IronTiger

Shamrock Tower was scheduled to have a McDonald's as the ground floor tenant. Question: was it this block where the McDonald's was torn down for the Shamrock Tower project (announced ~2004). It sure would make sense for the timeline.

As for liking it or not, I like it...but only if it's a hotel or condo. Not offices.

For some it is (even if mass transit IS available). It's usually not a matter of choice (like picking what shirt to wear one morning) it's what works and what's most effective for you (or available). In many cases, mass transit (usually rail-based) IS the best choice but isn't some pre-programmed choice ("take roads only if rail is not available") nor a given ("if you have X people, you MUST have rail"). If both are available and accessible equally, you can take which one you actually prefer.

OK, I'll play. I'm saying Philadelphia in case Miami and Chicago aren't right.

Well, that and a "true rename" it's just not all that known. For instance, did you know that 290 from Beltway 8 to Waller County is actually the Ronald Reagan Memorial Highway, and even put up real signage to that effect? Like Reagan's nickname, "the Teflon President"...it just doesn't stick. Raise of hands, how many of you actually were aware of 290's other name? I wasn't. As for the Gulf Freeway, the reason it's not called the Southeast Freeway was because the Gulf Freeway, as I'm remembering, was a pre-Interstate "freeway".

Four lanes is more to carry more traffic. In another thread I thought that the HOV/HOT lanes should be two lanes in any given direction because not for capacity purposes but for passing (and breakdowns). And yes, the parkways are few and far between...Allen, Memorial, and (to extents) South Main and TC Jester.

I've always thought that expressways were basically freeways. Parkways won't have the high speed, width, wide shoulders, etc. that freeways do. They're not for moving large amounts of people for miles nor for businesses to crowd around and residential streets to pop off of either...and it would be impractical to retrofit many roads to parkways. One project that might work is extending Post Oak Blvd. along the north side of the bayou (doing all that work they were planning to do) and the south side of Memorial Park and have that connect to Memorail Drive somehow but I can't see that being an especially popular option. The major problem is that inner loop is basically impossible for retrofitting, especially around Uptown (though Uptown needs it the most)

That's interesting. So the US-59 portion south of Midtown should actually be the Eastex Freeway and not Southwest Freeway?

Likewise, an extension to McHard seems tailor-made for a new parkway design instead of a traditional four lane road lined with stoplights and streets. It's too bad that the whole parkway name was hijacked by developers a long time ago, it's really an effective component of the road system that is sadly underutilized.

I had read that one of the features that Weingarten destroyed they claimed wasn't an original 1920s part of the theater, which sounds dubious (an excuse to have it ruined). But I also heard that the oldest theaters (dunno about the Alabama) didn't even have sloped floors, at least not at the rate that the Alabama had. Of course, I wasn't alive when the Alabama was built or even saw it when it was the Bookstop. I did some buy some cookie butter, candied ginger, and chocolate covered espresso beans there yesterday, though.

Yeah, but 249 doesn't even factor in to the directional freeways at all. As a freeway, it's only that past the Outer Belt, so it was just a blip on the radar as far as highways were concerned when the others were named. I don't think it became a freeway at all until the early 1980s.

Yeah, parkways are often misnamed. A good "true parkway" could be created by extending 35 the way it was supposed to be...an overpass at University but other than that a divided four lane road with overpasses/underpasses at major roads and minimal interaction with smaller ones. A tunnel at Griggs, Mykawa, Long, and those railroads, merge with Mykawa south of I-45, interface with Wayside but flyover Bellfort, make the roads south of that cul-de-sacs, and merge in with the existing TX-35 and with McHard, which will then extend parkway-style to Cullen Blvd. and connect that segment. Main Street (US-90A) seems to be another good candidate for a not-quite-freeway and seems like a good alternative to the real freeways.

So I was having dinner with my cousin (among others) at Black Walnut Café yesterday at Rice Village. We started talking about school, leading to statistics, leading to things like induced demand, which I thought was rubbish, but he countered with valid points, saying that adding extra lanes just causes more cars to go there and de-incentivizes other routes (or something like that) and spoke of the needs for other types of roads. Specifically, roads like Allen Parkway, which has limited access but allows you to go at a good 45 mile per hour clip consistently, which is great--unfortunately, it's the only real Houston road that does that. We discussed that even if Kirby was extended down to Pearland (connecting to the stub at Beltway 8), it'd still be a slow and ineffective way to go from his home in Pearland to the Village. I thought about the parkways...they're from a pre-freeway age and are a pretty good hybrid of freeways and surface streets: definitely not for long commutes but an effective way to get around within cities. Robert Moses built a lot of them in New York, but there just aren't that many in Texas. Neither of us proposed doing anything stupid like replacing freeways with parkways, but I thought that parkways (like Allen Parkway) would be a great way to augment the freeway system (and keep traffic flowing) without expanding them more. Thoughts?

Well, La Porte Freeway TX-225 I left out because even it goes off of 610 but doesn't go anywhere after that. US-59 goes to Laredo at the Mexican border and Texarkana at the other end. Northwest Freeway goes to Austin and beyond, I-45 goes to Dallas and terminates at Galveston, I-10 stretches from coast to coast, and 288 goes to Freeport (admittedly not as long as others) but 225 goes from the Loop to La Porte. And yes, I realize that the highways have different names in other cities too...(Santa Monica Freeway is also I-10, but not here!)

I have to admit, I kind of like Houston's freeway naming scheme of basing it after where it goes but I have to wonder why it's not applied consistently. To date, we have (moving counterclockwise): North Freeway - I-45N Northwest Freeway - US-290 Katy Freeway - I-10W (I read that early on this was "West Freeway" but I don't know if when it opened it was known as that or changed before) Southwest Freeway - US-59S South Freeway - TX-288 Gulf Freeway - I-45S (Why isn't this Southeast Freeway?) East Freeway - I-10E Eastex Freeway - US-59N (Why isn't this Northeast Freeway?) So we have 8 freeways with good names but three oddballs. West Freeway was renamed for a reason I can't remember but it was supposed to be named that, Gulf Freeway, no idea but at least the "Gulf" makes sense, and "Eastex"? Where did that even come from?

Renderings just aren't fair. We've accumulated our own collection in the "Houston: Potential" thread, with historic examples, but to put something for another city just seems mean. Renderings most of the time aren't even built, and can range from "Wow I wish that was built here" to "What drug were you snorting when you drew this?"

I noticed yesterday that the Macy's sign (which remained up some 5 years after Ike) is finally gone at Northwest.

No I don't have insider information. A lot of the prospective buyers seem intent on tearing it down, though, and I won't get my hopes up.

Well, typically that might indicate Walmart, but they already have that one at the Oshman's site and Target doesn't typically build SuperTargets anymore. An HEB Plus seems likely at this point: big, but not too fancy.

As appealing as it sounds to have someone buy up and restore it to it's former grandeur, it is a goner.

That was mentioned in another thread, it was visible from Buff Stadium.

Well, that would mean that some areas would get flooded (as if floods aren't a problem already) and for others, the bayous would simply start to look dried up (as if droughts aren't a problem already).

Probably not, but I (a non-Houstonian, though my work paycheck did come from Houston last summer) think that it might've been either on the row of buildings between 59 and Wheeler (razed a number of years for light rail) and not Sears. A little Google digging does find a neon "bread slicing" sign for Fair-Maid, but it was at Buff Stadium (the big Fingers store on I-45 S that closed several years ago)

I wouldn't complain that Houston's becoming too "suburban" especially since the historically low-density did that years ago. In the 1970s, the Heights got a Kmart (decades before the maligned Walmart near I-10) and Montrose got a Kroger (with a relatively large parking lot) with the gamut of fast food (Wendy's, Burger King, McDonald's) in that same era. And no one here is arguing that Montrose is too "suburban" (at least, I hope not).

The big problem is the single lane of the HOV. If any cars go slow (or stop), it will screw up the entire system. A two lane system where both lanes switch will allow for breakdowns or cars traveling less-than-highway speeds.