A Bloomberg article on the state of DT and the ongoing development...
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...snw&refer=home
Houston Pitches Downtown Flats, Yao's Eatery to Fight $4 Fuel
By Edward Klump
July 8 (Bloomberg) -- Houston, the fourth-largest U.S. city, hasn't had a new downtown luxury apartment tower in four decades.
That will change next year, when One Park Place opens. The $125 million, 37-story building will have 346 units, charging monthly rents as high as $7,000. The $170 million Houston Pavilions, opening in October, will have offices, shops, a bowling alley and a restaurant owned by the family of Houston Rockets basketball player Yao Ming.
Developers of the two projects are taking on the challenge of boosting the city center's population of 4,000 and enticing commuters to stay for activities after the business day ends. About 200,000 people work, shop or run errands each weekday in downtown Houston, a landscape of vacant storefronts on Main Street and acres of parking lots interspersed with skyscrapers.
"I think it's going to all happen, and it's going to happen in a hurry,'' said Kathleen Hayes, 58, a senior vice president at Merrill Lynch & Co. who plans to move into One Park Place with her husband in March. "It's almost like popcorn.''
U.S. cities are trying to recover from urban planning that pushed housing out of downtowns in the 1970s, when people moved to suburbs for bigger homes and better schools, said Robert Lang, co-director of the Metropolitan Institute at the Alexandria campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Washington, Atlanta and Denver have sought to make urban living more attractive and copy the feel of New York City, he said.
Houston's Turn
The timing is right for Houston, said Mayor Bill White.
"People are wanting to live closer to where they work,'' White said. "To build street-level retail, you need residences. To attract residences, you need street-level retail.''
Three downtown projects with residential space are being discussed, he said. More offices are on the way: Houston-based Hines is developing the 46-story MainPlace, which will house offices of KPMG LLP, and Dallas-based Trammell Crow Co. is building the 30-story Discovery Tower, near the new Discovery Green park.
The advantage of living closer to his job is obvious to Cody Austin, an application consultant for Aveva Inc., a developer of software for the energy industry. He plans to move to One Park Place to reduce the $600-a-month cost of gasoline and tolls to reach his office in the western part of the city from Clear Lake, about 45miles southeast.
"Why not put the money that I'm spending toward gas toward living in a nicer place?'' said Austin, 22. "And I've always wanted to live downtown.''
Skeptics say it will take years to reverse decades of neglecting downtown development in Houston, which sprawls over twice the area of New York.
Timeline for Turnaround
"For 30 years, we've built just the opposite -- we've built away from the urban core,'' said Michael Shine, president of Texas Food Group, who has invested in downtown restaurants. "I think it's going to take us 20 or 30 years.''
Cordish Co., based in Baltimore, tried to help revive downtown Houston in 1997 with construction of Bayou Place, which has movie theaters, a concert venue, restaurants and office space. It doesn't have residences.
"Somebody had to step forward to make something happen,'' said Taylor Gray, development director for Cordish.
The goal is to create a neighborhood atmosphere that will encourage residents to interact, said Bob Eury, president of Central Houston, a nonprofit group supporting downtown revitalization. Houston has a metropolitan population of 5.6 million and encompasses 645 square miles (1,700 square kilometers).
Downtown momentum stalled during the past decade amid street-improvement projects and construction of a new light-rail line, Eury said.
Urban Oasis
In April, the city opened Discovery Green, a $122 million, 12-acre downtown park with a lake, gardens, playgrounds, a promenade and an amphitheater. Hundred-year-old trees were rescued from other sites and transplanted.
About $5 billion has been poured into downtown since 1996, for projects including Minute Maid Park for Major League Baseball's Astros and the Toyota Center for the National Basketball Association's Rockets. The central district also is home to theaters and concert halls.
Professionals who want to be close to downtown jobs now live across Interstate 45 in the Midtown district, which is more pedestrian-friendly and has a grocery store. Midtown's population has jumped 37-fold to about 18,500 since 1990, according to the Midtown Redevelopment Authority, a nonprofit local government corporation, after developers built townhouses and apartment complexes.
Patrons for Pavilions
Midtown's residents will become customers at Houston Pavilions, said William Denton, who is developing the complex with partner Geoffrey Jones. Tenants will include Books-A- Million, House of Blues and a McCormick & Schmick's seafood restaurant.
"If you go to the Toyota Center, for example, and you want to go out to dinner before or go do something after, where do you go?'' Denton said. "There's not a lot of social things to do downtown at this point. We hope to change that.''
Houston-based Finger Cos. is developing One Park Place. The building has a selling point that no other city can claim, said Marvy Finger, chief executive officer: windows looking out on lights shining from miles of refineries and petrochemical plants after sundown.
"You're really viewing a Christmas tree at night,'' he said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Edward Klump in Houston at
eklump@bloomberg.net.
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