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Here We Go Again I Saw It Coming Fifth Ward To Be Gentrified


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According to Sarnoff's column, 5th ward is next to go as the developers are now heading north......I knew this would come as it sat there like a ripened peach

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/busine...ff/5468874.html

These dang developers are snatching up everything in sight, bumping out the old-timers which sends them to the suburbs and causes demographics shifts as the suburbanites can't tolerate change so they go out and move further out.....

I don't know personally if 5th ward will be so kind as 3rd was to new urbanism as 3rd ward is home to 2 colleges and a little more diversity....the 5th ward natives claim their area with a little more pride and won't go away easy.....some areas you got to watch your back a little more and I don't see $300K townhomes meshing well with the home of The Ghetto Boys or Scarface....

These developments also don't benefit the local school system as we all know they aren't enrolling at Wheatley

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The article mentioned HP employees relocating to Houston. They are not going to like it. You would know if you ever visited/lived in Palo Alto.

The term "Ward" sounds so dated and old, old fashioned. It also confuses younger people and newcomers to Houston. It just descibed as next to downtown? I imagine behind old Chinatown?

The Hardy Yards project was scrapped as someone described in a past East End topic? I thought the new stadium was going up here? Must be true as the other day on the news they mentioned properties going up, up, up! :o

How much longer will they keep Star Mission of Hope and other homeless kitchens in that vicinity? Maybe once (if) retailors move in they will protest. That will be an ordeal/hurdle.

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A proposed project at the northern end of downtown, referred to as the Hardy Yards, along with the potential of northside rail, will help the transition, he explained.

We might see Hardy Yards after all.

Eventually, yes. Hardy Yards will be developed. Just not along the lines of anything you've seen to date and not by the developer that originally publicized it. Look at it as land and only land with no proposal attached to it.

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The article mentioned HP employees relocating to Houston. They are not going to like it. You would know if you ever visited/lived in Palo Alto.

Whether they'll like Houston or not probably depends on what kind of money they're making. These won't be corporate big shots, so I'd suppose that they'd welcome our much more attainable lifestyle quite readily. That's what Houston is all about.

It just descibed as next to downtown? I imagine behind old Chinatown?

I thought the new stadium was going up here? Must be true as the other day on the news they mentioned properties going up, up, up! :o

Fifth Ward is north of the bayou, and could hardly be described as "next to downtown" given its relatively poor accessibility.

The term "Ward" sounds so dated and old, old fashioned. It also confuses younger people and newcomers to Houston.

Ahem. Doesn't confuse me.

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According to Sarnoff's column, 5th ward is next to go as the developers are now heading north......I knew this would come as it sat there like a ripened peach

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/busine...ff/5468874.html

These dang developers are snatching up everything in sight, bumping out the old-timers which sends them to the suburbs and causes demographics shifts as the suburbanites can't tolerate change so they go out and move further out.....

I don't know personally if 5th ward will be so kind as 3rd was to new urbanism as 3rd ward is home to 2 colleges and a little more diversity....the 5th ward natives claim their area with a little more pride and won't go away easy.....some areas you got to watch your back a little more and I don't see $300K townhomes meshing well with the home of The Ghetto Boys or Scarface....

These developments also don't benefit the local school system as we all know they aren't enrolling at Wheatley

It's unclear to me whether developers are actually heading north. Right now it seems pretty well confined to land speculators. I'm inclined not to take this article at face value.

IF developers are able to start a trend in the 5th Ward, I'm of the opposite opinion; it will fall easily. 3rd Ward has always been a little better politically organized. As for the schools, seems like knocking down homes with children and replacing them with homes without children is a pretty good way to reduce the head count while still adding to the tax base. Seems like a positive effect to me.

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positive? All you'll have are massive structures with nothing left....Austin, Jeff Davis, Reagan were majority white schools at one time but as soon as the families left the area you had schools topping 3,000 stidents now reduced to barely 1,200

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positive? All you'll have are massive structures with nothing left....Austin, Jeff Davis, Reagan were majority white schools at one time but as soon as the families left the area you had schools topping 3,000 stidents now reduced to barely 1,200

Is that a problem? I mean, usually the big legitimate complaint is the overcrowding of urban schools.

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It's unclear to me whether developers are actually heading north. Right now it seems pretty well confined to land speculators. I'm inclined not to take this article at face value.

IF developers are able to start a trend in the 5th Ward, I'm of the opposite opinion; it will fall easily. 3rd Ward has always been a little better politically organized. As for the schools, seems like knocking down homes with children and replacing them with homes without children is a pretty good way to reduce the head count while still adding to the tax base. Seems like a positive effect to me.

How would one find out the address to that site? I'd like to look it up on HCAD.

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positive? All you'll have are massive structures with nothing left....Austin, Jeff Davis, Reagan were majority white schools at one time but as soon as the families left the area you had schools topping 3,000 students now reduced to barely 1,200
I'm missing the point of your complaint. With only 1/3 the number of students, the student to teacher ratio surely went up. Isn't that what everyone wants?
The article mentioned HP employees relocating to Houston. They are not going to like it. You would know if you ever visited/lived in Palo Alto.
Once they purchase a home twice the size as their old Palo Alto home for less than 1/3 the cost, I'm sure they'll come around.
The term "Ward" sounds so dated and old, old fashioned. It also confuses younger people and newcomers to Houston. It just described as next to downtown? I imagine behind old Chinatown?
Fifth ward runs from the bayou to the northeast line Main St. would make if it didn't curve back to the northwest, north of downtown. Most consider Elysian an unofficial border.
The Hardy Yards project was scrapped as someone described in a past East End topic?
Hardy Yards would be considered northside, as it sits between Main St. & Elysian.
Fifth Ward is north of the bayou, and could hardly be described as "next to downtown" given its relatively poor accessibility.
I agree. I don't see Fifth ward gentrifying. No lofts, no studios, no offices, and no Victorian conversions. Some places in some towns just don't gentrify. Fifth Ward is one such place.
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I agree. I don't see Fifth ward gentrifying. No lofts, no studios, no offices, and no Victorian conversions. Some places in some towns just don't gentrify. Fifth Ward is one such place.

I don't see this happening either, at least not any time in the near future. I see other areas of the Near Northside, the East End, and even the 3rd Ward gentrifying before the 5th Ward. If/when the 5th Ward ever turns around, I wonder what creative name the developers will give the area to overcome the ghetto stigma of the name "5th Ward"?

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that's why I wonder why even waste time but high land costs can do that....

the 5th ward resident ain't going to go away easily....but Kashmere Gardens was the first integrated school in HISD....amazing how times changed

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3rd and 5th will both become something else eventually... 3rd Ward is about half-way done already... 5th Ward is just waiting for townhomes to "jump the tracks" of I-10.

The land is too valuable not to turn over. Big bank takes little bank. Always.

And, yeah, smaller school enrollment is better than larger school enrollment, assuming the tax base is the same.

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I don't see this happening either, at least not any time in the near future. I see other areas of the Near Northside, the East End, and even the 3rd Ward gentrifying before the 5th Ward. If/when the 5th Ward ever turns around, I wonder what creative name the developers will give the area to overcome the ghetto stigma of the name "5th Ward"?

True, Anytime you mention Ward it evokes poverty and depressed times. For millions of long time Houstonian's anyway.

and you can buy candy on every corner day or night.

Kashmere Gardens, you gotta see it to believe it. Lockwood at 610 more candy for sale.

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There are already townhomes hugging the East Freeway east of the Eastex and near Waco Street, with a handful of homes near them already purchased for the onset of new construction.

Surely it would take a while for Fifth Ward to gentrify but to say that it's not/won't doesn't seem true given what's already taking place (albeit on a small scale).

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I don't see Fifth ward gentrifying. No lofts, no studios, no offices, and no Victorian conversions. Some places in some towns just don't gentrify. Fifth Ward is one such place.

The "poor black factor" assumes high crime and that will be the one thing that spooks newcomers but the place has tear down written all over it, which is the fastest way to gentrify. 3rd Ward does appear to have a kinder and gentler original population than 5th and one or two murders or car jackings to new townhome dwellers there could leave subsequent developers holding the bag.

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Is that a problem? I mean, usually the big legitimate complaint is the overcrowding of urban schools.

The overcrowding, if it exists is more due to difficulties getting staff than actually finding kids. All the schools HCBU talked about are below 2,000 kids.

SchoolDigger shows the population trends:

* Austin - http://www.schooldigger.com/go/TX/schools/...393/school.aspx

* Davis - http://www.schooldigger.com/go/TX/schools/...434/school.aspx

* Reagan - http://www.schooldigger.com/go/TX/schools/...562/school.aspx

Davis's population (1,580 as of 2006) is larger than its 1987 population (1,392) - It was mostly Hispanic for at least 20 years. Its high was 1,795 in 1998.

Austin's population went from in 1987 to 2,910 in 1988 to 3,108 in 1995 and 1996 to 1,825 in 2006. - It was mostly Hispanic for at least 20 years.

Reagan

Like Davis, Reagan's population (1,720 in 2006) is larger than its 1987 population (1,693). Its high was 2,139 in 1995 and 1996. - It was mostly Hispanic for at least 20 years.

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The "poor black factor" assumes high crime and that will be the one thing that spooks newcomers but the place has tear down written all over it, which is the fastest way to gentrify. 3rd Ward does appear to have a kinder and gentler original population than 5th and one or two murders or car jackings to new townhome dwellers there could leave subsequent developers holding the bag.

This is exactly why I think 5th Ward won't gentrify. With 3rd Ward, you're pushing into Riverside Terrace, the UH campus, and I-45. Just like 4th ward, 6th Ward, Montrose, or Midtown, it will be easier to gentrify this area as you've already encircled the area to gentrify. Potential "pioneers" are more easily influenced to buy as they can see the potential outcome for the area, as there's only a finite amount of enclosed low-income area to gentrify.

With 5th Ward, there's no gentrification "finish-line", so there's no way to predict how much beyond a buyer's investment the area will improve. That may not affect land-buyers, investors, and builders - but it does affect the psyche of residential and commercial occupants. There's no motivation to be a pioneer in an area if you can't see the area improving past your property. This is the case with 5th Ward.

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I still think some folks are crazy for buying expensive townhomes next to second ward and those projects aren't going away anytime soon

5th ward would take a massive cleansing as there are some large scale developments (projects) there....I can really see the Coke Street Apartments or Kelly Courts being razed for townhomes....you don't want to have a New Orleans situation on your hand

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I still think some folks are crazy for buying expensive townhomes next to second ward and those projects aren't going away anytime soon

5th ward would take a massive cleansing as there are some large scale developments (projects) there....I can really see the Coke Street Apartments or Kelly Courts being razed for townhomes....you don't want to have a New Orleans situation on your hand

2nd Ward and the East End in general is a little bit more fractured by railroads, bayous, industrial districts, and just in the qualities of various adjacent neighborhoods, than are any other inner city neighborhoods.

For instance, if you look at aerial photos of the area that Danax refers to as "COMBO", in the general area of Commerce Street and Olshan's, specifically bounded by US 59 on the west, Buffalo Bayou on the north, York on the East, and the railroad tracks to the south, you'll notice that there are basically two small pockets of crappy old homes surrounded by old industrial and commercial properties. One pocket is directly across Navigation Blvd. from Ninfa's--so you know that it won't last--and the other pocket is clustered around the three-block-long Settegast Park, not radiating away from the park any further than two blocks (1/8 of a mile). This is one of the very few older parks in or near the warehouse district, so I think its safe to say that it'll get redeveloped before too long.

East of York, centered around the Ripley House on Navigation, is nearly the largest cluster of crap in the East End, second only to Magnolia and Central Park as far as I can tell. But as you go east, once you get past Engel Street, there's an old industrial district to the north and commercial lining Harrisburg as well as the Central City Industrial Park to the south, which has the effect of confining the crap to a four-block-wide strip. The first set of townhomes is being built by Waterhill in the northern industrial district, and I suspect that there'll be many more to follow. As that area transitions, the strip of crap will fill in...although actually there are several homes amongst that crap that may have potential for restoration. Once that happens, the big block of crap around Ripley House will start to get eaten away at the fringes, replaced mostly by townhomes. This could easily take 15 or 20 years, though

I suspect that Magnolia and Central Park will be the last areas to fall, if they ever do. They aren't well-located relative to freeways and are physically isolated by bayous and railroads with basically no reason for yuppies to venture into them. To a large extent, that's the same fate as 5th Ward. It's poorly-located, there's just no reason for yuppies to be there in the first place, and its hard to get a good toe-hold.

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