Earlier this year, we talked about the downtown real estate boom: One Park Place, the apartment tower under construction at the edge of Discovery Green; Houston Pavilions, the retail and office complex being built on Main Street; and a few skyscrapers in the planning stages. Well, the Houston Business Journal reported on one of those proposed new buildings Friday: a 47-story skyscraper being planned by Hines in the 800 block of Main Street.

There aren't that many details yet: The building would be 900,000 square feet, and construction would begin in March and wrap up late in 2010. Hines said it will begin construction with our without a lead tenant — a reflection, we suppose, of the developer's confidence in the downtown office market — and the building will be the first major addition to the downtown skyline since 717 Texas Ave., another Hines project, opened in 2003. The building is being designed by Pickard Chilton, which has done some nice work. However, if the hideous parking garage Hines just completed at Main and Walker is any indication of what's to come, we're preparing to gouge our eyes out. (And no, there's no reason to think that the building will look anything like that garage.)

The 800 block of Main — bounded by Main, Rusk, Fannin and Walker — is full of old buildings, including the 1912 West Building, the 1913 Montagu Hotel (which was undergoing a slow renovation last year) and the incredibly cool Bond Clothes store, which still has its Art Deco interiors — including rare Oriental walnut paneling and double staircases sweeping through a central rotunda — intact (the photo at left shows a part of the stair railings in the old Bond store). All those buildings will be demolished to make way for the Hines tower; only the Stowers Building (which was restored, but remains empty) will remain standing. It's a shame to lose those buildings, all of which have the potential to become cool restoration projects, but Houston's never been known for treasuring its past — especially when this part of its past involves rather decrepit structures on a block that smells of urine.

The Houston Business Journal notes that Trammell Crow is also planning to break ground on Discovery Tower, an 850,000-square-foot building at Walker and La Branch, next spring, so there may be "a neck-and-neck race to see which is first to turn dirt." We'll see.