Houston19514

Is there anything on Hillwood's website? And of course there is this:

Part of the reason for the relative black-out in Houston is that we have the most un-curious, incompetent press in the civilized world. (Just recently our daily newspaper had a story announcing a new CEO at Chevron. It was a story they took from the New York Times. The daily newspaper of the world's energy capital couldn't manage to write their own story about the new CEO at one of our largest employers. Not only did they not write their own story, they didn't even edit it to add any Houston angles... has the new CEO spent any time in Houston? what does this mean, if anything, for Houston? Nothing.) Sorry to go slightly off track.

There are certainly hints of that mindset in Slotboom's "analysis". But that mindset strikes me as the antithesis of the Amazon mindset or culture. Another tidbit of information about the East River site: According to HCAD, the site has 839,000 square feet of existing buildings (including at least one pretty interesting structure). More than enough for their initial requirement. No doubt they need to be updated, but that can obviously be done. The more I look, the more I think Houston has two of the very best sites of any city (East River and 800 Bell neighborhood). And the two are close enough to each other they might even consider doing a combination.

Slotboom's idea that the KBR/East River site is a "nonstarter" because there is "disadvantaged housing" and warehouses nearby is somewhere between laughable and offensive; but either way it's hard to take his "analysis" seriously.

As to sites, what city has a site with an existing up-to-date 500,000 square foot building with adjacent room to expand to 8 million? AFAIK, no candidate site meets that criteria and I don't know of any that come as close as either of our 800 Bell and East River sites. If I am not mistaken, the much-ballyhooed Victory Park proposal plans new construction to accommodate the initial 500,000 square feet requirement. Remember the decision is to be made in 2018 and Amazon wants the initial 500,000 square feet in 2019. (As a point of reference, I believe Shorenstein's plans for 800 Bell are supposed to take about 23 months. In comparison, the construction of KPMG Plaza (a 500,000 square foot building in Dallas) took almost 3 years. FWIW, the folks at Shorenstein (the people who own 800 Bell and who knew quite a lot about office buildings and rehabbing buildings) seem to think 800 Bell can be a Class A office building and have plans to make it so.

Why does Eric (and you) diss our quality of life and culture. Below average quality of life and culture??

With today's opening of Hotel Alessandra, we can add Lucienne and Bardot to the long list of places to eat in the evenings and on weekends in downtown Houston.

What makes you think the Chef's Hall will be buried inside the building? My understanding is that the Chef's Hall indeed takes all of the retail space, but it is in no way buried inside the building.

This can't hurt.

WHOOPS; Dallas's Midtown development not off to a great start.

The market does not have to re-balance to allow construction. All it takes is one large tenant (see, for example Capital Tower.)

Add Oxbow 7 to the long and growing list of places to eat in downtown Houston in the evenings and on weekends.

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Walked by it last night. Looks very nice. That part of downtown has undergone a remarkable transformation over the past decade or so.

LOL Oh, now I see the error. Hilarious example of the incompetence of Houston journalism.

/\ What's the error?

Like a lot of the articles being written about the Amazon HQ2 search, this is pretty much a waste of time. Interesting factoids, but I suspect Amazon is more interested in the number of talented qualified educated potential employees, not so much in the percentage. Houston is at 30.4% with bachelors degrees. 30.4% of 7 million in Houston gives them a much larger talent pool than 35.8% of 2.1 million people in Kansas City (just a random example from the CBS list). One presumes Amazon will conduct a more nuanced analysis of cities than CBS.

Pretty sure there is not a million square feet available in One Shell Plaza. I doubt they even have the 500,000 square feet Amazon wants on day one. Even if there was a million square feet available, where would they put the other 7 million square feet of space they want?

Yes. Amazon.

They want 500,000 square feet to start. 800 Bell is plenty big for that -- the refurbished 800 Bell is slated to have 1.4 Million square feet. The contiguous empty and near-empty blocks surrounding 800 Bell are plenty of land on which to develop an additional 6.6 million square feet of space without going all that tall and keeping some of the existing buildings (which may appeal to Amazon).

My first thought was the same... that we may fall short (or at least be perceived to fall short) in the tech talent pool. But today's Amazon is much more than a pure high-tech operation. They have huge transportation & logistics, inventory, supply chain, networks, engineering, and construction operations and needs, all areas in which Houston is strong. We need to go strong for this. I'm thinking maybe the former Exxon tower and surrounding blocks.

Hopefully, they will proceed with and accelerate the planned North Canal bypass channel.

FWIW, I'm pretty sure we do require new developments to have detention, and have for some time.

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