Quote:
Originally Posted by The Best Forumer
Perhaps... but the new renderings show significantly shorter towers... so... ???
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When you look at the old plan vs the new plan, you'll see that only one of the towers in the original rendering were very tall. The new plan does have shorter buildings than the old plan but the difference is a few floors and not significant. The only actual loss from the old plan to the new plan is that one very tall tower.
We haven't seen a full project scope of renderings for the new plan yet but from what I have seen it will have plenty of midrises and highrises. The highrises are prolly in the 20-35 floor range. In the old plan they seemed to be 25-40 floors not including that one very tall tower which was/is an aberration for both plans.
The loss of a few floors is more than made up for with the better pedestrian environ with greenspace, lakes, and walkways. The old plan lacked as much greenspace and didn't seem to include any lakes. These things go a long way in creating a sense of place for people to identify with.
IMO the new plan is much better and more ambitious, even if it is a little bit shorter. IMO Houston isn't in any dire need of tall towers since it already has an abundance of them. What Houston is lacking is more pedestrian realms and pedestrian friendly areas and this Levitt Green plan gets an A+ for that. The old plan had a lot of surface parking, concrete pavement, and roads. The new plan replaces those with greenspace, lakes, parkland, and outdoor pedestrian malls. That's a high quality upgrade, not a downgrade. It's easy to build a tall skyscraper, it's much more challenging to build an engaging urban city environment IMO.
It would be nice to see some tall buildings but it would be nicer to see Houston begin connecting all of its skylines and filling the gaps in between. If/when Houston begins doing that, it will look atypical for an American city, especially with its no zoning format, and will look like a mega beast from another continent. This Levitt Green plan is another step towards that since it replaces a 57 acre lot that currently has a 1-3 story distribution warehouse and lots of surface parking lots built around concrete with midrises, highrises, and greenspaces and pedestrian malls at the ground level. It will do its part to surround Hermann Park with more highrises, thus giving Houston its own version of Central Park. A top park with plenty of culture and amenities surrounded by a wall canyon of highrises. This will also stretch the Museum District's now rapidly growing skyline and will fill in a big hole from DT to TMC.
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