- CHI St. Luke’s Planning $110M Medical Complex on 23 Acres Near Exxon Campus, Grand Parkway [Houston Business Journal]
- Energy XXI Services Expands Space at One City Centre Downtown by 25%; Building Now 90.6% Occupied [GlobeSt.com]
- Morgan Group Developing 8-Story Pearl Residences at CityCentre, Across the Street from Its CityCentre Pearl Apartments [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- White Oaks Partners Renaming Colorado Club Apartments It Purchased on the East Side to the Oaks at Greenview [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Sugar Land City Council To Vote Again on St. Laurence Catholic Church’s Proposal To Expand Amid Neighbor Complaints [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Fire Breaks Out at Townhome on Greenway Chase Undergoing Renovations To Repair Damage From Previous Fire [abc13]
- On Next Demolition Day, May 17, 33 Structures Will Be Cleared Under City’s Revised Process [The Leader]
- North Forest ISD Memorabilia Up For Auction Now Through May 25 [Hair Balls; auction site]
- Houstonians Who Biked To Work Dropped from 0.5% to 0.4% of Commuters from 2000 to 2012, Finds Recent Census Data [The Highwayman]
- Will 6 New Digital Billboards Along Houston Freeways Promoting Hurricane Safety Cause More Car Crashes? [The Highwayman]
- RVs, Travel Trailers Could Put Millions of FEMA Dollars at Risk in Galveston County [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- Sneak Peek at Solaro, Texas’s First Estate Urban Winery, Making Wine at 330 T.C. Jester [Eating Our Words]
- Government Health and Safety Experts Don’t Know Much About the Tank Cleaning Industry [Houston Chronicle ($)]
Photo of Amtrak train downtown: David Elizondo via Swamplot Flickr Pool
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The fight with the church in Sugar Land is interesting to me. There already are large church buildings on that property, seems to me that this is a fight similar to the Ashby fight. People trying to control the development on property they don’t own.
I agree with Drew. The Sugar Land church fight is one to watch.
It’s worth noting that Sugar Land prides itself on it’s Zoning Ordinance. They enforce it too – I’m speaking from experience on that. But there’s still a fight over development? Kind of throws a wrench in the notion that zoning prevents these things….
In some locations in the U.S., local residents have grown used to the practice of being able to pretty much shut down a project they don’t like even if it meets the zoning requirements; sometimes such discretion is actually written into local development ordinances. San Francisco probably has the most famous example, though it’s common in many SF Bay Area cities and counties. I wonder if many Sugar Land residents have lived in such places and bring those kinds of expectations with them.
Stuff like Ashby happens less often in Houston than in zoned cities. My small suburban township in Pennsylvania, with around 13,000 people, has several similar fights going on right now, stupid signs and all.