Downtown’s future
Plan for the central business district offers a vision worth pursuing.
When plans were unveiled in October of 1970, Houston Center was called the “boldest, biggest and most imaginative downtown redevelopment project” ever attempted. City planners hoped that the project bounded by Fannin Street and Mckinney Street would convert urban Houston into the “city of tomorrow.” That never happened. Houston Center never grew as big as developers intended, nor do its “moving sidewalks” seem revolutionary in hindsight. But the ongoing quest to craft Houston’s future remains strong in a justreleased 20-year plan for downtown (“115 years: A journey through the archives” Page A6, Nov 2).
The Plan Downtown, guided by officials from the city, Harris County, Houston First Corp., and management districts from adjacent neighborhoods and funded by the Downtown District, Downtown Redevelopment Authority and Houston First, imagines a vital downtown Houston inhabited by triple the number of current residents.
Downtown streets hamstrung by their perpetually ill-timed traffic lights would be reconfigured for self-driving cars. Outdated highway infrastructure would be redesigned for walking and recreating outdoors. A green loop of five miles would circle the entire area, creating ample places to amble in the shade for residents and their families living in the core, along with the entrepreneurs, scientists and techies who would work in the city’s new innovation district.
The city and county would pool the public acreage they collectively own to connect the Theater District, historic Market Square, Buffalo Bayou, Discovery Green, Minute Maid Park and other public facilities with each other, and pedestrians could easily traverse the area bounded by Interstate I-10 on the north, U.S. 69 on the east and I-45 on the south and west without stumbling onto an unfriendly street with little activity and blank facades that make walking the block feel longer that it is.
Texas Southern University, University of Houston, Rice University and the Texas Medical Center would collaborate to create joint student housing in downtown, all accessible by Metrorail.
It is quite the vision — easy to dismiss as impossible in our sprawling city. But you only have to look back a decade to see how quickly things can change in downtown.
Just ten years ago, there were merely four hotels downtown, with 1,900 rooms. With only 2,600 residents, the area emptied out at night. On a hot summer day, the city’s center might be mistaken for a deserted concrete wasteland given that all the denizens were bustling around underground in the air-conditioned tunnels.
Today, there are more than 7,800 rooms in 25 hotels. Around 7,500 residents live downtown. Over 150,000 employees work in the central business district. Discovery Green, a former parking lot, is packed with families and young professionals throughout the day.
Plans for the future rarely work out totally as imagined: The Houston Center never connected its people-mover system to the central business district. Still, by virtue of intensive planning, we can take control of our future and shape it into a vision of vibrancy, business and green space. It is a vision worth pursuing.