Properties Vol 2 2017 Houston Secret City

PROPERTIES SECTION

Houston’s secret city

by David Kaplan

26 PROPERTIES | VOLUME 2 – 2017 Photos

by Spike Johnson

A visitor could easily spend a day in downtown Houston and not realize there is a seven mile pedestrian tunnel below. There are hardly any signs at street level directing a person there. While on a tour of downtown, Kingwood resident Truett Von Drake was startled when entering the tunnel for the first time.

Of course, the tunnel still comes in handy for downtown’s 150,000 workers when a thunderstorm or heat wave hits, and many make a trip underground a daily routine. However, a vast number of Houstonians who do not work downtown have no idea it exists.

“It’s like a city underground!,” she exclaimed.

“It’s one of Houston’s best kept secrets,” said writer and local historian Sandra Lord.

The tunnel under the 919 Milam building is a particularly lively scene around noon, as downtown workers move briskly in four directions — either to and from lunch or the office. On a bad weather day it is mobbed.

“I love the tunnel — I hated it at first,” she said. “I’d walk in the rain with an umbrella before I’d go down there.” When Lord first began exploring it in the late 1980s, the downtown tunnel system was poorly lit and much smaller, she said.

Remarkably, downtown Houston’s one-of-akind, mostly privatelyowned tunnel system was unplanned. It expanded organically. One building owner dug a tunnel after realizing it could provide his building with more leasable space and serve his tenants’ needs, then other building operators followed suit.

“It’s one of Houston’s best kept secrets...”

The tunnel has had an ever-changing relationship with above ground downtown life. Decades ago, many downtown storefronts were boarded up. Even Main Street was a place where the down-and-out gathered, while the tunnel was perceived as the safer, more upscale way for professionals to get to and from their cars and a grab a bite.

Today, the streets of downtown tell a different story.

They bloom with landscaped sidewalks, chef-driven eateries, trendy bars, a movie house and more.

Attractions like Discovery Green park, House of Blues and the Aquarium entertainment venue have helped make downtown Houston a major destination and city showcase.

A Pittsburgh native, Lord became intrigued by the tunnel and began researching it — meticulously, one might say. For example, she would measure the distance from one tunnel intersection to the next, so people who walked for exercise would know their distance traveled.

After founding Discover Houston Tours she gave tunnel and other local tours for 30 years until

recently retiring.

Lord, nicknamed “the Tunnel Lady,” has seen the downtown tunnel go from a “dark, disconnected place nobody knew about,” to a “bright shiny, fancyin-places” and much larger system that became “absolutely essential to downtown’s financial success.”

Many of downtown leaders guiding the above ground transformation have mixed feelings about the tunnel.

“As planners, we have a love/hate relationship with the downtown tunnels,” said Bob Eury, president of the downtown revitalization group Central Houston.

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“While they are an important amenity, primarily due to the office community, and to some extent the Theater District, they are still considered a hindrance to the life and vitality wanted and needed at street level,” he said.

“The good news is that we’re seeing more and more street level activity due to downtown’s current boom in the hospitality and residential markets, coupled with the dozens of restaurants having opened in the past couple of years,” Eury said.

“We believe that both above ground and below ground can be equally appreciated and accessible.”

The downtown tunnel, which is closed evenings and weekends, keeps a low-profile. It has no central office or phone number, for example.

At street level, there are hardly any tunnel directional signs or stairs that lead to the tunnel. Most people get to the tunnel by way of a building lobby where they take an elevator or escalator. One of the rare places where a pedestrian can enter the tunnel from the street is the front of Wells Fargo Plaza which has a landscaped stairway leading to the tunnel, although there is no sign identifying the tunnel.

Once inside the vast tunnel system, it is easy for a person to get lost.

There are color-coded maps on tunnel walls, but it is still easy to get turned around, partly because the tunnel winds and branches in so many directions and you can quickly lose your sense of the downtown street grid above.

Keith Rosen, owner and primary tour director of Houston Historical Tours which offers a variety tours including downtown tunnel tours, said that even some of his tour guides are not thrilled by the idea of giving a tunnel tour because the underground system is so confusing.

More often than not, when Rosen is giving one of his compelling tunnel tours a person not on the tour will walk up him, say that he or she is lost and ask him how to get somewhere.

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PROPERTIES | VOLUME 2 – 2017

Even the Tunnel Lady has gotten lost. In 2007, while giving a New York Times reporter a tunnel tour, she took him to a spot she had not been to in a while and got mixed up by the lower and upper levels of a unique double-decker section of the tunnel. “We had to ask someone for help,” she recalled.

There are few public restrooms in the tunnel, Rosen noted. In some instances, it is necessary to borrow a bathroom key or be given the entry code from a shop owner or building receptionist.

Despite the drawbacks, many downtown workers have made the tunnel a part of their daily lives.

Taking the escalator from the tunnel to the lobby of the 919 Miliam building after lunch, Marcus Wooten, a senior analyst at a downtown-based energy firm, said he’ll find a reason to be in the tunnel almost every work day.

“If the weather is OK, I’ll stroll outside, but if it’s too hot or too cold — it’s the tunnel all the way,” he said.

In years past, before the tunnel offered a multitude of lunch options, many downtown workers ate lunch in their company’s cafeteria, Lord said, but such a building amenity is hard to find now.

Most underground businesses are food service operations, but the tunnel also offers florists, jewelry shops, hair salons, financial advisors and sundry shops selling gifts, lotto tickets and Tylenol.

Many of the tunnel eateries are chains such as McDonald’s, Subway and Starbucks, but there are some mom and pop places, too.

Houston-based Peli Deli, an offshoot of Peli Peli, features South African fusion dishes such as naan pork belly tacos; while Chicago-based 5411 Empanada offers Argentinian empanadas.

Alonti Deli, which opened in Two Shell Plaza in 1974, is one of the tunnel’s longest running food operations, Lord said.

PROPERTIES SECTION

“We believe that both above ground and below ground can be equally appreciated and accessible.”

For some entrepreneurs, the tunnel can be an effective incubator. Salata, a salad bar concept, opened in the tunnel at 919 Milam in 2005, and now has 61 U.S. locations. Salata founder Berge Simonian previously owned a more traditional cafeteria-style operation in another part of the tunnel. He got the idea for Salata after noticing that his tunnel customers were ordering more salads and fewer hot items.

Most tunnel lunch spots are inexpensive, quick serve spots, but there is at least one higher-end exception: The Post Oak Grill under the CenterPoint Building has waiters and linen tablecloths and napkins. The restaurant serves modern American cuisine

with “daily suggestions” priced at $19.95.

Ileana Landero, the Post Oak Grill’s new business development manager, lamented that so few Houstonians know about the tunnel. If they did, more of them might consider an underground downtown experience like Post Oak Grill as an option, she said: “There’s a whole life down here.”

There is increasingly more life on the downtown streets as well, and tunnel operators face increasingly stiff competition.

Downtown developers are investing in street level life like they would have not imagined in previous decades.

Brookfield Property Partners, owner and operator of downtown’s Allen Center — which comprises One Allen Center, Two Allen Center and Three Allen Center — is spending more than $48 million on an above ground renovation that will include a one-acre lawn and event space, a twostory glass facade for One Allen Center at lobby level, a chef-driven restaurant and other retail.

Once the project is complete, Allen Center will be a “vibrant” mixed-use destination that will “significantly” add to the above ground experience of downtown both on weekdays and weekends, said Paul Frazier, executive MARTHATURNER.COM

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vice president and head of the Houston Region for Brookfield.

Nevertheless, the Allen Center tunnel will continue to serve a vital role, Frazier said, because it is so convenient for office workers and will remain a strong selling point for potential tenants. Brookfield remodeled the One Allen Center tunnel five years ago and gave it a more modern feel with a new floor, wall finishes and lighting, and renamed it “the Court.” Two and Three Allen Center are connected to One Allen Center by way of sky bridges.

In recent decades more downtown developers have opted for sky bridges over tunnels because they are cheaper and quicker to build, Rosen said.

Some downtown building owners have invested in snazzy tunnel remodels. The Neils Esperson Building tunnel has a sleek new look, complete with a stylish glass wall and handsome wood finishes.

The relatively new 1000 Main building offers the pedestrian a rare opportunity to be standing in the tunnel while simultaneously viewing life at street level by looking through a wide window.

Downtown Houston had tunnels predating the current underground system by a few decades, although they were much smaller in scope.

In the early 1930s, Ross Sterling, a founder of Humble Oil who would also serve as Texas governor, built a

tunnel connecting his downtown PostDispatch Building, now the Magnolia Hotel, to his Sterling Building. Sterling’s son-in-law, Wyatt C. Hedrick, a nationally-renowned architect, designed Sterling’s two downtown buildings and tunnel.

In that same decade, Houston entrepreneur Will Horwitz built a tunnel to connect his downtown movie and vaudeville houses. His air-conditioned tunnel contained an Old English style tavern, and a playground with a merrygo-round. The playground employed female daycare workers wearing white aprons.

In the late 1940s, Foley’s department store opened a tunnel connecting it to its parking

garage. The legendary and now departed downtown store did not link to the larger downtown tunnel system until 2003.

The modern-day downtown tunnel system began when the Bank of the Southwest Building, now 919 Milam, was connected to the 1010 Garage in the early 1960s.

Also in the 1960s a few city buildings and what would become the Theater District garage system built tunnels, Lord noted.

but it has not been immune to natural disasters. During Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, flood water poured into parts of the tunnel, particularly under the Theater District, Bank of America Center and Pennzoil Place.

After the devastating storm, “submarinetype doors with inflatable rubber insulation for airtight seals” were installed in some parts of the tunnel, the New York Times reported.

Of course, extreme weather is rare in Houston, and it is often pleasant outside.

Downtown worker Marcus Wooten is likely to take advantage of a beautiful day during the lunch hour. But when he’s hungry and it is really hot or raining, the tunnel is “heaven-sent,” he said.

“There’s a whole life down here.”

The temperature-controlled downtown tunnel is designed to keep its users safe and comfortable in any kind of weather,

A number of businesses in the Pennzoil Place food court were destroyed, Lord recalled, but most of the tunnel system was up an running about a week after Allison.