COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHY THERE’S NO ‘PARKING IN BACK’ REQUIREMENT 
“The idea of requiring on-site parking to be put somewhere else beside the primary frontage along the street was considered during the Urban Corridors process (that led to the current Transit Corridor ordinance). The message from the development community was loud and clear: you cannot prohibit front-door parking within a certain area — that makes properties just outside the boundary of the restriction more valuable and attractive to a greater range of potential occupants, and therefore unfairly diminishes the value of the restricted properties. The idea of making such a restriction mandatory was thus scrapped; it is now an ‘opt-in’ feature of the ordinance in return for the ability to do a reduced setback. Only on streets in light rail corridors though — it doesn’t apply in places like Washington and Rice Village, sadly.” [Local Planner, commenting on Comment of the Day: Too Many Parking Spaces] Illustration: Lulu
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COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT YOU’RE PAYING HOUSTON VALETS FOR “It dawned on me that when you valet park, you’re not really paying for the service of someone going out and parking your car for you. You’re paying for the right to a primo, reserved parking space that you don’t have to hunt or fight for. Scoff at it all you want, but valet parking seems to be a symptom of a shortage of available parking — or, as is often the case here in Houston, inefficient parking that results from too many businesses declaring the spaces in front of them are for customers only.” [ZAW, commenting on Comment of the Day: Too Many Parking Spaces]
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: IT’S TOO MUGGY TO WALK HERE 
“IMO people in Houston do not walk as much as they do in other cities. I have a friend who lives at West Ave and drives to Whole foods across the street, stuff like that. This is why Houston hasn’t had more ground floor retail in the past and we require 2375646523 parking spaces per 200 unit apt complex. Now everyone blames the heat for not walking, but I blame it on laziness and crime. If you build a walker friendly area that is safe like on west gray or west ave then people will come.” [benny, commenting on Comment of the Day: Would Ground Floor Retail Work in the Rice Village?] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: TOO MANY PARKING SPACES 
“In my line of work I look at parking requirements for different cities around the country all day long, and Houston’s are pretty high. 10 per 1,000 SF for a restaurant means you need a parking space for every 100 square feet. This means for every 10 ft x 10 ft block of floor space in your restaurant, you’re expecting that the people occupying that space drove ten different cars to get there. Is any restaurant ever so packed that there are 10 people for every 100 SF of space (including the whole area of the restaurant, not just the dining area), and all of them driving a separate car?
I guarantee you this: a city that requires that ten paved parking spots exist every time there’s 100 square feet of people dining somewhere will never be an interesting city. If you need that much flat pavement everywhere that people like to hang out and cluster, you’re going to concrete and asphalt yourself away from ever having an interesting district. You might manage to get something going in the parts of town that were built before the draconian regulations took effect, but pretty soon people are going to want to build new things in those areas, the new requirements will kick in, and pavement will start spreading like a cancer.” [Mike, commenting on Comment of the Day: Would Ground Floor Retail Work in the Rice Village?] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WOULD GROUND FLOOR RETAIL WORK IN THE RICE VILLAGE? 
“If you follow many of the comments on this board, it’s become kind of an inside joke here that everything should have first floor retail. If there was an article about a cemetery, someone here would post that it should have first floor retail.
That said, I don’t know of many other locations in this city that would be more suitable for first floor retail than this one. It’s already an established shopping district, and the building is actually replacing some retail. I’m not a developer, but I would think that in a high density location like this one, retail leases would be a net financial benefit, with a higher $ amount per square foot, and lease terms much longer than the typical 6 or 12 month residential lease. However, there’s two arguments I can think of on why they have chosen not to go the retail route. First, would any new retail businesses be subject to our city’s minimum parking regulations? If so, providing garage space would have a negative impact on costs. Second, perhaps if the plan by Hanover is to convert these to condos in the next 5 years, then retail would not be a net benefit.” [ShadyHeightster, commenting on What Hanover Might Be Building Next in the Rice Village] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE RIGHT TO PROTEST 
“. . . not to say I always concur with my own neighbors, where I live. A ‘greenbelt’ consisting largely of invasive species follows the dry creek behind my house and cleaned up would make a nice trail (she said shyly — she’s much bolder on the internet). But the people hereabouts hear the word trail and think transients, even after I tried to push their dog-loving buttons with ‘dog park,’ so I gave up on that notion a long time ago.
My neighborhood abuts a mall. A group wanted to put a ‘luxury hotel’ on the mall’s anvil-like parking lot with its wasted city view. Terrific, I thought, a hedge against the inevitable decline of the mall. At a meeting of a couple hundred people: I was the only one in support. Neighbors won that one, or rather, the bottom shortly dropped out of the ‘mall parking lot luxury hotel’ business.
Then too there’s a defunct movie theater, returning to a state of nature these ten years, at the edge of the neighborhood. The re-developer — retail, townhomes, offices — is dropping several hundred thousand dollars into a mitigation pot to conserve land elsewhere in the watershed, even though this land is already ruined.
I don’t see this enormous abandoned cineplex as an asset, but the others around here do, apparently, and had lined up to derail its transformation into . . . whatever. I confess that this time my exasperation was such that I contrived some ad hoc ‘neighborhood support’ (i.e. all my friends) to inundate Council and give them some cover for the vote.
I have no ‘rights,’ you say? I figure I have a right to whatever I can take from you, and I assume you’ll do the same.” [luciaphile, commenting on Comment of the Day: Houston’s Master Planners] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOLDING BACK THE ONSLAUGHT ON A GALLERIA MOD 
“There’s not too much respect for older architecture in Houston. I own a three family near the Galleria. My building was designed by Neuhaus and Taylor and was featured in ‘Houston and the Mod House.’ The developers are sniffing around trying to make deals for the whole street. I may reach a point of diminishing returns soon and be forced to sell. One of the reasons is that the city keeps raising the property taxes so high in ‘hot’ areas by comparing old buildings to the new ratables and raising the old assessments by thousands at a time. At some point you can’t afford to pay the bills with a density of three units on the property. A developer will come in, buy the whole cul de sac, and put up a tower so he can make a lot more money per sq. ft. from the land than we can. When you protest taxes, HCAD listens and lowers the amount a tiny amount. Thus, the little guy is eventually forced out.” [Gary Andreasen, commenting on Comment of the Day: How Houston Tears Down and Sprawls] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: WHAT THE HOME LISTING STATUS CODES REALLY MEAN 
“For those of you that think you know about real estate, but don’t, you will find a breakdown of HAR statuses at the bottom of this post. Pending Continue to Show (PS) means that the seller is still willing to have the house shown. It does not mean that there are necessarily any contingencies, it just means that they *might* still allow showings. They still have the right to decline a showing when an agent tries to schedule an appointment, and many sellers do choose to decline the showing, or at least don’t tend to be as flexible as they may have been before the home was under contract. The reality is that most agents don’t show homes that have a PS status anyway, unless the listing agent makes it a point to specify that the seller is willing to accept back-up offers. Many agents don’t use Pending (P) unless the seller absolutely insists on no further showings.
OP — Option Pending: Listings that are under contract and the seller and buyer have agreed to use the ‘Termination Option’ in paragraph 23 of the standard TREC contract, effective 1/1/03;
PS — Pending Continue to Show: Used for listings currently under contract but are still available to show. Listings having a contract with a contingency and taking back-up offers should be Pending Continue to Show;
P — Pending: Used for listings under contact and are no longer available to show;
S — Sold: Used when a property has funded and closed. All sales closed must be reported to MLS. Listings should not be changed to Sold status before the actual closing.” [HoustonRealtor, commenting on Restocking a Converted Grocery Store in the Houston Heights] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW HOUSTON TEARS DOWN AND SPRAWLS 
“. . . In other (mostly northern) cities properties are continuously rehabilitated and repurposed. In Houston, properties are abandoned and demolished and the city sprawls out further from the center. I think that is a fundamental flaw in the mindset (and before anyone starts screaming — I know since I have remodeled properties considered tear downs in the Heights that have proven to be great investments). Granted, it takes guts and money and it may not be worth it to buy something like this, but there are other properties worth saving all over the Heights, Montrose, river oaks, and 6th ward. Every time I see an abandoned property in those neighborhoods it makes my head spin.” [Heights Mom, commenting on Snooping Around an Abandoned Apartment Complex in Inwood Forest] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOUSTON’S MASTER PLANNERS 
“. . . I’ve talked a lot about the bad way some developers approach growth in Houston. But neighborhoods are addressing it wrong, too. They’re too reactionary. They sit around doing nothing until a developer proposes something they don’t like, then they mobilize to try to kill it. They need to ask themselves ‘what do we really want in and around our neighborhood,’ and then create master plans to communicate it. (The master plans wouldn’t be enforced — that would be zoning — but they could be used by developers to get a sense of what the neighbors would oppose.)
The Super Neighborhoods were supposed to be a venue where this could happen — they were originally under the auspices of the Houston Planning Department. But I’ve found that it’s actually the Management Districts that are doing master plans. It’s great that they’re happening, but Management Districts are paid for by and primarily serve businesses; and single family neighborhoods aren’t even trying to get in on the efforts.” [ZAW, commenting on Dogging the Morrison Heights Midrise with Doggerel] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH AN OLD GROCERY STORE 
“The Skaggs Albertson at Louetta and Kuykendahl is now a DPS Drivers License Center. The old Klein’s grocery store in Tomball is being turned into a Veterans Health Center. The old Walmart on 249 just south of Spring Cypress was turned into a training center for a company. The old Randalls on Jones is now a Habitat ReStore.
Another good use is for a fitness center.” [Tejas, commenting on Comment of the Day: All Emptied Out with Nothing To Do] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: ALL EMPTIED OUT WITH NOTHING TO DO 
“Sooner or later all of this development will raise the question: what do you do with a grocery store once the grocery store has moved out? It’s a question that’s been grating on me for a while. The space that used to house Randall’s at the corner of Bissonnet and Fondren has been vacant for almost six years. It would be nice to get another grocery store in there — and maybe if we can redevelop and upgrade the apartments around there it’d be a viable option — but if not, what are the options? I mean, other than a charter school campus or a scary after hours nightclub? [ZAW, commenting on What Houston’s Grocer Growth Might Mean for Randall’s]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE ASHBY HIGHRISE, LIKE A ROCKET 
“I think the Yao Ming reference is a show of support for the project. Like Ming, the Ashby Highrise will be a highly valued source of inspiration for the commoners in its shadow. I’m glad people are finally coming together on this.” [Alec, commenting on New Ashby Highrise Fence Graffiti Talks Hoops, Holdups] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WITH A BULLDOZER AND A PUBLIC WORKS BUDGET, YOU TOO CAN WORK MAGIC! 
“Maybe we’re the only folks that would consider watching such a show, but it would be interesting if one of the networks would create an Extreme Makeover: Cityscape Edition. Imagine if Peter Park were given a TV show size budget for each episode to improve the urban blueprint of a small area such as this. Think of how such a show could change our nation’s perception and understanding of our cities.” [Thomas, commenting on Why the Sidewalk at the Washington Ave Five Guys Burgers Isn’t Walkable] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: PARKING IN THE FRONT, BUSINESS IN THE BACK 
“It’s not BS. Local independent businesses may be relatively willing to provide their parking on the side / back / top / below or wherever. But I’ve heard from several retail developers that convincing a ‘credit tenant’ to lease in a structure that doesn’t have off-street front-door parking can be a major challenge, even if there’s an oversupply of parking elsewhere on site.
The developer of BLVD place wanted to put the development right up along the Post Oak Boulevard sidewalk –– and at the time there was the expectation there would be a light rail station right there. This was going to be done, I believe, without seeking a setback variance (and the Transit Corridor Ordinance in 2009 obviated the need for one anyway). But the tenants that were sought refused to come unless a parking lot was put in front –– the internal parking structure wasn’t enough for them. And so, the plan was redesigned with off-street parking in front, and the tenants came.
I don’t mean to imply support for the setback requirement –– I think in most cases it hurts way more than it helps and should be eliminated, or at least modified to not require a variance for more sidewalk-friendly development. Did you know that Kirby from Westheimer to US 59 is a Major Thoroughfare, therefore requiring a 25 foot setback from the right of way for new development? Same with Montrose from W. Dallas to US 59. Is this what we want for the primary streets of some of Houston’s most ‘urban’ neighborhoods, the very center of our city? In my opinion, this is ridiculous.” [Local Planner, commenting on Comment of the Day: When Houston Buildings Weren’t So Shy of the Street] Illustration: Lulu
