Best Benefit to Living Downtown

Houston's hardy downtown residents have earned charter memberships in the first real community among the skyscrapers since the early 1900s. "Almost everybody who lives down here now knows each other, and it's a good bunch of professionals," notes Solero restaurant owner Bill Sadler, who lives just a block away at the Rice Hotel. Being at the center of things also means you can go days without using your car, a virtual necessity almost everywhere else in Houston, says District I Councilwoman Carol Alvarado, who also rents at the Rice. Of course, with the state of the street construction downtown, human internal combustion machines can get around faster on foot than their automotive counterparts anyway.