Houston exhibit will start small
Sidewalk signature discs to honor Ryan, Campbell, Olajuwon
Houston’s nascent Sports Hall of Fame, plans for which were announced at Thursday’s inaugural Houston Sports Awards, will begin as more of a pedestrian experience than a brickand-mortar, ivy-covered homage to Earl Campbell, Hakeem Olajuwon, Nolan Ryan and other memorable athletes.
First in place this summer will be sidewalk signature discs on Caroline Street in the downtown GreenStreet dining/entertainment complex honoring the first three inductees, all of whom wore uniform number 34, said Janis Burke, CEO of the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority.
Next will come LED video or text displays built into one of the circular overhead coverings of the crosswalks that connect the threeblock complex between Dallas, Polk, Caroline and Main streets in downtown Houston.
Under consideration but “not in the immediate future,” Burke said, are plans for a museum-type space that could house permanent or rotating displays honoring individual athletes, the Astros, Rockets, Texans, college and high school teams or players or the long-lost Aeros, Oilers or Comets.
“I’m for starting small, because these are tough things to keep going,” Burke said. “You have to change exhibits, or people stop coming.
“We could open a small space off the sidewalk, but we will start small and grow into it if we do.”
The idea for the sidewalk stars featuring the athletes’ signatures grew out of the sports authority’s discussion with Midway, the Houston company that owns CityCentre and other Houston real estate developments.
“We work with them on a lot of projects and had been talking with them for a while,” Burke said. “We needed a neutral site where we could work with all the teams, and Midway said this would be great to draw foot traffic for their restaurants and shops.”
Other than small exhibits at college or professional venues, Houston’s primary sports museum was the baseball-oriented display once housed at the now-demolished Finger’s furniture store on the Gulf Freeway.
That store was built on the site of Buffalo Stadium, former home of Houston’s pre-Astros minor league team, and included the stadium’s home plate built into the showroom floor. The store and museum closed in 2009.
That material — about 1,500 to 2,000 items, including autographed balls, magazine covers, bats, equipment, a piece of the Buff Stadium façade, the western-style road uniforms worn by the Colt .45s — now belongs to the Astros, who have discussed adding a museum-style space at Minute Maid Park or Union Station but have yet to do so.
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