Houston19514

According to the website of Forest City Enterprises, the Mercantile is slated to have 30,000 square feet of retail. Not quite in the same league as HP.

The drop in his support may not be laid totally on his opposition to rail. But there was clearly no groundswell of support for him in the rail-affected neighborhoods, as one might have expected there to be if one believed Culberson and AftonAg when they told us of the overwhelming numbers in the affecte neighborhoods supposedly opposed to rail on Richmond. Same goes for Martha Wong's rather large loss.

Has anyone thought of e-mailing the woman and asking her?

Actually, I think the city's primary interest was the retail development. Whether it has been new or conversion, the fact is there has been quite a bit of residential development. Street-level retail is where we are lagging. Having said that, I hope (and presume) that HP will be announcing some non-restaurant retail tenants soon. But even if not, it does seem to have some spurred some other street-level retail in the area.

Over here, man. Yeah, right over here. This is the discussion... it's about Victory Park and it's efffect, positive or negative on downtown Dallas. I don't know what all that other ranting of yours was about. Let it go. Take a deep breath. Take a look around. You might notice everyone but you is having a good-natured, friendly, fact-based discussion. Feel free to join us if you are capable.

October 2008 (the completion date stated in the article) is almost 2 years from now... ;-) I'd put my money on the latter...

I'm afraid you missed my point. I completely agree that downtown Dallas is far from the economic center of Dallas. But, where you see a buildup of Victory shifting the center to the south (or at least slowing the northern shift), I see a buildup of Victory actually shifting the center slightly more to the north. Which one of us is right depends on where Victory tenants are moving from, and to a lesser extent, where they would have moved (or not moved, as the case may be) if the buildup of Victory were not occurring. From what I have seen (and I could very easily be wrong on this), it appears that the bulk of tenants moving into Victory are moving from downtown. If so, the mathematical exercise of calculating the economic center would show a slight shift further to the north. Possibly offsetting that to some extent is the possibility that those former downtown tenants would have moved to Plano etc if the buildup of Victory were not there. I don't buy that there would be wholesale moves from downtown to Plano if Victory weren't being built up. It varies from company to company of course, but I am VERY confident that Haynes & Boone and the other large law firms would not be moving to Plano even if Victory were not available. AND, since we're dealing in hypotheticals, IF Victory weren't being built up it seems much more likely that there would enough demand downtown for new multi-tenant buildings to be built IN downtown Dallas, further decreasing the likelihood of relocations to Plano (for those tenants who just want to move to a newer fancier building, no matter the location). By the same token, if a downtown tenant wants a suburban location,there is nothing at Victory to keep them in the central city (except that it does appear in photos at least to have a pretty car-centric, suburban-office-park ambience going. ;-)

Whole Foods was around long before Eatzi's. You are correct about Central Market being born after Eatzi's. If they reopen in Houston, I would expect it would be somewhere other than in the same shopping center as a new flagship Whole Foods, but ya never can tell. It seems very odd that they would close so suddenly and just drop orders they've already taken. That suggests to me that they are not in a good relationship with Wulfe and want out NOW (and won't be back for BLVD Place.)

Gotcha. I was hoping you would take that into account. (a lot of people forget to account for the standard deduction)

That's the first time you've tried to explain it. ;-) The theory of shifting the balance of the economy southerly is interesting and I can now at least see how your one-sided development discussion is relevant. BUT, I think your theory is based on a bad premise. I see Victory/Uptown as shifting the balance of the economy north out of downtown, not south from the suburbs. How many tenants are moving from the suburbs into Victory/Uptown? How many tenants are moving from downtown into Victory/Uptown? I guess your sub-premise, if you will, is that downtown Dallas is so unattractive (economically or whatever) that, but for Victory/Uptown, those tenants would be moving to the northern suburbs. (If that is true, it's a shame that Dallas has allowed its downtown to drop to such depths, and perhaps the best thing to do is to just let it die as a commercial center, or to hasten its death by building a new alternative downtown. And you can call it Uptown!) I don't buy any of that sub-premise. Perhaps SOME of the relocations to Uptown/Victory would have gone to Plano etc instead, but I really doubt if very many would have. If you are currently officed downtown and are shopping your tenancy... in a world without Victory, are many of those tenants really going to choose to move 20-25 miles? Remember the mantra of real estate: location, location, location. One would presume they were located in downtown to begin with because they wanted/needed to be in or near downtown. If they are willing to relocate north to Victory/Uptown, there must be some reason they prefer inner city Dallas. That tells me that, but for Victory/Uptown, they would more than likely stay downtown. And keep in mind that in a world without Uptown and Victory developments, there might be enough demand in downtown Dallas to allow for moves into newer, fancier buildings downtown.

That was not really necessary, now was it, Jason? How about instead of snarky comments, you try explaining the relevance of Dallas' one-sided growth pattern to the question of whether Victory is good or bad for downtown Dallas? Because as far as I can tell, the relevance is zero. If Dallas had perfectly concentric growth and development in all directions, I would still believe (and the evidence strongly suggests) that Victory is bad for downtown Dallas. Be sure to send me an e-mail in a year. I'm not putting this on Outlook reminder. (I'll have to trust you to be a big man about it and be willing to remind me even though downtown Dallas office occupancy is down. FWIW, one year is really not sufficient. Most of the new office space will not be completed yet and the current space will not yet have been vacated.)

Man, that does suck. They should open one in Houston Pavilions OR in the base of One Park Place Apartments.

Bashing? Good grief. Just a little light humor about the juxtaposition of a W Hotel blocks away from a Hooters. Get over yourself already. I'm not sure what Dallas' supposed greater competition really has to do with the question at hand of whether Victory helps or hurts downtown Dallas. But for whatever reason, it does seem clear that Victory and Uptown are better at the competition than downtown is. However much of a tangent it may be, I'll play along for a bit. Are the suburbs offering incentives to builders and tenants? Well, so is Sugar Land, and probably The Woodlands, so Houston is certainly not totally devoid of such issues. D-FW may have more trouble in this regard than Houston (again, tell me again all of you anti-zoning, anti-annexation folks why Dallas' style of planning is so much better). But that's all really off the point anyway. That might be some of the reason for Dallas' weak downtown office market, but whatever the competitive situation, the Victory and Uptown buildings are in the same competitive D-FW market as is downtown Dallas. And tenants are moving out of downtown Dallas and into Victory and Uptown. How is that not bad for downtown Dallas? Are you, like JasonDFW, on the verge of agreeing with me but throwing up your hands saying, yeah, but it's the best Dallas can hope for? Of course you know very well that I never said that it makes no difference to the city if a development is within the city limits or not. What I said was that it is not terribly relevant to our discussion. Competition is competition (except of course for the added bonus of incentives that we get from suburban competitors.) Of course there is competition for tenants. What's your point? Again, is it that this is the best Dallas can hope for? Not sure what your point is, Jason. Or its possible relevance to the question of whether Victory hurts or helps downtown Dallas. FWIW I already acknowledged that Dallas (and downtown Dallas in particular) suffers from the poor planning that allowed/encouraged all of the development to go to the north. What more can I say?

Hunt will vacate probably several hundred thousand square feet of space when it moves to its new building. Around the same time H&B (the law firm, not the Blues restaurant) will vacate 200,000+ square feet in Bank of America Plaza. I'm sure a good portion of the other tenants moving into Victory and the other new Uptown office space are also vacating space downtown. How are vacancy rates going to do anything other than rise? Somehow now, suddenly, after 20 years of the same promises, downtown Dallas will see an influx of new tenants??? I know you hope that to be the case; but there seems to be a dearth of evidence to support that hope. We are speaking of the location choices of a major law firm. To say that major law firms will move to Plano, Frisco, Richardson, etc etc. is simply ignorance of law firm location decisions and economics. How many major law firms have relocated to Plano?

If I understand you correctly, you seem to be on the verge of agreeing with me that Victory hurts downtown Dallas, but it's the best Dallas can be expected to do because of the unfortunate one-sided growth pattern. First, let me say that it is an exaggeration to say Houston has nothing like this. There is a huge pull to the west for the energy firms because their employee base is centered closer to the Beltway than it is to downtown. There are also pulls to the north. I agree with the basic premise, though, that downtown Houston benefits in the long run from the more-concentric development pattern that Houston has (and Dallas gets all the kudos for planning and zoning; go figure). But your argument proves too much. If businesses have no reason to be in the CBD, they surely have no reason to be in Uptown or Victory either (with it being only a 5-minute walk from or actually a part of the CBD as you and/or others here have told us). And yet, businesses are apparently choosing to locate in Uptown and Victory. Are they moving north from downtown so they can be two blocks closer to Plano? ;-)

Well, I don't think it's particularly good for downtown Dallas to have those two building under construction either. On the contrary. The result of that construction will be significantly higher vacancy rates for downtown Dallas. That, seemingly, is one difference between Dallas and Houston. In Dallas, you just keep building new buildings, the hell with the consequences for the market. Doesn't seem to work quite the same way in Houston. Not sure why. Now, I agree that if the choices are (a) building adjacent to downtown, or ( building 20 miles away, I would choose (a) as being less damaging to downtown. But it's still damaging. What sort of "spillover" do you see into the CBD? (And the fact that you are hoping that "spillover" from a new, neighboring development will save your downtown sort of proves my point that the initial impact will be damaging to downtown.) Greenway Plaza hurts downtown Houston. Could it have hurt more had it been 20 miles away? Yes, I would say so. Could it have hurt marginally less had it been built adjacent to downtown? Yes, probably so. But it still would have hurt. With respect, I suspect you know very little about office location decisions by major law firms. They are almost exclusively downtown or very near downtown.

I agree.

Oh, I think we really do get it; quite well in fact. 1. One Main Place (at 1201 Main Street) is "isolated from almost everything downtown"? Is that what you meant to say? How can that be so? It appears to be fairly near the middle of downtown, just a couple blocks from Bank of America. And Hooters only 2 blocks away from the new building; and no doubt within walking distance of the new W Hotel. Well, Yee Haw. You guys are developing quite the cosmopolitan little neighborhood up there, aren't you? ;-) No one has ever said Uptown (and Victory) are not close to downtown, and you'll no doubt have some people walking to Hooters for lunch, but the fact remains, they are not downtown Dallas, and they are sucking tenants out of downtown Dallas. That cannot be good for downtown Dallas. 2. No, Dallas is not Houston. But the same market issues apply. The only difference is that more (but by no means all) of downtown Houston's competition is within the city limits. So what? I'll grant you the small "victory" of keeping development in the city proper, rather than in Farmers Branch etc. But that doesn't take away from the fact that it will still hurt downtown Dallas. 3. I understand that Dallas, as a city, does not have complete control over developers. (I recognize there are some posters who seem to think otherwise, but I am not among them.) But another thing one constantly sees on this board is the belief that Dallas, as a city, does have much more control over developers than does Houston, as a city, due to the "Z" word. I have personally always thought that the impact of no-zoning on Houston's development patterns is wildly exaggerated, but many posters, including Dallas posters, seem to think otherwise. Again, I don't think competing for leases is a different ballgame in Dallas at all. Houston has the same situation of many different office centers competing to host businesses and law firms, etc. Whether they are inside or outside the city limits is really not terribly relevant, because, as you have noted, the cities do not control the developers, nor do the cities control the tenants. As RedScare said above, without Victory, it is very doubtful that H&B would have moved to Plano or Frisco. They would have stayed in or near downtown. It's a rather sad statement of the condition of downtown Dallas that the choice as you put it seems to be whether to move to Uptown or Frisco/Plano (with a move out of downtown seeminly presumed). Is downtown Dallas really that bad? So, in the end, I think we (or at least I) actually do understand the situation quite well. I have never said Victory was bad for the city of Dallas as a whole or that it was bad for the D-FW area. Only that it is bad for downtown Dallas. On that point, neither you nor anyone else has provided any reason to think otherwise.

LOL Yeah, that Olympics thing was a bit of an exaggeration, and just having some fun. But I don't imagine many people do .4 mile in 5 minutes on their strolls to a lunch spot.

Hey, JD. Don't forget to calculate your tax benefits of ownership. (Interest on your mortgage, and your property taxes will be deductible on your federal income tax return).

Doesn't the Holiday Inn Express meet your criteria? As most of the existing hotel's rates have risen fast, I too would like to see some more lower-rate properties.

Starting from what point in Victory? And ending at what point in the West End? Hooters?

Huh? Nothing in your rant of a post shows any way in which Victory will be good for Downtown Dallas. "Every one will be happy"??? Everyone except the owners of Downtown Dallas office buildings and hotels... Perhaps when you've cooled down you can come back and edit that so it makes some sense. HP is still in process, so what. It's not like Victory Park exactly jumped off the drawing board either, my friend. When did they start that project? Last century some time, IIRC. Houston is doing quite well at retaining and gaining companies in its downtown, thank you very much. Glad you recognized that. In fact, with the recently-announced Chevron lease and other smaller leases, Houston's CBD Class A vacancy rate is below 10%. I'm not sure why HP is not building their residential component. But it doesn't really matter, does it? Finger is going to build not a 30 story res. tower, but a 37-story res tower, and more will almost certainly be on the way, very soon. And there's a pretty good chance Houston will see some pretty significant new office tower(s) soon as well. Again, all of this is DOWNTOWN, not in some nearby neighborhood. THAT, my friend, will clearly be good for Downtown Houston. And by your logic, I guess that will make everyone happy and therefore be good for Uptown Houston, and heck if everyone is happy, that should make it good for Downtown Dallas too, right? Which route is that? I was speaking of the walk from a currently non-existent building (One Victory Park) to the south side of the Woodall Rogers. I measured it on Mapmyrun.com. Measuring all the way to On The Border makes for a 4/10 mile walk. If you did that in 5 minutes, you might be in the wrong line of work (maybe Olympic sprinter, messenger service...)

Would that be for a building with 24-hour front desk/concierge, swimming pool, fitness facilities, and parking garage?

I'll ask again. What do condo fees typically run in Washington DC? One can't really say why Houston's are "so high" without knowing how much higher and also without knowing what is typically included.