San Felipe Courts/Allen Parkway Village

[KinkaidAlum]

Editor-

You should do some background checks on Allen Parkway Village (San Felipe Courts). That place has a bad history and the residents had every right to be PISSED at what happened.

Brief synopsis

1) San Felipe Courts was placed right in the middle of the old 4th Ward but was a "whites only" facility to provide housing for veterans. Seems an odd location for a segregated facility until you realize that the city of Houston had a reputation for carving out the old 4th ward...Sam Houston Coliseum, new City Hall, Pierce Elevated, Allen Center, were all built on what used to house what would today be historically relevant African-American structures.

2) After FORCED desegregation, the name changed to Allen Parkway Village and soon thereafter, the facilities were allowed to basically rot.

3) Starting in the late 60s, the developer of Greenway Plaza and Allen Center (Schnitzer?) began a very public campaign to try and "reclaim" land around downtown for his private development. His eye was very much on the prize of the old San Felipe Courts. There's even old newsreel you can find with his brash statements about pushing people out of the 4th ward.

4) Despite Houston having one of the longest waiting lists in the nation for public housing, the city failed to used H.U.D. funds to keep up APV. Once certain buildings were deemed unsafe, the residents were tossed out and forced to move to other parts of the city and the buildings were left empty. Sure enough, crime and drug dealing sprouted up in these empty shells and the residents that remained pleaded for help which further served to erode the once vibrant 4th Ward.

5) Eventually, the developers won out. After years of deliberate neglect, most of the project was torn down to make way for a supposedly better/private development. It was only the voices of the few remaining residents that forced the city to offer up "token" amounts of public housing units.

6) If you drive by today, the most offensive aspect of all of the above might just be that the project that is there now, is AWFUL. Suburban, gated, garden-style apartments with cheap siding. That's the best we could come up with? At the very least, if you are going to remove people against their will in the name of progress, shouldn't there at least be signs of progress?

In 20 years, if not sooner, those apartments will look worse than APV. It's a sad chapter in our city's history.

4)

[bookey23]

I'm sure this isn't the right spot to ask this question, since this isn't really "Montrose", but does anyone know what construction is going on along Allen Parkway near 45? I was driving down Allen this morning and there were multiple excavators and workmen digging up the ground along the south-side of Allen as you near Downtown, before the exit to 45. It might've just been ongoing construction at those affordable housing units along Allen, but it seemed like a pretty decent-sized project.

 

Looked like there were two different digs going on around (roughly) 500 Allen Parkway and 1600 Allen Parkway.

[bookey23]

I figured out the answers to all of my own questions. Looks like the construction is related to the renovations at Allen Parkway Village.

 

TDLR page: TDLR TABS - Project Details (texas.gov)

Houston Chronicle Article on it: Allen Parkway Village tenants express fear, hope about moving while the public housing gets facelift (houstonchronicle.com)