- Hines Sells Downtown BG Group Place to Invesco Real Estate [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot]
- Stream, Wile To Begin Construction on Energy Corridor Campus-Like Mixed-Use Development This Summer [Houston Business Journal]
- Viva Cinema, Showing Movies in English and Spanish, Opening This Friday in PlazAmericas Shopping Center [Click2Houston]
- 437K Visitors Went to Galveston During Memorial Day Weekend, Up 70 Percent from Last Year [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Insurer Settles 1,200 Hurricane Ike Suits for $135M [Texas Tribune]
- Heights Revival Market Owners Annoyed By Repeated Break-Ins [KHOU]
- How Topography, Geography, and History Have Helped Houston Become America’s No. 1 Job Creator [The Atlantic]
Photo of ditch near Addicks Dam: elnina via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Re: Galveston
I was there on Saturday and Sunday and it was almost empty, like a weekday, we even thought it was bizarre. Everybody must have shown up on Monday in one wave.
Re: Heights Break-Ins
Not surprised at the burglary rate in the Heights, what when HPD only makes an appearance in the area every so often to tax commuters on Yale or Shepherd.
When did adding a strip mall next to an office building qualify as mix-use? Just like the law, are we going to have to parse out if a development is just a literal mix-use property (as in there are two possible uses of the land on it) or if it’s in the spirit of mix-use? Do skyscrapers downtown qualify as mix-use due to the retail in the tunnel and the public space they add by having a pedestrian plaza outside?
I guess I should have realized that the “Campus-like Mix-use” oxymoron is really just… well, moronic.
@ commonsense, It took me 3 hours from Galleria area to Galveston sunday at 11 AM. Island was packed but not along the seawall. i think mainly peeps go to the beach pocket parks just west of seawall.
HPD doesn’t care but you can visit them at their storefront on 11th and Shepherd! If you can’t find it, just ask one of the day laborers loitering around the NO LOITERING signs in the parking lot. They cannot even uphold the law in their own parking lot. . .
I was at a neighbohood meeting with HPD on crime in the Heights. The cops said that there had been a big spike in property crime in the Heights. The cops blamed it on a bad economy and people not securing their vehicles. No mention of increasing patrols. The result is that crooks know that the Heights is an easy mark and are getting bolder. HPD needs to step up and look in the mirror on the increase in crime in the Heights.
The Heights: where homes, cars, and meat markets go to be burglarized. And have you seen the graffiti? The place looks like a film location from Gran Torino. I thought people cared about this neighborhood. I wish the residents would get NIMBY about crime.
Thanks Inner Blooper, see the ‘broken window theory of neighborhood decline’ Also, note amount of trash, from trees to junk to yard waste out all week every week.
p.s. People are too busy sitting in front of coffee shops & neighborhood bars looking cool to take care of their neighborhood and homes.
Now that we can clearly say the Heights has been gentrified, it’s time for the new residents to contract out to the Harris County Constable for their own patrol. The public/private patrols provided by the Harris County Constable are what is done to actaully get patrol service and that is also the way that the Heights folks can then relate to Inner Loop living. Most of the folks in the Heights are new to the Inner Loop and they need to undersatnd that HPD does not provide adequate security, even the burbs relied on the constable patrols. Oh! the trials and tribulations of living in such a ghetto.
Oh right on the worthless Constables. They do nothing in the Highland Village neighborhoods but ticket drivers for
incomplete stops when they aren’t at Walgreens shopping. The one contracted for a townhome community I temporarily lived in while in Alief was visible ONLY one or two times a week at 6pm where he, too, did nothing but ticket for driving infractions or slap a warning sticker on someone’s boat trailer. At least you aren’t paying HPD extra dollars to not do
anything.
exactly what percentage of cuts ave the police and fire units signed up oto under Parker’s administration compared to all the other services and groups? there’s a lot of old personnel bloat that needs to be cleaned in this area to make room for more efficient management strategies and younger/less expensive officers working the beat. in the end you get what you pay for though. not like any of this is new and we don’t know exactly where to start, but for now the heights is full of money and ripe for the pickings.
Higher Density – most of the Heights is under a subscriber constable program.
@Jersey Girl – I guess you are getting what is being paid for. Since the constable service is paid for with private money, you have a much louder voice that you do with HPD. I’m sure that the constable will tell you that if you just pay more, you can get better service. The Heights has always been a crime area, it just so happens that you can build “Victorian” homes/townhomes faster that you can develop community support and activism. Go out and rally the neighbors.
When an old frame house in the Heights gets mowed down and a new $750k faux victorian gets put up in it’s place, the property taxes on the land go up by a factor of 4 or 5. So the city’s revenue stream out of the neighborhood is higher, yet additional resources like added HPD patrols are not allocated to the neighborhood.
Funny how I see plenty of police in Montrose, and River Oaks. While I see next to no presence in the Heights, seriously can’t even recall having ever seen an HPD squad car aside from in the parking lot next to Ross on 11th parked. As stated before they don’t even police the parking lot, occasionally on Shepherd you’ll get a speed trap coming down off the overpass over what was the railroad tracks and is now a bike path. I see the worst driving imaginable near that Kroger on 11th and it all goes on without any HPD supervision, it’s gotten so bad I won’t ride my bike in the area for fear of the crazy drivers. Why the Heights is so neglected is beyond me..
@ShadyHeightster – You are correct that area specific funds are not allocated to that particular area. Property taxes are paid into general revenue and the neighbors do not get to dictate where funds from their neighborhood are spent, wouldn’t be too fair to the city as a whole and please don’t get going on the whole NIMBY thing.
@inner blooper: There is actually a Heights graffiti task force that goes out and covers up/washes off graffiti. The problem is that they are not allowed to go onto private property to do it without permission. That is why the building across the stree from Milroy park on Yale St. is covered with graffiti. People have volunteered to paint it, but do not have permission.
@Shady Heightster: +1. All we hear from people at HPD and the City is that they will adjust patrols to try to address hot spots in the neighborhood. Translation: no resources for additional patrols. Message to crooks: operate with impunity in the Heights.
What were all yous Heights whiners thinking when you moved into the barrio?? Cracks me up every time!
HigherDensity, I’m not getting NIMBY about this, just pointing out that the city says there is no additional revenue available for hiring extra police or increasing patrols, the numbers don’t support that line of reasoning. Sales tax revenues and property tax revenues are both up substantially since the downturn in 2008/9.
.
Perhaps the city council member who represents the greater Heights could be more effective in trying to steer city resources toward her district.
.
I do think that many people reading this blog assume that the Heights is all gentrified. It is not. There is still a substantial portion of residents who are lower income. It is not West U or Montrose, nor will it be anytime in the next decade.
@oldschool when I lived in alief there was a small building behind my subdivision that was owned by AT&T (swbell at the time) it was graffitied quite a bit. we called hpd, as they handled the task force, and there was nothing they could do about it.
so I took it under my own duty to do what the city could not do. I illegally added my own graffiti over the gang graffiti, at first it was just to paint over it, so you couldn’t see the graffiti any longer. then I got mean and spiteful adding things like:
“likes to touch little boys” or
“is a gang full of peter puffers” or
other things that I imagined gang members would find infuriating.
I certainly don’t condone acts of vigilantism to correct issues, but since you’re not making things harder for others since they have to clean it anyway.
Has anyone in any of the Heights area neighborhoods looked into the Neighborhood Protection program?
It doesn’t take a lot of time from any one individual and it does work.
We use it in our east end ‘hood.