IronTiger

Last summer, there was a big fire at the Comfort Inn under construction at Hempstead Hwy. and FM 1960 (it's on YouTube). It was hot that the structure completely collapsed and they had to start from scratch. But wow, what a coincidence that people are unhappy that the thing is literally being built behind a cemetery (freeze frame at KHOU nails it), on the news reported yesterday, and today, the whole thing goes up in flames! That is incredible...or it's arson.

!!! BREAKING !!! The abandoned Kmart/flea market has gotten a demo permit.

No reason to be doom and gloomy--Montrose will always retain some of that uniqueness until its shops, bars, and restaurants completely disappear for chains (mostly), the original 1960s-era population of Montrose moves on, or other things. If you're bemoaning the "death" of Montrose, what was the catalyst, or the single "symbol" that it ended?

It's worth noting that the new one in Conroe is branded as "Fiesta Fresh Market" as it's incredibly small--22k square feet, which is "Food Lion/HEB Pantry" level small.

Besides offering fro-yo and the only location of Caribou Coffee in Houston (if not Texas), what was there that H-E-B or Kroger couldn't? Probably nothing. It was almost as if they were afraid to rebrand it as a regular Fiesta (Katy, TX has a "regular" Fiesta that opened in the mid-2000s)

A 2010 survey found that a third of government officials indicted for corruption were from the railways (link), and those were the ones they caught. (and India's railways break down constantly and have accidents) Not to mention Chicago and New York were also under huge corruption when their rail systems were built. Wait, what am I saying? We've established that building railroads is entirely squeaky clone without corruption at all.

That's too bad, let's try to figure out why. The last big suburban expansion was in the early 1990s, and two of those have already fallen years ago: the Webster Fiesta, which had the hydroponic garden (a huge draw but horrifically expensive to maintain), and the Katy Freeway Fiesta, which might have survived had the freeway knocked out a chunk of parking. One answer could be "it was losing money hand over fist" but I think it tried to go for the wrong angle--Fiesta is known for cheap produce, and this store had overpriced organics. The other problem was that by this time, the suburban ideas went away and Fiesta's Hispanic foods angle became more entrenched. Thus the need for a new logo and name when going into Sugar Land to reduce culture shock. The other thing was perhaps the store was too small. Even the Katy Freeway one was 80k square feet, but the new store was around 40k, far smaller than the local Kroger or H-E-B, or even Fiesta's sister stores in the urban areas.

Yes, yes, because of the vast, anti-rail conspiracy. It can't have ANYTHING to do with engineering issues, extreme cost, and the water table, like how Interstate 10 in the Inner Loop becomes a canal in heavy flooding, now, can it?

I think that was more of "crazy ideas" than "we need to build rail or we'll never be a first class city"

Two last ones: Describing how the "platform city" interfaces with the rest of the CBD The people mover system. Looks very futuristic! By now, those that have requested the Houston Center "image source" have been sent one. That's all for now...

Yeah, there were definitely W-D stores in Dallas, and also in Waco (former AppleTrees, interestingly), and Bryan-College Station, and points east (Louisiana, and probably Beaumont), but nothing in Houston except for possibly some in the southeastern suburbs.

nah the relevant stuff is 199-202 (215-218 on the PDF) and 196-197 (212-213). It should be noted that not everyone wanted the super-wide highway there is today, just without railroads. If you read in the discussions of the subject at the Chron, some parties just wanted a no-rail corridor but not quite as wide.

Yeah, Galleria V technically doesn't exist, and I don't call it that either. However, with Galleria III being destroyed and new retail replacing Saks, I feel that they may just no longer call it anything, and the old references of Galleria I, II, III, will fade into memory.

Some parts could use them, yes, but I think that we should build out the ROWs of what we have (TX-35, specifically) as we'll probably never see wide-scale ROW acquisitions again. And in non-freeway road arterials, we should build out the stubs of roads (Bellaire, Kirby) that were placed decades before. (the TX-35 expansion south of U of H was never officially cancelled. 225 was the only one totally canned)

I wonder if in the future, Simon will dispense with the "Galleria X" names entirely. After all, the Lord & Taylor wing is only unofficially (to my best knowledge) "Galleria V", it's still part of II technically. With the last true new "Galleria X" wing over a decade ago, and with Galleria III going away, I'm predicting that it won't have names like that anymore.

You kind of proved my point--any highway that requires all-new ROW (already developed) will be met with heavy resistance. East End didn't even have a lot of political power, and they stopped 225 dead in its tracks. Imagine what more well-moneyed NIMBYs would do. Coupled with lack of state's available funds, no freeways will be built in probably decades. Add to that with freeways less desirable in an urban planning sense currently, and you won't see any. But does it NEED freeways? Yeah, it does. But is a popular (or even realistic) option? No, probably not.

Doesn't the Cypress park and ride have retail? At Skinner?

There needs to be an all-new freeway, but no one will be talking about that.

Looks like Saks will take up all of the old Galleria III plus some. This is interesting--while Galleria III will be substantially gutted (the basic infrastructure, i.e. steel beams, etc.) but retained, most of the Macy's is gone. If they do build that residential high rise, I hope at least has good integration with the main mall.

Alternatively, METRO could bump up fares. After all, they recently considered, or did, some changes in the HOT lanes. On the "subsidy" thing listed above, do toll roads lose more money for everyone that rides on it?

What is "fair share"? Would based on mileage work, or not? Ridership? There's a whole lot of problems when you get into "fairness". The other thing to note that canal and railroads were privately owned (even the streetcars of old). If METRO was privatized, would it take off or need even more money to survive?

Well, the Town & Country Luby's is definitely going away...too old, too valuable.

Ha...I can't access the Chron archives right now, but you're flat out wrong. First off, what happened was that TxDOT bought the rail corridor in the early 1990s, gave the railroad free rent on the corridor, and dismantled it after 1997 after it was decided that rail wasn't the best alternative for the Katy Freeway corridor. Tom DeLay was off in the U.S. House at the time, and as much as you like to think that's he part of the anti-rail conspiracy, the Katy Freeway didn't get rail because of something you can read here. Short version is, only METRO wanted the rail corridor, and the other stakeholders (the agencies involved, and not just TxDOT) didn't. METRO wasn't even financially involved in the expansion, so its "voice" was not very loud or given a lot of thought. The only reason why METRO even had a hand in planning was that it operated the HOV lane, and that was with FTA funds. The stakeholders all felt like more lanes (not rail) would be more efficient, and while the stakeholders did try to block METRO from buying the ROW (by this time, the track was dismantled, and they might as well been--there were dozens of crossings, all of them rather dated even for the 1990s), the public was doubtful that METRO would've been able to even run a rather extensive commuter rail line (remember: this was before METRORail). METRO only had $40 million to do anything with, and that was from FTA. In the end, it was the HCTRA that gave $250 million to the project, and ended up running the managed lanes with METRO benefitting by getting free rides on it. METRO still coughed up money to make the managed lanes support light rail and the end result was that METRO could, in theory, add rail, but that was left up to the state (opposed to the original wording "METRO reserves the right to provide future light rail transit" as that would undermine the other previous discussions and their vision for it. Edit: Unfortunately for you abandoned rail buffs, the ROW and paveovers were obliterated by the freeway expansion. Best you could shoot for is abandoned spurs, which still exist.

Cars tend to have freedom of movement, you don't have to wait for a bus or stick to its routes (or transfer). Lots of people for parking downtown. The point is, if you wanted to go downtown, you would either have to drive yourself and pay for parking, or park for free out in the suburban area where parking is more plentiful, and go downtown with a P&R. Sure, you lose the option of driving a car and the benefit it brings, and the cost of a bus may be less than parking (and worth all the drawbacks). When you start to diminish the benefits of mass transit, people will go for cars, unless your goal was to make commute miserable for absolutely everybody.

It's not unheard of. I remember back when I was in kindergarten or first grade and rode a bus, the bus added maybe a 3 mile round trip to get this one girl back to her home past the airport (this was back in the mid-1990s)