- Lincoln Property Co. Planning $100M Renovation of Former Exxon Campus [HBJ ($)]
- New Apartments Coming Near Houston Farmers Market [HBJ ($)]
- Golfing Will End at Glenbrook Golf Course on April 1 Ahead of Its Conversion into Botanic Garden [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- Houston Plans To Install Warning Lights To Prevent People from Driving into High Water at Flood-Prone Intersections [Houston Public Media]
- Study: 28M Americans Live in Flood Zones and Don’t Know It [Houston Chronicle]
- Why a Houston Police Car Is Also Painted as a Taxi Cab [Houston Chronicle]
- Movie Poster for ‘Harvey’ Gets a Redesign [Houston Chronicle]
Photo of a railroad bridge over Brays Bayou: Leonid Notax via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Such a stupid place for a Botanical Garden. San Antonio’s is in Alamo Heights, Ft. Worth Arlington Heights, Dallas Lakewood, Austin Barton Springs and Houston? Hobby Airport? The kind of people that go to Botanical Garden’s are not going to that neighborhood and area to visit. The area has no natural draw around it, there is literally nothing to really bring you down there. Memorial Park or even Hermann, made sense. Uh, this makes no sense. Sure, its a nice piece of land, but in a not so great part of town. This is something rich White People support, I really don’t see them really loving this place like they would have had it been in a better location. Total missed opportunity.
@Jonathan: So we should put all the nice stuff where the rich people are and tell the poor people to work harder and move if they don’t like the crappy stuff? I’m not sure that’s sustainable.
The sustainable solution is to centrally locate it in an area with abundant access to public transportation.
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Using mass transit from the Montrose area it’s 1h 40m to Glenbrook with a lot of walking involved (not to mention every route dumps you right in front of Gus Wortham for the final leg of the trip). To Gus Wortham you have 4 different route options all just over 1h and not as much walking.
@Jonathan – I’m not rich, I’m not white, I don’t live in a nice area (at the moment)… don’t speak for me!!!
I like it and I as a non-white appreciate nature and welcome it. Besides, Houston city limits do not stop at the edge of downtown and neither should all the good stuff.
So how did the golf course work out in the “poor people” area? Doesn’t appear that it was sustainable, no? The pic on chron pretty much summarizes the state of the course, right down to the trash floating down the bayou.
I don’t think the botanical garden has to be in central Houston but Glenbrook is a terrible location. Gus Wortham would have been nice with the train headed that way anyway. The resistance from Gus Wortham was nothing more than a big ‘F you’ from all the long-time locals in response to the increasing gentrification. If you could only read some of the posts on NextDoor about how everything about their neighborhoods were already perfect before the new people arrived and how they are ruining it. They even goon to praise things like industrial noise, train horns and late night parties that keep others awake at night.
yeah…I’m only in that area of town if I’m on my way out of town. I don’t think I’d intentionally go to that part of Houston even if the gardens looked like Versailles. Like Jonathan points out, there are no other draws to compliment a garden… Hey friends, who wants to head out to the gardens, eat lunch at McDonalds, then hit up the Family Dollar store for a little shopping after??
The ideal location would’ve been Gus Wortham but grass-roots golfers became active and forced it to another location but both are going to be positive additions to the entire city. So I have to like the process and settle for a less-than-perfect result, which is the way real life tends to go anyway, and we can consider that perfect.
And if this were a socialist-leaning state or city we would need a sociological impact report and nothing like this would ever be allowed to flow naturally. The activist golfers would be ignored because they’re mostly white males and the city would instead turn it into something more “inclusive” like a botanic garden but the non-profit who would build it would be forced to charge an inclusive (low) admission fee. So now you’ve pissed off the golfers who were gonna put up their own money to benefit many others and now the botanic garden is thinking why screw with this city when we’re gonna lose money. Then the potential gentrification impact would have to be examined and some sort of other hit would be needed to “make it fair”.. So nothing happens but some people feed good about themselves.
The activist golfers at Gus Wortham are mostly Hispanic, and they did not want to lose a decent, affordable golf course close to their homes.
Agree with Ross. The grass-roots thing was mostly hispanic. HGA is more white, but they would have never gotten involved without the grass-roots thing happening.
Hmm…I’m a resident of the area and the “community involvement/feedback” has sucked so far. This is clearly a plan that was going forward regardless of local impact/concern. And as someone who lives very close to the golf course, it gets plenty of use and is pretty fair $
Apparently somebody is already supporting it. They’ve beaten their fundraising goals and are around $22,000,000 so far.
I should have known my comment would get Pelosi like social engineering blather. Call me whatever you want, I don’t care. I stand by the fact that this is a TERRIBLE location for a Botanical Garden. Period.