“SAVE THE ASTRODOME!”
About a year ago, architectural artist Patrick Lopez suggested on these same Pecan Park Eagle pages that the Astrodome could be preserved as a fitting structural artifact by our preservation of its girded superstructure in overlay upon something like a botanical garden in that same historical space where so much great local history has unfolded.
https://thepecanparkeagle.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/what-are-we-going-to-do-with-the-astrodome/
Now it seems that a UH graduate school architectural student named Ryan Slattery has been pursuing his master’s thesis with a plan along those same lines.
http://newsfixnow.com/2013/03/26/what-to-do-with-the-astrodome-reddit-has-answers/
Slattery still needs to come up with a cost strategy for effecting this conversion, but it does look great from a conceptual standpoint – and one that’s a whole lot better than a plain additional parking space patch in the middle of an already extant sea of cement.
Let’s keep our prayers pointed and/our fingers crossed that the rising wave of support for a more artistically inclined and historically dedicated Houston public voice shall finally rise up to win this day for the most important local structure we have ever sat around and paid to watch go to hell.
Tags: ASTRODOME ANSWER
The Pecan Park Eagle 
March 27, 2013 at 1:44 am |
It’s certainly reassuring to see some people with skills studying this issue and coming up with some serious plans. Let’s hope one of them is a better option than demolition of the Astrodome.
March 27, 2013 at 2:13 am |
The “tours” the media has been taken on are to sell the point that the Astrodome is falling apart. That is not structurally true I am told. What is true is that a building ignored for 13 years is having the same problems your house would if not maintained. Pipes break, water leaks, wood rots. If tearing it down truly would cost at least $29-million and it isn’t really even paid for yet, why not allocate that $29+million for renovation or re-use instead of destruction. Another parking lot is not needed. An historic Houston–perhaps even WORLD landmark should not be destroyed. This has nothing to do with the success or lack of it by the teams that played there. It was the WORLD’S FIRST indoor stadium. It always will be.