brerrabbit

Search on the boards and you will find a lot of discussion on this topic. I think the biggest thread is on the Galveston Island board. Tillman Fertatida the CEO of Landry's which owns the Boardwalk, and the Aquarium, as well as having built the Convention Center in Galveston is a big proponent of casino gambling and his family has at points owned casinos in Vegas, so yes he has positioned many of his businesses to take advantage of the situation if casino gambling ever is legalized in Texas. It is rumored (fact according to some) that the Convention Center in Galveston is actually wired to handle all the slot machines that would go in if gambling became legal. Each machine requires its own plug so when they built the building they beefed up the wiring and electric service to handle the future load. It is rumored (again fact according to many) that Fertaida's family was involved with organized crime, and the illeagal gambling that occured in Galveston for many years.

I live in a neighborhood in Pearland that has no pool, no playground and about all the HOA fees go to are common area maintainence and paying the management company and we pay a little over $200 a year. While $500 a year sounds like a lot when you add it all up, by the time you pay to mow everything, take care of all those lakes/retention ponds and take care of several pools and a community center you have nothing left for rent a cops. I'm not trying to justify it or sound mean its just the way it is. People should use common sense and take sensible precautions. I have friends that live in a suburb of Dallas and brag on how safe it is and how you don't even have to lock your doors. Well I guess to many others in the community braged as well and the city of Dallas sent some of their thugs out there way. After numerous break ins, car thefts and buglarys they started locking the doors. Any criminal will tell you they look for the easiest things to steal in the easiet way. Even the smallest deterent will send them to the next house.

Two things about this whole Vick situation really bother me. First, I love dogs and cats and own some. I would never want to see them harmed. However at the same time I am a hunter and hunt deer, water fowl,game birds, and a lot of other furry little creatures if so inclined. When some one says "why is everyone so upset at Vick? I mean people kill deer." Weak, weak, weak arguement. Bottom line difference, one is legal, the other one is not. That is the first thing that bothers me about this whole incident. Secondly, Vick is a professional athelete that works in the entertainment industry. Yeah all you hard core sports fans heard me right, I said professional sports is nothing more than entertainment. As such image plays a major role in his marketability and value as well as his atheletic ability. What idiot in the US today does not know that the one sure fire way to piss off 80% of America is to have it known you actively participate in fighting dogs? Now your limited God given talent is football, and because of this you are given millions of dollars to play football and the opportunity for a life and income that is above 99.9% of the people in America and you piss it away by getting involved in with dog fighting. Should I have sympathy for you? No your stupid! The last arguement I heard was that other atheletes had done worse, like attempted murder, or vehicular manslaughter, or assault, or wife abuse, etc, and they still get to play sports. Yeah well don't think I'm gonna excuse their activities and go after Vick alone. Those guys are idiots to and they should be kicked out of their sports as well. I don't know about you but if I get convicted of most of these crimes, or get caught using illeagal drugs (sometimes for the second and third time) I would loose my job, period. These idiots get multiple chances and most of those chances are even guareenteed in the players agreement. No one cries fowl when the average working stiff gets fired for the same offenses. So to Michael Vick (as if he cares) I hope you never play another down of football in your life, because you had the world on a string and were to damn stupid to understand it.

The cost I mentioned in my previous post is with the certificate. It is my understanding that you cannot even get coverage from the pool without the certificate. Several friends with older homes in the area had to have work done on their houses just to bring them up to standard to get the certificate so they could even get in the wind pool.

You and a hundred others. Clover Field is proud to be the orginating airfield for many of the towed banners around Houston. I swear sometimes when they are towing those things into the wind their groundspeed must be about 20 Mph. On the bright side we do get to see a few old warbirds from time to time as a couple of CAF planes are hangered at Clover. I know of at least one replica "Zero" and one replica "Kate" that are there and fly in the Tora, Tora, Tora shows at airshows.

I live off Dixie Farm Road between 518 and 35.

I went through this very thing when I had to renew my insurance in February and this is what I learned. If you live in Brazoria County you are basically screwed. It is designated as a coastal county so if your address falls in Brazoria County your in the high risk area. I was insured with Allstate when I got a letter in February saying they would no longer insure me for windstorm and hail damage. They would quote me fire and theft and I would have to get storm damage through the Texas Wind Insurance pool. I shopped around and found no one who would give me one policy that would cover it all. I wound up going with Farmers because a member of my church is a Farmers agent. I paid about $550 for fire and theft and liability and paid around $1,400 for storm insurance. This for a house valued at $244k. How the windpool works is basically this. Its a self funded, non profit pool that covers people in coastal counties in Texas. When I signed up the pool had assets of about $300 million. Should a storm hit and claims need to be paid, then any amount in excess of the fund would become the liability of the insurance companies participating in the pool that wrote the coverage. Farmers had sold around 7% of the policies in the pool so if losses exceeded the $300 million they would be responsible for 7% of the amount above the $300 million. Lastly, according to friends I have talked to in Pearland it seems that the only company that still offers full coverage in the area is State Farm. I don't think they are writing new policies but if you previously had both your homeowners and auto insurance through them they are continuing to cover those people with full homeowners coverage including storm damage.

Due to the precariously close supply/demand balance we have in the US suppliers can see two and three weeks out what way the prices will go. And no its not because of a conspiracy. Its because a particular refinery may be going through turn around, a pipeline may be going down for maintainence or the governement may be enacting a new regulation that costs the refiners more money. When Congress mandated the 10% ethenol blend that increased prices quite a bit. Ethenol cannot be added to the gas prior to shipping through pipelines. Because of its corrosive nature it has to be added to the fuel just before it is delivered to the station and cannot be shipped via pipelines. Ethenol has to be shipped by railcar thus increasing its price significantly and thus increasing the cost for the 10% of the fuel you put in your car.

They are on the wrong side of Pearland. Me and my rednecks are still around. Oh yeah it helps that in my little subdivision alone we have 15 law enforcement officers. Sheirffs Deputies, Houston Cops, and a Couple of DPS Officers thrown in for good measure.

http://www.houstonarchitecture.info/haif/i...showtopic=10906 Check out post number 24 on this thread about Jackson Jr High. It looks similar. It is very familiar and looks like the entry of several schools that were built in the 20's and 30's. Like Milby, Austin, and Lamar.

I know the Globe on Woodridge had the service as well.

The new police station is to be built on Cullen near 518. It will also house the new municipal courts. I don't know of any plans to build a station in or around SCR. As I have stated in another thread on this subject part of the problem is that major portions of the west side of Pearland are not in the City of Pearland. SCR is however the Wal Mart on 518 near 288 is not. Also large areas of Silverlake and Silvercrest are not in the city either. Those areas are patroled by the Brazoria County Sheirfs department. We in the Pearland area of Brazoria County have long been the semi bastard step children of the county that act to much like the people in Houston than the people in Angleton which means our needs are many times ignored. Part of your calls, e-mails, and letters should be directed to the sheirfs office in Angleton. They need to also step up their enforcement in the area.

It definitly was a Fed Mart for a while. It was in the old Globe building. When Fed Mart closed they tore down the building and built the Mervyns there. Next to the parking lot for the Globe/Fed Mart was a large apartment clomplex that ran from there out to a street called Plum Creek that ran from Telephone near Stubbs Cycles over to Winkler. A friend of mine lived on Plum Creek and we would cut through the apartments over to Globe, and then Fed Mart. Someone who lived in the apartments had actually built a horseshoe pitch in the grass between the parking lot and the back fence of the apartments and cut a hole through the fence to have easy access. That was our cut through to the store.

This is another fairy tale that some dealers in California are trying to spin. The very idea of including Chevron in the lawsuit means that whoever filed it doesn't even have a firm grasp on the companies history. Shell and Texaco agreed to place all of their retail assets into two companies known as Motiva and Equilon in 1998. The two independent companies ran all of the two companies combined retail assets. When Chevron sought to purchase Texaco they were told by the FTC that they could but they could not have any of Texacos portion of the combined retail assets which included all the stations, and refineries that were in Motiva or Equilon. This means that Chevron at no time had any control what so ever over price setting at Texaco or Shell stations. Secondly, no where in the article (or probably in the actual filing) does it ever compare the price increases to the dealers with the price increases other oil companies were passing on to their dealers. I can tell you from knowing details of how rack prices are set and having been involved in studies looking at pricing during that period that there are no significant statistical variations in pricing across the entire market. This fact alone makes the case extremly weak from the outset. Also the last group of dealers to complain about the pricing set up should be the California dealers. Since their state legislators have created stringent regulations concerning fuel blends sold in the state they have increased the cost out there significantly. Only a handful of refineries even produce fuel that can be legally sold in that state therefore making it one of the highest priced markets in the nation. More laws and regulations exsist in this country pertaining specifically to price fixing, and colusion in the fuel business than perhaps any other. Dispite the allegations of a group of dealers in California to the contrary there was no price fixing in California. A simple look at the NYMEX posted price for Unleaded fuel for the period vs the rack price changes to the dealers for the period shows a highly correlated pattern going both up and down. It takes about ten minutes to blow these guys theroy clean out of the water. The law suit is complete waste of time.

Mely's sold liquor so Sams Boat will be able to pending them receiving their liquor permit. The parts of Brazoria county not in the city limits of Pearland are the areas affected by the dry county laws. Clubs, bars and resturants in those areas require memberships to serve alchohol but Pearland changed those rules several years ago.

I totally agree that it is in fact a "hodge-podge" development strategy. But realistically all of Pearland is this way, even the older sections. Drive down 518 to just before Dixie Farm Road and drive through Wood Creek subdivision. It has two different areas built at two different times with completly different looks and values of homes. Then continue through Wood Creek until the look changes. You would not know the neighborhood changed except in the next area there are ditches instead of curbs and the house get better, keep going and the houses get worse, go some more and all of a sudden you find several nearly million dollar homes. This is one of the older parts of Pearland and the newer parts are no better. I find it completely amazing and get a good laugh everyother day when driving home into Pearland I see the signs saying Welcome to Pearland, a Master Planned Community. Who the hell are they trying to kid? Pearland just happened and if someone actually planned the whole thing the way it has turned out then they need to be taken out and horse whipped because they did a pretty piss poor job.

I find it amussing that people who have recently moved to an area and have little or no knowledge about the history of an area make assumptions about the area. While there are certainly new expensive homes on the west side, the old money in Pearland still lives quite well on the other side of the tracks. Not to blame any body for any thing, but if you look at the historical demographics of the Pearland area you will find that the majority of the lowest income, and highest minority areas in Pearland and the unincorporated areas of Pearland have always come from the west side. As far as crime goes once again that has nothing to do with where the criminals live because as I tried so hard to explain in my last post criminals, regardless of where they live go to where the things that they want to steal are. Prior to westside development they went to the east side, as the west side grows they have more opportunity over there so thats where they go. When new, bigger and better things are built farther down 288 towards Highway 6 then they will move down there. Its just the way crime works.

I don't understand exactly what you mean by this. More exclusive housing? How does that help crime? As I said in my earlier post, retail activity and growth leads to increased crime. Criminals regardless of race are attracted to where the money and goods are. It's a fact of life. Recently one of the new develpoments off of Pearland Parkway was plagued by a series of buglaries. Finally a silent alarm was reported as someone was breaking into a house and the police responded. The buglars unaware of the alarm were across the street robbing another house. Two were apprehended at the scene and two more were picked up later. All were hispanic and from South Houston. When asked why they came to Pearland one of the buglars answer was " rich people live in Pearland, so if you want to steal stuff you come here and steal the good stuff from them". One example is certainly not conclusive but I am merely saying that growth, espcially in retail shopping venues attracts a criminal element. Doesn't mean they come there to live, but they certainly go there to ply their trade.

I know of no one who feels that "old Pearland" has more crime than "new Pearland". I have friends who live on the west side and drive all the way to the Wal Mart at Dixie Farm road to do their shopping swearing they would never set foot in the Silverlake Wal Mart. I have no idea if it is true or not but several friends said they have seen a newsmagazine show on TV where Wal Mart senior executives claim that their worst store in the nation in terms of crimes is the one located in Silverlake. A large part of the problem is the rapid growth and the problems it brings. Part of it is that the city limits are so fragmented due to the MUDS and which has been annexed and which haven't is that law enforcement are not always sure who has responsibility to cover certain areas. The Police department has certainly increased its numbers and the city is in the process of building a new police station at Cullen and 518 but it will merely be a bigger and better one replacing the exsisiting one on Veterans. My wife and I kid about being jealous of all the eating places and stores being built on the westside while the east side gets very little new stuff, but both readily agree that we can always drive over to the west side but retreat home to relative peace and quiet when we get tired of it. Old time Pearlanders fought for many many years to limit access into Pearland from the north (Houston). They felt that to many roads leading to Pearland only served to increase the possibility of Houston's problems with crime spilling over into their town. They fought the battle for many years until the push for growth got to big for them to handle. With the addition of Pearland Parkway, the opening of Scarsdale and the widening of Dixie Farm Road along with the growth of the westside the bad parts of Houston will continue to migrate south. As far as the blacks on the westside they have been there for many many years. Clyde Drexlers uncle had a bar-b-que place on Cullen as far back as the early seventies and black ranchers have had cattle in the area for even longer. Anyone who doesn't know that they have been there for a while doesn't know Pearland to well. Additionally the cemetary along Cullen near 518 is one of the larger Black cemetarys in the Houston area. Also adding to the perception and unfortunatley some of the crime is that at least two large apartment complexs on the west side are designated as low income housing and still have numourous Katrina victems still living there. Add the retail growth to all the other factors and crime will inevitably follow. If you want to steal you go to where the money is.

I read this article yesterday and was totally confused at the time. They gave the location as 288 and CR 59 then said it was adjacent to Golfcrest Country Club and Green Tee subdivision. I noticed they have since taken that out of the story, but if you read the first reader comment at the bottom of the linked page you will see that guy's confusion as well.

One of the unexpected benifits of that time was better fishing in West Galveston Bay. In a book called "Plugger" which is the story of a gentleman named (I think) Rudy Grigar he tells of fishing at the far west end of Galveston Bay around San Louis pass and up into Chocolate Bay in the late forties and early fifties. There were holes in the shallow bays where huge schools of Redfish would congregate. These holes were from the WWII era as they were caused by the Air Corp doing their pratice bombing in that area because it was close to Ellington and Galveston and at the time virtually uninhabited.

Thats the start of the neighborhood and as I would have guessed the oldest part. If my memory serves me the first street listed was Huey, then came Duval, Grimes Wynona, Erby, Sue Ellen, Antonette, Juliet, and then 610 (or Holmes Road prior to 610) The cross streets were Askew, Broad, and Pecan. From the looks of the homes the oldest part of the neighborhood were from Huey to Grimes. Once past that onto Wynona you started getting 1950's style ranch that are similar to the homes in Pine Valley. The older area has some really nice older looking homes that go much further back. Yes.

Pine Valley is across Griggs Road from Oak Acres. I grew up in Oak Acres at 3026 Askew. I lived there from the time I was 5 till about 14. We then moved just around the corner into the Mobile Home park that was located at 3903 Erby. We lived in space number 2. I lived there until I graduated from U of H in 1981. The area that is now the Mobile Home park was originally government housing. The houses were two stories and had an apartment on the first floor and an apartment on the second floor. When the government finally sold the property they actually auctioned off the second floor apartments. They would tear out the first floor, put steel beams under the second floor and lower the second floor in one piece onto the beams and drive them away. If you look at the corner of Erby and the street that runs in front of Brookline Park you can still see a couple of the foundations the apartments sat on. They were thick massive things and these are the only ones left. They tore out the rest to make more room for trailers. We were a unique little area because we were actually zoned to attend Jackson Jr High and Milby High school. The dividing line for Milby and Austin was Griggs Road. The neighborhood had tons of huge oak trees and the house I lived in had 43 pin oak trees when we moved in. We lost some over the years but I can assure you that raking leaves in the fall as a kid was no fun. There has been a thread on this area before that I started call "Another Area to Look at" brer

They will most definitley release the land at some point. I mean that was what Friendswood Development was all about. Years ago Exxon, then Humble Oil aquired thousands and thousands of acres of land to drill for oil and gas. They decided to start developing a lot of it and thats how Clear Lake City was born, as a Friendwood Development. As a matter of fact there are areas in Clear Lake neoghborhoods usually on cul-de-sacs that were fenced and retained by Exxon for potential future drilling pads. I know from my friend who works with the Houston Parks Board that two such areas in Clear Lake have been sold or turned over to the homeowners associations by Exxon as Exxon no longer thinks they will ever need them. As Coog pointed out there is already development along Dixie Farm Road and Beamer next to San Jacinto South that was Exxon land and also East of 45 at Scarsdale where there is a new subdivision and the land closer to the freeway has a sign saying they are going to build a WWII museum there. I think as the Clear Lake gas fields play out you will see more and more of that area being developed.

I think your a little off target. The thread is talking about the apartment complex turned condos that are closer to the corner of Belfort and Broadway in the heart of Glenbrook Valley. The complex your talking about is closer to the corner of Broadway and Loop 610. Two different sets of apartments.