- Neighbors File Suit Against Developers of 2229 San Felipe, Claiming Office Tower Would Be ‘Abnormal and Out of Place’ [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot]
- Houston First, Buffalo Bayou Partnership Hope Sunset Coffee Building Project Will Revive a Neglected Part of Downtown [Houston Chronicle ($); previously on Swamplot]
- Two Years After Announcement, Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill Now Open in West Oaks Mall [Culturemap]
- El Gran Malo Out on Ella, Restaurant from Roost Owner Kevin Naderi On Its Way In [Houstonia]
- Permits for New Homes in La Marque Increased Nearly 90% from 2012 to 2013 [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- Johnson Development Corp. Holding 500-Home Tour of Its Master-Planned Communities This April [Houston Chronicle]
- Exploring BBP’s Abandoned Gravel Silos on Buffalo Bayou [OffCite]
Photo of Kemah Boardwalk marina: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Instead of throwing lawsuits around, the people in River Oaks should start a Buy Protect Sell program. Buy pieces of land around their subdivision as they come up for sale. Protect those pieces of land by putting restrictive covenants on them (height regulations in particular, since their concern has been the proliferation of high rises in their area). Then sell the properties with the restrictions in place.
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B/P/S has been used for about a decade by environmentalists elsewhere in the country. It could be used to preserve the low-rise character around a neighborhood. The drawback is that it can be costly for poorer neighborhoods, but River Oaks could well afford it.
They don’t want zoning, but then they get upset about this.
This is why the U.S. has more lawyers per capita than any country in the world! Why on Earth would bother suing Hines, it’s completely fuitile and a total waste of thousands of dollars. Hines understands real estate people, they know what they’re doing, no way you stop this building! I’m sure all the ambulance chasing lawyers are thrilled with all this absurd litigation that will go nowhere!–all of this looks so petty–uh, you chose to live in a city with no zoning, either move to change the zoning laws or stop wasting your money on stupid lawyers.
ZAW: That would require a PYMWYMI* program, which most people aren’t willing to do.
(* Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is)
Good point, Cody – and it would require some PYTWYMI (Put your Time Where Your Mouth Is) too. But if they’re ready to spend God knows how much money and time on lawyers, it’s not a big stretch to start doing B/P/S.
@ZAW
I say that there is really no need for B/P/S. It’s really simpler than that I think.
These River Oakians have no one to blame but themselves when it comes this ‘out of place’ development. They have the means and connections for real political influence unlike the 99.9% of us. However, they don’t support policies / candidates that endorse zoning. It’s a symptom our libertarian zeitgeist. Everyone is so gung ho for ‘market forces’ and ‘laissez faire’ until said forces affect you adversely. Then all hell breaks loose and it becomes a crime against humanity. You know what? Have some foresight, create a collation of neighborhoods (and yes, you’ll have to be in bed w/ minorities and poors), and enact real change. Change that will stop things like this tower being built in the future in neighborhoods that don’t like it. Until you take those steps, I’ll just keep basking in the schadenfreude.
Wah wah. Too bad Houstonians TWICE voted against zoning. Now the douche wads in RO have to deal with the consequences.
@DNAguy: ah, the old, “don’t like it, enact zoning” canard. Both you and I know that’s a nonstarter here in Houston, no matter who’s behind it. It’s like me telling a developer that if he wants to build a really crappy development and he doesn’t want anyone to care, he needs to invent time travel to go back to the 1970s. Ain’t gonna happen: unless you can disprove Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity….
I find it comically funny that an office building actually DOES pose a traffic problem for a neighborhood in terms of imposing peak-hour congestion (unlike an apartment building), and yet that River Oaks cannot seem to gain traction on opposing this building. The circumstances are otherwise quite similar.
The only material difference that I can discern between this and the “Ashby Highrise case” is that River Oaks’ blue-blooded reputation precedes itself; whereas the general public is usually ill-informed as to the socioeconomic consistency of Southampton and Boulevard Oaks.
ZAW and Cody: I think if they really wanted to implement a B/P/S program it wouldn’t take too much time on the resident’s part. They could just get ROPO to do it. However, I don’t think that the people living on the edge of RO could get the entire neighborhood to pay for it…
Really good retired lawyers living in RO can easily just sue for little to no expenditure on their part (relatively speaking).