Real Estate Hotspots; Drinking Water from Lake Conroe] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT THE PHOTOS OF THAT REDO YOU’RE BUYING DON’T SHOW 
“The most value in a flipped home is found in the hidden improvements: foundation, insulation, wiring, plumbing, structural integrity, weatherization, HVAC upgrades, etc. However, HAR only shows cosmetic pics and details. I agree with markd — one peek in the attic should tell you more about the value of the transformed house than anything you can glean off of HAR.
Of course, I watch real estate TV shows all the time and see people shopping for homes. Nearly always, the buyers turn up their nose at some real gems because of ‘that paint color‘ in one or two rooms, or the ‘ugly bathroom’ — which could be fixed for under $10k, yet they don’t even ask about the more important mechanical systems or structural issues, which could quickly run up to $100k to fix.” [Superdave, commenting on Going Gray Suddenly at 61, a Braes Terrace Redo Aims for a $698K Flip] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: NAKED PEOPLE, SECURITY CAMERAS, AND YOUR COMMERCIAL LEASE AGREEMENT 
“It’s a bad idea having naked people in common areas unless it is clearly stated in everybody’s leases that there exists the possibility of naked people turning up in the common areas and presuming that the common areas are not open to the general public. Among other things, the people that wandered into common areas naked after business hours may also not have assumed that there may be security cameras around. From every angle, what happened here was a lawsuit waiting to happen. (I say this as a guy that has owned a multi-tenant commercial property with a clause in the lease that would’ve addressed this situation, and permitted it. Yes, that stuff happens. It’s usually not very interesting; meaning I was never invited to attend.)” [TheNiche, commenting on League of Extraordinary Brewers, World’s First Brewery Incubator Brought Down by Wayward Game of Naked Twister] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: NAVIGATING HOUSTON’S HEAVILY CONGESTED FUTURE 
“I’m for better transit (I won’t be mode-specific here), but it should never be sold as making the streets less congested for you to drive around on. While it may take some cars off the streets, Houston’s congestion is likely to be massive enough that you’d never notice. Do NYC and LA have uncongested streets? Obviously not, even though both cities have much much better transit than Houston — meaning they have better alternatives to being in congestion and having to find parking. Congestion and difficult parking are our future (I wager even with self-driving cars, if they’re all personally owned) — everyone needs to be at peace with that.” [Local Planner, commenting on Killing Any Chance of Later Rail Conversion on the New Post Oak Bus Lanes; The Bedbugs of Beverly Hill] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THAT MONTROSE LOOK 
“If you really look at the building, it resembles a typical three story townhome, shrunk and widened to one level. Even the arched facade mimics the townhome in the background. And let’s face, the neighborhood behind it is rapidly becoming a majority townhome area if it isn’t already. So maybe it does resemble the neighborhood after all. . . .
If you seriously look at Montrose, it is just a polyglot of everything. A lot of it is butt ugly but the trees and grown out landscaping obscure it. My neighborhood and its adjacents are filled with homes, apartments, offices, etc. spanning 90 years of different styles and much of it is seemingly incompatible if viewed as a single entity. That is Montrose. It ain’t The Woodlands!” [JT, commenting on Raising Cane’s Is Almost Ready To Grab the Corner of Hazard and Westheimer with Its Chicken Fingers] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: RAILROADED 
“Southern Pacific (not Union Pacific, as one writer claimed), demolished this station in 1959. Critics may blame Houstonians for failing to rally and save the building, but the fact is that the modern architectural preservation movement didn’t start until the early 1970s, and even my architecturally hip home town of Chicago let some classic beauties like Louis Sullivan’s Stock Exchange slip away before public sentiment for preservation began to build. The first downtown railroad-station preservation-restoration project did not take place until 1973, when the Southern Railway’s vacant Terminal Station in Chattanooga was transformed into a restaurant and hotel complex.
If anybody has any photos of the interior of the SP station in Houston I would like to examine them for a book I’m writing about what happened to each of the big downtown stations in North America. SP’s Houston Station was designed by Texas’s most celebrated architect, Wyatt C. Hedrick, who also designed the Shamrock Hotel, the T&P station in Fort Worth, and dozens of admired hotels, factories and commercial buildings. Photos of his T&P station are all over the Internet but SP demolished his Houston station before anyone had a chance to make any good photos.” [F.K. Plous, commenting on The Secret Train Station Hidden Downtown] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE GALLERIA’S BEST-KEPT SECRET 
“It’s true; the secret to making a visit to the Galleria tolerable (even *gasp* enjoyable) is to have a secret parking spot that’s always available. Like many commenters here, I hated going there. But when I finally found my spot, I no longer dread going there even on weekends! (Forget about the holidays though . . . ain’t nobody got time for that).
And no, I’m not telling any of you where it is.” [crono_clone, commenting on A Longtime Houstonian’s Guide To Surviving the Recent Onslaught of New Developments and Residents] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A PATIO HOME, A TOWNHOME, AND A HOME HOME 
“As a general rule, Patio Home means tiny yard and 1 to 2 stories and no shared wall. A Townhome may have no yard at all or a small yard but is generally 3 stories plus and may have a shared wall. Now, don’t ask me what the difference is between those and a Garden Home, or City Home, or Urban Home.” [commonsense, commenting on What’s Planned for the Camp Strake Property; Pushing for a Galveston Bay Watergate ‘Compromise’]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: A LINEAR PARK TO CONNECT THE MED CENTER TO RICE VILLAGE 
“If the Rice Village wants to be a retail goldmine, it should look outside its borders. My suggestion would be a linear public park that would take the residential properties between University and Dryden between the Medical Center at Travis all the way west to Greenbriar.” [infinite_jim, commenting on Haven Is No More; The Allure of the Suburban Town Square] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: A BRIEF ANNOTATED HISTORY OF ALLEN PARKWAY VILLAGE’S DIRTY NEIGHBOR 
“Wow, I never knew there was a waste incinerator right in the Fourth Ward. Here’s a handy timeline:
Post-Civil War: Freed slaves construct their own neighborhood in the Fourth Ward.
1917: Camp Logan Race Riots are sparked off when a Houston policeman beats a black soldier in the Fourth Ward.
1920s: Gillette incinerator is built (PDF) right in the Fourth Ward.
1944: San Felipe Courts (today’s Allen Parkway Village) were built next to the incinerator. They were originally intended as public housing for the city (following a New Deal movement for public housing in the 1930s) but ended up being handed over to the defense department to exclusively house white WW2 veterans (PDF). The other motivation was to ‘clean up the slums’ along Allen Parkway for passing commuters.
1964: San Felipe Courts are desegregated following the Civil Rights Act and renamed to Allen Parkway Village.
1970s-90s: Developers advocated for APV’s demolition arguing that the public housing’s costs didn’t reflect the land’s ‘highest and best use.’ Meanwhile, the housing deteriorated due to neglect by the Houston Housing Authority and HUD. Residents organized and protested demolition leading to APV’s rebuilding in 1997.
Today: The city can now cash in by selling a plot of polluted land next to APV now that the Fourth Ward is gentrifying.” [Carpetbagger, commenting on The Best the City Can Get for Gillette; Not Jus Donuts’ Extreme Cakeover] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: A GUIDE TO SOUNDING OUT THE NAMES OF HOUSTON’S ACRONYMED SPORTS STADIUMS 
“Just make up a pronunciation. “TDECU†becomes “tuh-DECK-you,†and is the response to “why Grandma, what big fists you have!â€
Likewise, “NRG†becomes “nurg†(a kind of parasitic technician) and “BBVA†becomes “bubba-VUH†(Popul Vuh’s brother from the country).” [Memebag, commenting on Here’s That Downtown View the University of Houston Rotated Its Football Stadium For] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SCREWING THE HAVES 
“Message to the cool kids: If you are really cool, move to a cheaper part of town. The squares who are pricing you out of Montrose will be punished by living exclusively among squares, and the cheaper part of town will be cool. However, if you move and none of that happens then you probably weren’t that cool.” [Memebag, commenting on New Owners to Montrose Apartment Dwellers: Everybody Out by the End of August, We’re Tearing These Places Down] Illustration: Lulu
