Uptown Dallas vs. Uptown Houston (Spring, Farmers Branch: hotels, to live in, restaurant)

[LocalPlanner]

Originally Posted by Norman54

What I've always noticed about Uptown Houston is how pictures of it have to be snapped at a certain angle to avoid exposing that it started off as an office park. I spent a lot of summers as a teenager in Bellaire living with my dad who worked at a building in the area. Nearby Greenway Plaza was built as a campus mainly for Shell oil. They were attempting to assemble even more residential lots to expand the development when word got out driving up the price of real estate which killed the project.
I think Uptown Houston looks massive on the scale of Dubai. It has a masculine aspect to it. Neither is urban like Manhatten though.
What the city of Dallas has legally classified as Uptown just was never true. The developer who foresaw a kind of Uptown happening one day was Southland and its assemblage of land iits City-Place development.
I would describe that area of Uptown just to the north of downtown anchored by The Crescent as the burgeoning Financial District of North Texas and one day of the south.

Uptown Houston started as a retail node in the 1960s. The office didn't come until the 1970s and 80s.

[Norman54]

Originally Posted by LocalPlanner

Uptown Houston started as a retail node in the 1960s. The office didn't come until the 1970s and 80s.

I began visiting my dad in that area starting around 1971. There weren't any tall buildings, but just suburban ones. There was a thirty story building constructed at Greenway Plaza for Shell Oil which was very unusual.

[atadytic19]

Originally Posted by Redlionjr

You think that's urban? .

I don't think I used the word urban one time in that post, but yeah I should say it is urban before I say it is suburban.
What i originally said was we can stop calling it suburban now.

We miss use the term suburban to where it has become a catch-all phrase for car dependent.

Maybe you can find 1 out of every 1000 urban center in the US that is not heavily dependent on cars nowadays so the dependence on cars is no longer a determining factor between a city and a suburb. In fact if never was. It just happened that cars made living in the suburbs more feasible.

We have bastardized the word beyond recognition.

This is suburban: https://media.istockphoto.com/id/177...LwyKOtABaf8pU=

This is Post Oak:

https://photos.harstatic.com/1957637...9T22:57:55.997

https://www.designworkshop.com/img/w...u_post-oak.jpg

https://www.designworkshop.com/img/p...st-oak_N37.jpg

https://www.designworkshop.com/img/p...st-oak_N47.jpg

We may defer on what we refer to Post Oak as, but referring to it as suburban is either just lazy or ignorant of what a suburb is.

Suburban definition: the residential area on the outskirts of a city or large town.

Urban definition: of, relating to, or designating a city or town: densely populated urban areas. living, located, or taking place in a city

To answer your question, yes, I think it fits the definition of urban more than it fits the definition of suburban so I'm gonna say yes, I think it's urban.

It's not Manhattan, but urban doesn't mean a facsimile of Manhattan. Urban means city- like and that looks life a city to me.

[ParaguaneroSwag]

The strip mall that’s on the NE corner of Westheimer @ Post Oak is a piece of the puzzle that could transform the entire area. They don’t even need to tear it down. They could even just build a street-side node.

[atadytic19]

Originally Posted by ParaguaneroSwag

The strip mall that’s on the NE corner of Westheimer @ Post Oak is a piece of the puzzle that could transform the entire area. They don’t even need to tear it down. They could even just build a street-side node.

Lol, it's Houston, you know it's gonna be a tear down.

Would be nice if each corner had a unifying look.
The buildings don't have to be the same, just something that ties them together especially the sides going north in post oak.

But yeah that NE corner is very prominent and is probably defining the whole area, just based on how prominent it is. Thousands of cars go passed it every day, and fronting Post Oak on that corner is like 2000 feet of surface parking. It's like a huge tear to the urban fabric

[Norman54]

Originally Posted by atadytic19

Lol, it's Houston, you know it's gonna be a tear down.

Would be nice if each corner had a unifying look.
The buildings don't have to be the same, just something that ties them together especially the sides going north in post oak.

But yeah that NE corner is very prominent and is probably defining the whole area, just based on how prominent it is. Thousands of cars go passed it every day, and fronting Post Oak on that corner is like 2000 feet of surface parking. It's like a huge tear to the urban fabric

I believe that thirty story building in Greenway Plaza was the first skyscraper to be built out in the suburbs of Houston. I remember commenting to my dad who lived in Bellaire how unusual it was for a downtown-like building to be built outside of a Central Business District. If I am wrong, let me know.
Dallas just will never have something like a Houston Uptown area. It is a city of endless crossroads. For example, I look for that area around Town East Mall to make a big comeback. Will it look urban? No.
That area disappeared after the completion of the I-20 bypass. It lays in the perfect location though.
Frank Gifford on Monday Night Football once commented how Houston had three downtowns even way back then. What gave off that impression mostly were the downtown like skyscrapers built out in the suburbs.
Still, to make Uptown Houston urban, I think they will need to tear it all out and start over.

[atadytic19]

Not sure why Greenway Plaza keeps being brought up over and over.
Greenway Plaza is a totally different neighborhood. Totally different vibe and there's whole neighborhoods in between it and Uptown.


If I was comparing tall buildings away from downtown I would use the Williams Tower. It is right there in Uptown and it's like the 2nd or 3rd tallest building in the entire state. Far taller than anything in Greenway. Greenway has zero relevance here. Might as well have said Greenspoint

[Norman54]

Originally Posted by atadytic19

Not sure why Greenway Plaza keeps being brought up over and over.
Greenway Plaza is a totally different neighborhood. Totally different vibe and there's whole neighborhoods in between it and Uptown.


If I was comparing tall buildings away from downtown I would use the Williams Tower. It is right there in Uptown and it's like the 2nd or 3rd tallest building in the entire state. Far taller than anything in Greenway. Greenway has zero relevance here. Might as well have said Greenspoint

Building tall buildings out in the suburbs just wasn't done anywhere. The reason that Houston had the ability to do so was because the large energy companies based there could take in whole skyscrapers of space everytime they expanded.
In contrast, Dallas had at one time 10,000 corporations which was the most in the world. There was a top 200 list of companies back in the day. So Dallas has always had a larger office market than Houston, but of the shorter office building variety.
In Texas, having the most of the shortest buildings has never been something to write home about. Then again, having lots of empty tall buildings seems vain.

[LocalPlanner]

Originally Posted by atadytic19

Lol, it's Houston, you know it's gonna be a tear down.

Would be nice if each corner had a unifying look.
The buildings don't have to be the same, just something that ties them together especially the sides going north in post oak.

But yeah that NE corner is very prominent and is probably defining the whole area, just based on how prominent it is. Thousands of cars go passed it every day, and fronting Post Oak on that corner is like 2000 feet of surface parking. It's like a huge tear to the urban fabric

I just wonder what the lease rates are to justify having that little development sitting on super-valuable land. Of course, it's not the only such property in Uptown, but it is one that was transacted after land costs had gone way up. Redevelopment takes time.

Other similar ones worth noting: Tanglewood Center (Gallery Furniture), the formerly Weingarten center NWC POB / Westheimer, and the relatively new one SWC Sage and W. Alabama. That last one really floored me when it was built, I wondered how they made the numbers work.

Retail developers in Houston have had a really hard time trying to figure out how to do projects on high-value land. All they knew how to do was 1-story strip malls with surface parking, going to another model is apparently out of their league; they're also afraid the tenants won't cotton to an alternative model, because they're afraid customers won't go to a non-suburban format. Wulfe had to put a small amount of parking in front of Whole Foods for exactly this reason.

It would help if the City encouraged on-street parking on commercial thoroughfares, but it's not that enlightened when it comes to street design.

[atadytic19]

Originally Posted by LocalPlanner

I just wonder what the lease rates are to justify having that little development sitting on super-valuable land. Of course, it's not the only such property in Uptown, but it is one that was transacted after land costs had gone way up. Redevelopment takes time.

Other similar ones worth noting: Tanglewood Center (Gallery Furniture), the formerly Weingarten center NWC POB / Westheimer, and the relatively new one SWC Sage and W. Alabama. That last one really floored me when it was built, I wondered how they made the numbers work.

Retail developers in Houston have had a really hard time trying to figure out how to do projects on high-value land. All they knew how to do was 1-story strip malls with surface parking, going to another model is apparently out of their league; they're also afraid the tenants won't cotton to an alternative model, because they're afraid customers won't go to a non-suburban format. Wulfe had to put a small amount of parking in front of Whole Foods for exactly this reason.

It would help if the City encouraged on-street parking on commercial thoroughfares, but it's not that enlightened when it comes to street design.

Yeah that 3rd block was a head scratcher too.

But yeah I agree that a lot of these developers are very risk adverse and just stick to what has worked for the last 75 years.

Those multi floor HEBs are very neat, and with summers like this one, these developers need to get with the program and be more creative with their parking. Crossing huge parking lots is stupid in summer and winter and whenever it rains.

The new HEBs may not be the most walkable developments, but let's be honest, no one wants to walk to HEB. I'm all for walkable neighborhoods with human scale markets like an Aldi or trader Joe's, or better yet back to Mom and Pop shops. But the new HEB format uses lots less land. You are protected from the elements getting in and out of your car, and your car remains cooler while you shop.

The upper part of post oak is more shaded by buildings and trees so it is a better walking experience. But that Post Oak and Westheimer shopping complex with its marathon parking lot definitely needs to go.

Edit: taking about land values, is this McDonald's still standing?
https://maps.app.goo.gl/F6Ur7np5v6d4a2q77