Results tagged “publicworks”

Good morning, Houston. There's a new weapon in the battle to make Houston the most beautiful city in America: Beginning next week, commercial property owners will have to hide their Dumpsters behind a building, wall, fence, berm or shrub. Officials said they hope the rule — which City Council approved six months ago — will help increase property values and make properties safer (and, of course, prettier). Anyone who violates the ordinance can be...

Good morning, Houston. It's always nice to see our fair city get some love from outside — so we were happy to hear that Lester Holt and a crew from the Today show were in town filming yesterday for the show's "Cities They Love" segment. The point of "Cities They Love" is to showcase off-the-beaten-path attractions, so Today visited the Beer Can House, took a ride along Buffalo Bayou and checked in at the...

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So Mayor Bill White will ask City Council today for money to synchronize more of the city's traffic lights — a continuation of one of White's first initiatives when he took office. According to KHOU, about 70 percent of Houston's traffic lights have been synchronized; it's not clear how many more the $300,000 White will ask for would take care of, but we hope that much money would go a long way.

Issues with the development - dear to many Houstonians - is whether or not there will be adequate parking and increased traffic congestion. Lamesa has ensured that there will be public parking included in the plans, and that there is enough parking planned for the development itself. Area resident Bill Faloon though, is still worried. He said that the developers repeatedly have said they'll build with or without seizing Bolsover St., and also that he hasn't heard of any tenants signing on yet - that means there isn't an accurate way to assess true parking needs and traffic flow. Andy Icken, the city's Deputy Director of Public Works, seems to feel differently:

"Not to say the traffic in Rice Village isn't a difficult situation for people to navigate," but, he said, Sonoma and the closing of Bolsover should not make it worse.

Continue reading "Bolsover or not, Sonoma's coming"

Good morning, Houston. If you have an outstanding municipal warrant, it's time to start watching out: More than 150 law enforcement agencies, including HPD, are gearing up to arrest you next week. It's part of the Great Texas Warrant Roundup, which runs for a week beginning Friday; if you don't take care of your warrant, KHOU warns, you risk "being arrested and embarrassed in front of family, friends or even co-workers." No, not co-workers!...

Earlier this month, we talked about the proposal to build a youth sports complex on the site of the Wortham Park Golf Course, one of three public courses inside the Loop and an East End institution for a hundred years. The complex proposal is part of Houston's push to keep the Dynamo in town — the team is looking for a new stadium and has stipulated that a youth soccer/sports complex be part of the deal, and Houston is keen to keep the men in orange from moving to the suburbs.

Since the Houston Dynamo moved to town last year, it's been a foregone conclusion that someone somewhere would have to build the team a stadium. But where — and who — is still up in the air, and as the Chronicle reports today, Houston is trying to put together a plan that would keep the Dynamo from rocking the suburbs. The focus of the Chron's report is a proposal to put a Dynamo stadium downtown...

Via Off the Kuff, it seems some residents along West Alabama are wondering when they're going to get their old street back — you know, the pre-Spur 527 reconstruction version, sans contraflow lane and with the old bike lanes back in place. Alabama between Spur 527 and Shepherd, you may remember, was reconfigured to better handle increased traffic expected while the spur and parts of the Southwest Freeway were under construction. Originally, the street had...

Why have one parade when you can have two? That's our philosophy, and the federal judge who ruled last week that the city must allow both competing MLK, Jr. day parades to march through downtown agrees. The city had previously only granted the necessary parade permit to Charles Stamps of the MLK Parade Foundation, much to the chagrin of Ovide Duncantell of the Black Heritage Society. Duncantell filed suit against Bill White (unheard of!) and...

In case you hadn't picked up on it, Houstonians aren't accustomed to wintry weather. Anytime the temperature drops below 60, people start pulling out their parkas; if a few snowflakes fall, we all run outside, furiously snapping photos and trying to build snowmen (turns out you can't actually make a snowman out of five snowflakes — but we sure as hell tried). All harmless, right? Sure, until it gets icy — then all bets...

If you've ever thought of the people who spend their days at the Galleria as filthy, stinking rich, well, you might not be all that far off: The mall has recently had problems with raw sewage bubbling onto the sidewalk just outside Neiman Marcus. Uh, gross.

The shot from flickr user and houstonist photo contributor paper_by_design.

As we begin the week, a stern reminder from KHOU: Every time you run over a traffic cone, we all pay. The city's Public Works Department said each cone costs between $10 and $12, and replacing cones last year came to $100,000 — meaning we lost roughly 10,000 traffic cones in 2005. And the city apparently has pretty stringent requirements for its cones: "They have to be good quality, yet malleable so they don't crush your car." Yes, well, we should hope so.