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(Suburban) City Planning Question


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The other day when all Harris County parks were closed (due to Covid-19 fears) I suggested to my friend we should go to a park in Fort Bend County instead. We chose Memorial Park in Sugar Land. As we exited University Blvd I noticed something that always annoyed me about these very established and built out suburbs. Key words: built out. There’s this LARGE area of undeveloped land that always tend to be right off of the freeway. It’s prime real estate. Its hard to describe so I’ve attached pictures. I have a pic of the map view and the street view. I included Clear Lake because I doubt those spaces are big enough for anything significant, but it seems like a waste of space. And I’m assuming Smart Financial owns that vacant lot, but what about the lot across the street.

 

*Built out-everything that surrounds these empty and wasted spaces are almost all fully developed. Sugar Land, Clear Lake, Pearland all developed. As opposed to a small new community like Springwoods Village, Manvel or Fulshear.


I say all of this to ask, why do cities leave such prime real estate vacant for so long? In pearland and Clear Lakes case-why let these areas go so long without landscaping them (water fountain, large signage, statues, water feature)

 

I circled the areas I’m talking about in red.

 

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My initial frustration was when Pearland Town Square first opened. I used to go there. I moved out of the city for 5 years, moved back and it still looked the same. Now another 5-6 years have passed and it looks THE EXACT SAME. As if they’re in the middle of landscaping it or something. Now there just a large muddy puddle of mess.

 

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10 hours ago, midtowndweller said:

The other day when all Harris County parks were closed (due to Covid-19 fears) I suggested to my friend we should go to a park in Fort Bend County instead. We chose Memorial Park in Sugar Land. As we exited University Blvd I noticed something that always annoyed me about these very established and built out suburbs. Key words: built out. There’s this LARGE area of undeveloped land that always tend to be right off of the freeway. It’s prime real estate. Its hard to describe so I’ve attached pictures. I have a pic of the map view and the street view. I included Clear Lake because I doubt those spaces are big enough for anything significant, but it seems like a waste of space. And I’m assuming Smart Financial owns that vacant lot, but what about the lot across the street.

 

*Built out-everything that surrounds these empty and wasted spaces are almost all fully developed. Sugar Land, Clear Lake, Pearland all developed. As opposed to a small new community like Springwoods Village, Manvel or Fulshear.


I say all of this to ask, why do cities leave such prime real estate vacant for so long? In pearland and Clear Lakes case-why let these areas go so long without landscaping them (water fountain, large signage, statues, water feature)

 

I circled the areas I’m talking about in red.

 

yULzKJk.jpgUddD9ct.jpg
 

My initial frustration was when Pearland Town Square first opened. I used to go there. I moved out of the city for 5 years, moved back and it still looked the same. Now another 5-6 years have passed and it looks THE EXACT SAME. As if they’re in the middle of landscaping it or something. Now there just a large muddy puddle of mess.

 

 

 

In the case of Sugar Land,  the land on the east side of University is owned by the city and Newland Communities (the developer of Telfair) and the vision is for a convention center hotel complex plus a community visual arts venue on the city land and there is some plan for a mixed-use development on the Newland property.

 

I suspect the land west of University is owned by UH and I imagine they have expansion plans.

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The I-45/Bay Area Blvd land was originally a dead zone (and park and ride on the se corner) from when the feeder connected to the old cloverleaf arrangement from before the freeway was rebuilt OVER Bay Area Blvd.

Now TxDot has repurposed it as detention.  This is the case at all the reconfigured intersections along I-45 in the area.  I might think some of those other intersections you mention may also be for detention purposes.

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Yes, the space in Pearland is all for detention.  Pearland has beautification plans for those detention areas, but they are in connection with the construction of (and following) the Brazoria County Expressway project, which I don't think is even done yet.  FWIW, in the last five years, 288 has been expanded and the intersection with 518 reconstructed.

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3 hours ago, gnu said:

The I-45/Bay Area Blvd land was originally a dead zone (and park and ride on the se corner) from when the feeder connected to the old cloverleaf arrangement from before the freeway was rebuilt OVER Bay Area Blvd.

Now TxDot has repurposed it as detention.  This is the case at all the reconfigured intersections along I-45 in the area.  I might think some of those other intersections you mention may also be for detention purposes.

Here's what it looked like before the widening.

https://goo.gl/maps/fJRu83jNcuWJe3yJA

 

TxDOT typically does that for intersections that are converted from the rural crossroad overpass type to the mainlane overpass type. The old one way feeder bypasses or ramps to the crossroad are usually turned into two-way access roads to keep access to the businesses.

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There are a lot of old freeway intersections like that. Kingwood Drive and Northpark both have those empty corners. I believe in the case of Kingwood drive one corner may be gaining a Park and Ride soon with the Metro Next project.

 

On I 45 near Madisonville a few of those junctions are still intact, and they are really scary to drive on. Merging from the farm to market road that goes to Normangee to 45 you have to rapidly accelerate to catch up traffic going in excess of 80 mph on a very short sharply curved ramp. I don't think anyone misses that roadway layout at all.

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