HISD TOSSING AROUND A BELLAIRE HS REBUILD ON THE CHEVRON CAMPUS UP THE STREET 
On Monday some HISD folks pitched the idea of buying Chevron’s soon-to-be-empty land on Fournace Place to a committee overseeing the lately-stagnant push to rebuild Bellaire High School, Charlotte Aguilar reports this week. The 28-acre tract, which goes on sale on Saturday, is about 2 miles north of the school’s existing 17-acre campus and also fronts S. Rice Ave. HISD trustee Mike Lunceford tells Aguilar that Bellaire, “while one of the largest high schools in HISD, is on the smallest property.â€Â Principal Michael McDonough emailed stakeholders to say that if HISD decides to back the plan and is able to buy the land, funding would probably be put to a bond election; meanwhile, the existing school would still need some work while a new one was built. The Chevron land currently has a 10-story office midrise on it; the shot above looks out the window of that building toward the West Loop and the freeway-side Shell station next door (also up for sale). [Instant News Bellaire; previously on Swamplot] Photo from 4800 Fournace Pl.: Alvin A.
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The Bellaire HS folks are unaware that a main entrance to Episcopal HS is located a mere 1500 ft east of the proposed site. Traffic will be nasty indeed, especially with all the adolescent drivers.
This project has legs! Chevron could sell the open property west of the highrise office to HISD (it’s value is rather marginal now considering the surrounding office/warehouses, older apartments and dated houses), and sell developers the acreage along I-610 for new offices and hotels. The old Bellaire HS site would then be a high end property for residential development.
It’s a win, win, win situation.
Interesting. while i am sure they know about Episcopal’s location, i think a greater concern should be the fact that corner floods anytime there is a hard rain. It is particularly notable at the off ramp to Fournace to the Shell. i hope they factor that in when they design ingress/egress on the frontage road.
Let’s see what happens @WR. I think this could be a good thing for all. And yes, splitting the current property into two sellers (HISD and a developer) does make a lot of sense.
Well why not. The area infrastructure is a shambles. Let’s add a massive construction project and a high school to the mix. Rice street is essentially a crummy 2 lane road with outer lanes unusable because of pot holes. The Wal Mart center at 610 and 59 is an abomination on many levels with traffic being a big one. Once all the fast food is built out, triple the nightmare.
Episcopal HS is to close and the roads can not handle 3 to 5 times more cars this idea is plain dumb. Only positive is the new location would have 50% more land than the current location
I don’t see traffic to be all that big an issue as the site handled a decent number of CVX employees and school buses should offset the number of cars in traffic. The mornings may be difficult, but school lets out earlier than most businesses so the impact would be marginally worse at best. I could also see this as an opportunity for road improvements along Rice. This is a fantastic idea.
They will definitely have to rebuild Rice Ave there which is looooong overdue. While its true the Walmart there is an abomination, i don’t imagine much traffic will go through there. The campus will be at the northern most point of the schools zoning so most traffic will be coming from the south. I’d be more worried about my kids if they attended the elementary school across the street.
My question is what are they going to do with the current campus? While is would be nice if it were turned into a park (a-la-Eveyln’s), homeowners there should be concerned it doesn’t turn into a shopping center, an apartment complex, or a bunch of townhomes.