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Originally Posted by TexasCreed
Impressions mostly but the following gives a good picture of where things are being built.
http://devmap.io/cities/houston/developments
On the subject of multifamily dwellings I can say with some certainty that most of them are being built within the loop or close to it. Single family housing though still pulls most development outside of central Houston. Especially if you include the suburban cities such as Spring, Katy and Sugar Land. There is one bright spot though and that's the current construction and proposals for dwelling in the downtown CBD. Over 2,000 units are suppose to be under construction in the next couple of years and hopefully that is just the start.
Dallas DART light runs not only through Dallas suburbs but Richardson, Plano, Rowlett, Garland + 5 other cities going through most cities "downtown". The most popular line, Red Line, basically has 10 - 20 story towers along the majority of it's route which can also be considered destinations. In comparison you have Greenspoint which is within the Houston city limits. There you have 16 million sq ft of office space and 10,000s of workers yet it is serviced by all of 3 bus lines. Just different types of regional priorities. |
Looks like about 13,000 units U/C on that map, with about 3/4 of that in the loop.
With 14,700 MF starts in 2012 and 15,800 MF starts in 2013, I'd have expected a bit more. Not sure how long the average project takes to build, I'm guessing 2-3 years for the high-rises, 1 year for lowrise/midrise? So maybe 1.5 years on average, so you'd expect 20,000+ U/C?
So either Houston's not building as much as housing starts/permits would suggest, or there's stuff missing from the map. Smaller projects might not be included a lot of the time. Also I noticed that there's a lot of proposals listed for the core, but the ones further out are mostly U/C projects, so maybe whoever updates that website doesn't track suburban developments as much?
Still, about 9,500 units U/C in the loop, not including townhouses is a good bit. If Houston maintains the pace, that could be enough to add something like 100,000 people to the loop in the next decade. Plus 20,000 or so to Uptown.
It's good to see it's not just residential but a fair bit of retail, office and hotels. Looks like the major retail developments U/C are River Oaks, Regent Square, Azalea Court and Green Street.
Quite a lot of hotels U/C and proposed, especially downtown. I've been reading Jane Jacobs and she made a point about mixed use that surprisingly doesn't seem to have caught on much. It's not just about having mixed use so that things are closer together. It's also about mixed use to spread out customers for businesses across the day. She used 1960 Downtown Manhattan as an example where businesses were struggling because while they got a crush of customers at lunch break and 5pm, they got very few when the office workers were in their towers or left to go home. I think this is still a problem with many CBDs, from what people have said (I haven't been) this is a problem with Downtown Houston too.
Jacobs mentioned that for Downtown Manhattan, there were plans to add residents, but she didn't think they'd do much good, since they'd still be overwhelmed by office workers. Offices generate a very high density of workers, since a cubicle is much smaller than an apartment, so it's rather difficult for apartment buildings to get the residential population to come close (especially if mid rise like downtown Houston), plus modern offices have big floor plates which gives them an additional density advantage. Jacobs suggested building tourist attractions like theatres, museums and aquariums, which could bring people into downtown Manhattan throughout the day and in large quantities, as well as tourist oriented retail (retail that draws beyond just local residents).
I haven't seen her mention hotels, but I think they could certainly help and have many advantages over residential
-They're denser, often multiple people is a single hotel room, which tend to be smaller than most apartments
-They tend to attract relatively wealthy (middle class+) people, since travelling costs money
-Tourists spend a lot more while travelling than they would at home, eating out, shopping, tourist attractions, museums, etc
-Spending is spread throughout the day, and often even late into the night
That could give a good boost to the virtuous cycle where more tourists attracts more retail/attractions, which attract offices and residents (residents of other neighbourhoods and new residents to downtown), which attract each other, plus all that is good for transit which attracts all of the above.
From that link, the main downside is that suburban office development looks like it still outnumbers office development in the core.
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