CITY COUNCIL APPROVES MUD FOR 800 NEW HOMES ON PINE CREST GOLF COURSE 
Houston’s city council voted today to approve a proposal to create a municipal utility district for an 800-house development Meritage Homes wants to build on the former Pine Crest Golf Course. The golf course, which lies within the 100-year floodplain, is located at the corner of Gessner and Clay in the Brickhouse Gully watershed — where 2,300 residential structures flooded during Harvey. Today’s vote was on a proposal identical to one that was considered by the council last October but instead referred to the mayor’s office for further review. A representative of Meritage Homes told the Chronicle following the initial proposal that it would publish an analysis of “where or how floodwaters would flow across the surrounding land” after construction. But it later decided not to — reported the Chronicle’s Mike Morris — claiming that such a study would have been “irrelevant” in light of the city’s new standards for building in floodplains. A no vote by city council today would not have necessarily killed the project, council member Brenda Stardig noted to Morris — although it would have forced Meritage to find an alternate source of funding for the neighborhood’s infrastructure. The developer bought the 150-acre former golf course from MetroNational last year. [Houston Chronicle; more; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Meritage Homes
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Does anyone have thoughts on how this new neighborhood might affect the local high schools? It’s my understanding that Northbrook is struggling.
I’m not sure if this site is zoned to Northbrook or Spring Woods HS. Neither one is looked upon favorably by education-oriented home buyers (fairly or not) though Northbrook is especially disfavored. I imagine that to the extent any home buyers have high-school aged children, they will opt for private or some sort of transfer.
I would think it would improve, especially if zoned to Spring Woods. Maybe it’ll take a while (IE, younger kids starting in the lower levels, continuing to high school). But as the area develops, the schools are changing.
The problem for buyers is that this development is going to flood the neighbors. When the neighbors sue the MUD for hundreds of millions, there wont be any funding for the facilities, and taxes will have to be jacked through the roof to pay the bond and lawsuit damages. Oh, and your own house will flood, too. You would have to have a financial death wish to buy a home here.
If the golf course lies within a 100 year flood plain, wouldn’t all the homes built need to be built at an elevation two feet above the projected water level in a 500-year storm (per the recent Houston City Council vote) ? What’s the developer going to do, put 800 homes on stilts ?