Council postpones plan to build homes
Recently closed golf course site sits in flood plain
City Council has indefinitely postponed a proposal to build hundreds of homes in a west Houston flood plain amid questions about whether city leaders’ actions would match their rhetoric about mitigating the risk of flooding after Hurricane Harvey.
Mayor Sylvester Turner supported the move to refer the item back to his administration, a procedure that can be used to further study a controversial item or kill it.
Arizona-based Meritage Homes announced last May that it planned to build the single-family homes on the site of the recently closed Pine Crest Golf Club at Clay and Gessner in a master-planned community to be called Spring Brook Village. The finished project would include homes for up to 800 people, with properties priced between the high $200,000s and the mid-$500,000s.
The entire 151-acre site sits in a flood plain, Harris County Flood Control District maps show. Officials said the developers’ drainage plan, once built, will place most of the tract in the 500-year flood plain rather than in the riskier 100-year flood plain.
The builders have said they plan to build the homes at a higher elevation and have noted their plan exceeds the city’s minimum requirements for detaining storm water.
Still, Turner acknowledged the optics of approving hundreds of new homes in a flood plain two months after a historic hurricane flooded thousands of homes across the Houston area.
“We are living in the post-Harvey world, and I want people to have the confidence that we’re thoroughly vetting these projects and that we’re asking the questions,” Turner said. “When I have said previously that we can’t do things the same way and expect a different result, I want to make sure this project has been thoroughly vetted, and all the council members agreed to that.”
Activist ‘relieved’
As to whether his administration should have more thoroughly vetted the item before placing it on the agenda, Turner said, “There’s always an opportunity to ask the second question.”
Cynthia Neely, of Houston Residents Against Flooding, cheered the decision but said it never should have appeared on the council agenda in the first place.
“I’m relieved that it’s off the agenda and we don’t have to worry about it this year,” she said, “but from what I hear, construction and everything is continuing on the development even as we speak.”
City Council took up the item because the developers needed its consent to create a municipal utility district to pay for roads, water, sewer and drainage infrastructure on the site.
Council members Brenda Stardig and Mike Knox said the developers told them the inability to form a MUD could result in more homes and less storm-water detention being built on the site, because the builders might then be required to finance part of the infrastructure costs themselves rather than repaying those costs through future homeowners’ property taxes.
“It’s ‘Hey, y’all need to do it our way or we’re going to …’ ” Knox said of the conversation. “When I hear ‘or we’re going to,’ that’s a threat. I’m not one that responds well to threats.”
Representatives for developer MetroNational declined to comment Wednesday. Meritage Homes’ Houston division president Kyle Davison said, “We look forward to working with the city of Houston to answer any of their questions.”
Turner, for his part, said the council’s decision did not block development on the site and that the same proposal could well return after further vetting. The decision, he said, was not about stymieing growth.
As the mayor noted, the proposal came to council just one week after it approved $10.7 million to buy out 60 flood-prone homes, including some about 3 miles downstream from the site.
‘In a post-Harvey age’
Houston environmental attorney Jim Blackburn applauded the move, saying the council should use any opportunity to scrutinize future flooding risks.
The item was within the council’s discretion, he noted, unlike an applicant simply meeting a minimum building regulation and being entitled to receive a permit to proceed.
“It’s certainly fully within their rights to say, ‘We are in a post-Harvey age, we have new information that hasn’t existed in the past and we need to fully evaluate it and we’ll get back with you,’ ” he said. “The role of government post-Harvey has to change relative to flooding and flood policies in Houston and Harris County.”
Stardig, who represents the area around the planned development and had given her support to the proposal, acknowledged that she had a lengthy conversation with Turner that delayed the start of the Wednesday morning council meeting.
Stardig said she stressed to the mayor the need to have good development on the property if the MUD item was to be indefinitely delayed; she had negotiated with the developers to ensure that no apartments could be built on the land for 30 years, a key sticking point for her constituents.
“If we can afford to have another look at it and assure the public that there’s not going to be a (stormwater) impact, then we need to do that,” Stardig said.
Knox said he was pleased with the decision to delay the item, saying questions about the area’s future flood risk could not be answered in the time he and his colleagues were given to consider the item.
“I have no problem with the design of the project. I have no problem with the seller, the buyer. I just have a problem with the process,” he said. “We should have been given the opportunity to inquire and ask questions and come to a comfort level with our vote instead of being forced to vote yes or no with two days’ notice.”