IronTiger

Video does not exist, it says

There's a prospective plan of the mall here, no idea if it was to be one of the full anchors. If built it would've been the first fully-enclosed regional mall in the world, an achievement Southdale Center later took.

Notice that you can outline the Rockies too.

Given your preexisting anti-highway/car sentiment and other dubious claims made in the past, I will have to call BS on one or both of those. But Houston having aggressive drivers? I believe it!

Heard on the news last night that Lake Conroe was back to its original capacity (maybe 6 in. lower than the best points), and that the lake's now normal heights (first time in four years) would bring in more traffic for a boost to the local economy. I'm pretty happy at that.

That was the mostly in the Heights Walmart thread, namely his criticisms of "RUDE" (RUDH) and the "collapsing bridge". On RedScare, partially because of his "anarchy" avatar, I read his posts (2012-ish) in a "muffled Bane voice" which made them 10x more entertaining.

Slightly unrelated topic: didn't the COH make some ordinance in 2009 that banned a bunch of inflatables, like giant gorillas on car dealerships? I remember reading about that, and then one day, they all went away...

RedScare was the last to leave. I can't find the thread, but I remember that some of the last posts involved some radical liberal attacking him for a few random things (like not mowing or watering his lawn, or somesuch) because he thought Red was a conservative Christian (which he wasn't). He announced that he would leave and go for a bike ride--guess it was a long bike ride.

Cerberus has done better with Albertsons, than, say, Lampert has done with Sears and Kmart (though arguably, Kmart was doomed to begin with thanks to some mistakes in the 1970s and 1980s, namely, dumping money into new stores instead of maintaining older ones). The trick is to see if a giant merger like this will actually work, because a lot of the time it doesn't (AOL Time Warner, Penn Central being some notable failures).

Very interesting. I suppose it's possible that the railroad spur that leads straight into the warehouse at Holcombe might be abandoned? (Too bad: I would love to see them demolish the expansion of GSC and build some sort of commuter line on the ROW back to downtown--but the light rail being built there as well kind of limits that)

Sort of. Albertsons Inc., the Albertsons that loved and lost Houston, was split up in 2006 (a lot of store closures in this era, btw). SuperValu, a wholesale grocery owner, took "New Albertsons Inc.", the "stronger" Albertsons divisions, while Cerberus, under a shell company "AB Acquisitions LLC" took in "Albertsons LLC", the "weaker" Albertsons divisions. This included the Dallas-Fort Worth stores. Five years into the acquisition, a funny thing happened--Albertsons LLC was starting to do well (after closing a bunch of stores and starting to market themselves as "Albertsons Market", though this never went on any stores) while SuperValu started to choke on the Albertsons divisions. Last year, AB Acquisitions bought back New Albertsons Inc., putting the Albertsons stores back under one corporate umbrella. A few months ago, AB Acquisitions announced it would buy Safeway, but there was a period where other companies (like Kroger) could bid on Safeway, but they never did. So even though Albertsons is now marketing themselves as a combined entity now, they remain two independent companies. Safeway is the third company, and not yet combined. In the coming months, there will be some more changes and consolidations coming to AB Acquisitions as it cements its position as one of the biggest grocery operators in the nation.

A "big focus on natural/organics" might do okay--that's one major thing that the AppleTree changed when it changed to Village Foods, adding gluten-free, natural products, organic produce, and a few other things (by the way, it's all supplied by Grocers Supply Co.) and that attracted people to it. But it also sells a lot of cheap stuff too (the market isn't more than middle class) but it doesn't do half the volume of H-E-B down the road. Now, a third option would be improving the Randall's, then do some consumer research like "I like the new concepts introduced but prefer the Randalls name" then the Randalls name stays and improvements are made.

H-E-B is a very good grocery store, and there isn't a market where Albertsons and H-E-B compete anymore (not since 2011--actually, wait, I lie, Cleburne has both H-E-B and Albertsons). What Albertsons failed to do in Houston and other areas where it has since pulled out are two main reasons: 1) Not good enough prices (competitive for what they offered) 2) Failing to understand store demographics The locations also seemed a bit odd (Tidwell and Antoine--that one wasn't actually opened apparently, and Kroger opened it, if briefly). Besides, if your statement was true, why is Kroger still have the bigger market share? And also, why have new stores been able to enter the market? (Aldi, Trader Joe's, The Fresh Market) Again, it would be a simple one-store test. If it's not successful, too bad but not a great loss, if it is successful, then Albertsons will be able to return--and get it right!

It's been over 10 years since Albertsons closed their doors for the last time in Houston. Since then, Cerberus has made some improvements to Albertsons. I think that if Albertsons came in with competitive prices (they already dropped the card system, something that gives them a leg up on Kroger), decent products (produce--the make or break point), and not ignoring demographics, I think they could do it. It wouldn't be super-hard to do--maybe just close an underperforming Randalls for a weekend, do some employee training, run around the store changing prices, alter out the sign, grand opening event, and presto! Lower prices! Better store! If it could turn the store around, then great! If not, well, it was on its way out anyway.

So, splitting off from this topic which was before the Albertsons/Safeway merger--the facts are laid out... - If what Swamplot said was true, the Houston division of Safeway doesn't exist anymore and was merged with Dallas (former Tom Thumb). - Randalls and Albertsons are now under a common ownership. - A new Albertsons did open in Denham Springs, LA a few years ago. - In its 15 or so years under Safeway, the Randalls name has gotten tainted, but is irredeemable? What I want to know is, do you think that a grocery store under the Albertsons name (a former Randalls) would work in Houston, even as a single Randalls test trial? Do you think that the new company can turn around the Randalls name? Or do you think they should cut their losses and dump the Houston market entirely whether by selling Randalls to private investors or divesting the stores?

Well, the city still has a lot of power, and I imagine it has the power to squash (or at least, temper) any development that is too far outside the rim of what they'd like to see there.

When I was working at Village Foods (AppleTree until 2008, and yes, it was the next to last AppleTree ever, and yes, it maintains most of the original neon Safeway décor) I was shocked I had to explain to a co-worker the major differences between Walmart and H-E-B (our two main competitors)--and it takes a super-geek to go the extra mile and figure out what stores used to be what.

Well, actually, the first felony manslaughter case involving a bicycle has happened. And before you say "That's just one incident, X incidents happen every day involving cars", remember--human stupidity is endless. Also, remember that people are also strange--I read enough transit-related literature to know that even though many freeways are depressed or elevated, a total grade separation to entirely avoid interaction with cars (and thus, accidents), many people prefer to have surface boulevards and would like to cross the street instead of going over or under, thus INCREASING chances for pedestrian/vehicle accidents. Imagine that.

That's been discussed, but it's not particularly pertaining to this topic. Again, right now, we don't know exactly how it happens, and while automobile vs. pedestrian/bicyclist collisions are very common, it's a gross misstatement to say that "vehicles cause accidents". For example, last year there was an accident involving the light rail and a bicyclist, wherein the bicyclist was riding on the tracks with headphones on. Despite others trying to signal to her to get off the tracks, the inevitable grisly end result happened. You wouldn't blame the light rail would you? Of course not. It's the bicyclist's fault. The same thing happens in accidents involving vehicles. (P.S.: in case there's any confusion above, I wasn't blaming arche for trolling, it was in response to other messages on the thread--I'm sorry for the confusion caused)

Now, I'm not going to debate the subtle differentiations between CVS and Walgreens, but Fiesta is no Central Market. Uh--no. The convenience store rate is probably going faster than the grocery store rate, but it's probably always been that way.

The first step would be trying to figure out what actually causes traffic-related fatalities, and I'd say drunk driving sets up a significant number of that. OK, so for instance, let's lower the speed limit at night to prevent high speed accidents. Well guess what? It gets ignored, and the drunk driver kills an orphan's puppy before veering off the road, hitting a gas pump, and burns to his death. Changing the speed limit proved sadly ineffective in that case. Pedestrians onto freeways are another thing--people will jump over fences and try to cross the freeway that way--unless it's completely deserted and the driver has very long distance, the Darwin Award nominee will be turned to putty thanks to the laws of physics--and that's the best case scenario. Worst case scenario is that the ped's monumental display of grossly ignoring common sense will cause a multiple-car pile-up, killing and injuring many more. One thing that would work in theory is a total separation of bike and car lanes, reconfiguring a road to have a dedicated bike lane on one side taking up what was a whole lane (this might not even reduce traffic lanes provided they already had bike lanes on either side of the road). Well guess what? Some bicyclists are going to think "Screw that, I have a right to the vehicular lanes just as much as the cars do" (and you know they will--many bicyclists take the main lane, which is perfectly legal). People are going to be hurt, and your bicycle lane separation technique doesn't work like it should. tl;dr Never underestimate human stupidity

Some trolling attempts in progress, I see, but one realistic and cheap is thing is a bucket of flags at pedestrian crossings with busy roads.

The South End is HUGE! It used to be not much more than bleachers, now it's the tallest part of the stadium!

"The Rice"? For some reason, that sounds worse than "Post Rice Lofts".

Unfortunately, that won't happen. All too often I see pedestrians wander out onto the streets, bicyclists who selectively only traffic laws that benefit them, and drivers who will jump out in front of cars when one's coming straight for them. The only way you could catch anyone is to have cameras installed at—oh. Right.