Theater District feels like a ghost town

Posted 2:57 p.m.

Houston’s Theater District has the atmosphere of a ghost town. No one is here except for police cruisers roaming the streets, men in bright yellow suits pumping water out from the submerged garages and the accidental passerby taking a quick Snapchat photo of the Buffalo Bayou, which continues to roar past treetops, parking benches and footbridges.

The Wortham Theater Center’s doors are padlocked, with sandbags lining the entrance. Its floors are wet. On Sunday, the water breached its metal floodgates and flooded the basements levels as well as the Brown Theater. Later, when the rain receded, water remained in the building, trapped by the very floodgates meant to keep it out.

In the basement of the Alley Theatre, a painted red line several feet above eye level indicates the “Allison Line,” which was where the water rose to during the devastating 2001 tropical storm. The water is well above that line today. The entire Neuhaus Theater, home to the Alley’s edgier, contemporary plays, is under water.

Try to walk down to any of the parking garages below ground and you’re greeted by a brown sludge covered with a green, slimy membrane. There is nowhere for the water to drain naturally. The garage system is not only vast — it holds 3,369 spots for public parking — but vital to a functioning downtown arts district. The Houston Symphony, whose Jones Hall was relatively unaffected by the hurricane, cancelled its “Ella at 100” performance for the weekend even though their building’s mostly dry because there’s nowhere for people to park.

Two men take a cigarette break as they stand outside the entrance to Birraporetti’s. The doors of the downtown restaurant — a gathering place for live jazz, drinks, cozy pub food and post-show discussions — are open, letting out the stench of mold and wet carpet. Busy with salvaging the restaurant all day, they are not in the mood for conversation.

Mud marks where the water once was. Soot, leaves and tree branches line the sidewalks. Peer into the Houston Grand Opera’s back entrance and you can still see the footprints in the sand of the first people to enter in Harvey’s aftermath. As the bayou continues

to swell, some of the images people recall are downright biblical — earlier, Alley Theater Managing Director Dean Gladden saw a catfish lying dead in the middle of the road.

Rain, light but dogged, glistens on the hard hats of the men manning the pumps. They are removing water from the Alley Theatre’s basement, the Houston First parking garages and nearby buildings. The water gushes onto the street and into the sewer grates. The screech of the machinery pierces the otherwise grey stillness of the streets.

This is the first somber step in the theater district’s journey to recovery. During the same time last year, the Houston Theater District brought 10,000 people downtown during its annual open house. On a day when the city seems to be at its lowest, the Theater District — its stately buildings and expansive lobbies, all empty now — offers its scant visitors an eerie reminder of what Houston can be at its best.

The two men outside Birraporetti’s are done with their cigarettes. They do not dawdle. Armed with flashlights, they venture back into the pitch black of the restaurant, and return to work.