Plan To Transform Galveston Island

[editor]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metrop...an/6460428.html

If it were to adopt a proposal by a group of experts presented Friday, this island city would halt its westward growth and concentrate on developing behind the sea wall with pedestrian friendly, self-contained neighborhoods built along mass transit corridors.

[TheNiche]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metrop...an/6460428.html

This plan sucks.

They want to intentionally congest Seawall Blvd. Why? They want to install a median with trees on Seawall Blvd., blocking views of the beach by westbound traffic and from restaurants and businesses, blocking views of storefronts from eastbound traffic, and also limiting access to those restaurants and shops. Why?

They want the City to build a home on every single one of the vacant lots behind the seawall. The City does not have the authority to take land by eminent domain for economic development purposes, would have to purchase the lots individually at market prices, and you can all be assured that a program such as this would immediately correspond with land prices that shoot up, and probably also with a number of house fires and other mishaps to remove homes from their lots so as to make the lot eligible for the City's purchasing program. Aside from the ridiculous cost (which is grossly underestimated by ULI at a mere $1.1 billion that the City doesn't have and won't for a long, long time), I'm not clear that building anything in places like "the jungle" makes any sense whatsoever. And they seem to forget that much of Galveston, even behind the seawall, is susceptible to flooding by up to 12-foot storm surges. They say it will generate construction jobs, but the workers will primarily be from the mainland, and the jobs are temporary.

Galveston is already by its nature an urbanista's paradise. If they're going to be spending billions of dollars that they don't have to lure people back to the island, though, they need to spend it on incentives packages to lure employers to the island. Galvestonians need jobs. And if you want new Galvestonians, you need to create jobs and enhance tourism rather than congesting the city and eliminating views of the Gulf of Mexico. It's the economy, stupid!

[marmer]

Well, this is one of the times when I agree completely with TheNiche. A planted median on the Seawall? Please. They already have one on Broadway, and even it got clobbered by the storm. And is there really enough of a housing shortage that they need to build a bunch of new houses? I do like that the plan seems to acknowledge that continued westward development might not be such a good idea.

[Urbannizer]

I like the idea. Yes the median on broadway got clobbered but it was the live oaks and bushes that were clobbered.(Most of) the palm trees on Broadway weren't damaged at all. I don't think they will add median with live oak trees on the seawall, more like Palm trees instead.

btw there's already a thread here, part of the 42-project recovery plan.

http://www.houstonarchitecture.info/haif/i...showtopic=19972