Bill O'Brien fired from the Texans

Don't let the door hit ya, BOB:

The Houston Texans have started the 2020 regular season with four straight losses. They are 0-4. In the history of the NFL, there has been exactly ONE franchise to start a season 0-4 and go on to make the playoffs. (In case you get into bar trivia duels, that one team was the 1992 San Diego Chargers, led by the immortal Stan Humphries at quarterback!)

This Texans team doesn't look remotely ready to win a football game, let alone win the nine or ten games that would be required to make the NFL's postseason. Perhaps the most frustrating and infuriating part of the Texans' failure this season is that head coach Bill O'Brien was supposed to be an offensive expert (despite six recent seasons of Texans football that display the contrary), and the offense flat out stinks.

Players look confused, Deshaun Watson looks neutered, and in the end, the most productive output through four games was the 23 points they scored on Sunday against Minnesota. By Monday afternoon, Texans owner Cal McNair had seen enough, and he decided to move on from Bill O'Brien, firing the seventh year head coach and naming Romeo Crennel as interim head coach for the remainder of the season.

While O'Brien amassed a (barely) winning 52-48 record and notched four AFC South division titles as head coach of the Texans, his playoff record was a meager 2-4, and his most recent postseason performance was an epic 24-point chokejob against Kansas City. Moreover, as GM he made some truly bizarre personnel moves, such as trading fan favorite and all-pro wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins to Arizona for essentially nothing in return. In fact, O'Brien's ineptitude has pretty much screwed the Texans for years to come, as The Guardian's Oliver Connolly explains: 

It is a testament to the job that Bill O’Brien did with the Texans that the firing of a head coach/general manager who led his franchise to four division titles, only one losing record, and back-to-back double-digit win seasons was overdue.

As a reminder of the state of play when O’Brien was fired on Monday:

-- The Texans have the NFL’s highest payroll this year at $248m.

-- They are projected to be $6m over the salary cap this offseason.

-- Over the past 12 months, they have traded away Jadeveon Clowney and DeAndre Hopkins, two bonafide All-Pros, for a bag of nothing.

-- They do not have a first- or second-round pick in the next draft because of a trade that brought Laremy Tunsil from the Dolphins.

-- They have only four picks in the 2021 draft.

-- They are 0-4.

-- FiveThirtyEight projects them to finish the season with a 4-12 record, and gives them a 2% chance of making the playoffs.

It is about as grim a outlook as any team in the league. O’Brien leaves the team devoid of talent – or the assets to get any in the immediate future.

Indeed, the only question about Bill O'Brien's firing is why it occurred when it did. It would have made more sense to have given him the boot following last January's meltdown against Kansas City, when O'Brien proved beyond a doubt that - his four division titles in the weak AFC South notwithstanding - the AFC Divisional round was the furthest he would ever be able to take the team. 

Instead, the McNair family stuck with him, formally appointed him GM, and allowed him to make the boneheaded Hopkins trade, only to finally realize their mistake four games into the 2020 season. Now, the McNairs are stuck with open general manager and head coaching positions few people are going to want to fill, given the mess the franchise now finds itself in. ESPN's Bill Barnwell explains:

In the end, there was nobody left for O'Brien to use as an excuse, no power to grab and no promotion to achieve. The only person more powerful than O'Brien in the organization, McNair, is the one who made the decision to cut ties with O'Brien and his plan for the team after a month of bad football. I can understand why McNair made his decision, but it seems impossible to separate what O'Brien has done from the opportunity McNair gave him to make those decisions. McNair can right the ship and turn things around if the Texans make the right hires for O'Brien's old positions this offseason, but neither job looks particularly appealing. McNair also has proved he's not up to his job over the past two years, but as O'Brien was reminded Monday, you can't fire an owner.

Apparently, a recent altercation between O'Brien and J.J. Watt in practice may have been the final straw.  I feel badly for J.J. and think the Texans should trade him to a team where he has a chance to win the ring he so deserves. 

The Texans, meanwhile, are going to be a disaster for the next several years to come.

Houston sees surge in bicycling

More locals are traveling on two wheels, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic:

Coupled with the effects of a warming planet, Covid-19 has produced little good news this year. Yet the two crises did pave the way for one positive social shift: a bike boom, including in some unlikely places. New data from Strava, the fitness tracking app used by 68 million global users, shows that several U.S. cities saw significant year-over-year growth in both bike trips and cyclists in much of 2020. 

Among the six U.S. cities for which Strava provided data, Houston and Los Angeles, two sprawling metropolises where just .5% and 1% of the respective populations biked to work in pre-pandemic times, stand out. In Houston, the total volume of cycling trips in Houston was 138% higher in May 2020 than in May 2019. In Los Angeles, the jump was 93%. Unlike their peers, these two places also saw cycling increases in April, the first full month of widespread stay-at-home order and economic shutdowns. 

Given that riding a bicycle is a socially-distanced, outdoor activity, it should come as no surprise that  Houstonians tired of being locked into their homes began to hop aboard their bikes. Activity on the Houston BCycle bike share system saw dramatic increases shortly after the pandemic began, and people wanting bicycles of their own wiped out the inventories of places like Academy and Bike Barn. 

Cycling experts on the ground confirmed that the new Strava numbers are consistent with data from local bike-counters and bike-share systems. In Houston, one popular trail has seen a 162% increase in trips from January to August of this year, said Susan Jaworski*, an active transportation planner for the Houston-Galveston Area Council, a consortium of regional cities that helps coordinate bike networks.

“I think it was the pandemic’s stay-home, stay-safe orders, where people who were remote-working had a chance to discover their bikes,” she said. “When congestion disappeared overnight, I think more folks felt comfortable exploring to get fresh air.”

The big question is if automobile-oriented cities such as Houston will be able to keep people on their bikes even after the pandemic ends and regular commuting and exercising activity resumes. Houston has aggressively been trying to expand its investment in bike-friendly infrastructure, but the city's long-standing affinity for the automobile, as well as its harsh summertime climate, remain to be overcome.

Bicycling is a healthy, inexpensive, ecologically-friendly way to travel and recreate. If anything good comes out of this pandemic, it's that more Houstonians discovered this for themselves.

* Full disclosure: Susan Jaworski is a co-worker of mine at H-GAC.

The death of summer 2020

 Eric Berger eulogizes it: 

The summer of 2020, which featured the 5th warmest July and 8th warmest August on record, threw two tropical cyclones at Houston, and offered unsparing humidity, died on Monday. It was 123 days old. Summer finally lost its fight with fall’s first truly strong front, which blew into Houston on the morning of September 28th. Services have been canceled due to a lack of mourners.

The worst thing about living in Houston is the summer, with the miserable heat and oppressive humidity and mosquitoes and potential for tropical weather, so I'm always happy to see it coming to an end.

Speaking of tropical weather, the death of summer comes only a few days after the (apparent) end of hurricane season in Houston. Once again, Eric explains: 

Houston has had an astonishing month when it comes to tropical cyclones. Four weeks ago we were closely watching Hurricane Laura move along the southern coast of Cuba, toward the Gulf of Mexico. And of course, over the last few days, we dealt with heavy rains from Tropical Storm Beta. So amidst a record-setting tropics season, with more than two months to go until its official end on Nov. 30, could Texas really be done with hurricanes this year?

The answer, we think, is yes.

Eric explains that the odds of a hurricane striking the Texas coast fall dramatically after late September, especially when cold fronts begin pushing through.

Really, the only reason we’re not 100 percent confident that Texas will not see another hurricane this year is because it is 2020. Anything goes this year.

Anything, including zombie hurricanes:

Paulette regained strength and became a tropical storm once more on Monday, according to the National Hurricane Center. Paulette reappeared Monday about 300 miles off the coast of the Azores islands.

These "zombie" storms, like Tropical Storm Paulette, are rare but they have happened before, said CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller.

"Conditions can become hostile for a tropical storm to maintain its intensity, but if it doesn't dissipate completely, it can revive days later when conditions become more favorable," Miller said.

And with the apocalypse that 2020 has been, this year is prime for these spooky storms.

"2020 is a good candidate to experience a zombie storm because water temperatures are above average over a bulk of the Atlantic Ocean, and obviously we are seeing a record number of storms -- which ups the chances one could regenerate," Miller said.

Fortunately, Zombie Paulette dissipated a few days after it arose from the dead, and as of this evening the tropics are clear.

Houston expected to experience sunny, dry and temperate weather for the next several days. Enjoy!

2020 Houston Cougar Football: Revised Schedule and Season Preview

I hesitate to spend too much time writing this, because I'm still skeptical that there's going to be a whole lot of college football this fall in the midst of the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic. To be sure, the 2020 season is now well underway (Louisiana-Lafayette's upset of #23 Iowa State being my favorite highlight so far), but as players test positive, outbreaks occur on college campuses, and more and more games get canceled, I am still expecting the entire season to grind to a halt at some point.

In fact, with so many schools and conferences not currently playing, with so many individual players opting the season out, and with redshirt and eligibility rules suspended, the 2020 college football season is going to have a humongous asterisk next to it regardless of what happens. Nobody will consider this year's CFP champion or Heisman Trophy winner to be truly "legitimate." While I love college football, I can't help but wonder why programs are even bothering to play.

All that being said: the UH Athletics Department is among those who are bothering to play football this fall; hence, this preview.

The Current Schedule: Throw the old schedule away, as there have been changes. Last week's opener against Rice was officially postponed, but I don't expect it to be rescheduled. The trip to Washington State, likewise, was canceled due to the Pac-12's decision not to play this fall. Houston's game against BYU on Friday October 16 has been moved from Provo to Houston. And yesterday we discovered that the Cougars would be traveling to Baylor, rather than Memphis, for their season opener next weekend. 

So this is the schedule as it looks today; The AP rankings are current as of this morning:

     Sat Sep 18      at Baylor

     Sat Sep 26      North Texas

     Sat Oct 3        (off)

     Thu Oct 8       Tulane

     Fri Oct 16       #21 BYU

     Sat Oct 24      at Navy

     Sat Oct 31      #14 Central Florida

     Sat Nov 7       at #13 Cincinnati

     Sat Nov 14     South Florida

     Sat Nov 21     at SMU

     Sat Nov 28     Tulsa

     Pending:         at #16 Memphis

Looking Back: There was optimism that the Cougars, led by new head coach Dana Holgorsen and dynamic quarterback D'Eriq King, were going to have a successful, division-winning season. However, after enduring a brutal start to the season that included demoralizing losses to Washington State and Tulane, a host of players (including King) decided to redshirt. The Cougars ended the season with a 4-8 record - their worst campaign since 2004 - and King elected to transfer to Miami.

The Big Story for 2020: Playing through a pandemic. It's going to be a whole different football game in 2020, with players quarantined, stadium crowds limited, and schedules changing on a constant basis. I'm still blown away that the Cougars were able to replace next week's Memphis game with Baylor - a team the Cougars haven't played since the end of the Southwest Conference - on six days' notice!

Reasons for Optimism: Something like 35 players redshirted last season. Some of them (like King) left for other schools, but most return. A handful of transfers should be available to play this fall as well. One would therefore expect a team that is deeper and more experienced than last years, and that alone should result in more wins.  

The schedule is also easier than last year's - there's no stretch of four games in 19 days to start the season this time! - and the most recent changes have worked in UH 's favor. With the Washington State game being canceled and the BYU being moved, The Cougars will only travel outside of Texas twice (three times if the Memphis game is rescheduled) this fall. 

Quarterback Clayton Tune found himself in a tough spot last year, having to take over duties for King five games into the season, and ended the fall with 1,533 yards, 11 TDs and 9 interceptions. With experience, he should be better this season. He also has experienced running backs - Mulbah Carr and Kyle Porter - to hand the ball off to, as well as his prime receiving target from last year, Marquez Stevenson, who is probably the team's best offensive playmaker.

Senior linebacker Grant Stuard, who led the team with 97 tackles last season, heads a defense that is returning a large number of players who - hopefully- learned through adversity last season. Cornerback Damarion Williams was a bright spot in the secondary last year; hopefully he gets some help back there this fall.

Reasons for Pessimism: Just because a team has a bunch of players returning doesn't mean that the team is going to be better, especially if those players contributed to truly atrocious performances on the defense or offensive line last season. Last year's defense allowed 468 yards and 34 points per game, while Ryan Monceaux wonders about an O-line that allowed 95 tackles for loss and 35 sacks last season. While Clayton Tune needs to show improvement, he also needs better protection.

The Cougars had a habit of starting games strong but wilting in the second half last season. That's something that needs to be corrected this fall.

And about that schedule: while it's easier than the one the Coogs played in 2019, it's still tough. Three of Houston's currently-scheduled opponents are ranked, and Baylor is sitting right outside the top 25. The Cougars have to play every team that beat them at home last season on the road this season. 

What the Humans Think: CBS Sports ranks the Cougars 35th (out of 76* FBS teams currently planning to play this fall), and their sportswriters expect the Coogs to finish anywhere between third and eighth in what is now (thanks to UConn's departure) an 11-team AAC. Athlon had the Coogs ranked 70th (out of the full 130 teams) to start the season (they've since re-ranked them to be #45 out of 76*), and sees them as the sixth-best team in the AAC. The conference itself seems to think the same way; its preseason poll placed the Coogs seventh. Pete Fiutak at college Football News foresees a six-win regular season for Houston.

What the Computers Think: As of today, ESPN's FPI gives the Cougars a 50% or greater chance of winning seven out of their currently-scheduled ten games. Massey, on the other hand, currently only gives the Coogs a 50% or greater chance of winning four games. Congrove had the Cougars pegged at #50 (out of 77* teams) to start the season and expected the team to finish the season with a 4-6 record. As of this morning Sagarin puts the Cougars at #66 (out of all 257 Division I football programs); their rating of 69.57 implies a 5-5 record when the ratings of opponents and the home field advantage are taken into account (and a 5-6 record if the Memphis game is rescheduled). 

What I Think: On one hand, I would expect that Dana Holgorsen's Adventures in Redshirting from last fall would pay dividends in the form of a team that is deeper, more experienced and better-conditioned this fall. That would suggest improvement in 2020. On the other hand, we're still talking about a team that has a record of 5-12 over its last 17 games, has one of the worst defenses in the nation over the last two years (#119 in 2018 and #113 in 2019), and is led by a quarterback who had almost as many interceptions as touchdowns last year. "Improvement" might be a relative term.

I foresee a regular season record of 5-5 this fall (5-6 if the Memphis game is rescheduled). While I think the Cougars will be a better team overall, I still don't think they're where they need to be in order to beat anybody other than North Texas, Tulane, South Florida, Tulsa and Navy. 

This projection, of course, assumes that the Cougars play enough games to even make it to five wins before Coronavirus forces the plug to be pulled on the 2020 college football season. Right now, I will treat every game the Cougars actually play this fall as an unexpected and enjoyable gift, win or lose.

*Air Force is scheduled to play only two games this fall, so some sites include the Falcons in their rankings while others don't.

Henry Robert Hermis, Jr 1953 - 2020

The news of Henry's death came as a shock to me when I heard about it a week ago. Henry gave me my first job out of college, at his architectural consulting firm. Although I worked there full-time for less than a year before I moved on to graduate school, Henry still gave me part-time work during the summers and holidays while I was in grad school, and I continued to keep up with him and some of the other co-workers I met there long afterward. 

I would also occasionally bump into Henry at UH football games; in addition to being a fellow UH College of Architecture alum, he was also a fellow Cougar fan. 

I'm glad I got to know Henry. He will be missed.

On Wednesday, September 2, 2020 Henry Robert Hermis, Jr. passed away at the age of 67.  Henry was born to Henry (Sr.) and Rita (Barta) Hermis in Hallettsville, Texas on June 6, 1953.  He was raised in Houston, Texas at his family home on Reinerman Street, with frequent visits back to the family farms in Ammannsville and Schulenburg, Texas with his mom, dad, brother, sister, aunts and uncles, and many cousins.  Henry cherished his Czech Heritage.

Henry graduated from the University of Houston in 1976 with a degree in architecture.  While attending university he met his future wife Barbie and they were married on May 17, 1975.  Together they raised two wonderful sons, Kevin and Brian.

Henry is preceded in death by his father Henry Hermis, Sr. and mother Rita Barta Hermis.  He is survived by his wife Barbara Kahanek Hermis and son Kevin Hermis and wife Megan Womack Hermis and granddaughters Olivia, Eliza, and Emilia and son Brian McCann-Hermis and wife Ashley McCann-Hermis and granddaughter Hana.  Henry was a loving and dedicated husband, father, and grandfather that cared about his family and friends tremendously and everybody will miss him dearly.

A private Catholic mass will be held at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Plantersville, Texas, which will also be his final resting place.

Henry was a kind and generous man that showed compassion for all those around him and we believe he would appreciate donations to the Salvation Army, or The Czech Center Museum of Houston, or a charity of one's choice.

Will Ecuatoriana arise from the dead?

If some Ecuadorean investors have their way, Latin America's most colorful airline will fly again:

The name sounds familiar, but it has nothing to do with one of South America’s best-known carriers, Ecuatoriana de Aviácion, Ecuador’s largest aviation company until it stopped flying in 2006.

An initiative of the country’s entrepreneurs, Ecuatoriana Airlines was registered with the National Civil Aviation Council (CNAC) of the South American country in late August and intends to launch services from the Mariscal Sucre International Airport, in Quito.

According to the application sent to CNAC, the new airline plans to serve the cities of Coca, Cuenca, Esmeraldas, Guayaquil, Loja, Macas, Manta, Quito, Santa Rosa and Tulcán. The fleet of the new Ecuatoriana is not defined, but the company is evaluating the ATR 42-500 and Dash 8-Q200 turboprops and the Airbus A319 and A220 jets and its competitor, the Boeing 737 in the 300, 400 or 500 variants.

Ecuatoriana’s share capital, however, is only $ 16,000, 99% of which belongs to a foreign investor, the Ecuadorian press revealed – the company’s partners are Eduardo Delgado and Ann Martillo.

A few thoughts here: 

• Given my (admittedly three-decades-old) experience with Ecuatoriana, my first thought was "Cool! Now a whole new generation of travelers to Ecuador will get to experience fearing for their lives in heavy turbulence and having their flights summarily canceled."

• The airline's proposed destination list indicates that the new Ecuatoriana will be entirely domestic and, interestingly, will not fly any routes to the Galápagos Islands, even though they are popular with tourists and are financially lucrative. 

• $16,000 in share capital isn't going to buy a lot of airplanes, but that may be a typo. This article (in Spanish) claims that the airline has lined up $15.84 billion in foreign capital and $160 million in domestic capital. 

This filing comes amidst an unsettled civil aviation situation in Ecuador:

The Ecuador market is up for grabs. In May, the Ecuador government put TAME Ecuador, the former State carrier, in liquidation. Two of the other airlines that operate in the country, LATAM and Avianca, started reorganization processes under Chapter 11 in the US. Therefore, there could be a void left by these carriers, and a new airline could develop it in the post-COVID world.

State-run TAME had been struggling for awhile; the Coronavirus pandemic was the 58-year old airline's death knell. This left Ecuador without a true a flag carrier, as Avianca Ecuador and LATAM Ecuador are both subsidiaries of parent airlines based in Colombia and Chile, respectively, and face uncertainty of their own. So it certainly makes sense to set up a new airline - if only on paper for now - to fill the gap left by TAME and to take potentially take advantage of problems at Avianca and LATAM.

Obviously, the new Ecuatoriana won't begin flying anytime soon; even if it were possible to do so, it would be foolish to start operating a new airline in the middle of the pandemic. And, it goes without saying that in order for the new Ecuatoriana to be successful, it will need to be run much better than its infamously unreliable state-owned predecessor.

But if Ecuatoriana 2.0 does ever (literally) get off the ground, they could do worse than to bring back the old color scheme.

The End of the New Orleans Insectarium

This makes me sad:

The brutal chill that the coronavirus put on New Orleans tourism has claimed one of the city's top attractions for children.

The Audubon Butterfly Garden and Insectarium, closed since March due to city-mandated shutdowns and a sharp drop in visitors, won't be reopening its current location at the U.S. Custom House on Canal Street, officials from the Audubon Nature Institute said.

Audubon Chief Executive Ron Forman said the closure was necessary as part of a broader cost-saving initiative aimed at keeping the non-profit financially sound.

The current plan is to eventually relocate many of the insectarium's exhibits, including the Japanese-style indoor butterfly garden, into a renovated space in the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas at the foot of Canal Street — a move Forman expects will save roughly $1 million a year in lease payments.

The Insectarium was located in the impressive 1881 U.S. Customs House at the corner of Canal and North Peters. Its opening was a positive indicator of New Orleans' on-going post-Katrina recovery. But New Orleans, along with the rest of the world, now finds itself in the midst of another catastrophe. 

The insectarium now appears to be among the casualties of the economic downturn after more than a decade in operation. The 23,000-square-foot interactive exhibit opened in 2008 at a cost $25 million and quickly made it onto the top-ten lists of family-friendly tourist attractions in a city more often known as an adult playground.

It took up half the ground floor of the 19th Century landmark Custom House building, and was touted as the largest freestanding museum in North America devoted to insects.

With thousands of beetles, butterflies, cockroaches and other crawling, flying creatures, it was a kid-friendly detour with petting stations, termite hills and insect shows. And its butterfly garden allowed visitors to walk through a room brimming with hundreds of monarchs, common sergeants, tailed jays and other fluttering lepidoptera.

I first visited in 2009 and re-visited many times, owing to to the museum's uniqueness as well as its closeness to our timeshare. One of the museum's highlights was the "Bug Appétit" kitchen, featuring insect-based foods such as mealworm salsa and cinnamon-flavored crickets. The Japanese-themed butterfly garden was also enjoyable.

Normally, while walking along Canal or North Peters Street, you'd be able to peer into the windows of the Insectarium and see the butterflies in the garden resting on the Insectarium's windows. But the last time I walked past the Insectarium, a couple of nights before my wedding, I looked into those saw windows and saw no butterflies fluttering about. I felt sad.

The Audubon Nature Institute plans to move some of the Insectarium's exhibits, including the butterfly garden, into the Aquarium space it already owns. But the enjoyable uniqueness of the Insectarium itself is, alas, likely gone forever.

RIP Gerald Hines

I would venture to say that no single person has impacted Houston's skyline more than Gerald D. Hines. The legendary developer passed away last weekend at the age of 95:

Hines, who launched his property company as a one-man shop in Houston in 1957, developed billions of dollars’ worth of real estate across the globe, influencing generations of builders and leaving a lasting mark on the world’s top cities. 

The founder and chairman of the Hines firm was one of the first developers to hire sought-after architects, proving that tenants would flock to top-quality buildings, even in a down market. He raised the bar for commercial real estate by showing that quality and financial success could be mutually attainable. 

“Gerald Hines was one of the great patrons of American architecture of the 20th century,” said architectural historian Stephen Fox, putting him in a category with John and Dominique de Menil, Ima Hogg and her brother William, and Edgar Odell Lovett, the first president of Rice University. 

“He put Houston on the map in terms of architecture by his imaginativeness and his business discipline in understanding how he could work with the best architects of the world within the economic constraints of real estate development and construction,” said Fox, a lecturer at the architecture schools at Rice and University of Houston.

Hines and his development firm were responsible for many of Houston's most iconic buildings, including One Shell Plaza, Pennzoil Place, the TC Energy (originally RepublicBank) Center, the JP Morgan Chase (formerly Texas Commerce) Tower, the Transco (now Williams) Tower, and the Galleria. The JP Morgan Chase Tower, built in 1982, remains Texas's tallest building, while the Williams Tower, opened in 1983, remains the tallest building in the United States located outside of a central business district. In addition to his Houston developments, Hines was responsible for notable buildings in places such as New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Dallas.

Downtown’s Pennzoil Place represented a breakthrough for Hines from a design and development standpoint. The twin 36-story trapezoidal towers of darkly tinted glass was named “Building of the Decade” when it was completed in 1975 by the late New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable. 

Hines collaborated on the project with architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee who turned away from the boxy modern design of the era exemplified in One Shell Plaza just up the street. 

“In so doing they demonstrated that if you make a building that is distinctive there are tenants that will pay extra to have their offices there,” Fox said. “That was kind of the Hines breakthrough — to understand and respect the power of architecture to create structures potential clients would want to identify with.” 

Hines worked with Johnson and Burgee on multiple projects, including the so-called “Lipstick Building” at 53rd at Third in midtown Manhattan, a 34-story elliptical-shaped office tower completed in 1986; and San Francisco’s 101 California, completed in 1982, a cylindrical 48-story tower of glass and granite and glass, featuring a seven-story, glass-enclosed lobby. 

Hines developed friendships with many of the architects who designed his buildings. For his 90th birthday, he was joined by seven of them to discuss design and development in a public architecture forum at Houston’s Hobby Center. Hines sat alongside Burgee, A. Eugene Kohn, Henry Cobb, Cesar Pelli, Robert A.M. Stern, Jon Pickard and Art Gensler who talked of Hines’ outsize influence on commercial real estate. The event drew an audience of more than 2,000. 

“Our best work was for Gerry Hines,” Burgee, who, along with the late Philip Johnson designed several buildings for Hines, said at the forum.

Given his patronage of some of the era's most notable architects, perhaps it is only natural that Hines also lent his support the next generation as well:

Hines’ philanthropic contributions included a $7 million donation in 1997 to the University of Houston’s architecture school that now bears his name. 

When he spoke to students, Dean Patricia Belton Oliver said, there was an immediate connection and mutual respect. 

“I never saw him light up quite the way he did when he was surrounded by students,” she said. “For someone who made his career in such a tough business, it was so gratifying to see the joy he experienced when he had the opportunity to share his legacy.”

Discussions about Hines' contribution to the UH College of Architecture occurred towards the end of my time as a student there, and I remember it being controversial at the time. Some students were miffed that the college "sold out" to a developer, rather than an actual architect. Never mind the fact that, without developers, architects wouldn't have any business at all!

I never got to meet Hines in person, although I was among a group of UH architecture students who was invited for a luncheon at his River Oaks mansion, which was rather impressive.

Hines' firm continues to operate under the direction of his son, Jeffery. A tribute to Hines on the company's website is worth a read. The UH College of Architecture has put up a tribute as well.

Hurricane Laura

So, half of the "one-two punch" from the tropics didn't really materialize - Marco fizzled out as it reached the Louisiana coast - but the other half, Laura, is about to make life miserable for a lot of people.

For a while it looked like the Houston region was in danger of a direct hit, but the latest models are coming into agreement that the storm will hit to the east of here:

Unless this track shifts back towards the west in the next several hours Houston itself is probably only going to see mild effects - gusty winds and some rain - from this storm. That's good news for us, although communities along the bay and coast (such as the City of Galveston, which is under a mandatory evacuation) could experience problems related to storm surge.

Of course, this is most certainly not good news for folks in Port Arthur, Beaumont and Lake Charles.

The last days of Braniff

I recently came across this on YouTube and found it fascinating. It's an episode of Enterprise, a business documentary program shown on PBS in the early 1980s and hosted by the legendary Eric Severeid. This particular episode from 1983, entitled "Tailspin," documents the last days of Braniff International Airways, which, in spite of existing since 1930 and being the nation's eighth-largest carrier at the time, became the first major airline in the history of United States commercial aviation to declare bankruptcy in 1982. 

Prior to 1979, the US commercial airline industry was heavily regulated; the government determined which carriers could fly which routes and how much they could charge. Once deregulation occurred, many airlines, including Dallas-based Braniff, saw an opportunity to grow their business in ways previously unimaginable. The airline's leadership liberally added new routes and borrowed heavily to finance its expansion.

The results were disastrous, especially once the US economy entered recession. In late 1981, the over-leveraged, debt-laden, money-hemorrhaging airline hired Howard Putnam away from Southwest Airlines to try to rescue the company.

Putnam attempted to cut costs, soothe creditors and streamline operations, but Braniff's many internal problems, as well as fierce competition from larger, deeper-pocketed rivals such as American Airlines, made his job difficult. Attempts to attract more passengers, such as gimmicky fare promotions, cost Braniff the goodwill of travel agents (who issued most airline tickets back in those days and relied on commissions, as a percentage of fares, for revenue). An attempt to maintain liquidity by selling Braniff's Latin American network to Pan Am was briefly held up by the Civil Aeronautics Board (the network would eventually be acquired by Eastern), and proved to be too little, too late for the airline to survive. Braniff ceased operations at midnight on May 13, 1982. 

Seriously: if you have half an hour to spare, watch the whole thing. Film crews were given access to Putnam and Braniff's upper management as it struggled to stay afloat during its final days, which makes it especially fascinating.

As the documentary explains, Braniff was trying to survive in an environment when the US commercial aviation industry as a whole had too many seats and too few passengers. By the time he arrived, there was probably nothing Putnam could have done to save the company.

Braniff's demise would be the first of many airline bankruptcies, mergers and acquisitions, as deregulation completely transformed the US commercial aviation industry. Today, two-thirds of all domestic passengers are carried by just four airlines: America, Delta, Southwest and United. 

Cool fact: Braniff, was along with Eastern, one of the two original airlines serving Houston's first purpose-built air terminal.