These understated “Stop the San Felipe Skyscraper” signs started going up about knee-high this weekend in River Oaks and Vermont Commons to protest that shiny 17-story office tower that Hines is proposing to build nearby. Though these signs — spotted at the corner of Spann and Welch and San Felipe and Spann, catty-corner from the proposed site — might be lacking the services of an imaginative cartoonist like their yellow precursors across town in Boulevard Oaks, their message still comes through, directing the onlooker as well to a recently launched website for all things skyscraper-stopping:
Using figures from a study put together by the Service Employees International Union last year in support of striking janitors, Steve Jansen’s cover story in this week’s Houston Press highlights some spectacular feats of Houston highrise taxcutting: “For the 2011 tax year, if the owners of a class A skyscraper or office complex protested HCAD’s appraised value in front of HCAD’s appraisal review board or district court, they were 77 percent likely to have the value cut (and Âalmost always by millions). By contrast, only 55 percent of owners of single-family homes won their appeals with HCAD.” Total resulting savings on those high-dollar tax bills: $58 million in 2011 alone. This year, HCAD is raising the market valuations on many of the city’s fanciest office buildings by more than 50 percent. 
A Swamplot reader sends in this update on the progress at 1717 Bissonnet, where the Maryland Manor apartments are still standing in the way of the 
