Underground Houston

 

In 1981, I accepted a position with Aramco Services Company (ASC) in Houston TX.  'Aramco' is derived from ARabian AMerican Oil COmpany.  Aramco and its sister companies are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the House of Saud.  During the interview process leading up to ASC offering me a job, the recruiter had me follow him from one ASC office to another a few blocks away in downtown Houston.  To do this, we took the elevator to the lobby and an escalator to the basement.  From there, we walked through what was effectively an underground strip mall, corridors leading from one downtown building to another, and lined with shops and restaurants.  It was a surprise because I had never seen anything like this before in my life.

The story I was told was that sometime in the recent past (pre-1981), the owner of one building opened his basement as rental space for retail establishments.  The owner of the building across the street took notice of the action and did likewise.  At some point, one of them proposed cutting a path beneath the city street to join the two spaces, and workers in building A could then get to the shops and offices in building B without subjecting themselves to 100°F temperatures and 98% humidity.  As building owners one by one converted their basements to retail/rental space, new tunnels were added until today, the Houston tunnel system connects 95 separate buildings, is 6 miles long, and it is a piece of cake to get so lost that your only hope of rescue is to get to street level and find out where (exactly) you are.

It almost qualifies as 'a tourist attraction'.  It was stunningly extensive when I left the area in 1985.  It was more elaborate when I worked on contract for EXXON/Mobil in 1998, and it has certainly gotten longer since then.  It was and is literally possible to walk crosstown without ever risking being rained on.  In fact, when I worked for Aramco in the 80s, I often went to lunch with the local Mensa group by walking (underground) from One Allen Center at Dallas and Smith to The Shops at Houston Center, San Jacinto at McKinney.  It was a longer walk than it would have been at street-level, but it was air conditioned all the way.

 

Polluting the Landscape... or not

The IKEA store in Tampa wants to put up a bigger sign.

I'm reminded of a story about Kingwood, Texas, from my days as a resident there.  Herewith...

Kingwood is/was (according to Better Homes & Gardens) 'the best planned community in the world... period'.  That's quite a reputation to live up to, and the boys and girls who 'ran' Kingwood did the best they could.

There was a plot of land on Kingwood Drive set aside for 'convenience/fast food' and Friendswood Development contacted the McDonald's Corporation to see if they were interested.  They were, so Friendswood asked for a scale model/architect's view of the structure to occupy the northwest corner of (if I recall correctly) Kingwood Drive and Chestnut Ridge Road.  A few weeks later the McDonald's crew were back with a scale model with little cars parked in the parking lot and people placed as if they were heading for the nearest BigMac.

"What's this?"  a Friendswood minion asked pointing to a slender shaft sporting a golden "M" rising from the model.

"That's a 150 foot steel shaft so that folks driving by on US-59 will know there's a McDonald's here!"  he was told.

"In Kingwood, nothing protrudes above the (tree) canopy,"  the McDonald's guy was told.

"Oh, but we have to have our logo visible from the highway!"  they protested.  When they were told 'no exceptions', they packed up their stuff.

"Let us know when you change your mind,"  the McDonald's guys told the Friendswood people.

So Friendswood contacted Burger King.  "How about this nice plot at Kingwood and Chestnut Ridge?"

A few weeks later, Burger King showed up with a scale model showing little cars parked in the parking lot and people placed as if they were heading for the nearest Whopper.

"Why is this sign so bright?"  a Friendswood rep asked.

"It's illuminated,"  the BK architect informed him, smiling.

"We don't do 'illuminated signs' in Kingwood,"  he was told.

The BK architect pulled a pair of wire snips from his back pocket, reached under the model, found the wires leading to the illuminated sign, and 'snip'.  "No problem,"  he said.  Two months later, there was a Burger King on that spot.

The first week that BK was in operation, I happened upon the manager while he was screaming into his phone at his regional manager, flecks of foam spewing from the corners of his mouth, demanding they resupply his store for the third time that week because they were out of everything.  Again.

McDonald's eventually got a site in Kingwood up on Northpark Drive, but it was a second choice and they learned their lesson:  Kingwood was a joint venture of EXXON and the King Ranch (which owns 2/10ths of one percent of all the land in Texas);  you just don't try to impose your will on a conglomerate that size.

So...  what's wrong with Tampa?