The Mother of All Freeways: Maintaining the Status Flow On
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10 Cite Spring 1992 Joiu. W A R R E N BARNA MAINTAINING THE STATUS FLOW residential areas, and all predate the West ON HOUSTON'S WEST LOOP Loop, it was the proximity of these top- dollar demographic swatches, in tact, that made the Galleria, precociously conceived Hl- "Uptown" section of the Not so the West Loop, the flagship of United States and is expected to double i n as specialty retail on a quasi-Luropean West Loop, a 4.1-mile-long Houston's head-over-wheels embrace of worker population over the next 20 years. theme, Houston's special contribution to stretch ol Loop 610 between the automobile age. By a happy coinci- high-speed consumer-urbanism. Interstate 10 and U.S. 59 that is dence of its birth - an engineering decision Best of all, the West Loop joins what is Tthe heart of post-downtown, perpetually that reportedly ratified a deal cut in perhaps the most exquisitely symbolic Stands of old trees and the topographical smog-bound Houston (and until recently Houston City Council in the 1950s to pairing in the American landscape. On the variations afforded by Buffalo Bayou (its was destined to become the widest Ircc- benefit R. K. "Hob" Smith, then a major west side, shielded by scraggly pines within waters laced at the Loop only with effluent way in the world) has always enjoyed a financial backer of Mayor Roy Hofheinz - a gated sports-and-health center for from the nascent communities of the pine certain apartness among Houston's major the West Loop passes through the western strcsscd-out executives (which recently forests and prairies to the west) were traffic arteries. The other freeways may be end of Memorial Park, ensuring its safe filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protec- among the chief attractions abetting the ordinary land-despoiling paths of com- transit south through Smiths holdings. tion), is the hotel room that serves as the creation ol these enclaves, insulated, like a merce, taking farmers to market, connect- close to and paralleling Post Oak Boule- primary private residence of the President piney dream ol southeastern Connecticut, 1 ing the port to its hinterlands, collecting vard. The West Loop is relatively free of of the United States, at least for rax and from the unpleasantness to be found i n workers for their trudge to the still- billboards and therefore is more purely voting purposes. On the east stands the working-class neighborhoods. This shimmering office towers downtown or the itself- a connector, like the other Houston Houston headquarters of the Resolution preservation of a semblance ol primeval incendiary chemistry mills along the ship freeways, but insulated by them into a field Trust Corporation, a $500 billion work- identity was embraced by area residents as channel, and speeding harried salary men of activity without poles. out center for the real estate lending a matter ol both principle and interest, to and from the airports. But by the industry, created to ensure that profits stay and they strove to keep the bayou free standards of this choicest vignette of the Metaphorically, the West Loop is not private and losses are duly socialized. from such unwelcome intrusions as con- WiM I oop. 1 louston's othci Ireeways have electrical path but Brownian motion. This tinuous north-south roads. As a result, always been leveltrs of humankind, the shows in the difference between its traffic All the development in the corridor was until 1989 not a single north-south street domain of off-price malls, budget motels, patterns and those of other freeways. predictable, but little of it was. In fact, crossed the bayou to link 1-10 and U.S. 59 and used-car lots, where billboards Other freeways are congested at peak hours comprehended in the 1950s, when Loop between Shepherd Drive and Voss/ broadcast the forbidden impulses of the or when there are wrecks or Hoods or 610 was planned. Back then, the Loop was Hillcroh. An impregnable green curtain city's autonomic nervous system, flashing roadwork to contend with. The West intended simply as a bypass route to relieve meandering along the bayou across the images of whiskey and cigarettes, psychiat- Loop, by comparison, evolved past that congestion downtown and on the city's western half ol the city secured the social ric hospitals for women and children, point in the mid-eighties, when, lor a thoroughfares through the end of the position of a relative handful ol houses. and vasectomies for men. while, it was the busiest si retch of'freeway century. But, as Peter C. Papademetriou Consequently, all the area's local north- in the nation, with an explains in his authoritative Iransportation south traffic, not just that coming from average daily traffic counr of and Urban Development in Houston. 1830- outside the West Loop corridor or gener- 231,000 vehicles. The latest 1980, the Texas Highway Department's ated by Uptown growth, was pushed onto published daily average, for decision to develop the Loop and the new the West Loop. Ergo, non-peak-hour 1990, is a mere 224,000. freeways of the 1950s and 1960s with congestion where the green curtain parted. making the West Loop still parallel frontage roads embodied "a the busiest freeway in the philosophy that it was less costly to build N TEW S I IN( ,1 V, the routing of the city but only the second more roadway than [to| buy out access freeway through Memorial Park busiest in the state, after a rights."'This all but guaranteed that the .u tually helped preserve the develop- stretch of rhe l.BJ Freeway Loop would also function "as a local street, ment options for privately held land to in north Dallas (227,001) or a collector street, conceptually at the Ithe west. Plans for a second breach, the vehicles per day lor 1990). opposite end of the traffic sped rum [from I l).Xc) extension of Chimney Rock across The Nilotic inundations of a Ireeway loop]." This potential was the bayou to join Memorial Drive with 1- the West Loop's traffic nowhere more heroically realized than on 10, resulted in an acrimonious process stream have been almost the West Loop, in parr because of the that, as former I louston Planning Com- unbelievably stimulating, spectacular highrisc building spree thai mission chairman Burdeite Keeland tunes, turning the freeways acquired a self-hilfilling momentum with took from the 1940s to the 1980s to effect frontage roads and Un- the development by Gerald D. Hines {Cite, Hall 1990, p. 24). The maintenance commercial zones visible Interests of the Galleria complex, thereby of the bayou barrier was a strategically I m m its overpasses into B exploiting the market demographics brilliant social and political achievement, valley of giants ruled by inherent in the charmed geographic area in view of Houston's zoning-free, no-lands- Philip Johnson and John that the West Loop passes by. barred pattern of development. For as Burgees beacon-topped anyone who has bought a house in a Iransco lower, in company To the east of the West Loop, below and subdivision or even merely studied ads lor with lesser marvels by residential real estate knows, all new Johnson, Cesar I'elli. and beyond Memorial Park, is River Oaks, while to the west lie Ianglewood and the suburban houses, from the Houston Skidmore, Owings & Heights in the 1890s and Montrose in the Merrill and the enfilade of incorporated Memorial villages. The neighborhoods west ol the freeway have a 1910s to Kingwood and First Colony the Woodway Canyon. today, were sold with an implicit promise: "Uptown" Houston, as this peculiar unity: in them, low-scaled fifties and sixties ranch houses are set behind 'Move out here, live in tamed but other- aggregation is now called as wise unspoiled nature, and you will be a a public relations conven- open drainage ditches. A remnant of the not-so-distant agricultural past, these happier, more lulfilled person. In addition, tion in preference to the you will be spared, forever, from the earliei designation Magk ditches link the region visually as much with Bordersviile and West Columbia as churning real estate market that afflicts the Circle, is the eighth-largest rest of the city. Your neighborhood won't business district in the with River Oaks. Even so, these neighbor- hoods arc in the top tier of Houston's elite turn into a slum, and it won't skyrocket up West Loop looking north from U.S. 5 9 . Cite Spr ALL FRE in value so much thai speculators will drive ment of Highways and Public Transport;! West Loop would have been expanded by complicated by the fact that several large you out to build a mall or an office park." don) sees itself as responsible to the iwo Lines in L-.ah direction, increasing the structures would stand just over 20 feet through-traffic commuter and has been total number of lanes (not counting from the freeway frontage roads. The cost And as anyone who has lived in Houston planning to expand the West Loop for over frontage roads) from 8 to 12. And the area's of acquiring the buildings and land would more than half a boom-bust cycle knows, a decade ro alleviate congestion and to deal access ramps would have been reconfigured have added perhaps $100 million to the in a city that thrives on the unabated with actual and projected growth in traffic. to make entering and leaving the freeway $80 million needed for the freeway im- churning of the real estate market, the From the start, the department has sought less difficult and hazardous.