Wednesday, September 06, 2006
An open dialogue on serious strategies for making Houston a better city, as well as a coalition-builder to make them happen. All comments, email, and support welcome.
About Me
Social Systems Architect, consultant and entrepreneur with a genuine love of my hometown and its people. I cover a wide range of topics in this blog - including transportation, transit, economic development, quality-of-life, city identity, and development and land-use regulations - and have published numerous Houston Chronicle op-eds on these topics. I also co-authored the Opportunity Urbanism study with noted urbanist Joel Kotkin and others, creating a city philosophy around upward social mobility for all citizens as an alternative to the popular smart growth, new urbanism, and creative class movements. I am a native Houstonian, 6th-generation Texan, attended Rice University for my BSEE and MBA, and a former McKinsey consultant. I have had a long career in information technology, and am currently the founder and president of OpenTeams, a web-based collaborative software company that emphasizes openness and transparency inside large organizations. CONTACT EMAIL in no-spam format: tgattis (at) pdq.net - send me an email if you would like to receive these posts via email, or see the Google Groups signup box below.
Previous Posts
- Reason on Why Mobility Matters
- Reason calculates the cost of congestion relief
- More challenges to urbanism in Houston
- Challenges to urbanism in Houston
- Urban corridor planning in Houston
- Reason's Bob Poole on land use and transportation
- Rice ranks high in university surveys
- The 6m tipping point, city uniqueness, and density...
- Oil-barrel airfares, Kotkin suburbs, risky Houston...
- McKinsey on zoning
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4 Comments:
Good effort. But if we can't persuade a locally-owned company like Weingarten to change its plans, I doubt we'll do anything to convince a national chain like Barnes & Noble - especially when the current Bookstop is so far below the current standard for the chain.
It ain't over till its over.
I have a suggestion for all 23,000 signers of your previous petition. Why don't each and every one of you pony up $100 apiece, form a committee to manage the property, and then offer Weingarten $2.3 million for the properties. It's one thing to sign a petition, but if all of you truly value the Alabama Bookstop and the River Oaks theater, then why don't all of you put your money where your mouth is. That property belongs to Weingarten and not to you.
Weingarten certainly has a right to do what they want with the property, but we also have a right to not patronize their businesses if we dislike what they do, and they can either take that hit or choose a different course of action.
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