As Ashby rises from the ashes, protests likely
In October 2007, protesters marched up and down a well-off stretch of Bissonnet Street, many carrying signs depicting a “monster tower” with grasping arms and bared teeth, looming over single-family homes in the prosperous adjacent neighborhoods. This protest was provoked by a project known as the Ashby high-rise, a proposed 23-story tower at the corner of Bissonnet and Ashby — smack-dab between two lovely neighborhoods near Rice University, Boulevard Oaks to the north and Southampton to the south. Protests and lawsuits over the project would drag on for years.
A few months after this display of civic outrage, as millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes and savings due to a global financial crisis, a more parochial issue — land-use policy in Houston — occupied the attention of a small but earnest group of city officials, neighborhood activists and real estate industry leaders who assembled regularly in a conference room in the City Hall annex. They were there to come up with policy that dealt with larger issues that the Ashby high-rise represented. I was the reporter at the back of the room, necktie askew, dutifully scribbling in his notebook. I’ll never get those hours back.
The group’s goal was afflicted with a name that hardly tripped off the tongue: a “high-density development ordinance.” This measure, if they could figure out how to write it, would protect neighborhoods made up mostly of detached, single-family residences from the deleterious effects — traffic congestion, blocked views, a general “out of place” aesthetic — of developments that concentrated more people into smaller spaces. Highrise residential towers, for example.
The group twisted itself into knots for weeks and actually produced a draft ordinance, but nobody liked it. One concern was that the measure’s language would potentially affect future projects, but it wouldn’t have stopped the Ashby high-rise. As I wrote at the time, “Finding ways to capture only projects that fit this narrow definition has required hours of discussions of fine points such as the meaning of the word ‘abutting.’ ” By midsummer, the project was abandoned and never taken up again in the same context. Andy Icken, at the time a deputy public works director and now Houston’s chief development officer, explained the conundrum back then, saying that such an ordinance
“would give people a warm feeling that this is the way the city does things. The disadvantage is ... as we explicitly define these development standards, we often find ourselves skirting the Z-word.”
(Anyone with enough interest to keep reading will know what the Zword is.)
The site has sat empty in the eight years since a
Houston judge ruled there was no way to legally block the project. Throughout those years, the lovely patch of green space encompassing an entire city block has proven irresistible to some residents, who have squeezed through gaps in the surrounding chain-link fence to play catch with their dogs. (Children born in the year the developers first sought permits are in high school now.)
Now, finally, some movement: The Chronicle’s Marissa Luck reports that the owners of the property have brought in a new development team and a scaled-back plan for a 20-story luxury apartment building on the site. It would have 94 fewer units than the 2016 version of the project. The developers plan to break ground by November and finish construction by 2025, Luck reports. Assuming this actually happens, the dogs of Boulevard Oaks and Southampton will have to find another place to romp.
Across the city, meanwhile, complaints persist about problematic land uses: New music venues and strip clubs pop up all over. Concrete batch plants, it turns out, are located mostly in communities of color. State scientists have found cancer clusters in Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens that may be linked to a site where railroad ties were treated with creosote. These environmental justice concerns arguably are more urgent than the complaints that flooded City Council members’ inboxes at the height of the Ashby controversy. In such disputes, of course, neighborhoods inhabited by construction workers and retail clerks face much greater challenges than those where lawyers, doctors and university professors live. And the underlying issue — the need for a better system to regulate what goes where in a rapidly growing city — remains unresolved
Bill White, who was mayor when the Ashby project was proposed and navigated much of the early controversy, told me by phone last week Houston’s leaders are challenged to balance the need to keep traffic moving — by discouraging big projects that dump huge volumes of vehicles onto streets not designed for that capacity — and “not pulling up the ladder behind us” when opportunities arise to provide more housing near major employment centers. (The Ashby site is convenient to downtown and the Texas Medical Center.)
“That does cause stress with people who don’t want anything but single-family (housing) in neighborhoods that are already built out for singlefamily,” said White.
He wasn’t specifically referring to neighborhoods near the Ashby site — in fact, a lowslung apartment development stood there for years until it was demolished to make way for the new tower. It is true, though, that leaders of many established neighborhoods fight fiercely against proposed apartment projects, and they bring out the heavy artillery if the phrase “low-income” or “affordable” is uttered by anyone involved. A denser city may seem desirable in the abstract, but many would rather see it happen on someone else’s street.
About the Z-word: Houston voters have rejected zoning three times since the end of World War II, most recently in 1993. A friend who follows these issues suggested to me that lots of new folks have moved to Houston since then, and a properly worded initiative — perhaps focusing on buildings’ form rather than their use — might pass. But someone with influence would have to step up to champion the idea, and I don’t see any obvious candidates. I think zoning in Houston is a non-starter.
As for the new proposal for the Ashby site, it’s hard to imagine that another round of protests and/or lawsuits would yield a different result. Geoffrey Walker, a resident who was active in the effort to block the Ashby project, said many questions about the impacts of the new plan remain unanswered.
“These are questions that the homeowners around the site will quite reasonably be concerned about,” Walker wrote in an email. “And so far, they make it obvious to us that a 20-story tower with 140-plus rental units makes no sense for this site.” (The plan actually calls for 134 units.)
Chris Amandes, the president of the Southampton Civic Club, offered this via email:
“My personal reaction is that fewer units and less traffic is a better thing than more units and more traffic (as well as all of the other negative aspects associated with the building and its construction), but at the end of the day, it’s still a 20story building in a location where a 20-story building doesn’t belong.”
The trick, of course, is how and by whom decisions get made about where buildings of a particular size, design or use “belong.” Houston clearly hasn’t figured that one out yet.