I-10 West is starting to have an impressive skyline now, that's spilling over into Katy.

On the top left you can see the new bridge being constructed for the north line extension. Look at all that vacant land though, so much room for awesome developments of Houston does it right.

http://i527.photobucket.com/albums/c...d/64a2d882.jpg

http://i527.photobucket.com/albums/c...d/5aa3afec.jpg
Then a bonus shot of all the crap lots that still have to be covered up. Think of how great dowtown will be once all those lots are covered up by developments. That will be decades and decades though I'm afraid.

I think there is a difference between a salesman telling you to buy his product because you need it and it will benefit you and an objective party advising you.

In this case, it's the former. Granted sometimes the salesman might be correct.

Noticed this blurb from today's Bisnow update regarding Marvy Finger's projects. Sounds like something may be in store for the old Ben Milam Hotel downtown. Not sure if it would be a renovation or an entirely new project on that site...

:previous: The wording "old Milam site" leads me to believe that it's an entirely new project.

[QUOTE=photoLith;5665134]On the top left you can see the new bridge being constructed for the north line extension. Look at all that vacant land though, so much room for awesome developments of Houston does it right.

http://i527.photobucket.com/albums/c...d/64a2d882.jpg

A lot of the "vacant" land in this photo is flood plain and will likely never be developed. It's where Buffalo and White Oak Bayous meet and it is notorious for flooding.

Best case scenario is for the Buffalo Bayou Partnership's dream to come to fruition and turn that into useable park space rather than just dead space.

some of that area is taken up by UH-Downtown's parking; slab of concrete just behind UHD on the other side of the freeway.

I found this intriguing article in Construction Weekly - a lot of speculative proposals for high-rise buildings exceeding 828 meters (the height of the Burj). Included are not one, but two, building proposals for Houston that top out in excess of a mile in height. I think one of them goes all the way back to 1981, but I'm not sure about the other. Judging by the list, if built, they would have been the tallest buildings in the US for quite some time.:banana:

http://http://www.constructionweekon...urj-khalifa/1/

:shrug:

Architects have been chosen for the Midtown Arts Center

Per Bisnow...

Well, it seems Fingers is going to tear down the historic Ben Milam Motel across from Minute Maid Park and replace it with an 8 story apartment building, typical Houston; destroy an historic building when theres only 20 vacant lots surrounding it instead of restoring it.

http://i527.photobucket.com/albums/c...d/c6044942.jpg

Rice village.

The piece didn't say if it is or isn't entirely new construction.

At any rate, it's worth noting that the 'tower' section above the base of the building is 8 stories. It's entirely possible that it's referring to a rehab of the former hotel space into apartments and retail.

^
I went and talked to the Houston preservation commission today and it seems that fingers hasnt yet bought the building. The article is very vague but the building isn't an historic landmark nor protected in any way shape or form. The commission told me that they've talked to the building owners in the past and that they really don't give a shit about the building and are basically just in it for the highest bidder. They said the outlook for the buildings future, even if fingers doesn't purchase it is very grim due to its long term vacancy/abandonment and the costs of restoration and it seems that Houston developed aren't too interested in restoring things. Plus the floor heights are pretty short, maybe 8ft at best, when most apartment/lofts have ceiling heights of 11ft or more so a potential developer would view the 8ft ceiling heights quite negatively ubfortubately.

Geeze, 8 ft floor heights... there's your reason to not restore.

RSS Feeds?
 

Any admins out there?

It would be awesome to have this forum push out an rss feed rather than me having to check daily for updates. Vbulletin says this can be easily accomplished:

https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/show...specific-forum

Hopefully you will take this up for consideration. Thank you!

sounds cool but probably not in the cards anytime soon. i make it a habit of making rounds every other day or so on this thread as well as some of the other houston sites; HAIF, Swamplot, etc. You can get an RSS feed from them

No, as far as I know, that is the land that is intended to be the Burnett Multi-modal Transportation Center. I don't know what has become of the proposal, but I remember LRT plans, brought before the Planning Commission, included Burnett configurations.

I know the plan was ambitious and may be on hold, or dropped entirely. Maybe it's local common knowledge that Burnett is no longer in the making, and if so I apologize for my ignorance. :cheers:

http://www.eekarchitects.com/portfol...modal-facility

^
Yeah, Im fairly certain that died a long time ago.

I wouldn't doubt the magnitude of the proposed facility, but I'd wonder about the use of the land? Is it still planned to be transit-related

By the way, thanks for posting that photo! I use to run the Heights Trail regularly (concrete line shown long the bayou). It was my favorite trail, particularly running toward the city with the beautiful view of the skyline and the pulse of the traffic on the freeway! :)

the intermodal facility is DOA.

I don't understand what's the big fuss about this Ashby High Rise? http://houston.culturemap.com/newsde...egun-to-fight/

I thought Houston has no zoning laws.

It doesn't have zoning but the rich folks are upset regardless.

I seriously dont understand why they are so up in arms over that like 20 story building. Every time I see some uppity douche with one of those stop Ashby highrise bumper stickers I just want to punch them in the throat because it seriously makes no sense why they are so against it. I mean, theres tons of mid rise residential towers all over the city and they live in the city, so get over it. And their little cartoon of the highrise makes it seem like its a 600ft tall building or something. What are they so against? The possible shadows it will cast? Why do they care, most of that neighborhood is covered in trees and the ground is usually shadowed by them anyways.

From the article above...

# If you nevertheless succeed in constructing this project, we will not stop our opposition, and we will take every lawful action available to us. It is important that you, your investors, and your construction and permanent lenders understand this.
# We will picket your leasing office. Not once or twice, but at all times it is open.
# We will identify your tenants and send regular communications to them at their units and their places of business to let them know that they are not welcome in our neighborhood.
# When your tenants walk in or through our neighborhood, we will let them know that they are not welcome.
# We will challenge the permits for your restaurant tenant.
# We will boycott your restaurant and encourage our friends and neighbors to do the same. We will appear at your tenant’s restaurant and demonstrate our opposition to their presence in our neighborhood.
# If your restaurant tenant has other locations, we will boycott and appear at those locations as well.
# We will appear at the homes of the owners, investors, and chef of your restaurant tenant and demonstrate our opposition to their presence in our neighborhood.
# We will post unfavorable reviews of your restaurant tenant on dining websites.

How about we form an pro Ashby highrise group and picket these assholes houses and tell them they arent welcome in a changing city and can piss off to Tulsa or something. Some of the above stuff is like borderline stalking and harassment.

Some other things they might as well add to that list would be... we will show up at your houses and places of business and key your cars and spray paint your windows to show our opposition; we will also be forced to break your gas lines leading to your houses or condos and be forced to light molotov cocktails to show our opposition to this highrise.

Hell yeah! we need to outnumbered them.

What a childish and absolute freaking joke.

If I were ever a tenant there and they did that I would for sure find out where they lived and do the same thing to them on a daily basis late at night and bang on their door to tell them I don't like them and that if they ever harassed me again I'd call the cops on them.

I really want to fuck with these anti ashby high rise people now though somehow.

This guys got a blog where he talks about Houston Politics. He posted this two months ago on the Ashby Highrise.

• Video Link

i think the ashby developers should redesign the building to be twice as tall with the menacing grin and arms.

http://swamplot.com/wp-content/uploa...by-cartoon.jpg

Alright enough talk of this Ashby Highrise issue, we have an eternity to discuss that BUT I want to bring to your attention Generation Park.

Generation Park:
http://assets.bizjournals.com/housto...n/GP-2.jpg?v=1
Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/p...sets-huge.html

Sweet infill ;)

Yay a huge suburban office park, how exquisitely exciting. It's so great that houstons suburbs are still pushing out even further into forested land and farmland, such a great step forward in the right direction. Next lets talk about suburban housing tract infill in kingwood and the woodlands.

I'm with you. But at least it's better than that other junk around the airport. When the airport was built, flying into it provided some beautiful forested scenery. Now, it's mostly warehouses, junk yards, and other unsightly stuff. The only airport area that looks worse is PHX as you land from the west.

Have you seen where the Ashby Tower is supposed to be?

Bissonnet has two lanes and is lined with nothing taller than 3 stories (the Rice U Graduate Housting units). The few businesses along that street are 90% located in old houses with one strip mall-ish building closer to Shepherd Drive that houses Picnic and Raven Grill.

Ashby Street doesn't even have lanes. It's a purely residential street that straddles two of Houston's most historic residential enclaves; Boulevard Oaks and Southampton. Both Blvd Oaks and Southampton have STRICT deed restrictions.

I love towers, but I'd prefer them to be integrated properly into the city. This building will do nothing to ease congestion or promote "urban" living. Additionally, it will be replacing a much more affordable two story apartment complex so it's not like the "rich" folks are trying to keep people out of their neighborhood.

If you've ever ventured to North or South Blvds and appreciated the live oak parks down the center, then you'd realize what's at stake. The Ashby Tower will literally rise over South Blvd.'s most historic homes. There's so little left to preserve in Houston, but to me, potentially ripping the fabric of one of the city's healthiest street car suburban neighborhoods, isn't worth the risk.

Shasta, I agree 100000000% with what you are saying but the people of Houston have overwhelmingly decided that they do not want to operate that way. We've had a city plan and zoning ordinances on the ballot multiple times and they all got voted down.

Two elections ago we had a pro-urban planning/city plan mayorial candidate run for mayor and he lost.

You can't decide to have zoning ONLY when it benefits your particular situation. If anything, hopefully the city will legally install something to protect the character and charm of these neighborhoods and implement some zoning requirements. Let's hope it leads to a better Houston.

For my job, I get the chance to work on projects all over the country, and I do a lot of zoning research during the due diligence process. Zoning isn't as scary as everyone thinks, most of it is to ensure that the building adds to the character and charm of the neighborhood and not detract from it via facade/roof/glazing/exterior material requirements

I really would like to see Houston heading in that direction.

That will never happen. Money rules Houston and the developers have it all. I am personally in Favor of the high rise but would love to see Houston have zoning because nothing in this city is really protected from tear downs and poorly integrated infill like all the crap tin sided gated buildings going up in Montrose, freedmans town, and the east side.

welcome to houston. there is a tallish residential building going up in the galleria (bigger than ashby) that is in a very cramped spot next door to a walgreens whose only access is a small side street linking westheimer to yorktown. now, the traffic there will be a total nightmare but since we live in a city with no zoning, this is what happens. why should the people near ashby get special treatment? because they're wealthy?

In Austin we have zoning and we still have horrible planning, in some cases due to variances. In other cases, due to lack of public notice and comment. People here stay pissed all the time about this sort of stuff. Having zoning doesn't solve the problem. Having zoning and leadership and a majority of residents who actually care about these things is what solves the problem.

Houston just needs to end minimum parking requirements and establish an urban setback requirement(which is currently being done).

I live just north of these neighborhoods, right across the freeway, and use Bissonnet daily to commute to work. I generally disagree with most of what you are saying.

The footprint of this building is the same as the old apartments it's replacing, but it's height and scale is where the controversy is. However, Bissonnet is a very tree lined, in fact, I would argue that this building won't be too noticeable from the street. Furthermore, Bissonnet has been becoming more crowded due to increase in popultion and the growing Medical Center, that this with just be a drop in the bucket. As far as deed restrictions go, obviously this building doesn't fall under its control.

Yes, I wish this was on Bissonnet in the Museum District or north on Richmond along the future light rail. However, I don't view this building as ripping any sort of fabric. In fact, I welcome a little bit of more retail (if that is in fact still being included).

That building isn't going to make much of dent in the traffic at Westheimer @ Sage... Plus why isn't this a good location? It's does face a small side street, but it also faces Sage St. (a relatively large thoroughfare) and is literally next to Westheimer. I wish the building was bigger and could have taken up the Walgreen's space as well.

I rode my bike over to the ashby area today and that crappy apartment complex there has lots of tenants. I can't imagine the high rise having that many more people living on that spot than do now. And even if there are, the whole traffic argument is bull because I live in houston house apartments downtown, which is three times the size of the ashby high rise and maybe about once every ten minutes a car enters or leaves the parking garage. Hardly enough traffic to cause congestion. Even if Houston house were located in a residential neighborhood this wouldn't even cause traffic let alone a 21 story tower.

but the building is not being built on westheimer and sage, it's being built on a landlocked chunk of land on brownway where you have to cut through walgreen's parking lot to get to sage and it's access to westhiemer is limited to westbound only. you have to get on to yorktown to go east bound.

This doesn't really have anything to do with anything but I was up in one of halliburtons offices today down in the energy corridor and had this view.

http://i527.photobucket.com/albums/c...d/012f6f79.jpg

Maybe i'm just immature but I hate those yellow signs. I remember I was riding my bike around there one day and I saw one that someone had vandalized to make it look like the menacing building was yanking it. Whoever did that, it was brilliant.

True. But you can walk to the Galleria, the grocery store, etc.

This is going to be really big...

http://parceltool.generationpark.com...ap_Cropped.jpg
http://parceltool.generationpark.com/

^
Yuck, I love that area, I used to go down to Sheldon Lake S.P. all the time growing up. This will no doubt damage the ecology of the park and the flow of the creek into Sheldon Reservoir. The state park offers some of the most important egret, spoonbill, and night heron nesting areas in the Houston area; its also home to lots of Alligators and the threated Le-Contes Sparrow and large cypress swamps. I guess that land was destined to be destroyed by suburban sprawl at some point or other, oh well.

As a teen, I remember taking a trip to an office and saw this view. For the first time in my life at that moment, I realized how amazing the Houston skyline(s) really is. THANK YOU for taking this shot, I've been trying to find this view for almost a decade now! lol no joke! :banana:

I want to go back up there and bring my real camera with me and take some photos up there at night or just better photos with my D700. Its a pretty kick ass view, makes it look like NYC from that far away.

The Maryland Manor is hardly crappy. Sure, it's not a class A new stucco apartment complex with faux rock exterior, but the units are clean and relatively affordable for the area. Lots of Rice U. graduate students are going to be looking for places soon. Oh, and by the way, there are 67 units at the Maryland Manor complex today. The new tower is projected to have 220+ units, so yeah, there will be a slight increase in traffic, especially because many of the Maryland Manor's current residents actually walk/ride bikes to get to Rice. You can see them every morning heading South down Ashby St. to the campus. Most of these people wont be able to afford the new tower.