IronTiger

Philly and Houston are nothing alike. For example, Philadelphia's main draw is being one of the birthplaces of the nation largely surrounded by neighborhoods that will suck your soul out (largely, don't give me the anomalies) while Houston has less of a touristy downtown but decent neighborhoods surrounding it. Houston is a place where you can live largely the way you choose, living in a quasi-suburban house is possible in Houston, but not in Philadelphia. I'm sure if that article was mentioned on Swamplot, they'd have a field day with it.

Mixed-use doesn't even have to be ground level. One great example of where mixed-use worked (as "they must be able to work separately") was in College Station, and one of my favorite subjects to study. Enter Doux Chene Apartments, a trendy French-themed apartment complex (here on Google Maps, note the largest main building with the stairs leading up) very similar in layout, theme, and trendiness of the Chateau(x) Dijon Apartments where a younger W. lived years before. Originally, it was a fancy restaurant called Mansard House. Later, it held no less than 3 nightclubs, one of which was a discotheque. The set-up lasted at least 10 consecutive years, better than most can claim. We can observe that although it had low density (it was on the fringes of town at the time) and was set back from the street, it had good parking, on a busy road, BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY it followed the golden rule: an area where it was both acceptable for residential and commercial to survive in the spot.

I have another idea. The Seawall is decades old even in the newest parts. What if a new seawall was built in front of the old seawall, and the old one was demolished for a widened promenade?

Last I heard, the parking never created a cent of profits, too.

Which is what I've been saying before...a business won't survive from the sole occupants, unless you want the residents to subsidize it or something.

Nah, I like it the way it is, I don't think that I can stomach another domain change. The move from .info to .com messed up Google searches (you said so yourself) and I think also caused a lot of people to leave (or at least, start the process of leaving, if that makes sense).

#2 used to be the Chick-fil-A Express in 2013. The mall seems way too dark in some places with too-low ceilings but I guess that's just part of the time it was built. I imagine it's more depressing if you remember what it used to be, which I never really experienced.

Well, with CityCentre, you run into one problem of mixed-use: you're relying on a base outside of what you have inside. CityCentre, as I understand it, has a variety of great shops and restaurants that people want to go to. This results in overflowing parking. The parking garages seem like a good solution but I've heard that it's locked up with valet parking. At least they have the parking garages to begin with (courtesy of Town & Country Mall) because they need 'em. So let's go back to your theory. If a restaurant is in a pretty dense area to begin with (not necessarily cramped NYC style stuff but some place that has a substantial residential area to draw from), then it might work, especially if it's big enough of a draw for the immediate neighborhood but not destination dining/shopping. But even in your "restaurant theory", that's still a pretty generous assumption to assume that even the 60% of them that do go out will take it one out of every 5 times they'll go out to eat. One effective way is to try to get high-turnover tenants: coffee shops, dry cleaners, stuff that will appeal to people on a regular basis. Shops and restaurants not so much because people will likely get tired of them. I know that in everyone's favorite satellite college town, a new CVS/pharmacy is working out quite nicely at the base of a student living complex because they know they're not just trying to feed off the students there but because it's across the street from Texas A&M and they can get a lot of walk-in traffic that way. But it also works as a full neighborhood CVS, so there's a bit of shared parking lot between the CVS and a walk-in medical clinic. A denser neighborhood would not necessarily eliminate the need for parking either. While I haven't gone into what happens when you have mixed-use in relatively isolated areas (hint: it's not pretty, unless you can pull it off amazingly well). The magic issue is of course, parking. How do you build enough (or have enough) so that it can reasonably attract who you want to frequent the business but not enough that it just becomes wasteful?

Well, I did go in April 2013 and at the time, there was one diner/cafeteria place with red/green/blue/white tiles (don't ask me what it was), a Chick-fil-A Express (limited menu, akin to what you'd see on college campuses), and a few local places. The antique mall is there too, and I kind of liked that (but didn't explore all of it), but it's a bit disheartening to see it and imagine the J.C. Penney that was there before (and I've never even seen that JCPenney, just pictures of what it might've looked like given the age and prototype) As for Macy's, you're right. The Macy's at Northwest has been sitting far too long empty and probably not worth a serious investment. The bigger problem is because the reduced parking lot makes it difficult to navigate and the anchor pad (oversized anyway) would need to be demolished and rebuilt.

I read that Piccadilly closed earlier this year, unfortunately. While Greenspoint can be wrecked (well, maybe leave the theaters), I think NW Mall still has legs. First, move Macy's from Greenspoint to NW Mall, reopening it. While NW Mall isn't too healthy it's far better than Greenspoint, because what made it special and unique was stripped out over two decades ago (trees!), it was becoming a mess even in the 1990s, and a realistic window for saving it has come and gone (yes, in 2008 I would've happily jumped on that bandwagon, but no longer!). Even the food court isn't good (Brothers Pizza departed several years back). When downtown malls in other cities failed, the thing that always tends to survive is the food court because of office workers in the area. While Greenspoint has office buildings nearby, even the Greenspoint food court isn't a viable place for that anymore. At best, it is far too big for the neighborhood it's serving, and a vacant lot is going to be better than a blighted "redevelopment" or anything like that. Did I tell you that I have friends of a friend who will defend Greenspoint EXCEPT for the mall. Time to pop the festering zit on Greenspoint's face. Game Over. Northwest Mall on the other hand, despite having some of its parking lot marred, isn't in deep trouble like Greenspoint is. It has fountains, a nearly full food court, and a few stores. It's a lot quieter, and I think with some more aggressive marketing, some new stores, and the like, it can still remain.

Well, mixed use is a lot more complicated than many think. It has to be commercial and residential area, the location has to be good, there needs to be enough parking (no way does ANY mixed use building rely mostly on people living above) or in a relatively dense area anyway.

A&M's games are simply really popular. Even in the worst days of Aggie football, they drew tens of thousands of people (60k, IIRC?), while at Baylor, they can (practically) give away seats for free and still require near-permanent tarps. [That's what happened at Floyd Casey, you can bet that will happen at "McLame" Stadium] A&M of course has its own problems with enlarged fees and all that, but that's a different issue altogether. Point is, a college football stadium isn't obliged to give students free/super-reduced seats in the stadium, nor is it "the norm" to charge hundreds for a seat. In U of H's case, football just isn't that big of a thing. They're in a relatively obscure conference (at least C-USA) and if they were to play A&M, it would be one of the first games in seasons where A&M can hone their skills in thrashing lesser opponents (like Rice--sorry, Owls)

IIRC, purple is in the area and works in the hotel biz. He really helped me out on the history of a rather interesting hotel in the area.

About 4 or 5 years ago, I created "Lone Star Lake at Houston", an outdoor mall that I designed and traced from a Greenspoint Mall aerial and preserving the anchors at the time (I wrote in Foley's, in an alternate universe where the name was preserved somehow). LSL@Houston was extensive and featured "Astro Pavilion", a scaled down theme park taking salvage from a certain theme park. It was somewhat forward-thinking, too--the Tower Records at the mall would end up becoming a Trader Joe's (this was before TJ's actually opened in Houston). The mall area featured a mini-train and a star-shaped lake, too. Reality, of course, is different. One of the big problems of your Greenspoint is you can't create something out of nothing in a largely unproven area. Search around on HAIF, for Tang City Mall, for instance, an Asian strip mall built in the 1980s that never gained more than three tenants (ever). There has been a plan circulating for years called the Renaissance at Greenspoint, but that's never amounted more than a new movie theater. Adding apartments isn't likely going to work--typically new mid-rise apartments build in gentrifying areas, not where the area is depressed. If it's competitively priced with other areas, it won't work since Greenspoint is so undesirable (at least comparatively), if it's lower-priced you risk running into the same problem that ruined Greenspoint and Gulfton--a glut of cheap apartments that turn into slums. Greenspoint has been in trouble for years (a miracle it managed to last this long, really). It has just two things that could be considered anchors...a Dillard's Clearance Center and a Macy's, the latter wanting to close as early as the late 1990s (as Foley's) but convinced to stay (possibly by giving them virtually-free rent), and even then the department store has one floor open only (Dillard's too). On the upshot, Greenspoint Mall is one of the worst parts of Greenspoint in many ways, so good could come from taking it down. My idea? Demolish the entire thing and put it up for sale. Any remaining tenants have good selection in nearby vacant strip malls.

Satellite updated too--check out Montrose and Dallas on Google Maps.

Well, you've just shown light on one problem: when an influx of people come in like for the Olympics, it will start to degrade the quality of the rest of the city, and people won't be happy if bus routes are cancelled, rerouted, or get cut schedules. Those that can afford it will try to get out of town.

Google has the Walk at a very slow pace. And the Inner Loop is only 15% of Houston's land by area (~20% population)

I actually did cross the street at Westheimer to get to Katz. I ate there a few years ago, but I honestly don't remember it being TOO traumatic.

Yeah, but it's kind of a moot point anyway since Fingers closed that facility in 2012 (for good) and was finally finished off this year.

Looks like the...Bestway Motor Inn? The fire looks like it's closer to the driver than Fingers is, and the driver is heading north.

First off, I apologize in advance for the topic title. It rhymes! (and it's unique, too) In all seriousness, though, what was Houston like in the peak of the "No Zoning" days? I've read some pretty crazy stuff, like the fireworks factory in the middle of a residential neighborhood, or the "mongrel neighborhood" ad, which despite its racist undertones, depicting houses turning into bars and shops (would a house really convert to a bar in the middle of a street?) or was it far less pronounced (just on the corners/frontage of well-trafficked roads, ease of converting residential to commercial, or densifying unexpectedly)? Furthermore, has the "peak" passed and things have pretty much fallen into place, or there are incredibly oddly placed businesses/homes still evident today? For example, big houses sit next to strip malls on Richmond, but it's freeway/strip mall/house/house/house/house/house/house/house not freeway/strip mall/house/house/house/random other business/house/strip mall/another few houses etc. I know that one of the ways that Greenway Plaza was built so easily is that they got everyone to sign because the deed was expiring and neighbors were suspicious that Lamar-Weslayan would "go commercial", but I have no idea what the "threat" level was.

Instead of demolishing and replacing it with a miniature replica, why not remove the exterior walls (removing the whole "airflow" problem) and leave the Dome intact?

1. It's not a theme park, not a museum. Are you one of those people at Epcot who think that the pavilions are trash because they don't show what the "real" country is like? 2. The goofy "Texas" theme will still be everywhere. If you've explored an airport terminal in Texas (well, I can speak only for the Dallas airport, but you get my drift), they'll be some store selling touristy "Texas" crap. 3. Some article in Houstonia mocked the tourist view of Texas with a cartoon of someone standing in Discovery Green and thinking "I thought there'd be more cow poop" or something along those lines. If you want to experience a fake, cowboy theme park version of Texas, go to the theme park. That's why it's called "The Theme Park Version". If you want Real Texas, explore Houston or the areas outside of it.

What's interesting about these maps is it says a lot about who drew them. White, liberal, Inner Loop, probably single, has no friends that are outer loop conservatives or Mexican...so based on their map, I'd say they live in the downtown area. Or Midtown.