brerrabbit

This may be slightly off topic, but here goes. Discussion here has come around to parking for events in downtown and that is certainly a big consideration, but the jest of the discussion is really about a new stadium for the Dynamo, how to fund it and where it will be. I'm all for sports and while I don't watch soccer I understand those who enjoy it. What is starting to bother me is the idea of build, build, build and let the city/ county pay for it. Make no mistake about it, if funds to build anything are provided by the city or the county, it costs you the taxpayer. Forget the politicians buzz phrases like "all the funds will come from hotel taxes, and rental car taxes, so your not paying it". Thats a load of BS because since that money is paying off Reliant, Minute Maid, Toyota Center, and oh by the way the $50 million of improvements to the Dome from the eighties its not going to other concerns that would benifit the larger population as a whole, like parks, roads, and other city infrastructure. Some one even mentioned the new park in front of GRB. While it will no doubt be nice, I seriously question the idea of spending $70 million on a 2 maybe three block park. Again the majority of the money is coming from donations, but just like any other scarce commodity (in this case money) there is a limited supply of it and they just took a huge chunk of it from the foundations and corporate givers for a while. This project will delay widespread park projects all across Houston because your spending so much, for so little. While Drayton McClain looks to be pushing for the new Dynamo stadium, keep this in mind, he will only support the ide if in return he gets a publically funded parking garage that he can take revenue from. He knows the loss of surface parking to the stadium will be what he needs to force the city's hand on the matter. The latest proposal for the practice facility to go along with the new stadium would be at highway 288 and Airport on a 40 acre piece of land there. And get this the rumor is the powers that be want the non profit group that aquires and build park for the city to fund the aquisition. Guess where they get their money from? The same places Mayor Bill has raided for his $70 million park at GRB. I want to see Houston be a dynamic beautiful city that grows and prospers, after all I am a native Houstonian, and a sixth generation Texan. This is my home, and this is my heritage, but mortgaged the future to get all this stuff is not what I had in mind. The city/county needs to stop spending money like a drunken sailor on shore leave or Houston is going to suffer greatly tomorrow for todays short sighted actions.

Few pics from my trip today. Hope you enjoy. Just had to comment on this last picture. With the expansion of the school the addition was built between the football field and the main building. It totally changes the feel of the building. I remember riding the city bus to Jackson and getting off on Telephone Road and walking to school. The approach from that direction made the back of the school look like a prison. It was the Boys and Girls gymns from that angle with the lunchroom above them on the third floor. It had a definite prison feel to it. The newer building really takes that away and really softens the look.

I want to say the principals name when I was there was Marion Skaines. Mr. Morgan was never an assistant Principal till after I left. He went on to be the Principal at a Jr. High in Southwest Houston and took a lot of the teachers from Jackson with him. After that he moved into administration with HISD and at some point I remember seeing his name on the news as having been involved with some wrongdoings associated with the school district. He eventually lost his job over it and I think faced criminal charges. My drama teacher was Ms. Hargis who I also had for RWS in the 7th grade. I wasn't till I was a junior in high school that a girl who was a year ahead of me from the drama program at Jackson who was also at Milby explained to me that Ms. Hargis was gay. Wow what a shock that was to me way back then. Ms. Hargis followed Mr Morgan to the new Jr. High and was the librarian there for many years. I saw her and several of the other teachers from Jackson when I tought a Project Business class at the school in the early 80's.

Actually now that I think about it I think it took like three days to show it because classes were only an hour long and the movie pushed three hours. Mentioning Mrs. Fortenberry reminds me that I was in class at Jackson with her daughter Tracy. I had classes with her all three years at Jackson and she was in Speech and Drama with me as well. Also we had Coach Herman who I actually knew before I got to Jackson because I played Little League baseball with his son Craig.

I went to Jackson from 1971 to 1974. I remember watching the movie "The Battle of the Bulge" in that auditorium with several history classes. (And no it wasn't about loosing weight) I really enjoyed my three years there and was going to go to Austin HS but changed at the last minute and wound up going to Milby instead. I had Ms. Hargis for RWS in the 7th grade and wound up taking Speech from her in the 8th and 9th grade and went to numerous tournaments. Those were some very good times growing up.

Proably the last time I went to a drive in Movie was to see a double feature of Slap Shot and Young Frakenstien at the Gulfway Drive in off Shaver and the Gulf Freeway. About thirty minutes into the first movie fog so dense rolled in that you could not see the screen. We waited about thirty minutes and it never let up so we left and they refunded our money. One of the many disadvantages of the old drive ins. As a kid my parents used to put me in my pj's in the back seat of the family car and take me to the old drive in on Winkler by Gulfgate. I remember it had a huge clown on the back of the screen and my parents would watch the movie while I fell asleep in the backseat.

My understanding is that the city is going to close one block of a street over there and the garden will take up two city blocks and the rightof way for that one block of street. I don't think its the area you are talking about as it will be farther west on the south side of 59 closer to the China Town area.

My source has sat in on meetings with the City and Dynamo representatives and while the city is willing to talk putting the land into the mix the team is expected to contribute most if not all of the building costs. Given that the warehouse district is out because much of that area over there is considered to be worth as much as $50 a square foot. That would put the price at $2.2 million an acre. No way the city is going to step up to that. Also in the same area a little farther west in the China Town area the city is in the process of closing an entire block to create a garden in honor of our sister city in China. I never knew Houston had a Chinese sister city but apparently they do. They have already built a Houston garden over there and we are now reciprocating. Might be why the International Festival is doing China this year. Anyway the garden will be on a street in the area. The construction of the garden is why my source was looking into land costs in the area. He has also been looking at alternatives for the property at BW 8 and US 59 for a while when the Dynamo Stadium issue came up and it seemed a natural fit. Lets face it people here are dancing around the issue of who will go to the games and based on what I have seen from the games they have played at Reliant Park between international teams and the feedback I have got from the Dynamo games its apparent that the continuing fan base is and will be Hispanic. Sure the suburban soccer families will attend some games but the diehards will be Hispanic. As a result the discussion on where to put the stadium is wide open since there are Hispanics all over Houston and the surrounding areas while some of the other minority groups tend to be in specific areas. (I'm not saying this is good or bad or forming any opinion just saying it is what it is and the group making the decisions believe this to be true) If you accept this then the location of the stadium is wide open because the expected fan base is all over the place and will come to the games. Given that and a $2 million an acre price for the area near MMP I can guareentee it will not be built there. He works acquiring and building parks for the City of Houston and is a very good friend of mine.

Markel Steel has been gone for a while. Along that stretch of the Gulf Freeway as it enters downtown was the original Fingers Furniture store that became Star Furniture and Markel. They were leveled and they built homes on part of the site. Does anyone remember when Fingers was at that location prior to moving down to Cullen and 45? The old Colt 45 stadium was at the current Fingers location and when they moved out to the site of the Astrodome the old stadium was demolished and Fingers built there current store on the old site. The Colt 45's played in a stadium on the north side of the Astrodome parking lot until they completed the Astrodome and then moved indoors and became the Astros. In the basement of the Fingers store in their snack bar area is a Houston Sports Museum and the location of the old home plate from the Colt 45 stadium. The mark it on the floor with terazo tile laid in the shape of a home plate.

Actually the way Sage got around the Blue Laws was to rope the areas off on Saturday and then open them back up on Sunday, thus being the only store selling that stuff on Sunday. The Blue Laws merely said you could not sell the stuff for seven days in a row and everyone interpreted that to mean that you closed on Sunday. Sage just exploited the loophold and made a pretty nice profit for a while till everyone else caught up to the idea. On that same note who remembers the Deauville Shopping Malls. These were short lived ideas that were originally meant to challenge the Blue Laws and be open seven days a week. The buildings still exsist such as the one on the Gulf Freeway at Bay area Blvd, on the east side of the freeway. The malls had off name stores and did 90% of their sales on Sundays when everyone else was closed. I think they did okay for about six months until the regular malls saw they were not getting in trouble and decided to open up on Sundays as well. That did in the Deauville bunch and they closed and eventually were turned into A couple of Garden Ridges and at the one at Baybrook became the home of several Big Box tretailers like Best Buy, Oshmans, and Bed Bath and Beyond.

My Father's hang out was Sheffields on Telephone Road and its still standing although the neighborhood has change dramatically over the years. I spent a lot of time in that old building.

Not necessarily the Mississippi river but certainly the Sabine, the Trinity, the San Jacinto, the Brazos, and the Colorado all add to the problem. That combined with the fact that the Gulf is very shallow comparitivly speaking to other gulfs and oceans. It takes almost ten miles off shore to get past the hundred foot depth mark. Add it all up and you get murky water that deposits darker sand onto the beaches giving it a "dirty" look.

In post number five I mentioned a house being built near Glenbrook pool on a piece of property near my Mother in laws house. Well I went looking for it on Live.Maps and look at what I found. The guy is building a dome house and apparently its all concrete. Guess he wants to be ready for the next hurricane. http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&...;scene=10479588

I love Galveston and spent a huge part of my life there. I still go there frequently and am very glad to see new projects going in to improve the area. That said I don't see the sense in building this type of community in front of the seawall. I wish that no hurricanes would ever hit the Texas Coast again. I live 30 miles from Galveston and am scared to death whenever a hurricane enters the Gulf. I am pragmatic and after just going through the insuring process for my home see the disaster both in terms of human life and fiancial loss that could be looming on the horizon. My insurer basically dumped me this year. They said sure I'll give you homeowners insurance but we exclude wind, water, and hailstorm damage. The translation, no hurricane insurance. I live in the northern tip of Brazoria County which means I live in a level 1 coastal county. No one will write insurance there and therefore the state mandadited that a seperate insurance pool be created to insure homes in that area. If you sell homeowners insurance in Texas you are required to participate in the pool. The current pool has $300 million in it while a cat 5 hurricane making a direct hit on the Galveston area would generate according to computer models in excess of $6 billion of damage. Now when you take the non level 1 areas in the pool out of the mix your still left with around $4 billion of damage in the level 1 area. That means that insurers would need to pay $4 billion in claims witha pool of $300 million. The state has said that individual insurance companies would have to make up the shortfall based on the percentage of the pool they sold. For example Farmers who has written about 7% of the business in the pool would have to come up with $280 million. Yeah right! These insurance companies would be stalling and baling out left and right. That means no coverage for the effected, and then the only alternative would be the government and they would have to bail us out. I have no problem with people building things anywhere they want, but if they take a risky position based on the likelyhood of hurricanes then they should bear the risk, or pay the fair value of the risk. How this relates to me is that these new houses on the beach will be paying the same rates I will for insurance. Yet they sit on an unprotected beach on the Gulf of Mexico while I live in Pearland farther inland that parts of Harris County that are Level II risks and can still buy storm insurance outside the pool. Great project, wonderful for Galveston, but very unfair in the manner that the risks associated with construction at that location will be allocated to everyone even those who are not taking that risk.

No unfortunatly the San Jacinto Inn is long gone. It was located right next to the Battleship Texas across the road from the San Jacinto monument. They were a family style resturant that brought out plates of food as you requested them and would keep bringing it till you were full. They had fried shrimp, fried oysters, fried chicken, the best biscuits in the world and most of the time straberry shortcake for dessert. It was one price for the meal and as I said you ate till you were full. My family loved that place and were sad to see it close.

What information I do have is from a very good friend who is very involved with the whole park business in Houston, in fact its his job. According to him the city as well as the group he works for is getting a ton of pressure from the community to increase the number of sports fields available in to the public. As the city grows a lot of open space that once was dedicated to Little League, Soccer, Softball, and Lacrosse is being gobbled up for new construction. The latest victim being the Lacrosse complex at the corner of Stella Link and West Belfort. They plan on extending West Belfort thus getting rid of the fields there. I was involved with Little League for many years and can tell you that the majority of the Leagues in the state are on public facilities that the city or county provides and pays the light bills for. The only current exception I know of is Pearland where the Dads Club owns the land and the Little Leagues pays for there own lights. East End LL, Magnolia LL, Friendswood LL, Sagemont Beverly Hills LL, and Dixie LL all play on public facilities and have no worries as to light bills. As the trend to public facilities continues and youth sports grow the demand will only increase. This means that facilities like Gus Worthem are being looked at pretty hard to decide if they can continue to operate as golf courses. In the end I think the city will opt out to the playing fields.

It goes right back to the issue of usage. The course is currently very under utilized and with only a nine hole course it would probably be even more so. Again the philosophy of the City is to maximize the number of users and visitors to the greenspaces in the City. This means building the most needed, and requested facilities to reach more people. Golf at that location is not it. The discussed tradeoffs would be community participation in the form of youth clinics and community involvement. I could not imagine the city contributing anything more and if they did I think it would be a bad decision. In talks with other places for the stadium it has been made clear there would be no financial support from the cities. At least when I spoke with several of the Pearland city councilmen thats what they told me.

FrankM, I bet you even had your graduation from Milby in 1977 at the Sam Houston Coliseum.

I commented on this thread or possibly another one that I would be really sad to see Worthem closed for a soccer stadium or anything else for that matter. It is a piece of history in that it was one of the first if not the first golf course in Houston. It is also one of only four courses left inside the loop. (Worthem, Memorial, Herman, and River Oaks) However the reality is this, of the City of Houston owned courses only one is in the black. The rest bleed red ink. Memorial because of the wranglings that were done when it was renovated has a provision that all revenues generated have to stay at Memorial and the funds cannot be used to fund any of the other courses. The way the City looks at the situation is what facility on this location will serve the most users? My best recollection is Memorial has somewhere around 70,000 rounds of golf played there a year. Worthem has less than half of that. Lets for discussion sake say its 30,000. If closing the course and transitioning the area into soccer fields, baseball fields, lacrosse fields, and additional park area would serve say 200,000 to 250,000 citizens a year then its a no brainer the city will opt to ditch the course. Whatever the go forward position is one thing is clear, if any additional facilities are built at the site, the course will close. No plan would ever consider retaining any part of the course while adding any other facilities. As far as the discussions with the Dynamo the current belief is that if they reached an agreement all the City would contribute to the mix would be tha land. The Dynamo would be responsible for all construction costs.

I remeber Gaido's on South Main. The one in Galveston has been there for what seems like forever. My son played YMCA basketball with Casey Gaido when he was in the 1st grade. His father was Paulie Gaido who was still running the Galveston location at that time. The resturant they opened right next to it was named for the little Gaido my son played basketball with. At that time they lived in Bay Oaks in Clear Lake and Paulie drove to Galveston to work every day.

This is wild, today while looking at this site a friend at work noticed me looking at this site and saw the Bolton and Barnstone topic and started asking me about it. Turns out he got married in November and one of his family's friends that was in attendance was none other than Preston Bolton. My friend said he is about 75 to 80 years old and had heard he was interested in contempory and mods and offered to design a house for him if he wanted to build one. Small world.

Number 10 came away from the clubhouse and played your second shot over the bayou. There was a footbridge across and then the 11th was a short par three back across the bayou. When you stood on the 11th tee box if you looked to your right there was the two lane bridge. The road that connected it went straight across the course to Glenview.

Does anyone remeber the old bridge that was actually on the Glenbrook Golf course. If you drive down the Gulf Freeway feeder north from Howard you will pass over Sims Bayou. Right after you cross it if you turn right you will be on a street that parralels the bayou for a ways and then turns north and eventually comes out on Park Place between St Christophers and Charlton Park. At one time about a 1/4 of a mile down that road from the freeway there was a bridge over the bayou. Eventually they closed it to street traffic but it was used for the course for many more years. As a child my wife used to go that way to church with her Mother at St. Christophers.

I'll have to ask my wife but I don't think so. This man was ex Military and had servred as a Major in Viet Nam. He owned several rent houses and apartments and spent most of his time taking care of them. He also rented the house my wife grew up in until her mother finally bought it from him.

My mother in law lives right behind the Glenbrook pool and I remember those houses. I think some of them are still there. The only way to get to them is from Highway 3. One of the houses over there actually had a dock on the bayou and kept and old cabin cruiser type boat there. I always thought that was pretty neat that you could live in Houston and still have a dock with a boat. It was a long haul to the ship channel and anywhere else but I still thought it was pretty cool. Also along those lines there is a piece of property at the end of Neal street behind the pool that a doctor has purchased and is building a huge house on. As neal bends and becomes another street there is a driveway that serves the house on Neal but continues up a little hill and goes back near the bayou. My wife and mother in law walked up there one day and looked around. It's a huge house with a concrete domed entry way and looks like it will be 5,000 sq ft plus house. Years ago a man by the name of mr. Boyd owned the house on Neal, and the house that used to sit on the hill. The house on the hill burned years ago and Mr Boyd and his wife moved to the house actually on Neal. After his death the property was pieced out and sold. Now someone is actually building a mansion where the old house stood.