Quote:
Originally Posted by sakyle04
the surface parking lot in the foreground would be one of the great residential tracts, in my opinion. on houston (if you consider that Travis cuts the overall lot in two), but a skip removed from the uber-dense section. I imagine a building that stretches/arches over travis, creating a mini-tunnel while bridging the two lots to allow for a larger footprint.
there is enough room there to do something significant...
i wonder whether a combo rent/own building would be possible? like the vistana but with 10 more stories to accomodate more parking/storage and 7 floors of ownership condos.
the rental portion/income would help to defray some of the spec fear/costs in building it and the ownership portion would help pay down the note, creating a greater profit mechanism in the overall building.
surely, someone has thought of this and will tell my why it wouldn't work. no one would buy in a building with renters? not even in an upmarket building with rents even a bit higher than Vistana? not with seperate entrances or elevators for renters and owners (floors 1-13, 14-23)..>?
sorry...hadn't dreamt about such things in a while. thanks for humoring me.
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Could work... Perhaps have a couple tower ends for penthouses in each end, and have seperate entrances.
I think the only problem with this right now is that urban entertainment is still sketchy to many. Hopefully the redevelopment of Rivercenter, UTSA playing at the Dome, and upgraded performing arts centers will solve this problem somewhat. Slow addition of rental/for sale units within walking or even a 5 minute drive to DT will add a few more "feet on the street," which will allow more retail and more local serving bars and clubs to increase traffic DT.
I can see that site working as a complete rental of 400+ units within the next 3-5 years or so but no so much as for sale units. I see a conversion of the Rand Building or another older office building before 100 or so units are for sale in the CBD.
Edit:
Actually, maybe 3-4 floors or 30-40 units for sale might work quickly that close to the river. I could be wrong altogether but the River (even though its a block away) sells. La Cascada always has low availability, Riverview Condos on Convent are the same, and even the Exchange building across from the Weston is also a tough one to get even as a re-used reno. I still see both markets needing a few months to absorb into Vistana, St. B's and Vidorra, but I think with a couple of smaller projects around DT first, that a large scale project like this might not be too far behind.