Houston19514

^ The narrative included in the initial post clearly states ONE city block: "Taking up whole city block, located on SE corner of the George R Brown Convention Center, bound by Clay, St. Emanuel, Bell & Chartres." The hotel site is the block to the north...Bell, St. Emanuel, Polk & Chartres.

Property owners, not the city, are responsible for installation and maintenance of sidewalks (although the city could do a better job of imposing/enforcing some sort of standard).

"misleading"? How about "worthless". ;-)

Yes, they (Houston First Corporation) were talking about residential on this block. They put it on the market and set a date for receiving proposals. None of the crack journalists in this town have ever followed up on the story... So who knows? Perhaps they received no proposals. Perhaps they received no good proposals. Perhaps they have sold the property to one of the proposal-makers...

I understood what you meant. I think the Continental executives who made the merger decision(s) were/are a bunch of morons.

I'll probably regret asking this, but what are you talking about? ;-)

What a bunch of morons...

Good points, except I'm not sure that the days of getting 3000 square feet new construction single family homes in the suburbs with great schools for $250k are gone.

^ Nothing unexpected and it's not as if the whole building is available for rent. They have one large block of space (about 230,000 square feet), one medium-sized block of space (just over 110,000 square feet) and a few scattered smaller spaces.

They originally planned an 80,000 square foot store, but after building a couple of those they apparently didn't work so well and they said they did not plan to build any more that large. They reduced the size of the Post Oak plan to 48,500 square feet. Still larger than most Whole Foods stores, I think, but not as large as originally planned.

Yes, they have taken the space formerly occupied by Devon Energy. I believe Chevron has subleased the space until some time in 2017.

^ Cool! Thanks for posting.

The City of Fort Worth is indeed growing faster than the City of Dallas, FWIW. But the Fort Worth-Arlington division is not growing as fast as the Dallas-Plano-Irving division.

Not true. While Houston is growing faster than DFW, the difference is negligible (4.33% vs. 4.28% over the 27-month period from April 2010 to July 2012) and not nearly enough to make up the 500,000 + difference in our current populations by 2030.

Any such decision would likely not come until after the 2020 census is conducted.

There aren't really any tunnels underneath the building. There are only 2 tunnels connecting to the basement of the building. One to 1000 Main and one to the Macy's parking garage. There will be no use for those tunnels until the new complex opens, so yes, I would imagine they will remain closed.

So which is it? Is this plan "pretty expensive for what we are getting" (as you claimed in post # 263) or are we getting so much for our money that it's too good to be true as you now suggest? You seem very confused as to what your position is. You seem to be intentionally missing the point of the comparison with the other convention center/exhibit halls posted. There is nothing apples/oranges about the comparisons. In each case, a public entity is spending money to create exhibition halls. We are proposing to do so for a fraction of the price per square foot that other communities are spending/have spent.

Focus, dude. Try to focus on the actual proposal rather than your fevered conspiracy theories.

If the Nashville comparison is not worth getting into, why did you proceed to get into it? In any event, thanks for reinforcing my argument that they paid almost three times the price for roughly the same amount of exhibit space (without anything close to the flexibility). And ours is in an already world-renowned architectural marvel. Theirs is in a new building that will be dated in 20 years. Not in the dome's league? You are out of your mind. Likewise with your statement about the Raleigh convention center. Thanks for clarifying that despite paying more 5 years ago than we project to pay now, they ended up with a span "nothing like that of the Dome's existing" and got themselves a basic warehouse structure. Your statement that we are not getting much for our money could not be more wrong.

How so? For an investment of approximately $195 Million (in fairness, less than that, because if we don't do this project we still have to either continue to spend a couple million per year to maintain it or spend tens of millions to demolish it, but let's just go with the $195 Million figure), we get a 355,000 square foot multi-purpose convention/trade show/sports/gathering space facility unlike any other in the world. For comparison: --Nashville recently spent $623 Million to build the 350,000 square foot Music City Center, which is a relatively run-of-the mill convention center. --Oklahoma City is working on a new convention center (again, a relatively run-of-the-mill facility, on which they plan to spend $250 Million for around 250,000 square feet of exhibit and meeting space. -- 5 years ago, Raleigh NC spent $221 Million on a run-of-the-mill convention center with approximately 190,000 square feet of exhibit and meeting space.

^ Houston Street in Dallas looks like what??

That's exactly right. I'm quite sure there were plenty of Subdudes around town in the early 60s proclaiming that we should not build the Astrodome because they were not aware of anyone ever having built an enclosed air conditioned baseball stadium and that it had never once made economic sense to do so. Thank goodness the Subdudes of the 60s did not carry the day.

Of course you are completely ignoring the fact that there has never once been another facility quite like the Astrodome. It's just a tad different from repurposing Texas Stadium or Mile High Stadium or Yankee Stadium. (And you are also completely ignoring the successful repurposing of Compaq Center just up the road.)

Ahhhh... Well, shoot. A little disappointing they aren't starting sooner. Hopefully, that is incorrect. I'm just getting a little impatient for some of these downtown high-rises (both office and residential) to get started and see some more cranes in the sky. ;-)

Not true. Downtown Dallas actually has zero high-rise residential projects under construction. There are 2 or 3 projects in the Uptown and Victory Park areas adjacent to downtown, but none downtown.