Greenspoint Mall project could be a turning point
Does this story sound familiar?
In a booming economy, developers build thousands of apartments to house young professionals and service workers. Decades pass, the apartments grow shabby, rents drop and families desperate for affordable housing flock to a community that lacks amenities such as parks and grocery stores. The decline of a nearby shopping mall seems to mirror the problems of the broader neighborhood.
The best-known example of this scenario played out in Gulfton, the southwest Houston neighborhood where apartments built for “swinging singles” in the 1970s became homes for low-income families 20 to 30 years later.
Conditions in Gulfton have improved in recent years, partly through the nationally acclaimed work done by Baker-Ripley, the nonprofit formerly known as Neighborhood Centers Inc. And Sharpstown Mall, 2 miles from the heart of Gulfton, has been redeveloped as the Latino-themed PlazAmericas.
A variation on this theme is playing out some 25 miles north of Gulfton, in the area surrounding Greenspoint Mall.
The recent announcement that the longstruggling mall was under contract for sale and redevelopment was encouraging to the area’s business leaders, who are rebranding the community as the North Houston District. But details of the buyers’ plans are uncertain, and so is the effect of the redevelopment on the people who live and work
in the surrounding area.
The North Houston District — a 12-square-mile area bounded roughly by the Hardy Toll Road, Airtex, Veterans Memorial and West Road — includes about 18,000 apartments in some 70 developments, said Greg Simpson, the district president. While many were built in the 1970s and ’80s and marketed to singles or childless couples, the average occupancy now is 3.5 people per unit, Simpson said.
‘Disconnected, isolated’
Some of these apartments were inundated by floods in April 2016. A few days later, Susan Rogers, the director of the University of Houston’s design resource center, commented on the floods and related neighborhood issues in an essay on the Chronicle’s Gray Matters website.
“The mall, office towers, multi-family apartment complexes, and strip retail development are disconnected and isolated from each other both physically and demographically,” Rogers wrote. “Fundamentally there are two communities: one community that caters to the area’s office workers, and one community for those who call the area home.”
The North Houston District is aware of these issues, Simpson told me, and is working to attract amenities such as fullservice grocery stores. A Fiesta store on Airline Drive, about three miles from Greenspoint Mall, lies within the district’s boundaries, but residents tend to think of that area as a separate neighborhood because Interstate 45 and Beltway 8 divide the district into distinct quadrants.
“The whole district is not a food desert,” Simpson said.
The North Houston District has an abundance of assets: a location near Bush Intercontinental Airport and equidistant from downtown and The Woodlands; Pinto Business Park, where Amazon opened an 855,000-squarefoot distribution center last year; the North Houston Skate Park, North America’s largest; and more.
Crime in the area was dramatically reduced when the district opened a public safety center that put more police officers closer to district residents, said Jack Drake, who led the district for more tha 20 years starting in 1990.
The district also is undertaking housing initiatives, including efforts to “deconcentrate” the apartments by persuading owners to close some sections, Simpson said. But he acknowledged: “That’s a tough argument to make.”
Resident engagement in the Greenspoint area appears to be low. The area’s Super Neighborhood Council is inactive, said Simpson.
Increasing involvement
A dynamic “catalyst organization,” often a nonprofit, can be the key to increasing residents’ involvement, said Angela Blanchard, the president and CEO of Baker-Ripley.
Perhaps Avenue Community Development Corp., one of Houston’s most successful nonprofit housing developers, will fill that role in the North Houston District. Simpson said the district is working with Avenue CDC to develop affordable single-family housing as an alternative for families.
Community development is hard, and the problems in the neighborhoods surrounding the vacant storefronts of Greenspoint Mall are formidable. But most of the essential elements for improvement seem to be in place, if the area’s leaders have the skill and patience to apply them.