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mollusk

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Everything posted by mollusk

  1. mollusk
    "Brand control" as imposed by the same bright light MBAs that came over from Proctor & Gamble, etc. to run a car company as if it were selling toothpaste and laundry soap - with the result that engineering and differentiation between the nameplates went into the dumper, followed by sales. As I said, dipsticks.
  2. mollusk
    I hadn't wandered through that section of the tunnels in the last week or so, but today I noticed that the giant "SKANSKA" signage and some other artifacts are now removed. See ya, pretty much the last stairs in the tunnels that can't be easily bypassed. IIRC, that will leave only Two Houston's spiral connection to 1001 McKinney and 801 Travis to Pearl's JW Marriott a-birthin'.
  3. mollusk
    The auto industry apparently thinks that we buy a particular make of car based upon the architecture of the dealerships; i.e., we might accidentally walk into something else if it doesn't have the silly silver V with a curve on top like Buick, or the centered blue square (in exactly the same shade last seen on a '72 Vega) for Chevy, the blue waves of Honda, the silvery white of a Ford or Lincoln store, or the sand colored Mayan mashup of a Lexus dealer's overhangs. Dipsticks. I like architecture more than most (which is why I think Buick GMC stores are as ugly as the POSes they try to sell inside), but when I'm looking for something to drive I buy a car, not a building.
  4. mollusk
    I like having downtown to myself. I almost found myself hollering "you kids get offa my lawn barstool" at the Gladys unveiling this evening.
  5. mollusk
    Seeing the frame for the parking garage that will be there for a year or two go up, I must now accept the "parking contract that can't be broken" theory posted a couple weeks ago. That must be one insane (and very carefully assigned) contract for the buyout numbers not to work, given that they were able to buy out the Houston Club with its nearly Panama Canal lease term at a rate set when Ike was President.
  6. mollusk
    In the early '80s, about five minutes before the end of that particular boom, I worked for a property development company that also had the bright idea of doing an office condo conversion. It didn't work out then, either. With 20 - 20 hindsight, I think that most office based businesses prefer the flexibility for expanding and shrinking space to meet current and short to mid term projected needs that a lease offers, and that isn't really practical with an ownership model. In addition, the tax treatment is just easier. Finally, people who are interested in investing in real estate are more likely to go toward transactions that are more clearly geared to being an investment for its own sake, rather than as an operating adjunct to their primary business.
  7. mollusk
    Gorgeous, and should help the retail component of the center as well. I can't help but notice that the rendering still has the Ghost of Foley's there.
  8. mollusk
    I dunno about that. Just because the final responsibility may not be fully allocated doesn't mean that an upstream party won't pony up and seek contribution. As a nearby example, the apartments on the NW corner of the Waugh/Memorial cloverleaf burned to the ground while still being framed, but ultimately didn't get set back that far on their timeline.
  9. mollusk
    Short answer: Yes. Projects of this size will usually have a significant chunk of the contract documents devoted to specifying how the insurance plan is laid out and apportioned among the various players - GC, subs, etc. With a loss this big there's usually going to end up being a fair amount of time and effort devoted to sorting out who ultimately ends up writing what checks for how much.
  10. mollusk
    Given the current state of the market I expect they will hit the "reset" button, and yes, there ought to be insurance in place to cover it - typically a "builder's risk" policy.
  11. mollusk
    I think you may be correct, Filio. Earworms. AAIIIIEEEE!!!!
  12. mollusk
    Tinker Toy Airways.
  13. mollusk
    I could not agree more. The Houston MSA has twice as many people as it did in 1980, but aside from adding lanes here and there and the first wisp of a rail system we are largely still using the same infrastructure design. It's just overloaded, and it's not going to get any better without a significant investment - which by the way, will recycle dollars through the community.
  14. mollusk
    If there is not a significant percentage of people using only the "ride" part of park & ride, you could accomplish the same revenue effect by raising fares. If the goal is to try to get people to carpool to the park & ride, or get dropped off, or use a bicycle, or a jetpack, then charging for parking would make sense. My perception, though, is that there isn't a whole lot of alternatives out in the burbs other than driving oneself to the park & ride (I will happily stand to be corrected by someone who uses it). My only real comparable is BART. It has parking garages and lots, at least some of which charge; however, the BART stations are also stops for ACTransit, MUNI, etc.
  15. mollusk
    Part of an email I got yesterday: Please be advised that beginning Friday, 3/28, at 11:00 pm through Sunday, 3/30, Rusk between Main & Milam and Travis between Walker & Capital will be closed due to the JW Marriott construction at 806 Main. Considering that the building itself is at the corner of Main and Rusk, whatever it is that they are planning to to ought to be interesting.
  16. mollusk
    Commercial construction and real estate lawyer (mostly on the war horse side, some transactional). FWIW, my dad was an engineer - civil by education, structural by practice, long before the practice got as segmented as it is now. He would have been annoyed to be put in the same category as architects.
  17. mollusk
    The Handy Andy at Memorial and Dairy Ashford was the first (I worked there in high school), followed by Woodlake, then Voss at about the same time as one up on 1960 around Champions, and perhaps a couple others. They even had their own store brand of beer - Kassel - that was brewed by Pearl IIRC. One of their big deals was that the bag boys would walk the groceries out to the customers' cars, and we were NOT allowed to accept tips.
  18. mollusk
    The building (or rather, its site) is now under the eastbound Katy Freeway.
  19. mollusk
    Repeating a point I've made before, the proposed University Line was relocated AROUND Afton Oaks years ago. In my perception, Culberson just has a knee jerk reaction to rail, period, much as Tom DeLay did - that's why he keeps fighting the University Line, just as he effectively killed any rail along the Katy corridor whilst gleefully doing a photo op on a bulldozer on its way to cutting uncrossable six and seven lane frontage roads.
  20. mollusk
    The scaffovators are now just above the 12th floor.
  21. mollusk
    Speed related accidents are caused either by driving too fast for conditions, or too much speed differential between vehicles. The operating theory behind setting the speed limit in accordance with the 85th percentile is that the bulk of the driving public is not suicidal and can therefore pretty much figure out how fast to drive all on their own. Personally, I think there is a lot of value in having a minimum speed on highways as well as a maximum, in order to cut down on the differential.
  22. mollusk
    ^ Egad, you're right. I'm having trouble grasping that 1984 is now 30 years ago. The place in time I had in mind was really a bit over 40 years ago, now that you've made me do the math.
  23. mollusk
    Having grown up with the spawn of many major oil company employees relocated here from metropolitan NYC by Humble and then Shell, I can personally attest to the amount of whining that went on. Houston was a much, much different city 30 years ago, having more in common with Tulsa than with any large city on either the east or west coasts - as just one example, Go Texan Day for the Rodeo was a school holiday (so that we could watch the trail riders come in).
  24. mollusk
    Those items being framed up may be pedestrian walkways for the sidewalks so that people don't have to detour across the street.
  25. mollusk
    All three have been down for decades. The 1000 block of Main now contains a building named (of all things) 1000 Main, IIRC built for Reliant right before deregulation and breaking it up into three components. 908 Rusk was replaced by 801 Travis, built about 30 years ago to house Allied Bank of Texas' (eventually, Wells Fargo's) back room operations, and now just a nice, low key building with multiple tenants, mostly small companies and professional offices.
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