- 22-Acre Business Park Planned Near Old Town Spring [Houston Chronicle]
- City Acquiring 1.5 Acres in Southwest Houston for Brays Bayou Greenway Trailhead [Houston Chronicle]
- InterContinental Houston Medical Center Hotel Tower Tops Out [HBJ; previously on Swamplot]
- Stuccovered Howard Barnstone-Designed River Oaks Mansion on the Market for $19.5M [Culturemap]
- Opening of Menil Drawing Institute Delayed to Unspecified Date [ARTnews]
- Rooms To Go Headed to The Reserve at Shadow Creek Ranch in Pearland [Bisnow]
- Lee’s Creamery Opening Standalone Shop in the Heights [Eater Houston]
- California Bakery Chain SusieCakes Opening First Houston Location in Rice Village [Houston Chronicle]
- Texas City Reservoir Undergoing Major Renovation for the the First Time Since Built in 1948 [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- 9 Flood-Damaged Meyerland Homes Near Brays Bayou To Get Elevated with FEMA Money [KHOU]
- City of Katy Approves Measure To Paint Murals on Water Tanks [Katy Times ($)]
- Katy Getting Its Own Buc-ee’s Next Month, with 100 Gas Pumps and ‘World’s Longest’ Car Wash [Covering Katy]
Photo of Bellaire rooftops: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
If you pitched “the most badass gas station concept ever and we’ll use beaver themed double entendre to market it” to investors, they’d call security on you.
A new taxpayer’s paid sign coming on I-69/US-59 “Buc-ees Blvd. 1/4 mile ahead” …. just another example of government corruption. I wonder just how much money was donated to a politician for this one?
@WR – Highways are the sacred cow of Texan voters – they can never be big enough, wide enough, fast enough, or decorated enough to satisfy voters. Until that changes, expect your politicians to put road amenities at the top of all priorities. In any case, I interpreted that line to mean Bucee’s purchased a spot on one of those blue informational signs advising drivers of “services” located at the next exit (gas, food, etc.).
Re Home raising: rather than city fix the flooding problem, they play the hunger games instead. A few lucky winners, everyone else screwed.
@Superdave
It is planned to be on a large green exit sign to something called Buc-ees Boulevard, not on an informational sign to Buc-ee’s, and as such it is a blatant use of federal highway money to promote a private business.
If the Buc-ee’s Blvd location is like the rest of them, the sales tax revenue spike ought to pay bay back the cost of the sign before lunch. Those places must have pretty amazing sales per square foot numbers. The local government was probably tickled pink to rename a street after their new favorite cash cow.
Or more likely, Buc-ees constructed a “street” and called it buc-ee blvd. Compared to the mythical logic used by COH officials to use taxpayer money for hotels, signs and who knows what in the downtown, Katy putting up a sign that directs out-of-towners to a store where they can leave their money to benefit the local community is pretty innocuous.
Out of curiosity, how do you know the taxpayers paid for the sign and not that Buc-ee’s paid for naming rights?