is a pretty darn diverse place.
The NY Times discovers that Houston
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Category Archives: News – Houston Local
Icahn on settling Pennzoil-Texaco with Jamail
This blog is mostly about business and law, so Carl Icahn’s activities have been a frequent topic. Likewise, this blog also centers on Houston, where the Pennzoil v. Texaco case from the mid-1980’s is a part of the city’s storied legal lore. Consequently, the video below of Icahn doing his equivalent of a standup comedy routine describing how he settled the Pennzoil-Texaco case with famed Houston plaintiff’s lawyer Joe Jamail is an absolute classic for this blog. A very big hat tip to John Carney at Dealbreaker for the link to the Icahn video.
Thoughts about basketball at Reliant
My friend John Stevenson graciously hosted a couple of friends and me at last night’s NCAA South Regional semi-final basketball games at Reliant Stadium. Although the company and conversation was a solid A+, my grade for Reliant Stadium’s performance in hosting its first big-time basketball tournament is a rather pedestrian C- (the Chronicle’s David Barron has a more favorable review here). Here are my observations:
1. First, the good. The configuration of the stadium into a 43,000 seat basketball arena is not bad, at least for a football stadium hosting basketball games. We sat in the first row of the club section and the sight lines were fine, although we all used our opera binoculars from time to time. I do think that it would be possible to arrange more seats closer to the floor, particularly on the ends, without giving up much from the nose-bleed seats.
2. But now for the bad. As has been the tradition at Reliant Park since the opening of the Astrodome over 50 years ago, parking was Byzantine. Although Reliant Park is blessed with plenty of on-site parking, the facility’s parking areas were originally designed with narrow entry points that funnel autos to relatively few parking ticket agents that take a parking fee from the driver of each auto entering the facility. This has always been a horrible idea and it’s incomprehensible that Reliant Park officials have not changed it after decades of fan frustration. With tens of thousands of autos descending upon the facility within an hour or so of a big game, traffic around the facility slows to a crawl as autos line up for miles at the most popular entry points waiting for drivers to stop, pay the parking charge and then move on to park. To make matters worse, the narrow entry points are converted to too-narrow exit points after the game, so traffic also stacks up in the parking lots after the game.
What should be done is simple. All of the entry points should be widened to facilitate traffic flow and, at least for big events, there should be no parking charge taken at the facility (the parking charge should be included in the price of the ticket — with tickets already priced at $156 for the South Regional, charging an additional $20 to park at Reliant is outrageous). With widened entry points and no stoppage for payment of a parking fee, parking lot attendants could then concentrate on moving drivers quickly into the parking areas. Traffic backups would be greatly reduced.
Being old-timers in attending events at Reliant Park, our group avoided the traffic bottleneck by entering Reliant Park off of little-used Stadium Drive on the north end. However, when we entered an hour before game time, automobiles were already backed up for miles on Kirby and the other west-side entry points. That bottleneck caused many fans to miss a good part of the first half of the opening game between Texas and Stanford.
3. How on earth could Reliant Stadium not have sufficient concession workers and supplies available for an event as prestigious as an NCAA Regional? In the club section, there were so few concession areas available that the lines required a half hour wait throughout and after the Texas-Stanford game. There were no individual concession vendors. By the time that the lines had dwindled midway through the second game between Memphis and Michigan State, many of the concession areas had run out of bottled water. Finally, although it’s not a big deal with me, isn’t it a bit odd that a fan can’t buy a beer while attending a basketball event that lasts over five hours?
4. The Reliant Park overhead video screens were nice, but provided sophomoric information about the players and showed too few replays of exciting and controversial plays. The folks at Reliant Park need to check out how the Toyota Center operates its overhead video screens, which provide much better information and more replays.
5. Pricing of the tickets is definitely an issue. It’s my understanding that Reliant Park and the NCAA priced the tickets for the three South Regional games at a total of $156 on the thought that the basketball configuration would be limited to about 25,000 seats. When hometown favorite Texas was given the second seed in the South Regional and then won a spot in the South Regional semi-finals, Reliant Park and the NCAA modified the configuration to its present 43,000 seat configuration to accommodate the increased demand for tickets from Texas fans (they also sold tickets at $78 for only the two Friday night semi-final games). Although almost 33,000 attended last night’s games, my sense is that even more would have done so if the nose-bleed tickets had been priced at more reasonable levels.
By the way, I’ve got Memphis in my bracket winning the South Regional final tomorrow against Texas. Although the Horns are solid, nothing that I saw in the two Friday night games has changed my opinion that Memphis will prevail.
Reliant Stadium, South Regional-style
Check out the Chronicle’s nifty rendering of the new basketball configuration that will be used this weekend at Houston’s Reliant Stadium for the NCAA Basketball Tournament South Regional. The Reliant Park ticket seating chart for the basketball configuration is here.
This particular configuration provides about 40,000 seats for the South Regional. A different configuration that will seat 72,000 will be used when Reliant Stadium hosts the NCAA Final Four in 2011.
The ignorance of costs
I don’t particularly like the distraction of talking on a cell phone while driving, so I avoid it as much as possible. It’s also not enjoyable avoiding other drivers who are not paying full attention while chatting on the cell phone.
However, I also recognize that cell phone usage while driving has facilitated beneficial communication exponentially. Thus, whenever I see creeping paternalism such as this, it gets my attention:
West U. eyes ban on calls while driving
Cell phones in school zone lead to ‘near misses’Houston-area officials are watching West University Place as elected officials there consider banning cell phones in the school zone near the community’s lone elementary campus.
The move would put the affluent suburb on the map as the first Houston-area municipality to take a stand against drivers talking on their phones as children travel to and from school. The community is following in the footsteps of Dallas and several North Texas suburbs that have recently approved bans. [. . .]
West University proposed the ban earlier this month after conducting a study to determine how often drivers were spotted chatting on their cell phones in active school zones. Over three weeks in February, police counted 297 drivers on their phones.
Six of the drivers violated traffic laws by creeping into intersections while children and crossing guards were present, West University police Lt. Thad Olive said.
Although neither Olive nor HISD police officials could recount an incident when a child was seriously injured in a school zone because of a driver on a cell phone, they said this type of ordinance could prevent tragedy.
"There’s been a lot of near misses," Olive said. "It definitely has distracting effects. If I can take one element of risk away from the children in that school zone, then it’s a good thing." [. . .]
Kenneth Jones, who oversees HISD’s crossing guard department, said he’d love to see the ban enacted citywide.
"If you’ve got that phone in your hand, I don’t think you have your mind 100 percent on driving," he said.
Kelli Durham, an assistant superintendent in the Cypress-Fairbanks school district, was one of several educators to suggest widening the ban to include all drivers, regardless of whether they’re in school zones.
"If cell phones shouldn’t be used for safety reasons in school zones, should they be used anytime on our streets and highways?" Durham asked. . . .
So, if "one element of risk" can be taken away from children in a school zone, then that’s sufficient justification for regulation of a hugely beneficial communication device? Does this mean that the next initiative will be to ban conversation between a driver of a car and a passenger while in a school zone? That’s also distracting, perhaps even more distracting than talking on a cell phone. Should we also ban distracting billboards, signs, automobiles and lights while we’re at it?
What is most disturbing about all this is the utter ignorance of the bureaucrats proposing these regulations of the cost of the regulation relative to the benefit. Wouldn’t it be prudent at least to perform a meaningful cost-benefit analysis of the probable impact of outlawing a valuable improvement in communications before foisting yet another regulation on the public?
T-Mac for MVP?
The incongruity of Chronicle sportswriter Richard Justice writing about sports has been a frequent topic on this blog, so I don’t much bother anymore keeping up with his often baseless observations about the local sporting scene. However, on the heels of the Houston Rockets’ recent 22-game winning streak, I did a double-take when Justice jumped on the bandwagon and started promoting the Rockets’ Tracy McGrady for the NBA’s Most Valuable Player Award this season.
As noted in this earlier post, as of December 30, McGrady was barely better than a league-average NBA player. There were dozens of players in the Western Conference alone who were having demonstrably better seasons than McGrady. So, at least as of that date, there was simply no objective basis for McGrady being considered the MVP of the NBA this season.
But perhaps McGrady elevated his performance tremendously during the Rockets’ subsequent 22-game winning streak? Maybe that improved performance justifies Justice’s advocacy of an MVP award for McGrady?
Sorry. As this Dave Berri post points out, McGrady’s production in the second half of the season is essentially the same as it was in the first half. Thus, McGrady is not the reason the Rockets went on their 22-game winning streak. Rather, the primary reason for the Rockets’ transformation was the improved play of Carl Landry, Rafer Alston, Shane Battier, Luther Head, Luis Scola and Dikembe Mutumbo, not McGrady.
Berri backs up his position with objective statistical analysis. Justice backs his up with subjective blather. Is that what the Chronicle prefers?
"America’s booming opportunity city"
Each time local politicians in Houston engage in bad policy initiatives such as the ones noted here, my wish is that they would be required to read this fine Joel Kotkin/The American op-ed entitled Lone Star Rising — How a combination of ambition, entrepreneurship, trade, and tolerance made Houston America’s booming opportunity city. Kotkin has been studying Houston over the past several years and he provides a perceptive outsider’s view on why Houston grew into such a vibrant place:
First appearances—then and even now—often didn’t help. Early visitors were struck by the settlement’s largely shack-like housing. And in those days, long before air conditioning, there was the Houston weather, which often combined scalding temperatures with soupy humidity. . . . Yet the Allen brothers had not really chosen so badly. Houston possessed powerful assets. It sat on an enormous fresh-water aquifer, which today guarantees a water supply in a way that other growing cities, such as Phoenix and Las Vegas, can only dream about. The area also abounded in natural resources such as timber and rich soil that was ideal for growing cotton. And when oil drillers hit a gusher in Spindletop, about 90 miles from Houston in East Texas, in 1901, Houston suddenly found itself positioned as the nearest city to some of North America’s richest oil and gas reserves.
None of this, however, adequately explains Houston’s ascendancy. Other cities enjoy better locations for shipping, richer agricultural resources, or similar proximity to oil fields. The answer, I have come to understand as I have worked in Houston as a reporter and consultant, echoes something that the late Soichiro Honda once told me: “More important than gold and diamonds are people.” This critical resource, more than anything, accounts for Houston’s headlong drive toward becoming not only the leading city of Texas and the South, but also a player on the global scene: it is emerging as one of the world’s great cities.
Read the entire op-ed and learn a lot about what makes Houston such a special place to live.
Landry’s is worth more because of what?
Did I read right what Steve Scheinthal, general counsel of Houston-based Landry’s Restaurants, Inc., said in this Chronicle article?:
Landry’s is . . . facing a handful of shareholder suits seeking class-action status in the wake of CEO Tilman Fertitta’s bid to take the company private.
Fertitta made an offer on Jan. 27 to buy out the company at $23.50 for each unowned share. The $1.3 billion deal, including debt, is being reviewed by a special committee of the Landry’s board. [. . .]
Scheinthal dismissed the shareholder suits as standard in a going-private transaction.
"Absent Mr. Fertitta’s offer, the likelihood is that the company’s stock would be trading well below the current market price," he said.
Landry’s stock closed Friday at $17.73 a share, down 38 cents.
Fertitta’s offer for Landry’s was made without a financing commitment in a tough credit market. Yet, the company’s general counsel is claiming publicly that such a speculative offer is all that is propping up the company’s stock price?
I wonder what the boys over at Long or Short Capital will think about that?
The Hollywood Dome?
It is a reflection of how low my expectations have sunk for rational decisions from Harris County officials. I actually felt a sense of relief that officials do not appear to be taking this seriously:
Lights, camera, action: Dome needs a makeover
The Astrodome was a stage for baseball and football prima donnas to strut their stuff, but it could become a forum for Hollywood stars.
At least that’s what would happen if the Houston Association of Entertainment Professionals gets its way.
The association, a new, non-profit group representing film industry workers, has heard that not all county officials support the Astrodome convention hotel plan and has come up with an alternate proposal — turning the Dome into a film production studio.
"It would bring an entire new economy to Houston," said association president Elise Hendrix. "We should make a home for the film-making industry."
Astroturf and stadium seating would give way to studio space where sets could be built, a film-processing operation that could produce dailies, a 100,000-square-foot, underground sound stage and offices.
Hendrix pitched her idea to the Houston Film Commission, an arm of the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, last week.
But she and other association members may appear light on the gravitas needed to have their plan taken seriously. Hendrix, 25, is a professional makeup artist who left the University of Louisiana at Lafayette before graduating. She was a fashion design and merchandising major.
The association doesn’t have a web site, only a page on MySpace.
But Hendrix said the association is courting investors who would put up the estimated $50 million to $200 million needed to gut the Dome and turn it into Astrodome Production Facilities. She declined to name investment groups that she is courting.
Willie Loston, director of the Harris County Sports and Convention Corp., which oversees Reliant Park, said the association hasn’t contacted him about the proposal.
"Great," he said after learning of it. "They got some money?" [. . .]
Given the speculative nature of the Astrodome Hotel boondoggle project, and assuming that the County powers have decided that razing the Dome is political suicide, why aren’t County and Texas Medical Center officials figuring out a way to renovate the Dome into the premiere medical training and education facility in the world? Just a thought.
The diversity of Texas
Yes, Texas is a diverse place. It’s a part of its charm. But following on this post from yesterday, that diversity does not make it an easy place to get one’s arms around.