Houston19514

Not to mention college sports.

That probably has more to do with Camille's than with this location. Not sure that company has much time left.

What Chron articles have been picked up nationally in recent times (or, for that matter, ever?)

The 102 still runs from Greenspoint to downtown. If it doesn't stop near where you stay, you could probably save a lot of time by taking the 6 to Greenspoint Transit Center and then switch to the 102

Two high rise residential buildings were built -- 14 and 15 Greenway Plaza -- 30 stories each.

Yes and no. The people who re-did it did not find tenants. But they did sell it. It was purchased by the Episcopal Health Foundation. They plan to move their offices into the upper floors (may have already moved in). The first floor and mezzanine have been leased to Christ Church Cathedral. It will house the Hines Center for Spirituality and Prayer.

Only a couple years, I think.

Isn't that where 1000 Main is located? I had not known Hines did that demoliation. Would be interesting to see what their plans were at the time of the demolition. (And of course the early-mid 80s oil bust was a unique period. One suspects Hines had no intention at the time of letting it sit as parking for 15 years.)

Hines has not been known to buy properties with any intention of sitting on them for any extended period of time, and I cannot think of a single instance where they have bought a property, demolished it, and replaced it with a parking lot.

Actually, it's no news at all. Nothing but speculation on the part of Ralph Bivins.

Glad you're not trying to nit pick. ;-)

Seriously? The West Loop is probably the most congested freeway in town. And I did not use "without traffic" numbers. I did the calculations with traffic at the time (mid-morning). If you look at rush hour traffic times you'll get similar results. There is no case to be made that the Northwest Mall site is better for serving the largest destinations or the most destinations in Houston. Just looking at connections to the various destinations by car, the Post Office site is the hands-down winner. If you add in the added benefit the Post Office site provides by accessibility to transit and the ability to walk to good portions of downtown, it's no contest. (There may be other factors supportive of the Northwest Mall site, e.g., land cost, cost to build the rail into downtown; but providing the best accessibility to the most destinations is not a factor that favors the Northwest Mall site.) The Post Office site is more convenient to : Downtown Museum District Texas Medical Centern (and by extension NRG Park) NASA/Clear Lake/Kemah Galveston The Woodlands/Exxon Mobil/Springwoods Village/Conroe Greenway Plaza Pearland Baytown (and by extension, the Beaumont/Port Arthur region) The Northwest Mall site is more convenient to : The Galleria/Uptown Sugar Land Katy/Energy Corridor Cypress

I'm pretty sure the parking garage structure will fill in that gap.

Because other major league ballparks don't have advertisements in their outfields??

What are you talking about? NO ONE is assuming everyone's final destination will be downtown. See the above posts discussing at length the travel times to various non-downtown destinations.

Indeed, we need "proper road access". As you say, the Northwest Mall site is accessible from 290, 610 and 10. The downtown site is just as easily accessible (arguably easier) from I-10, I-45, and I69/US59. Perhaps you've noticed, Houston's freeway system radiates in all directions, with downtown at the the center of the system. I'm not following your conclusion that, even though freeways feed into and out of downtown in all directions, somehow "as for destinations, it's terrible". How is a downtown station terrible "as for destinations"? And how is the Northwest Mall site better? 10,000 passengers a day? That is not a large number to handle. About 1/2 that number use Metro's Main Street Square station on an average day. Look at the sites they are looking at in Dallas to get an idea of how much space they need. The sites we are discussing downtown (either Hardy Yards area or (my preference) the Amtrak/Post Office site, have plenty of space. Antagonistic grid streets? I'm not sure where to start with that. Maybe I'll let a traffic engineer address that silliness. Here are some examples of travel to various destinations from the two sites, according to Google Maps: Texas Medical Center: From Northwest Mall by car: 25 Minutes From Post Office site by car: 14 Minutes From Northwest Mall by transit: 1 hour, 2 minute From Post Office site by transit: 36 minutes BG Group Place (as a stand-in for the hundreds of downtown destinations): From Northwest Mall by car: 18 minutes From Post Office site by car: 5 minutes From Northwest Mall by transit: 41 minutes From Post Office site by transit: 8 minutes Galleria (as a stand-in for the dozens of uptown destinations): From Northwest Mall by car: 14 minutes From Post Office site by car: 17 minutes From Northwest Mall by transit: 29 minutes From Post Office site by transit: 42 minutes Greenway Plaza From Northwest Mall by car: 17 minutes From Post Office site by car: 14 minutes From Northwest Mall by transit: 49 minutes From Post Office site by transit: 45 minutes NASA From Northwest Mall by car: 47 minutes From Post Office site by car: 38 minutes From Northwest Mall by transit: 2 hours, 24 minutes From Post Office site by transit: 1 hour, 52 minutes Galveston From Northwest Mall by car: 1 hr, 9 minutes From Post Office site by car: 1 hr, 1 minute Baytown From Northwest Mall by car: 36 minutes From Post Office site by car: 30 minutes Katy From Northwest Mall by car: 28 minutes From Post Office site by car: 32 minutes Kingwood From Northwest Mall by car: 38 minutes From Post Office site by car: 36 minutes The Woodlands From Northwest Mall by car: 35 minutes From Post Office site by car: 33 minutes Sugar Land From Northwest Mall by car: 29 minutes From Post Office site by car: 30 minutes Pearland From Northwest Mall by car: 39 minutes From Post Office site by car: 31 minutes Cypress From Northwest Mall by car: 25 minutes From Post Office site by car: 30 minutes

Sorry, but there is nothing in your post that makes any sense at all. As already stated, there is simply no place in the metro with better access from all directions than downtown. There is zero reason to think we could not accommodate the meeting of an HSR line, the light rail, a Greyhound depot and metro buses without buying out UH-D (perhaps some of UH-D's vacant land might be used, but that is all the better.) Not sure where the "HSR causing additions to the skyline" idea came from, but there is nothing wrong with building a tower over or next to an HSR station. There is plenty of room for everyone on the northern edge of downtown. A [major] transit center with HSR, Amtrak, light rail, Greyhound and bus just does not need that much space. Light rail and Amtrak are already there. A transit center/station for all components, with a walkway to the light rail station would not take that much space (and there's no reason it could not have a tower (or towers) above it).

Yeah, there is simply no place in the metro area that is as easily accessible from all parts of the metro area as downtown Houston. (And fwiw, the same cannot be said for downtown Dallas.)

Sounds like you haven't been buying big enough boulders.

Aloft, Hampton Inn Springhill Suites Homewood Suites Marriott Marquis JW Marriott Holiday Inn and Hotel Alessandra

Alessandra website still says it's opening Fall 2016.

I don't think the city promised more hotel rooms than we already had. We were required to commit 19,000 rooms. We passed the hurdle long long ago (and with regard to the 2017 Super Bowl, had it met a the time the bid was made). I'm pretty sure the only specific promise made to the Super Bowl selection committee regarding new hotels was that we would have the Marriott Marquis as part of the package. I think we have somewhere around 75,000 hotel rooms in the metro area. By the time the Super Bowl arrives, we should have well more than the 19,000 in just the central areas of Downtown/Medical Center/Museum District/Uptown/Greenway Plaza (if we didn't already). Downtown and Uptown combined will have well over 16,000 rooms.

From the "glass half-full (or indeed 3/4 full)" view, 3 years ago, Urbannizer's August 27 picture would have had at least twice as many available lots. 15 years or so ago, it would have been almost entirely vacant.

Hate to break to all you knee-jerk Landry haters, but the Downtown Aquarium is a "real" aquarium, accredited and everything. It may not be the world's largest aquarium, but it is indeed real and not insignificant.

BBP does regular boat tours on Buffalo Bayou