In my View Blog

Discovery Green Park opens in Downtown Houston

Discovery Green Park opened up for "business" this past weekend to large crowds who had come to see what the hype was about from local TV news and newspapers. This 13 acre, $122 million project by the City of Houston certainly did not let them down.

Complete with waterworks, playgrounds and even a dogpark this was reminiscent of New York's Central Park, although much smaller in size. It is located accross the street from George R Brown convention center, in close proximity to Minute Maid Park, Hilton and Four Seasons hotels.

Being as obsessed as I am with Houston Real Estate, I had to look for possible real estate plays related to the park and discovered that they were being made already. A luxury leasing development by The Finger Companies, dubbed One Park Place, was already under way and being marketed as "Downtown Luxury Living, Featuring a 13-acre front yard". Very coincidental!

Anyhoo.. For all the photos catch my entire Flickr stream.   

Ashby High Rise -- An attempt to understand

You don't have to go very far in the Rice University area without spotting the bright yellow signs featuring an apparently angry tower with a serious dental problem. The signs are pretty much on every yard referring to injustice, unbearable traffic and apparently an anger management problem (see look on tower's face). I might be a little late to this party, but I can tell you that I am interested in truly understanding what the conflict is all about without all the propaganda decorations. From what I can gather based on the limited research that I have done on this subject, the inhabitants of the gorgeous neighborhoods around the proposed site near the corner of Ashby and Bissonnet are opposed to this development on the basis that the excessive traffic it would bring would further strain the already lane limited thoroughfares and that in the construction process, the new development  will destroy some of the beautiful trees in that part of the neighborhood. The product of such opposition is a surprisingly very well put together blog, that the opponents of the project use to track the developments, news coverage, fund and awareness raising and such.

And on the other side of the story (there's always two sides to every one) we have Matthew Morgan and Kevin Kirton of Buckhead Investment Partners. According to their website (where you can see elevations, site history and a timeline of events), their company performed a non required traffic impact analysis that supports their idea that "high-rise residential has minimal impact on the neighboring streets". Most importantly, they cite the actions taken by the Southampton Civic Association as an attempt to zoning which is not in effect in the Houston Area and warn that this may set a dangerous precedent.

The story has been covered at length by the Chronicle and local TV stations. However, beyond the biased interest groups involved and their spin on the story, I believe there's a legitimate debate to be had here. The issue at hand is described by two main questions:

1. Does the lack of zoning in the Houston area give developers the right to bring to life projects that are damaging to existing communities?
2. On the other hand, should the entrepreneurial growth of new development be stopped because it doesn't serve a particular group's interest?

What say you?