IronTiger

It was still standing in April 2004, four months after the light rail officially began operation. By October 2005 it was gone. The Delman was wrecked between December 2002 and January 2003 (thanks to GE images). The block to the southwest of Sears seems to have been done away with earlier in 2002.

I know this is going to sound incredibly dumb, but they aren't the same thing? I mean, Campus Vue is on MacGregor...and this is a different project? How confusing.

Weren't they going to retain/renovate the other building?

Good. I mean, to me, Hempstead Highway (along with OST) are representations of "old fashioned highways" complete with old motels in need of some restoration. It's one of the areas of Houston that I had never been on before and was happy to do so. As for the widening, that would sure make it nice to go on.

Nope, 4510 Main, right next to ANOTHER former Holiday/Days Inn.

Every time I hear stories like this, it sounds like the Spring area has deteriorated more and more.

The only thing I see wrong with this plan is that it's not "complete" until they build the Hempstead Tollway, which is the only one that connects to the NW Transit Center, plus it cannibalizes Hempstead Road. I kind of hope that doesn't happen in a while, to be honest. I kinda like Hempstead Road.

Ellsworth Drive

I wouldn't consider it "beyond absurd", since so many people really don't want to see their neighborhood altered. It's not exactly "right next to downtown" either. Yeah, it's closer to downtown than say, Katy, but there's highways and the bayou separating it.

Fact is, none of these huge events really bring in publicity and fame, not a lot of money or a seat at the "cool cities" table. Atlanta tended to luck out in that respect, but these types of things are hit or miss. Super Bowls particularly don't seem to turn a city's success around: Super Bowl XL sure did wonders for Detroit didn't it?

OK, how would you tell a superette from a convenience store by looking at it? Obviously, anything attached to a gas station would be a convenience store, but there are lots of other sketchy/older convenience stores that sell the same product mix (beer/wine, lotto tickets, snacks, etc.) at around the same prices of other convenience stores. Former UtoteM stores qualify, as Circle K began dumping the old 1960s ones without gas pumps almost immediately.

The local TETCO installed a real Slurpee machine, meaning that they are still intending on converting them completely. Last time I recall, there was still a Speedy Stop at TX 6 and 290. Is that still a SS, or did that convert to TETCO?

Finally, one more thing, what about the third McDonald's at 4510 Main? Apparently, it was demolished in 2005, and may be used for METRO projects (just guessing) but what was the story to that one?

OK, I know some about the Astrodomain hotels (Astrodomain, IIRC was Astrodome+Astroworld+Astrohall+four hotels). Originally, there were four hotels (and I gleaned this from Arch-ive.org, sevfiv's wonderful Houston architecture site): the Astroworld Hotel, Sheraton Inn Astroworld (not the full-line Sheraton hotels, this would ultimately be rebranded as Four Seasons by Sheraton), Holiday Inn Astroworld, and Howard Johnson's Astroworld. The Howard Johnson's was ultimately rebranded as Quality Suites, Sheraton Inn eventually became Days Inn and was demolished in the early 2000s, but its the other Astrodomain hotels I'm interested. As we know, Holiday Inn and Astroworld Hotel became Crowne Plaza. According to Emporis, it went under the following names: "Astroworld Motor Hotel, Astro Village Hotel, Sheraton Astrodome Hotel, Radisson Astrodome Hotel, Park Plaza Hotel Reliant Center, Houston Grand Plaza Hotel" But it doesn't account for the Holiday Inn name. This site doesn't take into account when the Holiday Inn merged either (from Google Earth this appears to be in the late 1990s or early 2000s, but could've happened in the early 1990s). It seems like the hotel adopted the Crowne Plaza name circa 2008, Houston Grand Plaza circa 2006, Park Plaza Hotel only briefly in 2005, Radisson at the time when the hotels were foreclosed on in 2002, but Sheraton was the name before that and at least as of 1990. The Holiday Inn was 8111 Kirby AND was still a Holiday Inn in 1994. In 2002, the Holiday Inn and the Radisson were foreclosed on, but they were physically connected by then. In December 2005, it was discussed that the former Holiday Inn (which was connected by that time but the rooms were closed) would be reopened by the Houston Grand Plaza. Days Inn was also closed by 2005 and was demolished in 2006 as part of the Grand Plaza renovations (it remains empty and undeveloped). As another note, it didn't seem to stay long as Park Plaza Hotel, seems it was only a brief name during the worst of times. Sometime in the early 1990s (or late 1980s), Holiday Inn jumped over to a former Ramada (8111 Kirby) where it remains today. But unless some aerial imagery has steered me wrong, the hotels were NOT connected at that point. So what happened to the Holiday Inn side? Did it go under another name that the Astroworld Hotel didn't? It's pretty easy to find out some of the eccentricities of the hotel like the Celestial Suite (though pictures are hard to come by) but I want to know more about the actual name changes of the hotel.

Yeah, it was mostly in regards to "Things you do not want to happen to you" category. Amazingly, the accident didn't incapacitate either driver (physics says that most of the force was applied to the road, and not into the hapless minivan), but a situation like that (especially as I've been in that particular intersection many times) is something you NEVER, EVER want to see.

I know the feeling. Back in 2009-era...I posted a lot of threads that I really wish would stay buried. But like asbestos, they're pretty harmless as long as no one disturbs them. (Also, am I the only one disappointed expecting to see Niche or RedScare upon opening this thread?)

1. There's nothing wrong with liking downtowns. That was mostly in response to downtowns are romanticized as opposed to the 1930s are romanticized. Of course downtowns would be better if the parking lots were full of actual buildings and people and all that, but I was arguing that people mis-blame the reasons as to why it happened. 2. Sorry, that last part should be "In non-downtown (suburban) environments, abandonment and demolition will be viewed differently. People will talk about..." I think the greatest problem of downtowns is the common development issue of putting a single office building on a block with almost no street-level shops or access. That's one disadvantage of the new Marriott, I think: the old 806 Main at least had a Domino's on the lower level.

Is this thread about the same building?

Nearly every major American city experienced some sort of deep decline in their downtowns (or in their cities, Sunbelt cities did not have hemmed-in borders--St. Louis, Detroit, NYC, Philadelphia, Cleveland, etc. suffered massive population losses in the 1950s through 1970s), some deeper than others. Downtowns are romanticized. You come across a parking lot in a downtown, the type where you can see that buildings once covered the entire block: many regret that the buildings were demolished, maybe express some anger toward "car culture", walk away with a "this shouldn't have happened" feel; but demolished areas elsewhere will talk about things being overbuilt or maybe some sort of pithy statement about consumerism. No one would talk about downtowns being "overbuilt" even in their prime, but in both areas, demographics shifted, and the area was left with a surplus of abandoned buildings, but they're viewed totally differently.

It was on Demolitions Report June 6th.

People move around. It's the same reason why there's abandoned strip malls and other empty/underused structures in some parts of town.

I thought about Dallas and I know someone who lives on a road in the Plano-Richardson area that is six laned in parts, but when it goes through old 1960s homes, the road is two way with a dual bike/parking lane. Arapaho Road has six lanes and is near the Central Expressway, and until about 10 years ago houses existed directly along the six lane road. Obviously, these didn't rise in land value all that much, and the city was able to acquire them and raze them. They weren't used for eminent domain (they remain empty) or redeveloped any other way, or along a floodplain. There were only about a dozen homes that were razed because they were the only ones built like this. All others are serviced by side streets or alleys. One major road north, Park Blvd., in parts with homes facing outwards to the main road, the outer lane (six lanes total, not unlike Richmond) is converted to a parking lane, so it's a four lane in practice. I don't think homeowners in Kirby or Richmond have that option. The other big difference is that in the Plano-Richardson, the houses are fairly small 1960s-era affairs, but I don't know how wealthy the people who live there actually are.

The Alabama Theater's sloping floor was covered in concrete, several feet in places. Restoration is plausible but I can't see it happening.

Modern pictures on Yelp show it's still there, but it's probably employees only.

Is it true that the leveling of the floor of the Alabama Theater was because of ADA requirements and code, at least partially?