[houston19514]

Originally Posted by bilbao58

My post just before this post of yours also mentioned the ground floor retail/restaurant spaces in the original and possibly current plan, which I had forgotten about when I wrote my first post. This proposed project has been around for a long time...easy to forget all the details after all these years. Strictly residential buildings definitely produce less traffic than when retail, hospitality is added. But anyway, I did not mean at all to change my argument, just clarify it.

I still think that a building of this size should have higher capacity streets to serve it. If only to make it easier for residents of the building to get in and out of its garage and for traffic already on the street to not be disrupted. (Edited to add) Bissonnet is not just a narrow street, it's a narrow street that already has too much traffic on it.

When the building was first proposed, a graphic was published that clearly showed the difference in scale between the building and the two-story houses that directly back onto the property. It was pretty astonishing. So scale is an issue to me.

But even more so, there are SO many locations within a half-mile, mile or two miles of this location that would be SO much better for this project. Better for the neighborhoods they could be in, and better for the residents of the building themselves. Think about it, residents of this building will have nothing but SFH neighborhoods surrounding them in all directions. Bissonnet is not much a pleasant street for walking. The neighborhoods are nice on both sides of Bissonnet, especially North and South Boulevards, great for walking the dog, but why live in a high rise if the surrounding area is all suburban-style SFH? The Museum District, Hermann Park, Binz/Midtown, Main Street/Midtown, Rice Village/Kirby, even Montrose/Westheimer are ALL so much more suitable for high rise, urban living. I would guess that residents of this building will be using their cars a lot more than residents of high rises in those other areas.

I think it's just a stupid spot for a residential high rise. Seems like a purely speculative money-making proposal for some developer who thought they got some prime property on the cheap.

You make reasonable points regarding the scale. But you are exaggerating when you claim there is nothing but SFH in all directions. As I believe you acknowledged earlier, Bissonnet has for some time been transitioning from more or less all single family to a mix of uses, including salons, restaurants, Houston Hillel etc, plus it's a short walk to Rice University, a reasonable and pleasant walk to the MFA-H, less than a mile to Hermann Park, it's a pretty easy walk up to restaurants etc on Richmond... FWIW, I walk along Bissonnet pretty regularly. It's a perfectly nice street on which to walk.