- Investor Interest ‘Extremely High’ for Downtown’s Houston Center [HBJ ($)]
- The 8 Largest Houston Assets for Sale Right Now, Including Houston Center [Bisnow]
- Market Square Park’s Revitalization a Decade in the Making [Houston Public Media]
- The Hidden Costs of Buying a Home in Houston [HBJ ($)]
- CHI St. Luke’s Health To Join ‘Vivacity’ Medical District in Valley Ranch [HBJ]
- Developer of River Oaks Condo Revere Park Gets OK To Build Closer to Street [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- Inside the River Oaks Estate Built for George R. Brown, on the Market for $10M [abc13]
- A’Bouzy Opens Today in Former 60 Degrees Mastercrafted/Harwood Grill Space on Westheimer Near Kirby [Culturemap; previously on Swamplot]
- Mala Sichuan Bistro Expanding to New Asian Town Shopping Development in Katy [Eater Houston]
- Maison Pucha Bistro Planned for 1001 Studewood, Previously Home to Black & White and Stella Sola [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- Fifth Ward Activists Protest EPA Budget Cuts in Front of Superfund Site Currently Under Redevelopment [Houston Press]
- Metro Considering Closing Certain Downtown Rail Lanes to Cars [Houston Chronicle ($)]
Photo of Vistas de Sevilla, Cottage Grove: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Re: Maison Pucha: I know it’s the chef/owner’s name, but he should have hired a marketing person to help him come up with a better name for the restaurant.
Re: Metro closing lanes downtown: most other cities that I’m aware of that have light rail on streets with shared traffic put the light rail lines in the middle of the street so that turning traffic and driveways are not obstructed by the trains. METRO just always has to be different, and it’s usually not in a good way.
Re: Metro Considering Closing Lanes to Cars
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This clusterflock downtown would have been avoided if you had elevated the lines in the first place. Yes, it would have cost more but what good is a cheaper product that fails at its primary mission of mass transit?
Re: METRO. Signal timing disruption has always been a problem downtown, even along the Red Line where the train has its own separate guideway and signal priority. Used to bother the hell out of me that I’d get stuck at Main Street about a quarter of the time and then hit the very next red light. If they were promising that this setup on Capitol & Rusk wasn’t going to interfere, well not only were they negotiating in bad faith but the City officials were either stupid, ignorant, or simply going along with it.
@ WolfBrandChili: I have to agree. A project like light rail really ought to be grade separated or not built at all. It’s not just the safety factor and it isn’t just that it *induces* peak-period congestion rather than mitigating it. As it is, average LRT operating speeds are about 17mph…which is 1mph slower than the average operating speed of local buses; and having LRT as part of the network induces additional transfers which inconveniences them further. At-grade light rail in Houston was a barely-affordable solution looking for a use case for it that just didn’t exist.
So the EPA takes the superfund site off it’s priority list within the first two years of the Obama administration, a developer moves in to spin hay into gold, and now Scott Pruitt is the scapegoat….. got it.
@WBC, I’d rather ask what good is a product that provides the same benefit at a more expensive price (bus vs rail)
@Toby – The site has been at work being remediated since the early 2000s by the developer with private funds.