The city’s historic commission voted 6 to 1 yesterday to give its approval to a new High First Ward historic district — but it’s a considerably smaller district than the proposed one area property owners squabbled over and then voted on in February. The colors in the map above show the city’s tabulation of the results of that vote. The dashed lines show the original boundaries; after the ballots came in, the city’s planning director redrew the boundaries so that the district would be in an area where at least 67 percent of the owners supported the district. Of the 55 tracts in the new district, 37 owners voted to approve it, 10 opposed it, and 8 didn’t return survey cards (which counts as a “no” vote). to the count, Next and final stop for the proposed district: A final vote by city council.
- Previously on Swamplot: Urban Living’s Newly Vacant Lots in the First Ward Don’t Like Historic Districts; Where a High First Ward Historic District Might Go
Map: HAHC (PDF)
The area left is so small and disjointed why bother. Houston is so bad at preservation it’s laughable.
Shannon- “why bother” is exactly what these vultures hope for. The developers prey on indifference, pick at the bones of apathy and drain the blood from indecision. Every inch we can protect is worth it. Every single inch.
We should always give up when our expectations of other people isn’t met.
Look, it seems a large portion of this area doesn’t even support the historic district. What’s left is a disjointed small group of houses that will lack any real sense of neighborhood, it will look as jacked up as most of Montrose. This end product of the 1st Ward Preservation is lacking to say the least–geez, go to New Orleans or San Antonio and see it don’t right, you might learn a thing or two instead of lecturing me on–“anything is better then nothing”–BS
Done*
Looks like even our state legislators in Austin could learn a thing or two about gerrymandering from the Houston Historic Commission!
Given that the HHC re-drew the boundaries after the election, I’d expect some lawsuits to crop up from the remaining ‘no’ votes who are being press-ganged into the new historic district. Setting aside that the resulting ‘district’ isn’t much of a district (townhouses will quickly be looming over many of the protected properties), the democratic process aspects of this aren’t terribly open.