Plan to redevelop Buffalo Bayou to be unveiled (Hold Onto Your Wallets Houston!!!)

Disturbed by the sound of the approaching boat, a heron stirs from its perch and takes flight, its broad wings flapping just inches above the water's glassy surface. Mullet jump in the bird's path. A warm September breeze sighs through the trees lining the banks of Buffalo Bayou.

As the boat rounds a bend, this image of sylvan wilderness gives way to a glaring industrial landscape. Cranes belching smoke lurch around a scrap metal yard, and farther east the vats and pipes of a huge sewage treatment plant stretch along the northern shore.

Achieving a better balance between nature and industry is a key challenge facing the architects of an intensive new effort to redevelop 10 miles of Buffalo Bayou through the heart of Houston, from Shepherd Drive on the west to the Houston Ship Channel turning basin on the east.

On Monday, local government and civic leaders will unveil a 20-year master plan for the bayou that has the enthusiastic backing of the business and political leadership.

The 191-page document was developed by a team of nationally prominent land planners, waterfront specialists and landscape architects hired by the nonprofit Buffalo Bayou Partnership.

Echoing themes developed in recent plans for the Main Street corridor and the near northside, it envisions bayou improvements as the catalyst for new commercial and residential development that would continue the renaissance of downtown and its environs.

"All over the world, great cities are reinventing themselves around their waterfronts," an overview of the plan states. "Think of New York's harbor, Chicago's lakefront, Baltimore's inner harbor, San Francisco's bay, Barcelona's seafront, Paris' Seine riverfront, and London's South Bank and Docklands."

To speak of Buffalo Bayou in the same breath as the Seine or Lake Michigan would require quite a leap of faith for many Houstonians who regard the bayou as little more than a muddy drainage ditch. This master plan is not the first effort to transform the waterway -- in reality and in the city's consciousness -- but in its sweep and vision it is certainly the boldest.

It calls for some $800 million in public expenditures over 20 years, including $500 million for flood control, and anticipates an additional $5.5 billion in private investment along the bayou corridor.

Among the ideas sketched out in its pages are the transformation of a long-abandoned sewage treatment plant, now a despised East End eyesore, into botanical gardens; creation of an island with an amphitheater for outdoor concerts; development of 850 acres of new parks connected by hike-and-bike trails; and construction of a performing arts center on the site of the central post office.

Underlying these grand visions is a less glamorous but arguably more important principle: flood control.

"It's the single most important step in achieving all the rest of it," said Jane Thompson, whose Boston-based Thompson Design Group was the lead consultant in the team that developed the plan.

The plan calls for diversionary canals and other measures that tests have shown would lower the bayou's downtown flood level by more than five feet. Its authors and supporters say this would reduce the likelihood of catastrophic flooding and open the waterfront to development of cafes, restaurants and other public uses.

"This land is so underused that they've put prisons on it," Thompson said, referring to a prisoner transfer facility on the bayou's south bank. "Nobody would dream of doing that in any other city that I can think of."

Mike Talbott, Harris County Flood Control District director, said the planners' visions of beautification and new development are "entirely compatible" with the requirements of flood control engineering.

He said the prospect of spending $500 million on Buffalo Bayou flood control measures over 20 years is feasible, noting that the district is spending $450 million over 12 years for projects on Brays Bayou.

"This plan is a fabulous, visionary catalog of opportunities," Talbott said. "If they can get the public support and the political support, this community can fund just about anything it wants."

Efforts to gain that support have made considerable progress. The Greater Houston Partnership, the city's most powerful business organization, has endorsed the plan, as have numerous smaller groups such as the Houston Canoe Club and the Park People.

City Councilman Michael Berry, who met with the Buffalo Bayou Partnership representatives last week, came away impressed.

"I think we have a real opportunity to create something wonderful," Berry said, while acknowledging uncertainty about funding prospects.

Anne Olson, president of the bayou partnership, said it is important for public officials to remember that the plan covers a 20-year time span, and "we're not going to them for money right now."

The plan discusses a range of funding strategies, including the use of bonds backed by revenue produced by new developments, assessments on property owners along the corridor, and efforts to obtain special federal appropriations.

In laying out proposed improvements, the plan calls for distinct approaches in the downtown, western and eastern segments of the route.

Downtown, it proposes development of a "WaterView" district highlighted by the "Commerce Street Promenade," a broad, tree-shaded, half-mile-long walkway that would connect other important downtown destinations.

Another key downtown feature would be Festival Place, an eight-acre park with an amphitheater across the bayou from Sesquicentennial Park. The site could be a new outdoor venue for Theater District events and the Houston International Festival.

These proposals and others reflect the planners' goal of providing greater access to the bayou, increasing its visibility and, to the extent possible, restoring its banks and slopes to a more natural state.

"That's one of the things the people at our workshops wanted to see -- to naturalize the bayou as much as possible," Olson said, referring to meetings held with neighborhood groups during development of the plan.

West of downtown, the plan calls for improving access to the bayou from the nearby Fourth Ward and Sixth Ward neighborhoods with new parking lots, shaded streets leading from the bayou to nearby schools, pedestrian overpasses, widened sidewalks and crosswalks and extension of the park trail system.

To free up land for parks, the plan proposes redesigning the cloverleaf intersection at Waugh and Memorial and realigning Allen Parkway's traffic lanes, changes that the planners said would not impede traffic flows.

East of downtown, the bayou grows wider and deeper as it flows toward the Ship Channel. The concentration of industrial sites -- some abandoned, others still in use -- grows progressively thicker.

In this segment, the plan's emphasis is on new parks, trails and other amenities to promote development that would help revitalize the historically neglected neighborhoods of the East End.

Key proposals include development of the "Turkey Bend Ecology Park," with wetlands and other natural features, on land now occupied by a concrete plant; creation of botanical gardens on the site of a derelict sewage treatment plant off Lockwood Street; and redevelopment of abandoned or "underused" industrial sites.

Community leaders in the East End, who have long complained that economic development initiatives tend to bypass the area, are thrilled with the bayou plan, said Mary Margaret Hansen, president of the Greater East End District.

"We are not being neglected this time," Hansen said. "So much time and effort and thoughtfulness have been put into the east sector of this plan."

As word of the planned improvements circulates in the development community, Hansen said, "I have a sense that investors are already looking at properties near the bayou."

The plan emphasizes mixed-use and mixed-income developments, and partnership leaders said they are mindful of past redevelopment efforts that have pushed poor people out of their homes.

"Affordable housing is very much a part of this," said Toni Beauchamp, the partnership's board chairwoman. "It's not about gentrifying everything."

The question of how to prevent gentrification reflects the need for a mechanism, in the absence of zoning, to ensure that development along the bayou corridor is consistent with the plan's vision. The plan calls for design guidelines but does not specify a means of enforcing them.

Olson, the partnership president, said the key is an ordinance being developed by the city planning department to authorize the creation of "area plans" that would guide development in particular neighborhoods or corridors. The same tool would be used for design guidelines included in the Main Street redevelopment plan and a new plan for the near northside.

Previous discussions of area plans have envisioned a combination of regulations and voluntary guidelines, perhaps backed by economic incentives. Suzy Hartgrove, a spokeswoman for the city planning department, said the area plan ordinance is still months from completion.

Other practical obstacles would have to be overcome to turn the plan's visions into reality. A Metro bus barn, among other buildings, lies in the path of one of the proposed diversion canals, for example. Postal officials have no firm plans to relocate the central post office, where the planners propose to develop a festival space.

Olson said the plan's 20-year horizon would provide time to work on such issues while moving forward with more immediately achievable goals.

Over time, as the plan gained momentum and the bayou became a popular destination, market forces would lead to a natural evolution in the use of space alongside the waterway, plan supporters said.

"I think that ultimately the plan will point in the direction of the highest and best use of the bayou," said Hansen of the Greater East End District.

In the end, though, the critical factor in changing the image and reality of Buffalo Bayou could be the natural human attraction to water, a force that bayou supporters say has been suppressed by the waterway's inaccessibility and by degradation of its water quality and wildlife habitat.

"People love water," said Mike Garver, a former bayou partnership board chairman who regularly uses his boat to clean trash from the waterway. "People gravitate to water, I don't care if it's the muddy Mississippi or what."

Add to this the $1billion I-10 corridor rail/toll road, $1.3billion in stadiums, a new (obsolete) Olympic shuttle rail line that has disrupted Main Street and shuttered a number of businesses, a new downtown theater for Theater Under The Stars, a concert hall for SFX/Clear Channel...

We've been taken to the cleaners by these crooks (and Ken Lay was one of their ilk who lobbied for the downtown baseball park).

Our roads flood, our schools could be improved. Stop these downtown leeches in their tracks.

If I remember correctly, the rain water drains from west to east in those bayous (ditches, really). That is, rain water from west of Houston will drain through the city via the bayous. There was significant building west of Houston while I was living there, and I noticed a significant increase in the water flowing through those bayous over the years. I hope they have plans to alleviate that.

I remember one year when Braes Bayou was high, some idiot decided to kayak on it and got stuck under a bridge.

Actually I did know better, I didn't vote for him).
Good for you! Methinks Brown stuffed the ballot box in the welfare wards last election.

What shocked me, however, was how Brown was supported by so many "respectable" Houstonians, particularly in the corporate world, after being disgraced in New York. As far as his term as Police Commissioner is concerned, remember that he was appointed by one-termer David "Men's Room Attendent" Dinkins and that all we heard about him was that he was a "tough military man" who was a great cop in Houston.

taken to the cleaners

Add your Sam Houston toll road. We went to see family in Baytown this weekend. 59 was under construction so we took it. We had to get off shortly after getting on and drive service roads. The traffic was bad and it was light after light. And then we were routed right back on at a pay booth! 5$ and 2 hours to get across. We left the Crosby area about 16 years ago. 59 was still under construction and the ship channel bridge was only supposed to be a toll until paid for. Some things don't seem to have changed. lol

Ah, but you forget that the dowtown-Astroworld ligt-rail line is only the first of many more that are planned, at $40-60 million per mile. At the same time, this bayou plan proposes removing the railroad tracks from the north side of downtown, forever eliminating any chance of implementing commuter rail(faster than the light-rail, and much cheaper at $5-10 million per mile). So in the plans of these geniuses, the taxpayers will pay 4 to 12 times as much to take twice as long to travel to Katy, the airports, Sugarland, Kingwood, Clear Lake, etc. Is anybody really going to ride a light-rail train for 1.5 to 2 hours each way from Katy to their job downtown?

And nowhere have I read any proposed solution to improve the water quality past downtown. Who really wants to stroll along, dine along, or go to a concert surrounded by smelly muddy water with poop and food wrappers floating by? The Riverwalk it ain't.

They may be intending to divert the bayou around downtown and leave a cleanwater body downtown.

The Art Guys had a project where they specked out a plan to straighten out the bayou. It consisted of taking a map of the bayou, cutting it apart, and gluing it down so that the bayou was straight.

If downtown congestion is such a problem, why aren't we doing more to encourage major office workspace outside of the downtown region? Naw, makes too much sense. Leave South Main to fester. Sugarland doesn't need any help. Katy? People only live there. < /sarcasm >

Here are some renderings of the proposals. Some of what is proposed could probably be a good investment for the city, even moreso if the flood control element would actually work. There are some attractive features to the plan, but also IMHO some fatal flaws. And remember, a good artist can even make Hillary look attractive in a rendering. Just remember the water quality and floating trash of Buffalo Bayou when viewing those waterside esplanades. Not exactly the Seine.

West of downtown looking east.

Northwest corner of downtown looking east southeast.

North side of downtown looking south.

Northeast side of downtown looking west.

East of downtown looking west southwest.

Further east looking west soutwest. This is currently an industrial area, I believe the bridge in the foreground is Lockwood! "Hmmm, where would I rather see a concert, Woodlands Pavillion, or the Barrio Superfund Bandshell?"

Even closer to the Ship Channel is a defunct sewage treatment plant, which would be turned into a botanical garden(accessible via Clinton Drive and rough neighborhoods).

Same site looking the other direction.

Downtown details.

As I understand it, toll road and rail would run down the middle of I-10 (like the HOV lane does now). I have not heard of any plans to load passengers from stations/stairwells under the highway.

The rail plan that I liked was the original Whitmire plan (I didn't support much of Whitmire's administration but I did like the original rail plan that Metro head Bob Lanier shouted down -"Houston doesn't need rail"). That rail system linked Houston's 3 downtown districts together (medical center, "downtown", and the Galleria) and had a line that went out to Intercontinental Airport (now Bush Intercontinental Airport). Take care of the out of town visitors first and then combine to the system lines in from the suburban communities.

People heard "heavy rail"/"light rail" and said, "I don't want heavy, give me light". Some people even wanted a subway ignoring the reality that Houston is at sea level and any subway system would flood. The "light rail" line will operate at ground level (and something that people are not considering is that there will forever be wires criss-crossing over our streets to supply the power since there can be no power source below, the dangerous third rail, on a ground level rail line). An elevated rail would have avoided giving up roadway, it would have avoided any collisions between the railcars and other vehicles or pedestrians (several trolly-bus drivers have hit and killed pedestrians that had the right of way downtown). The current main street rail line will not be able to run in 3 inches of rain (which is quite possible with some of our storms).

A bunch of wrong headed plans.

Another example of the downtown property interests that control all downtown redevelopment:

When Mayorbob started crowing that we suddenly needed a commuter rail line, he said that it had to go to Union Station. When that plan went down in flames and we needed a new baseball park, it had to be at Union Station. The development of the ballpark has now entirely precluded any ability to utilize Union Station as a switching house.

These crooks are lining their pockets as Jones, Hoffienz, and others did in a past era in Houston.

Actually I have a different take Lanier's decision to kill rail. At the time it was a smart move, because for the same amount of money as rail would have required he was able to do a lot of street repair and road expansion, AND implement one of the best express bus systems in the country. Yeah, many people don't want to ride the bus, but many others will and do, coming in from Spring, Kingwood, FM 1960, the far ends of Westheimer, etc. And all that road construction made a huge difference, Houston was one of only a couple of metro areas to reduce their congestion level. While all the liberals were screaming that you can't build your way out of congestion, Houston proved them wrong. One of the few things Lanier did right.

I can assure you any rail plan in the Katy Freeway corridor, no matter what mode is proposed, will have plenty of stations with walkway brides over the freeway to side lots, businesses, and apartments.

Metro will unveil a new proposal for a regionwide rail plan later this year. Its likely to be a boondoggle proposing light-rail all over the city, with vague promises of service to the far suburbs fine-printed as 20-30 years out. For far less money they could provide the same service with much less light-rail and commuter rail instead for most of the corridors. Plus there are existing freight railroad lines in most corridors that could add commuter trains relatively cheaply compared to light-rail, which would require a separate right-of-way and electrical lines. But the latter solution wouldn't make near as much money for Lee Brown's developer cronies, nor waste money for expensive toy trains through vote-fraud rich districts. Why serve more commuters with better service(15-30 minutes faster each way than light-rail) when you can pretend to do so and reap oodles of campaign donations?(among other perks)

But more importantly, it is not conclusive that now is the time to start building any rail projects in Houston. Someday it will provide a needed commute alternative, and greatly expanded commuter rail is where Dallas-Fort Worth is headed in the next 30 YEARS.

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