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Houston19514

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Everything posted by Houston19514

  1. Houston19514
    They may be trying, but their efforts have been a miserable failure. It doesn't matter if their stated goal is to win every Pulitzer prize offered. The product they are producing is horrible and seems to be getting worse. Cohen joined the paper in 2002. Can anyone seriously suggest they are closer now than they were 12 years ago to being one of the papers in the country that are must-reads for the country's intelligentsia? It's hard to even type the question without laughing.
  2. Houston19514
    You get the audience you earn. I don't even waste my time going to their site any more and dropped my print subscription 20 years ago.
  3. Houston19514
    Yeah, besides that evidence. If that's the extent of the evidence, I rest my case. Transferring a guy from a Hearst newspaper in a smaller market doesn't really impress me as making much of an effort to bring journalistic talent to town. The proof is in the pudding. The primary newspaper in the largest metro areas of the country have been awarded the Pullitzer Prize the number of times shown next to their name: New York Times -- 112 Los Angeles Times -- 41 Chicago Tribune -- 25 Dallas M News -- 9 Houston Chronicle -- 0 Philadelphia Inquirer -- 19 Washington Post -- 47 Miami Herald -- 20 Denver Post -- 8 Atlanta J-C -- 11 Boston Globe -- 23 San Fran Chronicle -- 6
  4. Houston19514
    They are MUCH louder than our Metro trains.
  5. Houston19514
    It's publicly known that 6 Houston Center is just a few weeks from being started? Is that based on the Downtown Houston Development Map that says construction is starting in the 2nd quarter of 2014 (which ended a few weeks ago)? Have they even taken soil samples? Note that behind that lovely marketing banner is a surface lot completely full of parked cars. We've seen this kabuki before from Crescent with regard to 6 Houston Center. Remember the ground-breaking they had back in 2008? I hope my skepticism is misplaced (although I'd like more to be wrong about International Tower). EDIT: This got me curious, so I went to see if they have pulled any building permits. Good news. It appears they pulled a permit in March for "site work and foundation for office tower" and one in April for "new high rise superstructure for future..." I wonder if they had building permits back in 2008...
  6. Houston19514
    Yeah, I don't expect to see this one get built any time soon. International Tower also seems pretty unlikely at the moment and I'm skeptical about 6 Houston Center.
  7. Houston19514
    I think what you are thinking of is the McDonalds at Vinita, Oklahoma. It's not really retail integrated into a bridge, per se, in that it's purpose is not to get either people or cars from one side to the other. Kinda more like the other way around, I guess... a bridge integrated into a retail structure. The building hosting the McDonald's restaurant was originally built when the turnpike opened in 1957 as one of the Glass House restaurants, owned by the now-defunct Interstate Hosts company. Because of this heritage, it is also known as the "Glass House McDonald's" and the "McDonald's Glass House Restaurant". Later, the building also operated as a Howard Johnson's restaurant. http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/11683 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Rogers_Turnpike#Vinita_service_plaza
  8. Houston19514
    Oh. I thought we were talking about the construction boom.
  9. Houston19514
    Not likely. Show us a rail project anywhere that reduced congestion in a noticeable way. And by the way, another dog that won't hunt is the repeated lie that the Katy Freeway project did not reduce congestion in a significant way. Repeating the lie does not make it true. Years after completion, despite huge population, job and economic growth, the Katy Freeway is still significantly less congested than it was prior to the widening project.
  10. Houston19514
    To be more precise and fair, the dog that doesn't hunt is the one who constantly, and falsely, claims or implies that building rail would have meant no traffic congestion, or even significantly less traffic congestion.
  11. Houston19514
    I didn't think there was ever a vote on the monorail plan.
  12. Houston19514
    Let's do a comparison/forecast to/for the current boom (new-build high rises in italics) I did not include Capitol Tower, International Tower, or 5 Allen Center . . . 2016 is going to amazing: 2014 SkyHouse Savoy rebuild/Holiday Inn Carter Bldg rebuild/JW Marriott 2015 1111 Travis 500 Crawford (not a tower, but still part of the boom) Block 334 (Alliance; again, not a tower) Texaco Building rebuild 2016 609 Main @ Texas Marriott Marquis Hines Market Square 6 Houston Center ? Marquette Place Hampton Inn/Homewood Suites Hilton Garden Inn Hotel Allesandra Leon Capital 5 story Orion 8 story Nau Center GRB North Garage/Office/Retail HSPVA 2017 1600 Louisiana One Market Square? Block 98 Market Square Tower Camden 21 story Trammel Crow 6 story
  13. Houston19514
    When looking over that timeline, it's pretty clear that boom really started well before 1973... 3 highrises were built downtown in 1971 (by which I think they mean completed in 1971). 5 more in 1972. 1971 One Shell Plaza 801 St. Joseph Total Plaza 1972 1111 Fannin 600 Jefferson Two Shell Plaza Hyatt Regency One Allen Center 1973 KBR Tower 1974 Two Houston Center Centerpoint Energy Plaza 1976 Pennzoil Plaza Pennzoil Plaza 1978 Two Allen Center LyondellBassell Tower 1980 Three Allen Center Enterprise Plaza 1981 First City Tower 1982 Binz Building Fulbright Tower 600 Travis 1983 Four Houston Center Wedge International Building 1400 Smith Bank of America Center Wells Fargo Plaza 1984 Lyric Center 1301 Fannin 1600 Smith
  14. Houston19514
    I just hope their outrageously ugly parking garage bites the dust in a hurry. One of the biggest remaining eyesores downtown.
  15. Houston19514
    It is my understanding that the three old buildings are indeed still standing. I read somewhere that there are some funny/awkward transitions between buildings where the floors of adjoining buildings did not match up.
  16. Houston19514
    and there is pretty much no evidence of the Chronicle ever targeting top journalism talent.
  17. Houston19514
    Because the story was written by a Chronicle "reporter".
  18. Houston19514
    FWIW, it has been reported that they are considering building a second SkyHouse in Charlotte next door to the first Charlotte SkyHouse.
  19. Houston19514
    Isn't it owned by Amegy Bank? That's what I find in HCAD. No sale has been recorded. So it could just as easily be SkyHouse, Alliance, or someone else altogether...
  20. Houston19514
    Yeah. That quote is just wrong. According to Transwestern, downtown Houston has 55,285,545 square feet of office space. Other services show a smaller number because they don't include owner-occupied buildings (e.g., the huge Chevron complex). But I have no idea where they might have come up with that 28 Million square feet number being larger than downtown Houston. Ridiculous.
  21. Houston19514
    I don't pretend to know the intricacies of Hines' financing for its thousands of building projects over the years. So allow me to rephrase: Hines may not need to get conventional financing like many, if not most, other developers. The standard percentage-units-sold hurdle to get condominium financing probably does not apply to Hines. Having said that, let's not get too far off course. I have no reason to think Hines has any interest whatsoever in converting their Market Square tower to condos.
  22. Houston19514
    Except that Hines may not need financing.
  23. Houston19514
    "new retail space along Preston"
  24. Houston19514
    They are also building an "addition" to the current building. It will fill in the gap in the current building (and perhaps a little more), so there is some not-insignificant construction to be done.
  25. Houston19514
    Tap, tap, tap...Getting impatient for the promised update. ;-)
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