Businesses finding the suburbs superb

[LTAWACS]

Look what i found... just who do they think they are?

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As Houston's suburbs draw increasing numbers of new homeowners, so too have they attracted business owners. Growing numbers have chosen to plant their new businesses on the other side of Loop 610....

link: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/chron10010/7011022.html

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UGH.

[IronTiger]

Out of curiosity, since when does "outside the 610 loop" equals to the "suburbs"?

There's a lot of Houston outside 610 but within the city limits. Greenspoint even manages to defy this further by being outside the tollway yet STILL within the city limits!

[AtticaFlinch]

Out of curiosity, since when does "outside the 610 loop" equals to the "suburbs"?

Fifteen minutes ago. Sorry we couldn't tell you before you wrote your comment, but now you know.

[TheNiche]

Look what i found... just who do they think they are?

Who does who think who is?

[LTAWACS]

Who does who think who is?

Who do THEY think THEY are. Moving outside of Houston. Perhaps the solution is to annex more and more.

[TheNiche]

Who do THEY think THEY are. Moving outside of Houston. Perhaps the solution is to annex more and more.

Yeah, that's exactly what Houston does. A commercial developer puts retail, industrial, or office buildings at some unincorporate intersection, and Houston promptly annexes and taxes it. We don't annex residential areas, however, because that would require that we provide city services to people that might actually exert political influence on us. Honestly, I'm amazed that there hasn't been a lawsuit over this practice. (Or maybe there has been, and I'm just not aware of it.) Seems like a disparity between taxation and representation.

And as you recall, we also got The Woodlands to pay us tribute in order not to annex them...which was a really sweet deal for Houston.

Of course, we can't annex Sugar Land, Pearland, League City, Conroe, or the like.

One way or the other, though, the attractiveness of suburban locations to many small- and mid-sized businesses isn't going away. Many of them just serve the nearby residential base; others simply aren't so specialized that they need to be expensively-convenient to the entire region's workforce.

[Trae]

Any possibility that some of the Houston suburbs start incorporating (with permission from Houston) this decade? I think we're starting to finally see our suburbs grow up now and start attracting more businesses (like the Dallas area).

[TheNiche]

Any possibility that some of the Houston suburbs start incorporating (with permission from Houston) this decade? I think we're starting to finally see our suburbs grow up now and start attracting more businesses (like the Dallas area).

Aside from The Woodlands, which had to pay tribute to the City of Houston...probably not. The various MUDs that currently provide services to various subdivisions are very different from one another; without an elaborate system by way of which to equalize the burden of debt that is carried by these MUDs, there wouldn't be sufficient agreement over the terms of municipal incorporation. Also, the suburbs within Houston's ETJ would probably also be required to pay tribute to Houston in order to receive its blessing...but wouldn't be able to take from Houston the commercial base that Houston has already annexed. And that means that the tax rates for such municipalities would be inordinately high.

What is more likely is that suburbs begin to press for an increased number of Management Districts. Management Districts can be legislatively chartered to provide nearly all the same services that a City can provide--roads, transit, police, fire, parks, economic development & tourism promotion, you name it--without screwing with the pre-existing financial structure of the various MUDs that the Management Districts encompass.