mollusk

it could be called something to the effect of Symphony Plaza, or Symphony Place (bad example since we already have a symphony, but some other performance arts name)

does anyone ever see Jones Plaza being redeveloped? its right on the new light rail line, and doesn't seem like the best use of space. the Chronicle building(s) could make for another great theater/tower location.

Symphony Plaza/Place gives me the immediate mental image of another recorded music playing Maestro - type giant sculpture from David Adickes (whose work in general really does not fit my taste) (***shudder...***).

The Chron mashup is very likely to be completely redeveloped, if for no other reason than because it's already three or four buildings reskinned into oblivion.  However, Jones Plaza is not only a publicly owned park, it's on top of a couple entrances to the Theater District underground parking.  Any redevelopment will be more likely another attempt to give it some daytime life as park space, a la Market Square finally being made into something more than a no man's land.

There appear to be a couple more moving parts on this one than with the Dallas station.  

Remember, up there all the routes pretty much converged well south of town, which itself wasn't much competition for the relatively small section of downtown that made sense.  "Take a fast trip to Duncanville!!!!" just isn't a thing; we've got three popularly discussed locations (NW Mall, Post Office, and the railyard) that each have distinct pros, cons, and math.  On top of that, while there's a preferred route into town from Montgomery/Grimes counties, it's not yet final.  NW Mall, for example, makes a lot more sense when coming in from the (granted, preferred) utility corridor, which passes it, than from the BNSF route, which doesn't - so it's not really two or three possibilities to number crunch, it's as many as six.

Well, that's not the first time some outfit's overly paranoid corporate counsel wrote up something that ends up being totally unrealistic in an effort to cover the corporate tukus twelve ways from Sunday (and/or Saturday and/or Friday if those are days of worship in a particular tradition), together with any and all holidays, including but not limited to the secular and religious, without regard whatsoever to the number of actual practitioners of said traditions that are or who may be present or consciously or peripherally aware of the celebration.  

For the record, I was an early adopter of the Plain English movement in my own practice.

Public projects in particular are very price sensitive.  Not to mention, the concrete market is still a bit tight.  

Hey, why not.  

but conspiracy theories are always so much more fun.  

Not to pile on (OK, I'm piling on...), but - from a tax base standpoint this will be better for the rural counties than what's currently going on.  Practically all of the land that will be used currently has an ag exemption on taxes, meaning that they pay very little.  That exemption won't apply to the rail line.  I don't know just how it will end up being appraised for tax purposes, but even if it keeps the same value per acre (actually, it's likely to go up IMHO since it will be used for production of income), there will be more net taxes to the county, etc. from losing the ag exemption alone.

Is it still sealed off at tunnel level?

Yep (not that there's anywhere past it to go other than the Americana garage).

the vagrancy of weather

Is that when the rain is, um, foul?  Or does it mean that the weather's like (grinning puffy brown triangular emoji)? 

Gerbil tubes predominate on that end of downtown, particularly from San Jacinto on east - which is a good thing for visitors, since it's easier to keep one's bearings in them.  Connecting up the convention center hotels to the Park Shops and ultimately, somehow, Green Street seems like it would be helpful for all concerned.  And yes, I know that people walk the streets in NOLA and Oslo, but I don't remember hearing a whole lot of tunnel complaints other than getting lost in them from noobs and (***Nancy Grace voice***) "Whut about the street life" from Urban Design Types - both of which can be helped out by the sort of thing that the Capitol Tower renders show.

Didn't King run before and kind of fizzle out?

Not white, but beige.  

I agree, the coral would be kinda cool, even if it would look dated in 5 - 10 years... but isn't that one of the things paint is useful for?

Still got a bit to go before it tops out - it'll be about 30' shorter than 1301 Fannin, the white building to 1111 Travis's left.  I'm guessing it'll end up just a tad higher than where the taller of its crane booms is in this picture.

I suspect Metcalf's bill will be quietly drowned at birth in committee.  With any amount of luck, there will be something else coming up this session that's shiny and distracts him.

I'll happily defer to someone with more knowledge on the subject, and I certainly loves me some mayhem  , but isn't implosion a bit of overkill, as well as a pretty fair amount of risk for a two story structure that's at least somewhat attached to adjacent things that will remain?

Ran into a guy with a ladder coming out of the former Clutch City Squire last night.  

With all the construction you really need to watch out around downtown these days.  I'm glad it sounds like nobody wuz hurt. 

Busy out there...

(**baseball announcer voice**)   And it's a beautiful day for concrete...

Well, I still remember was that one of the big positives that you guys were praising it for is not using any new ROW that wasn't power line or railroad ROW and were using that "fact" to shut down opposition when it cropped it up on the thread.

Now, there's some politician that wants to prevent use of eminent domain unless counties approve it, and you've got feathers ruffled up. This leaves two possibilities:

1. TSR will not use eminent domain, and therefore the house bill is completely useless and there's nothing worry about.

2. TSR would use eminent domain, and you've been lying/lied to about it not using eminent domain.

tl;dr for my earlier post - 

Exercising eminent domain already requires approval of a local court, the judges of which are likely to personally know the affected people in the counties between Houston and Dallas.  

-------------

I thought adding layers of governmental approval to a private enterprise project is something that Rep. Metcalf's party makes a big production about opposing.  

Actually, for those who have the appropriate address, the Conroe Courier and similar fine publications would probably do better than Dallas or Houston's local fishwrap.

and how does a demo get red tagged? Did they some how tear it down improperly? And how would you 'correct' a red tagged demo?

Swamplot lists 927 Studewood as having a demo permit today.  The city does come out and inspect prior to issuing a demo permit and will leave a green tag if the permit is granted.  I do not know why this property would have trouble with a demo permit, but it looks like they are moving forward.  

If I remember to, I'll take a look at the red tag next time I wander by the Valero next door... but I suspice that the red tag might be a result of starting demo without the proper permits.  

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/02/25/lawmaker-files-bill-could-stop-proposed-bullet-tra/

Remember two things people:

HB1889

Will Metcalf

Here's the facebook post:

Today, I filed House Bill 1889. This bill will require county approval for the use of eminent domain for electric railways. Numerous county officials have come out in opposition to the Texas Central Railway and their use of eminent domain. This bill would help give more local control and would let individual counties decide what is best for them. Although this may not be the ultimate solution, I believe it is a good first step. I am currently working on filing more legislation regarding this issue.

If you would like to learn more about HB 1889 please visit www.legis.state.tx.us

"Whee, here we go, the Ledge is back in session! And many a village is missing its idiot."  - Molly Ivins, 1/14/03

I miss her, even though a lot of her observations from a decade ago are still relevant - it's like deja vu all over again.

Rep. Metcalf apparently fails to remember that you already have to get the courts involved in order to exercise eminent domain - and once you get past somewhere around Conroe, those judges usually run into the affected landowners at the Dairy Queen or church or the high school football game pretty regularly.  Beyond that, this is a privately funded project (the sort of thing I kinda thought the Rs got all slobbery over) that's going to be using the same route as existing rights of way for rail or utilities for just about its entire length.  If Greenway Plaza and much of the Galleria area could be built over existing neighborhoods filled with fairly nice houses (shoot, downtown, too), it's pretty dang likely these guys can figure out how to deal with landowners along their route.  

Above and beyond which, this project isn't exactly something Bubba and Billy Bob hatched up yesterday afternoon at the ice house, or a concept piece from one of our colleagues on this board.  It's a private group that's managed to put together a pool of private resources that's on a par with a lot of good sized governmental entities, over the course of a number of years already.  It's not going to be the cartoon Ashby highrise, or even the sea of concrete that is the Katy Freeway.

An entire industry has built up around substituting easy talking points for facts.  In that atmosphere, fear, fear, gut wrenching fear!!!!! of the unknown easily billows into infinite panic, and that's hard to deal with.  Just look at what a pointless PITA it's become to get onto an airplane.

The new apartment tower will not get any glare from the Museum Tower it is situated south of the tower in fact it will benefit by getting shade from MT in the summer and in the winter from Trammell Crow Tower:)

Museum Tower will cast shade on its neighbor to its south??

IIRC the sun works differently in Dallas.  They're closer to the North Pole.

This comment is not a criticism - it's a celebration of our diversity.  

Interesting read.

I used to live in the 1700 block of Portsmouth before it became a gang hotspot, in a complex of fourplexes occupied by grad students, med students, law students, baby lawyers, new doctors, and whatever Rice grad students turn into.  Our only excitement was when my next door neighbor's girlfriend would get drunk and unruly.  At the dead end was a larger apartment block that became very not choosy when the economy tanked in the early 80s.  Shortly after that the education ghetto pretty much vanished.  

And the Museum Inferno Tower isn't empty because of the location. 

FIFY.  

^^^^ This.

I've gotten very used to this business model with BMW.  It's pretty much their norm, though the dealership I went to for many, many years fell off that track after being bought up by a locally based chain that apparently is more into selling than servicing.  Pretty much all of its shop and most of its better service writers are now at a different BMW dealership - still one owned by a chain, but a different chain with a different apparent management philosophy and way more stability.