WHERE THE ACTION IS, IN AND AROUND HOUSTON 
From Dug Begley’s report on next weekend’s dual openings of the North Line light-rail extension and the Hempstead-to-Katy Segment E of the Grand Parkway: “[Judge] Emmett frequently notes that about 500,000 people live within Loop 610, about 1.5 million live between Loop 610 and the Sam Houston Tollway and about 2 million live outside the tollway within Harris County. ‘We’re seeing a lot of people moving inside the Loop,’ Emmett said. ‘That growth is going on. But for every person moving in, about four people are locating outside the beltway. Nothing is going to change that growth pattern.” [Houston Chronicle ($); previously on Swamplot] Map: Grand Parkway Association
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Tag: Sprawl
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW HOUSTON TEARS DOWN AND SPRAWLS 
“. . . In other (mostly northern) cities properties are continuously rehabilitated and repurposed. In Houston, properties are abandoned and demolished and the city sprawls out further from the center. I think that is a fundamental flaw in the mindset (and before anyone starts screaming — I know since I have remodeled properties considered tear downs in the Heights that have proven to be great investments). Granted, it takes guts and money and it may not be worth it to buy something like this, but there are other properties worth saving all over the Heights, Montrose, river oaks, and 6th ward. Every time I see an abandoned property in those neighborhoods it makes my head spin.” [Heights Mom, commenting on Snooping Around an Abandoned Apartment Complex in Inwood Forest] Illustration: Lulu
Putting Google’s Landsat Annual Time Lapse function to work, Texas architect Samuel Aston Williams has created animated .GIFs that give a satellite’s view of how certain cities — Shanghai, Atlanta, Lagos, etc. — have changed during the past 30 years. And here’s Houston.
- The Devastating Impact of 30 Years of Sprawl, As Seen From Space [Atlantic Cities]
Image: Samuel Aston Williams via Atlantic Cities
Next month, reports Real Estate Bisnow’s Catie Dixon, construction’s supposed to start on 3 more segments of the Grand Parkway: That’s why F1, F2, and G on the map here are colored in that cautionary yellow. And where G ends? Not coincidentally, adds Dixon, at that future intersection with U.S. 59, planned to be completed by 2015, the 1400-acre master-planned Valley Ranch is getting ready to sprawl out.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: LOOKING AT OUR SPREAD “It’s interesting when friends from back east visit, because they almost universally observe that Houston is ’empty’ (to quote directly). Given the amount of space in this city, the idea that we need to build things far from everything (and then build more roads to get people to them) is really kind of bizarre.” [John (another one), commenting on Comment of the Day: Heading for Points Greener]
THREE MORE LINKS IN THE GRAND PARKWAY ARE NOW READY TO ROLL 
Yesterday the Texas Transportation Commission rubber-stamped TxDOT’s selection of a developer for 3 additional segments of the Grand Parkway — if you count FM1960 and Hwy. 6, Houston’s fourth ring road. Segments F1, F2, and G of State Hwy. 99 will run from Hwy. 290 east to the newly minted I-69 (also known as U.S. 59). Along the way, the new stretch will rub elbows — conveniently — with the new ExxonMobil campus in the former pine forest west of the I-45 intersection and the start of the Hardy Toll Rd. Zachry-Odebrecht Parkway Builders will be in charge of the $1.04 billion project. Construction is expected to start next year, with the toll road opening in 2015. [TxDOT] Map: Tollroads News
COMMENT OF THE DAY: YES, A RING ROAD EVEN FURTHER OUT THAN THE GRAND PARKWAY “I hate to be the one to break the news, but the next outer loop beyond Grand Parkway is already being planned. If you look at the land plan for Cross Creek Ranch, there’s a big right of way built into the western portion of the development. It is right close to the proposed terminus of the Westpark Toll Road and roughly aligns with FM 2855 to the north and Spur 10 to the south. Some of the economic development corporations and chambers of commerce out there have even begun tracing its route on their planning maps.” [TheNiche, commenting on The Swamplot Award for Special Achievement in Sprawl: The Official 2011 Ballot]
MY SPIDEY SENSE SAYS LOOK OUT FOR DRIVE-THRUS IN ISSUE 3 
“They don’t get a ton of super-heroics or super-villainy down there, as far as we know. . . . As every comic book reading Houstonian on the Internet has pointed out, Houston doesn’t have as many skyscrapers as New York, so webslinging around is going to be a different experience. Kaine is going to deal with it in an amazing, unheard of way on occasion: by issue two, he’ll actually drive a car. He might have to hop on a bus, stick to the side of a truck—the possibilities are limitless. . . . It’s also really humid there. Sweating will be an issue. Grackles are a problem. Houston will offer some challenges, but it’s not like Godzilla lives there.” — Scarlet Spider writer Chris Yost, on setting the new comic featuring Spider-Man Peter Parker’s clone, Kaine, in Houston. [Marvel Comic News, via Hair Balls] Drawing: Marvel Comics
THE MAN WHO RESURRECTED THE GRAND PARKWAY 
As recently as the beginning of this year, 2 northwestern segments of the proposed fourth ring road around Houston were considered by many to be stalled projects — remnants, even, of an outdated dream to project sprawling, suburban-style development ever outward from the city. But by September, construction on the 15.2-mile Katy Prairie paving program known as Segment E of the Grand Parkway had magically begun; further north, Grand Parkway’s Segment F — the portion that would connect ExxonMobil’s proposed campus in Spring to western suburbs — now appears inevitable. How’d that happen? Reporter Angie Schmitt looks at the role of developer and TxDOT commissioner Ned Holmes in the startling turnaround, including the former banking executive’s remarkable ability to dig up a previously unnoticed $350 million deep in the books of the otherwise cash-starved state agency he oversees — in order to make the Grand Parkway happen. [StreetsBlog; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Rte. 99 ramp construction: Covering Katy
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: SOWING SPRAWL “Then the birds fly over the empty dirt and drop seeds for nail salons, cell phone accessory stores and quickie loan dives. The city would have to plant chinaberry trees to protect it.” [Hellsing, commenting on Mayor Parker Wants To Buy Unused Eastwood Elementary School on Credit]
The tilt walls are already up! Those of you who’ve been eagerly awaiting the strip-center-themed revival of Yale and Heights Blvd. south of I-10: here are your signs of progress, snapped just yesterday by a Swamplot reader. No, this isn’t the new Walmart — or the Washington Heights District strip centers promised to go with them. It’s Orr Commercial‘s Heights Marketplace, a separate development facing Yale St. at Koehler — and the Walmart site across the street — beating everyone to the punch. Opening dates for Lovett Dental, Wahoo Fish Tacos, the Loan Depot, and more: next March.
Tuesday morning, not far from the former grounds of Forbidden Gardens, its now-ransacked replica gravesite of Emperor Qin, and his army of one-third-scale terracotta soldiers at the stub-end of Hwy. 99 and Franz Rd., TxDOT and a contingent of public officials will gather to celebrate the groundbreaking of a notable project for Houston: the paving of a $350 million four-lane toll highway with “intermittent” development-ready access roads across an expanse of largely uninhabited prairie land that stretches between Katy and Cypress. When it’s complete, the 180-mile-long Grand Parkway will be Houston’s fourth ring road, cutting through 7 different counties. But none of the planned segments will forge so dramatic a path through undeveloped land as this particular north-south stretch, called Segment E.
What’s this we’re looking at? New pedestrian-friendly retail going in along Yale St., right across from Ainbinder’s Walmart-anchored center on Yale and Heights Blvd. in the West End? No, silly. That’s a ghost head-in-parked car hidden behind the artfully-placed starburst in the bottom left corner of the rendering. All those figures in front are just walking back and forth between the fish-taco joint at one end and their dentist on the other. Yes, work has already begun on this new strip center at the corner of Yale and Koehler St., called Heights Marketplace. The developer promises it’ll be finished before the end of the year, with the first stores opening next March.
If Ainbinder missed a few strip-center clichés in its Washington Heights District shopping-center plan, this Orr Commercial development, back-to-back with one of Ainbinder’s Heights Blvd.-facing strips, is here to take up the slack:
SPURRING A TOILET REVOLUTION What the world needs now, according to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: better places to poop. This year, the foundation will spend $3 million to fund 8 university teams working to reinvent the toilet. New off-sewer-system toilets for the 21st century would save lives around the world and “turn crap into valuable resources.” And who knows? Backwards thinking like that might end up making it cheaper to build more of our beloved way-out burbs around here too. [Gates Foundation] Video: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
COMMENT OF THE DAY: YOU GO TO WORK WITH THE SPRAWL YOU HAVE, NOT THE CITY YOU MIGHT WANT OR WISH TO HAVE AT A LATER TIME “. . . The ExxonMobil development is right in between The Woodlands and Spring. Residents of these communities would cut 30-80 minutes off their round trip commute by working at the new facility versus going downtown. That is a very significant reduction in smog forming vehicle emissions. If a business doesn’t need to be in Houston’s central business district, then it is actually better to have them build closer to the work force than to cram more people on the highway for longer commutes. You can’t beat sprawl that is already here. The best you can do is mitigate it by creating smaller city centers in places like The Woodlands, Sugar Land and Clear Lake.” [Old school, commenting on Comment of the Day: ExxonMobil Takes the Forest]