AK123

You could try River Park or River Park West.  The houses are about ten years old or less.  Right off of HIghway 59.  You won't have to deal with traffic entering and exiting the neighborhood like you would have to if you live in Greatwood.  It's only ten minutes to Sugar Land.  There is shopping at the Grand Parkway and one exit south of River Park West there is tons of shopping.

 

And you'll be on the high side of the Brazos River.  There is a reason the original settlers of Richmond/Rosenberg settled there and not in Sugar Land.  High ground.  That area where they built Telfair used to flood.  I don't know how much water those berms they built around the neighborhood will keep out.  Looks pretty iffy to me.  Just some things to think about.

RiverPark is not the same market/class as Telfair; it's lower-end in comparison. The school district is different and the schools don't rank as well as the ones in Greatwood or in much of FBISD. Unfortunately, the nickname locally River Park has of "Poor Man's New Territory" has some validity to it. The only reason Sugar Land annexed it was because of the tax revenue from the big shopping center anchored by the HEB. And the reason it's protected from flooding is no different than Telfair, First Colony, etc... it has a LID tax as well. As far as River Park West... that's almost to Rosenberg.

I've been in the Sugar Land area for a decade... the best current alternatives to Telfair as far as similar developments (but obviously lower prices because the locations aren't as convenient to central Sugar Land) are Riverstone and Aliana.

Looks like overpasses are going in on the Grand Parkway (Hwy 99) near River Park and also at West Airport Blvd. This will be the toll section of the Grand Parkway.

Also at West Airport Blvd @ Hwy 99, it looks like the Aliana master-planned community is doing major work on a new entrance and possibly expanding West Airport Blvd from two to four lanes with a median. I'd expect major commercial to move into the area after that (retail, restaurants etc.) according to their land use map.

The south half of FM 1464 is nearing completion on the road widening project. I'm told TxDOT is to plant lots of trees afterward. Also there are tentative plans for a beautification project of FM 1464 (landscaping) from the southernmost end outside Chelsea Harbour up to West Airport Blvd, to be completed by the local municipal utility district.

Interesting... looks like that location would be in or next to the Aliana development? Actually seems closer to Sugar Land than to Katy...

My bad... looks like that's actually by Waterside Estates and Long Meadow Farms. Not that far off though... to me it's all "somewhere between Sugar Land and South Katy" with Richmond postal addresses...

A movie theater/bowling alley/restaurant/bar (Santikos Theatre Palladium 22) is in the bidding stages for the NE corner of Grand Pkwy and West Bellfort.

Interesting... looks like that location would be in or next to the Aliana development? Actually seems closer to Sugar Land than to Katy...

From the HBJ:

http://www.bizjourna...du&ana=e_du_pub

Will be interesting to see how it turns out.

Johnson Development's plans, on the other hand, haven't gone over too well.

http://www.yourhoust...4f1ad38da3.html

http://www.myfoxhous...over-apartments

Sen Shumer, D NY - "When people from Paris, Beijing, Tokyo and Amsterdam start saying they want to go to Houston, maybe then they'll get a shuttle,""I'd say to Texas, don't mess with New York."

http://www.nydailyne...mer_says_f.html

The problem with his statement is that this wasn't all about tourism; otherwise, the shuttles should also be in Disney World, Miami and Vegas.

It was also supposed to be about places that had a strong link to the space program and involvement in it. That alone puts Houston way ahead of NYC.

I'd also bet he's too busy being self-righteous to realize that Houston is no slouch in number of visitors.

http://www.consumert...ted-u-s-cities/

• Most visited US cities

• Orlando, Fla.: 48 million visitors

• New York City: 47 million visitors

• Chicago, Ill.: 45,580,000 visitors

• Anaheim/Orange County, Calif.: 42,700,000 visitors

• Miami, Fla: 38,100,000 visitors

• Las Vegas, Nev.: 36,351,469 visitors

• Atlanta, Ga.: 35,400,000 visitors

• Houston, Texas: 31,060,000 visitors

• Philadelphia, Pa.: 30,320,000 visitors

• San Diego, California: 29,600,000 visitors

Every other week it seems I read about some new corporate relo, expansion, or some new restaurant opening in Sugar Land.

Here are some of the latest to look forward to:

First expansion of Flying Saucer

http://blogs.chron.com/beertx/2011/04/flying_saucer_expanding_to_sug.html

First suburban location of Churrasco's

http://houston.culturemap.com/newsdetail/02-18-11-sugar-land-gets-the-first-suburban-churrascos/

First Houston-area location of Coal Vines

http://www.yourhoust...12b018dfa9.html

I drove through on West Airport Blvd and noticed they recently changed several signs that used to say "future residential" to "future commercial." That's a lot of future commercial. Perhaps this is going to be a future town-center sort of development? Whatever it is, it's pretty big.

Also, a recent press release from their web site:

Last year, Aliana Development Company announced it would be making changes to the existing land plans for the community by mid April 2011. A newentry is being created along the Grand Parkway with a soaring light tower reminiscent of the early craftsmen style. Like a tapestry, the landscape will have small touches of stone walls that naturally merge into the scenery and plantings woven into the terrain. The landscape plans embrace a street scene that will offer gentle, rolling movement. The developer also announced it will build a new model home village, scheduled to open in the spring of 2012, which will showcase model homes offered by Aliana’s premier team of builders.

Recently, Stone and his team met with the builders to unveil Aliana’s refreshed look - which includes a new brand logo and enhanced website. The builders were given an opportunity to view an upgraded master plan for the community along with artist’s renderings of the new planned entrance off the Grand Parkway and of the model home village.

Asked a couple of construction guys what is going up in the front of Waterside. They said ,"A Jack in the Box and some sort of Liquor store." Not sure about the liquor store as there is already one in the shopping strips and a heck of a selection for beer and wine in the Kroger. But, even a terrible fast food chain like Jack in the Box is a semi-step in the right direction adding some much needed dinning options to the area.

My Rant (for what little it is worth)

Who the @#$% determined that the 99 corridor was an extension of the Hwy 6 Ghetto? I think the more accurate description would be Sugar Land and Cinco Ranch type people with less uppityness about them. In other words, they don't overextend themselves on overpriced housing and Luxury Cars. That means more disposable income to actually spend at stores around them. Kroger got it right, saw the perfect storm of "age of acquisition" and "modest living, disposable income" families and built the largest Kroger in the world right there. That's why they are as successful as they are. End of rant.

Where on earth are you getting the above in bold? I don't see any resemblance.

As far as lack of options, I've been surprised at the lack of development along the Grand Pkwy from the northernmost end of New Territory all the way up to Waterside Estates. Seems like a huge untapped potential. There's not even a home improvement place (Home Depot or Lowe's) anywhere really close! Why did Lowe's build outside Quail Valley right across Hwy 6 from a Home Depot?

Hopefully Aliana will be able to draw in some places along the Grand Pkwy... now that I've driven by and see several of their signs changed from "future residential" to "future commercial" just in the last few weeks.

Also, if Aliana REALLY wanted to kick it up a notch, they'd attract a Costco or Trader Joe's location.

"...plans are in the works to revamp parts of Aliana, which is between the Grand Parkwayand FM 1464."

http://www.alianahou...esidential/?SID

http://www.chron.com...ss/7321801.html

From the article,

"... Travis Stone, the new president of Aliana Development Co. Stone took the job after years at the local division of Newland Communities, where he was most recently senior vice president. He oversaw development, sales and operations for the company's four Houston-area communities — including Cinco Ranch and Telfair."

I'd expect Aliana to end up a lot more similar to Cinco Ranch and Telfair in the end, with him as the head. Which should be a good thing... apparently the original plans were more geared toward Dallas area buyers and homebuilders, rather than Houston area buyers and homebuilders, whatever that meant exactly.

If you go by the ratios of population to bad apartment complexes, I'd expect the City of Houston to have almost 700 complexes that are similarly in need of attention, and not on the TDHCA list.

But the TDHCA still encourages developers to go out to Katy, to build new low-income housing on virgin fields next to angry neighbors.

Not if they displace those bad people to jail instead of just sweeping them from neighborhood to neighborhood. 'Weed and seed' programs actually do this. They combine efforts on revitalization with parallel efforts on crime prevention and law enforcement. Sorry I wasn't more explicit about it 18 months ago, but I have always envisioned 'weed and seed' as being integral to fixing these bad complexes.

Finally, someone else who gets it!

I think I have officially given up on downtown. Nothing seems to work. Pavilions is a ghost town. Main Street is dead. Aside from Discovery Green/OPP it's a complete disaster.

But it wasn't always that way... I wouldn't have described downtown that way 6-7 years ago. And the whole period from 1998-2004 or so seemed like things were very lively in downtown, especially around Main Street.

So the question is, what happened? And once that's determined, can (and should) anything be done to reverse it?

Did those patrons just move west to Washington Ave? If so, why?

Etc...

Stop cherry-picking your data and open your eyes to the easy-credit Hardieboard-hell that has enveloped nicer--but aging--neighborhoods.

I see what you're saying. Are these days really over as they say, after the credit crash of '08?

Well sure, as long as you acknowledge that most of the homes in Spring tended to kind of suck in the first place. That certainly didn't help.

Hmm, I seem to remember the Spring ISD neighborhoods of Northgate Forest, Olde Oaks, Ponderosa, etc. as being quite nice with some really nice homes. Northgate still has customs being built I believe. The public schools have taken quite a turn for the worst, however.

In the grand scheme of things, Alief and Fondren were aberrations coinciding with an oil and credit boom that simultaneously busted us in the mid-80's. Nothing approaching such an extreme level of insanity has happened in any other part of the region either during that era or since then.

I know it's not quite on the same level, but what about the demise of the Spring ISD / FM 1960 area within the last 10-15 years? Also due to overbuild of apartments?

A little market data for the skeptic:

The Sugar Land-Fort Bend submarket currently has 30 operational Class A apartment complexes, averages 93% occupancy (compared to 88% in the entire Houston region), and has experienced positive absorption of 174 units year-to-date. You are correct that 2007 was a better year; occupancy peaked at 95% during the 1st quarter of that year, and since that time, average rents have declined by two tenths of a cent per square foot, and only 654 units have been absorbed.

There is one Class A complex currently under construction, and including those units in the total inventory and assuming the continuance of the recessionary absorption rate, it'll take another year and one month for the fundamentals to recover to 2007 levels. Two additional months after that, the occupancy rate would exceed the level that has ever been recorded for the Sugar Land-Fort Bend submarket. And honestly, I think that that's exactly what will happen...seeing as how the capital markets are acting as a sort of barrier to entry. Sooner or later (and probably later), things on Wall Street will loosen up; and when they do, Aliana will be an attractive location for new multifamily development.

Even assuming all of this, it seems like any area lacking in apartments is all south of Hwy 59. And south of Hwy 6 for that matter.

North of 59 and especially north of 90 has lots of apartment complexes, especially along 6.

And you have to remember, to most homeowners in Fort Bend "apartments' is a dirty word. Mostly having to do with Sugar Land/Fort Bend bordering southwest Houston, which was ruined by the overbuilding of apartments in ratio single-family homes. In fact, many of the older generation moved away from places like Alief and Fondren when those places started going downhill, to get away from that sort of thing.

As far as bank financing for projects -- that's obviously had an effect. Telfair is getting closer to build-out (on homes), there's got to be tons of disposable income in there, yet the perimeter (which was supposed to be filled with retail/shopping/restaurants) all still sits as open land.

Yeah, actually they did exactly that.

Did they?

And if so, how long ago? Things are a lot different now than they were in 2007.

Way too much land in there for "multifamily housing" which I assume means apartments. There seems to already be a glut of apartments in these parts (I hear the place next to Chelsea Harbour can't find enough tenants after the big expansion; the guy who wants to build some next to the new Cloisters has been getting tons of complaints/resistance; there are a bunch more all up and down Hwy 6 near Woodbridge; and some on the edge of Grand Mission on the Westpark.)

This site is outside of Sugar Land city limits, so there's really no zoning. Hopefully these developers are doing some due diligence and spending some money on market research before just building more and more of what we don't need out here. What we really need are more decent, family-friendly restaurants; can't go anywhere on a Fri or Sat night it seems without long waits and mayhem. I've even heard some people saying they're going to stop voting for MUD bonds because they don't want the MUDs to continue to spend on increased capacity in order to accommodate more new monster-sized apt complexes...

http://www.read-king.com/site.php

Has anyone around there tried this method yet for the bandit signs?

http://www.txdot.gov...rvletConfig.xml

Looks refreshing in a cable world full of you-know-what like Real Housewives of ___, Jersey Shore and other such rubbish.

Bravo or Style or one of those types should pick it up. I'd watch and I'm not even AA.

Can't anyone start an article about Houston without mentioning all the perceived negatives first? It's getting really tired.

I don't see articles on NYC constantly having to start off "there's more than just insane expense and crowds!" or for New Orleans "once you get past the ghettos and extreme humidity..." or for Austin "intense heat and drunken college kids aside..."

Sprawl capital of the universe? For real? Petrochems? How many of us ever actually go over to the Ship Channel to see this? This is the kind of PR foolishness that fuels the fire of bad perceptions and stupid stereotypes... Gag.

2nd Edit: Also, still no one has told me in what way Westfield HS is a bad school. I'd like an explanation as to why.

Why do you want others do to the research for you? Are you really that lazy?

http://www.schooldig...721/school.aspx

1 out of 5 stars. Ranks 1108th of 1437 Texas public high schools.

Especially considering it used to be ranked much better just a decade or two back.

I don't expect that area of town to come back for a long time. Unincorporated Harris County and little/no control over bad development. Too bad, because there are lots of nice, unique neighborhoods on the north side of 1960. Unlike areas like Westbury which are being revitalized because of location, I think 1960 is too far out from town to come back anytime soon, if not all of my lifetime.

How is Westfield High School bad?

Is this a trick question? Just look at any school rankings website. It's certainly not good, especially compared to a decade back. There was even a Chronicle article on the FM 1960 area and how that whole area has seen a decline.

Same for the Alief schools, that goes without saying. If it's not the overbuild of apartments and cheap housing, what would you say the reason for its decline is then? I'd like to hear your theory, since you're such the expert on this topic.

I guess homeowners should just stop caring about what happens on open land in the areas around us, in the name of being PC for you. The developers who overbuild on apartments and cheap housing have no concern whatsoever on what it can do to the surrounding area... they're just in to make a buck.

It shouldn't take a genius to figure any of this out. It seems like you just like to get in the Katy forum and pick fights for the heck of it, so never mind.

Try asking the guy from the 'burbs on post 16 who brought it up.

Oh, also, my geotag has recently changed. Now I'm a 'burb guy too. I am one of you.

In an effort to fit in better with my new digs, how's this for a start:

Apartments lead to bad schools! People of different cultures and whose skin most likely happens to be darker than mine live in apartments! They malevolently destroy property values like that planet-eating thing from the original animated Transformers movie! Angry exclamation!

Oh please.

You and others are ones to talk about stereotyping, the way you are doing it with suburban folk.

It's no secret that too many apartments can bring an area down, or at least be a big contributer to decline. 15-20 years ago, Alief had good schools. You're now on FM 1960 you say... do you realize Westfield High was a highly ranked, desirable school 10-15 years ago? There's a thread in city-data about the subject now... city folk in addition to suburban folk are naming bad apartments as a primary reason neighborhoods decline. Some apartments may start out good, and go bad later as they age and renters want the latest and greatest. At that point, rents go down, as does quality. If there's too much of it, it can overwhelm the neighborhood, and in moves the cheap housing and banks giving anyone who can breathe a bad loan. Then come the foreclosures, pride in the area and sense of community gone. People from all walks of life can tell you this, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out.