Comments on: White Oak Tower: It Was All Just a Bad Drawing

By: abby

abby — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 16:11:19 +0000

yea i like actual drawings not ugly but paintings, get a life too!

By: abby

abby — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 16:10:20 +0000

u r all like total nubs, this is so boring, and i am like never coming back to this fucking site!

By: Gtwnguy

Gtwnguy — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 04:12:46 +0000

Without a doubt this SHOULD be built in the Heights, where everyone “seems” to pride themselves on green and neighborhood friendly concepts. The building that takes up the space of 10 homes allows for 50+ to live there, sounds perfect. Houston needs more of the density, not less. Heights people act like they live in some utopia; give me a break. Every other block is blighted, While Oak especially. I like the Onion Creek place, but let’s face it, it’s a dive. The Heights is over-rated and full of itself; time for reality check: it is close to downtown and should have higher density for the land price. I love how Heights folks had townhoms, but without those townhomes their own single-family homes (half of which are dumps) would be worth half their value (they are only worth the land-value in most cases). Build this thing and teach the Heights a lesson: it does not exist in a vacuum, welcome to 2008!

By: Corey

Corey — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 21:00:22 +0000

I’m no shill - I think this makes much better sense than a lot of the current new building going on in our neighborhood, i.e. the 4000 sq ft houses in the middle of residential blocks that block a lot of sun themselves. Mixed-use building - old and new - help make the Heights a wonderful, livable, walkable neighborhood. All through the Heights we have retail, restaurants, bars, coffeehouses, multifamily housing, manufacturing, schools, churches, hospitals, etc.

I see a building like this, on a long-established commercial street/through-way, as being in line with the character of the neighborhood. How nice it will be for those neighbors who are able to walk to their offices in this space, and the neighbors on the immediate blocks are already used to retail, commercial, and restaurant traffic. Add to this the proximity to I-10, and I think this makes a lot of sense.

Leave the single-use, single-family-only building to the dying exurbs. A nice mix of land-use has been and will continue to be the strong suit of the Heights.

By: CK

CK — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:53:09 +0000

To echo what I said earlier on the other thread, as long as the city approves their application, since there’s no deed restrictions and no zoning affecting the property, they can legally do whatever they want. As far as I’m concerned, much of that section of White Oak is not exactly what I’d call attractive. I have to differ with Jeff about the existing commercial on White Oak being an anomoly. Along the segment of White Oak in question, it seems the commercial properties far outweigh the residential ones. In addition, this same section of White Oak doesn’t exactly have attractive residential improvements. I also can’t see traffic being any issue at all here. Oh, and I can assure you kjb434 is not a shill, nor am I and I doubt Corey is either.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:54:12 +0000

Nope, still not convinced. I’m fine with that corner being retail. I’m fine with that corner having upstairs businesses. It still doesn’t take away from the fact that buildings of this size just don’t belong in the area no matter how green its construction or what its intended purpose is. Anyone remember what we were ‘promised’ from Sawyer Heights? Yeah, that turned out like they said it would.
And what is a ‘commercial district’ anyway? This is one road, which has both commercial AND residential on it. In fact, I would consider commercial to be the anomaly here since the neighborhoods directly to the north and south of here are purely residential.
That said, I would love to see the owners of this corner do something with it, but even at the ‘revised’ 9-10 stories, its still too big in my opinion.
I would prefer the Allegro style retail/commercial that is going up on Studemont.

By: Dave Mac

Dave Mac — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:24:36 +0000

Those two comments have to be shills. I can’t see anyone in the neighborhood excited to be having a building large enough to block out the sun in the neighborhood. Not to mention the added traffic on Oxford. It just doesn’t belong in this location.

By: Corey

Corey — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:01:40 +0000

I’m very excited by this. I live just a few blocks away and welcome this new addition to White Oak.

By: kjb434

kjb434 — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:12:37 +0000

This is great news. I think this building will potentially do everything it can to be a valuable part of its community as long as the developer can find interests and move forward.