Bloomberg.com: Exclusive: "Houston Pitches Downtown Flats, Yao's Eatery to Fight $4 Fuel
By Edward Klump
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July 8 (Bloomberg) -- Houston, the fourth-largest U.S. city, hasn't had a new downtown luxury apartment tower in four decades.
That will change next year, when One Park Place opens. The $125 million, 37-story building will have 346 units, charging monthly rents as high as $7,000. The $170 million Houston Pavilions, opening in October, will have offices, shops, a bowling alley and a restaurant owned by the family of Houston Rockets basketball player Yao Ming.
Developers of the two projects are taking on the challenge of boosting the city center's population of 4,000 and enticing commuters to stay for activities after the business day ends. About 200,000 people work, shop or run errands each weekday in downtown Houston, a landscape of vacant storefronts on Main Street and acres of parking lots interspersed with skyscrapers.
``I think it's going to all happen, and it's going to happen in a hurry,'' said Kathleen Hayes, 58, a senior vice president at Merrill Lynch & Co. who plans to move into One Park Place with her husband in March. ``It's almost like popcorn.''
U.S. cities are trying to recover from urban planning that pushed housing out of downtowns in the 1970s, when people moved to su"
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
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