IronTiger

That's strange. I worked at Village Foods about a year ago, and it was an AppleTree in all but name (AppleTree IN name until about five years ago), including much of the decor still intact (neon, wood trim), we still asked paper and plastic, I worked as a sacker and took groceries out to people's cars. Guess it was an anachronism, huh?

I think that's leftover from the 1970s and 1980s, a combination of the decline of downtown and the fact that Houston was pretty grimy at one time (bayous were filthy, rampant air pollution, etc.)

In Hearne, Texas, there's a rather unusual overpass that has this unusual ridged concrete instead of the smooth concrete you see in overpasses. The reason I bring it up here is because my dad says that was a way in Houston they were building overpasses at the time (apparently, the ridges were created by sliding tin roof pieces down the side). He did live in Houston at a time (the Heights, as you may have heard), so that would indicate that it was perhaps Interstate 10 or 610, which almost certainly have that style with them today, but I'm wondering where specifically they might be (if any survive). These would've been made in the 1960s.

How about to reduce ROW buyouts is to remove the frontage roads for expansion AND to avoid weaving? The hotels won't like it, but surrounding roads and buildings can be reconfigured for access.

Eh--probably more complicated. Like mentioned before, the last big suburban expansion was in the early 1990s, and none of them were really looked down upon, at least in the beginning. The Webster Fiesta was huge and the hydroponic garden was a massive draw. Well, it went first after it became obvious that the garden was destroying profitability, the Katy Freeway Fiesta could've survived, but the freeway destroyed the parking lot, and the Willowbrook Fiesta is still alive and well. The image Fiesta created was not Latin American specifically, but the fact that around the time of the closure of the hydroponic Fiesta, Fiesta picked up a handful of old AppleTree stores--stores that were already pretty dated in the late 1980s, and did practically nothing to the interior or décor. This combined with the fact that there was no effort to expand to the suburbs but trend toward the more diverse areas in other cities cemented that image. So that's Problem #1. But it wasn't a deal breaker because of... Problem #2: The Sugar Land Fiesta tried too hard to be different. If you look at the reviews at Yelp, you'll notice more people disappointed to what other Fiesta stores had and this one didn't to the things that they DID add. People seem to be unhappy at the high price of produce, for instance. Problem #3: The rent was probably too high.

Because DG is a destination. I saw a lot of people at Klyde Warren Park in Dallas that probably did not live downtown but were there anyway because it's a large urban park (well, as for as urban parks go anyway). For downtown, I don't think anyone needs to worry. Things are happening in a positive direction, and advertising tends to look desperate when done wrong (driven by Northwest Mall lately?)

Nope. It would be a hard draw for have families with children in downtown, as I can't think of any downtown area in North America where people are raising a family in a downtown area that are middle to middle-upper class. There are plenty of places in the Inner Loop to raise a family but downtown isn't one of them (partially due to the lack of parks and schools)

My point was that there's going to be people that spend WAY more time at the Galleria (more trips) than you or I ever would, skewing the average significantly and driving up the "number of visitors" at the Galleria. I think there are three questions at the core, all of them distinct and different but similar: 1) Are people living in downtown satisfied with what they have downtown, or do they need to leave for the simplest of things (entertainment, basic shops)? 2) Are Houstonians and others that identify as Houstonians (these include suburbanites living in the ETJ) ashamed of or proud of their downtown? 3) Would tourists ever consider downtown Houston as something to see in Houston?

Heck, I don't even think I can remember the Mexican restaurant I ate at FIVE years ago, which I have MORE information for, and I STILL don't know where it is, or if it still exists or not. They had a giant Obama cut-out there. It was near a Randalls (Randalls Flagship, I think, it had capital letters instead of the script)

Yeah, but you can't yourself as a good indicator of the "average" even if you think of yourself as an "average" person. Even when I was waking up at 6:30 to watch most of the entire Kids WB Saturday Morning block a decade and a half ago, I still watched far less TV than the TV watching average.

Come to think of it, the high ceiling was because it did have a second level area (bar? events center?) I doubt that will help anyone though. I've got another "mystery establishment" in Dallas from a shorter time (2004), the road, and parts of a name, but even that is an unknown. It doesn't help that both of these are in huge cities where people are less likely to know about these sorts of things...

Well, Galleria has about 26 million visitors a year, and Houston has about 2 million people. If Houstonians (not suburbanites or out of towners) went an average of 1-2 times a year, that would be only 4.2 million visitors a year from Houstonians (a statistical average). That would mean the other 85% are all people from the suburbs or out of town. That's just not possible.

(bolded for emphasis) I have a hard time believing that.

Directly next to a Fuddruckers. I know I saw the NASA Space Center same day. And the area was under a tornado watch.

I sure I wish knew what was the Mexican restaurant I ate at in the late 1990s. All I remember is that it had a rather high ceiling and was next to a Fuddruckers. I'm pretty sure it was next to a highway.

I don't know, for Houstonians, most people are pretty happy in their corner of the city and won't go out of it unless it's worth their time like a sporting event or restaurants or shops. Large retail districts like Chinatown (near Beltway 8 and Bellaire), Rice Village, and Uptown have a strong residential base to draw off and build off, and downtown doesn't have that. Sure, there are shops and related stuff if you have a specific reason (Joystix, Brown Book Shop) to check out, but it won't have that draw. However, if downtown is growing as fast residential-wise as I hear it is, then there's no need to "advertise". Businesses will come (maybe incentivized, maybe not), cool stuff will come that might be worth another head turn from non-downtowners, and things will work themselves out.

Hmm...I think I know where it was thanks to Google Earth. There's a self storage facility at 7825 Katy Freeway, just east of Antoine, on the SOUTH side. This was not exempt from the Katy Freeway widening--a part of the facility was torn down, with the buildings rebuilt. To the west of it was 7855 Katy Freeway, Wellesley Inn & Suites, which was built in the late 1990s (1998) but torn down less than a decade later for the highway widening. To the west is 7777 Katy Freeway, Alexan Silber, which was 7787 Katy Freeway, a large Holiday Inn (torn down about the same time). In 1995, the self storage facility was intact, there was a vacant lot, and then a creek to the west. The vacant lot had remains of a "T" shaped structure. In 1989, the self storage facility seemed to be recently built with the vacant lot seemingly recently cleared. In 1978, an unidentified object takes the place of the self storage facility and what would be Wellesley Inn and has the T shaped building. This was likely the motel. The same structures appear in 1953 but it's washed out (also hard to tell). After the building was demolished, what wasn't taken by frontage road became a retention pond. Also, for what it's worth, the two Voss segments never connected, and if they did, it was brief. In 1953, the north Voss segment was clear cut but not built, and only the south segment connected to Katy Road (not a freeway). Bingle did. By 1978, Voss had already curved to go under the Katy Freeway to connect to Bingle. The original south segment of Voss connected between the frontage road and the main south segment of Voss, but didn't go under. The north side of Voss crossed the railroad but also dead-ended at the frontage road. If you were looking north at Voss, near the former Las Alamedas, directly across the freeway was the other side of Voss, but the widening obliterated that so they connect even less.

Personally, I think that they shouldn't force kids to take fruit at all and bribing them with trinkets is a bad way to foster a healthy habit. Also, if schools are still doing fresh fruit the way they were doing it in the late 1990s and early 2000s, they'll seemingly get the cheapest, nastiest oranges or the bitterest, hardest apples they can find.

If downtown was to "market itself better", who would they be trying to attract? Tourists or locals (suburbanites)? Both of those are very different things. Retail is sadly pretty much a lost cause, as upscale malls need a nice area to draw off of (a lot of downtown malls failed this way). The retail component of Houston Pavilions was suffering, and other potential retail draws in Houston (Shops at Houston Center mall) are mostly service or food oriented tenants. The retail needs to satisfy the downtown area, and I don't even think downtown has that much of a residential base to have even that. Restaurants are needed on the surface. Weekend tourists and suburbanites (who go to see sports, or a play) are disappointed in the lack of street level restaurants, and even if the tunnels weren't closed on the weekends, it's mostly chain fare that can be found in other malls/rest of Houston. JPMorgan Chase Tower has a great observation deck, but that sadly isn't all that well known (and closed on weekends). To put it simply, if downtown were to market itself, what would it advertise and why should people go down there?

The article posted was before the BI-LO merger but after the bankruptcy. The 2005 closures in Atlanta were under bankruptcy, and by that time, they had pulled out of the major Texas markets (not Houston, I've found, but they had stores in Waco, Bryan, and a collection in Dallas-Fort Worth), and that was after a bunch had been closed.

I thought some of them looked really cool but some just seemed ugly (SF), depressing (Moscow), or just claustrophobic (Mexico City)

Ah, that will explain it. However, "Finding Flow" was always locked to me showing no topics. Frankly, I don't think HAIF is big enough to have clique subforums that will see enough activity to keep going, as the normal forums aren't busy enough. Three subforums haven't seen any activity in months, for instance...sorry if it was an experiment that didn't work out too well.

Physically, I believe it's still intact, but have no idea when it ceased being used by Nabisco. If the Canal location opened in 1940 with the bigger plant near TMC opening in 1949, did Nabisco only operate it as a bakery for less than a decade?

It looks like there was another, older Nabisco plant in the East End area. Link. Whatever happened to that?

Today, Randall Onstead leads the combined BI-LO/Winn-Dixie chain, which he took about a year ago. Between the improving status of Winn-Dixie (their store remodels actually look pretty good), and their closeness to Texas, if the chain wanted to move into Texas by buying back the Houston Randalls, I think they could. It would be a great way to reunite Randalls back to the original ownership (sorta) and make a bigger chain. While Albertsons/Safeway could probably part with the Houston market, it would be a pretty large leap to bring Randalls to the forefront, seeing as Randalls has lost so much ground in the competition, and "bought by Winn-Dixie" still doesn't exactly inspire confidence.