COMMENT OF THE DAY: WE’RE UNDER YOUR BEACH HOUSE, GRILLIN’ YOUR BURGERZ “It may appear that the homeowner ‘won’ this case, but read the law again. Texas law allows anyone to place a blanket on the beach, right up to the vegetation line, even if it’s an intrusion on the privacy of a seaside home. Basically, you can have a cookout under the house, park your car, spread out, whatever, and the homeowner has zero ability to do anything about it, as the home is within the vegetation boundary.” [mikeyyc, commenting on Texas Supreme Court: Private Properties Can Erode Public Beaches]
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Tag: Galveston
TEXAS SUPREME COURT: PRIVATE PROPERTIES CAN ERODE PUBLIC BEACHES The state’s high court ruled today in favor of Californian Carol Severance, whose rent house on Kennedy Dr. in West Galveston found itself in front of the vegetation line after Hurricane Rita hit in 2006. The Texas Supreme Court ruled that the state can’t claim an easement on her property — but if the same topography had resulted over a longer period of time, the easement would be okay: “Texas law allows anyone to place a blanket on the beach, right up to the vegetation line, even if it’s an intrusion on the privacy of a seaside home. But in a split decision, the court found that the state’s policy of ‘rolling easements’ — the ever-shifting border between public and private land — does not apply when it’s moved by a storm. At the same time, the court held that policy is justifiable in cases of erosion, which is gradual.” [Houston Chronicle; decision; previously on Swamplot]
Got an answer to any of these reader questions? Or just want to be a sleuth for Swamplot? Here’s your chance! Add your report in a comment, or send a note to our tipline.
- Galveston: Watercolor artist Don Springer, who makes a habit of rendering area oddities, wants to know more about the Galveston Kettle House on the San Luis Pass between Pirates Beach and Pirates Beach West he painted a few weekends ago. “I know that it was not the radio station KUFO which once broadcasted from the foot of the Flagship (That flying saucer is now a house on West Beach).” He passes on a story he heard from “credible sources” that the half-water-tower turned house was the home of a landscaper who recently passed away, but asks, “Can you use your unlimited resourses, connections, and talent to determine the history of this landmark before it rolls off into the sunset?” Readers? He’s talking to you.
- Montrose: Chronicle tech guy Dwight Silverman wants to know what’s going into the building at 1721 Waugh, just south of the Commonwealth split; at about the same time, another Swamplot reader sends us this recent pic of what looks to be a refacing job on the building:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: MAKING HISTORY IN GALVESTON 
“what’s equally funny is that the sign on the [pier] now reads ‘[coming] soon: galveston’s historic pleasure pier’. i guess on this island, things are now considered historic even before they’re built.” [JC, commenting on Landry’s Kicking Galveston’s Flagship Hotel Off the Pier, for Amusement] Photo: Ellen Yeates
HAIKU OF THE DAY: AMUSEMENT PARK WEATHER Landry’s not on land, sell gale storm rides with dinner. OK, Fertitta? [houku, commenting on Landry’s Kicking Galveston’s Flagship Hotel Off the Pier, for Amusement]
First order of business for Tilman Fertitta, now that he’s finally succeeded in turning Landry’s Restaurants back into a private company under his control (the deal closes today): announcing the demolition of Galveston’s hobbled-on-a-pier Flagship Hotel. Actually, Landry’s officials jumped the gun slightly, showing plans for a large hotel-free amusement park on the 25th St. Pier site of the shuttered hotel to Galveston’s city council yesterday. In place of the Flagship — which was built a few years after Hurricane Carla hit the island in the early sixties — yep, you guessed it: There’s gonna be a Ferris wheel. Plus: a double-decker carousel and other attractions meant to vaguely resemble the amusement park originally on the pier when it was built in 1943.
CALCULATING DANGER IN GALVESTON The data miners behind the Neighborhood Scout website have declared a small but notable section of Galveston to be the 21st most dangerous neighborhood in the U.S. — and the second most dangerous in Texas (the top state honor goes to #15, an area near E. Lancaster Ave. in Ft. Worth). Working from secure offices in Rhode Island using the company’s “patented, patent-pending, exclusive or proprietary” data, Neighborhood Scout calculates residents of the area in Galveston from 19th to 26th streets between Broadway and Harborside (labeled the Church St. neighborhood) have a 1 in 11 chance of becoming a crime victim over a 1-year period. No, the risks of becoming a storm or flooding victim appear to have had no effect on the rankings. Included in that little hood: The heart of Galveston’s Strand Historic District. [Wallet Pop; details]
Start with a few architecture students on some kind of field trip with their professor. Throw in a “freak storm.” Then trap everyone — along with a “chaperone†— inside a massive and spooky abandoned building. What do you get? The setup for Hellstorm, a new horror movie from local producers Epiphany Filmwerks.
Epiphany promises its filming location, Galveston’s long-abandoned and rotting Falstaff Brewery, will be “one of the main characters in the movie.” That’s where the young cast of pouty screamers will, of course, “encounter something much more terrifying than the storm itself.” What could that be?
GALVESTON’S NEW RINSE-OFF NIGHTSPOT 
A lawsuit will determine whether Scott Arnold can collect the remainder of the insurance money he expects for the loss of the famed Balinese Room to Hurricane Ike. In the meantime, the former owner of the waterside bar wanted to make sure his next nightspot would survive another big Galveston flood. So . . . is his new Granite Room, which opened on July 4th as part of the Voodoo Lounge complex at 26th and Mechanic streets, on an upper floor or something? Naaah. It’s mop-down friendly: “This building got nine feet of water during Ike,†he tells HBJ reporter Allison Wollam. “So I designed the club with granite and marble so that if it floods again, we can just hose everything down and be open again within a week or two.†[Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Granite Room
THE POWER BALLS HAVE ARRIVED! Okay, fess up: Which one of you has been secretly transporting oil from the Deepwater Horizon gusher to our local beaches? The Coast Guard reported over the weekend that up to 5 gallons of dime- to ping-pong-ball-size tar balls collected from the surf along East Beach in Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula’s Crystal Beach came from BP’s little offshore accident. But surely the little bugger-balls can’t have been trying to swim all the way back to headquarters? “[Coast Guard captain Marcus] Woodring said the condition of the tar balls didn’t look like they had drifted all the way from the Macondo well. They were ‘inconsistent with the weathering pattern that would be expected,’ he said. ‘To travel 400 miles is going to take a long time,’ during which the oil would be expected to break down. Officials were investigating whether the tar balls were from oil that clung to the hull of a ship passing through the BP oil slick or were from ballast water taken on by a ship in the oil slick zone and later dumped in Texas waters, Woodring said.” [Houston Chronicle]
GALVESTON TAR BALLS UNDISTURBED BY OIL SPILL “If oil from the spill reaches Texas, it will likely be in the form of tar balls, said Capt. Marcus Woodring, U.S. Coast Guard sector commander for Houston-Galveston. He said tar balls found along Texas shores so far have been analyzed and are not from the spill. Tar balls are common along the Gulf Coast because of minor oil spills and natural seepage, he said. As a precaution, floating barriers are already being placed in washout areas on the Bolivar Peninsula to protect the wetlands behind them, he said.” [Houston Chronicle]
KING READY TO LAUNCH 700-YEAR WAR Will the new Gulf Coast Community Protection and Recovery District be leading the battle to build a 60-mile-long “Ike Dike” to gate off Galveston Bay from hurricane storm surges? “I think there’s a growing consensus that something’s got to be done,†board member and former Kemah mayor Bill King tells Eric Berger: “Whatever gets done, says King . . . it’s important not to view it as a magic bullet. ‘I think it’s a big mistake to think about this issue as a single project,’ he said. ‘One thing I learned from the Dutch is that they’ve been doing this for 700 years. We’re starting a war, trying to hold back Galveston Bay from inundating the area, that’s never going to end.’†[Houston Chronicle]
Now that everyone’s feeling all nostalgic about Hurricane Ike, please enjoy the sweet and soothing sounds of this video, featuring newly released aerial footage taken over portions of Galveston Island and Bolivar Peninsula on September 20th, 2008.
- Aerial Survey Post Hurricane Ike [SSPEED]
Video: Bryan Carlile, Beck Geodetix
GALVESTON’S NEW PARKING METERS WILL BE READY TO RAT ON YOU WHEN YOU’RE RUNNING LATE Downtown Galveston’s unofficial era of free parking will come to a rather abrupt end as workers install new solar-powered meters that automatically notify enforcement officers when a space runs out of time. If you’re under the limit, you’ll be able to add more time to your meter from a mobile phone. The new wireless meters will be installed on streetcorners between 20th and 25th streets and Harborside Dr. to Postoffice St.: “The city has removed 707 of the hurricane-damaged coin-operated meters and more than a dozen of the larger meters that accepted credit cards. Shortly after Hurricane Ike struck Galveston on Sept. 13, 2008, filling downtown streets with a salty storm surge, city crews cracked open the machines and removed the corroded, green coins. They cracked the meters open again recently and found $1,600 more in coins that people fed into the dead meters. Those coins also were corroded. The city plans to turn the coins into the U.S. Mint for reimbursement.” [Galveston County Daily News; more details]
TRACKING GALVESTON’S THOUSAND-PLUS ABANDONED HOMES City planning department officials have counted 1,078 homes in Galveston that are boarded up, look vacant and have unmaintained yards. Another 229 are boarded up but show some signs of maintenance. The city plans to use the data gathered from the drive-by survey to prepare for a code-enforcement blitz. “City staff blamed the abandoned homes on three factors: the high rate of absentee landlords and homeowners in Galveston; and the double whammy of Hurricane Ike, which flooded three-quarters of the island and damaged many houses that lacked insurance, combined with a national recession that forced many homeowners into foreclosure. Of the houses city staff identified as being potentially abandoned, 760, or more than two-thirds, are east of 61st Street and many of those are in neighborhoods north of Broadway, particularly in the Lasker Park area, according to the city’s survey, which is still in draft form.” [Galveston County Daily News]