Houston Mayor Bill White is capriciously manipulating local governmental power to sidetrack development of a condominium project (nicknamed the “Ashby high-rise”) in a neighborhood where he raises a substantial political campaign funds. The incident has received some national attention through this Wall Street Journal ($) article, which somehow suggests that Houston’s phenomenal growth over the past 50 years has been in spite of — rather than because of — the city’s lack of zoning and liberal land use policies.
At any rate, it’s really a sad reflection of the state of political discourse in Houston that the Mayor has been given a pass on undermining a project for the benefit of his campaign war chest. The property was valued and sold to the present owners on the assumption that a large-scale redevelopment would be built there and the owners followed all the city’s rules and regulations in obtaining the necessary permits to proceed with construction. When a few wealthy neighbors of the development pulled Mayor White’s chain, he blithely ordered one of the city’s approvals to be revised to delay the development and now is attempting to ramrod two ordinances through city council to stop the project altogether.
In short, the developers invested a substantial amount of money in buying the property and followed the laws in preparing the large-scale redevelopment, dozens of which dot Houston’s landscape. Mayor White and his friends don’t like the development, so White is changing the laws. And this is political leadership?
At any rate, all of this reminded me of this excellent Virginia Postrel/Atlantic.com article that compares the radically different land use policies of Los Angeles, on one hand, and Dallas (which are quite similar to Houston’s), on the other. Suffice it to say that the likes of Mayor White favor the Los Angeles approach over that of Dallas and Houston. Think about that the next time you vote for mayor.
Update: The website for the group opposing the project is here. A copy of the proposed “emergency” ordinance is here.
Update 2: A recent West U Examiner article on the project is here.
Houston's Clear Thinkers
Longtime Houston attorney Tom Kirkendall's observations on developments in law, business, medicine, culture, sports, and other matters of general interest to the Houston business, professional, and academic communities.
“… the Mayor has been given a pass on undermining a project for the benefit of his campaign war chest.”
I’m curious – what evidence would you offer to substantiate that bit of judgmental editorializing?
Greg, I have none at this point. But I’m betting that the zip codes of contributors set forth on Mayor White’s next campaign finance report will reflect an uptick in contributions from this part of town. Can you think of opposition to another commercial construction project during Mayor White’s tenure in office that has generated such a responsive chord from the Mayor’s office?
Counselor Kirkendall, don’t you know you should be highlighting the Mayor’s accomplishments instead of editorializing on a blog that reflects your opinion? 🙂
The Mayor will also need to tap that affluent part of town heavily if the mayor does indeed embark on that run for higher office statewide eventually, so the move could well be an investment in the future.
What is indisputable is that the Mayor has moved the machinery of government in a capricious (and punitive) manner, pushing an ordinance that hasn’t been vetted in the usual manner at warp-speed through the process, to give special treatment to a highly influential community. The poorly-vetted ordinance also apparently bestows quite a bit of discretionary power on the city’s public works director, which could open entirely new cans of worms down the line, after the current mayor is gone. It’s bad process and bad policy.
Tom:
I really could not disagree with you more on the subject of the Ashby Highrise. What you have substantially wrong is that the developers did not follow the rules or submit plans outlining this project when they purchased the property or when they initially applied for permits with the city. Rather, they purposefully obfuscated their plans, claiming to be planning a 2 to 4 story development on par with the apartments currently located at the site. After getting initial approval, but before final permits were issued, they tried to quietly switch the plans to the current 23 story proposal. Fortunately, the local civic association was monitoring the project and noticed the vast discrepancy in the two proposals. Not exactly the kind of open, honest playing-by-the-rules scenario you describe.
This development will add 460 vehicles to an already overcrowded two lane street running through a neighborhood that currently has fewer than 400 residents. It will cause massive overflow traffic on the purely residential streets surrounding the tower and will literally block the sunlight for more than 30% of the homes in the neighborhood for more than half of each day. One of the last pedestrian friendly neighborhoods of Houston will be lost. The tower is planned to be 23 stories tall, and will be directly in the middle of the neighborhood. It will have single family homes that have been there for 75 to 80 years within 30 feet of its footprint on every side. The average height of these homes? Less than 30 feet. Not only will it be an eyesore and completely out of character with the neighborhood, it will create a substantial danger to area residents by the traffic patterns it will create through our streets. Additionally, it will give hundreds of additional eyes direct access to my backyard. Every time my little girl plays in the backyard, I will wonder who is watching her from above. No fence will be high enough, no tree full enough to allow me and my family any semblance of privacy.
The ordinance proposed by the City is not unfair and it does not function in an ex post facto manner. Permits for the project have not yet been issued, and the ordinance will not alter only this project, but will protect all other Houston neighborhoods from having this type of development thrown up in traditionally single-family home areas. Building regulation is a touchy subject in Houston, but we have allowed the developers too free a rein in this city. In general, they have used some level of self-policing, but it now appears that era has ended and the only goal is to line their pockets at the expense of other citizens of the city. Whether that means we will end up with zoning in Houston, I don’t know. What I do know is that when you push the limits too far in a world of purely self-regulation, you often end up with bad legislation in response. If we end up with legislation unfriendly to the development community, we will have developers like Mr. Morgan and Mr. Kirton to blame. Had they gone about this in a forthright manner, the protests and objections would have been made before they made any major investments and would have likely resulted in an abandonment of the project before they were too fully committed. By trying to sneak this through and make it a fait accompli before protests could be lodged, they created an issue that may ultimately lead to the curtailment of certain types of development in Houston. If so, so be it.
Matt, thanks for contributing the resident point of view. I agree with you that the developers should not be allowed to change the nature of the project radically without giving the neighbors an opportunity to object.
However, I disagree with you on the proposed ordinance. It’s effectively zoning without the consent of the citizens and with the added ruse of being passed quickly because of an “emergency” (what’s the emergency?). The Ashby project may be a bad idea, but the proposed ordinance is a worse one.
“I’m betting that the zip codes of contributors set forth on Mayor White’s next campaign finance report will reflect an uptick in contributions from this part of town.”
Yeah, that should make all the difference in his $2M cash on hand. So much for clear thinking … just another hateHouston.net entry via remote.
Greg, I seriously doubt that Mayor White’s political ambitions are going to be fulfilled with merely a couple on mil in cash on hand.