Petco, Michaels, Bed Bath and Beyond, and a big Dick’s Sporting Goods store are among the retailers now lining up for spots in Newquest Properties‘ new Grand-Parkway-adjacent shopping center dubbed The Grand at Aliana. They’ll be buffered from the highway by a roughly 2,400-car-parking lot and a front-line of fast food restaurants. The whole Grand plan hits the Houston Planning Commission’s desk later this afternoon at City Hall Annex, 20 miles away from where the development would be built off W. Airport Blvd.
The map at top shows it vying for attention up there amid the blue jigsaw grid of proposed and recently-built neighborhoods that keep appearing around the highway. In orange is the shopping center’s namesake, the 2,8000-house-and-counting Aliana community that wraps it to the east.
Viewed from the east in the conceptual shot below, you can see some of those houses in the foreground:
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Just next door is Market Center at Aliana, home now to Target and H-E-B with more tenants inbound.
- Four new retail centers to transform Hwy. 99, Harlem area in Richmond [Community Impact]
- Previously on Swamplot: How New Harris County Developments Are Hugging the Grand Pkwy.
Images: NewQuest
A brief summary of the affects of urban sprawl on green-field developments upstream from Houston.
2,400-car-parking lot. Lets assume each spot is 10×20. 480,000 sq ft.. Lets add some driving lanes and call it 500,000 square feet. What would the run off be for a 1 inch storm, 1 hour.
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Coefficient of runoff on a surface parking lot is about 0.95 (comparatively clay-y soil with light vegetation is around 0.5 to 0.6.
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500,000*0.95*1/ 96.23 = 5000 Gallons per minute in stormwater run off for a brand new parking lot. About 2000 gallons, per minute extra its original configuration. Is there even a retention pond at this site?
Yuk, just yuk.
We’re all familiar with ‘If you build it (the highway) they will come.’
And they did.
And now it’s just a race to build, recoup investment and get out before the next Harvey, or Allison.
@ enginerd: Yes, all new development is required to provide on-site stormwater detention amounting to at least a 100-year storm, although local polities may specify additional requirements. By comparison, natural prairies in the Houston region are overwhelmed by even a 7-year storm. I’m not saying that the existing rules shouldn’t be tightened further, but greenfield development under existing rules enhances flood protection on net.
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Remember, Houston has been flooding just about ever since there was a Houston to flood, when the only thing upstream of it was forests and prairies. It’s actually really impressive that Houston sustained the largest rain event ever in the history of the United States last year and that there wasn’t far more damage; and I attribute a lot of this good fortune to post-90s greenfield development.
May they all flood: every subdivision, every street, every house. They have no business being built on that prairie. May all the developers go bankrupt and get boils.
I agree, Miz Brooke Smith!
You could not pay me to live out near the Grand Parkway or anywhere in Katy!!
This looks really similar to the Shops at Bella Terra, which is maybe 5 minutes up the road.