10 Cite Spring 1992

Joiu. W A R R E N BARNA

MAINTAINING THE STATUS FLOW residential areas, and all predate the West ON '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 - 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 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. provements. Sinking the roadway would sellers of most subdivisions have no to achieve this expansion by double- have taken even more land, to account for intention of honoring any such promise, decking the West Loop, like the portion of \< ilNEERS at the highway depart- the thickness of retaining walls. And it which evaporates like a sulphurous 1-35 that runs lo the east and north of ment estimated that the designed would have been complicated by the Clinton Drive log .is soon .is the devel- downtown Austin. The state's intentions capacity of the West Loop would proximity of Buffalo Bayou, which has a oper's investment is recovered and control have been reflected as a matter of course in increase from the then current tendency to overflow into low-lying areas of his municipal utility district is sold out irs long-range planning and also in studies E200,000 average daily trips to 275,000; this during heavy rains. to the home buyers. From that point on. released by Metro, the Houston-Galveston capacity, they said, would be reached in Area Council, and other local planning the dynamism of the market takes over, 2010. 'The specific purpose of the double- Local residents argued against the highway bodies over the years. and the subdivision's value begins to fall decked lanes would be to reroute lung- department's plan. Mike Globe, president or rise, almost never standing still. As distance traffic, taking it out of what one of the Alton Oaks Neighborhood Associa- Houston's long-deferred experiment with The first public controversy over the plan engineer called "the turbulence in the tion, said: "Elevated lanes would introduce zoning begins to counteract the relentless arose in 1989, when highway officials corridor that is caused by all the entering additional noise into what is already a neighborhood displacements occasioned released a double-decking scheme for and exiting vehicles." very noisy area, and it would be visually by this unbridled speculation, the example public comment. "This much must be said degrading to what is now an attractive of the neighborhoods to either side of the lor the scheme: it had a certain physical Hedging their bets, officials said that the portion of Houston. The scope ol the type West Loop holds certain lessons. grandeur. Two elevated lanes in each proposal for elevated lanes was only one of of structure they are talking about is such direction would have started on the three options under consideration. They that ii removes any human scale from the O f all the participants in the great real Southwest Freeway near South Rice, risen were also studying widening the West Loop area." By proposing a least-cost engineer- estate casino that Houston has been since above the 610-59 interchange to a height at its current grade level and sinking the ing solution for West Loop traffic, Globe the Allen brothers began selling lots, only of about 100 feet, run some 50 feet above roadway below grade. Bur both alternatives maintained, officials risked exacting a the residents of the Buffalo Bayou barrier the outer lanes of the West Loop, crossed to double-decking had big problems, they greater cost from the neighborhoods and have managed to achieve stasis lor more over the top of the 610-10 interchange, said. Widening the freeway at grade would work centers that would be damaged. "A than ,t year or two. Unfortunately, the and extended along 1-10 eastward t o T . C. have demanded that state officials acquire neighborhood without zoning like ours is lesson of the bayouside communities is Jester Boulevard and westward to Antoine. an additional 40 feet of right-of-way on extremely fragile; it only takes a little to tip that the only thing that actually worked At the same time, the current width ol the each side ol the freeway, and this was the scales toward urban decav, and we was sufficient spare cash to create eco- nomic and political buffer zones. Now it appeals that, zoning or no zoning, the buffer zone rhat held for the past 40 years will not he enough. Because the West Loop has in effect redefined the city's phy- sical center and become its central artery, the bayouside communities have become. in essence, part of a new inner city. If Billy Joe Don needs to get from FM I960 to Pearland, he doesn't much care that the residents ofTanglewood wish to maintain what remains of its traditional connection with Memorial Park. All he knows is that the West Loop is bumper-to-bumper.

The political power of Tanglcwood and its neighbor communities remains enormous, but it has been perceptibly eroded over the I L)Slls. with changes in the Houston City Council that emphasized (and may soon eliminate altogether) at-large representa- tion in an effort to increase minority- group membership. Most of all, the resi- dents of the barrier have to contend with the patchwork emergence of the "Uptown" business district, which has established IIM'II .is .1 formidable economic generatoi and political force, and which is beginning to tire of the rustic-domestic pretensions of its neighbors. It is in this context that the plan to expand the West Loop became & a big - often literally screaming - deal. The Texas Department of Transportation (a 19') 1 renaming of what, since the 1970s, had been called the Texas Depart- Visual simulation of 24-lane widening of the West Loop, looking south from San Felipe. Cite Spring 1992 flO S i already have the roar of two freeways." misleading fact that this would produce million, not counting air-handling expanding the freeway, he said: "Having Don Olson, director of the city's parks and the world's widest single freeway; after all, equipment, water pumps, and generators). cars in stop-and-go traffic produces a lot recreation department, also condemned it was only an addition to what was already ol pollutants. If you can get them moving the double-decking proposal, saying the a 14-lanc project. They came armed with HILE highway officials ran faster, you actually reduce the amount of noise it would generate would threaten computer-generated views of the new their numbers, the focus again pollutants in the area, which satisfies the Memorial Park. "From the standpoint of freeway, showing how it could incorporate shifted. In a manner typical EPA. Same thing with noise: get the traffic the city, we own some highly scenic park landscaping in its medians, and they were throughout modern Texas, moving faster and it decreases." Silverman land that has already been cut into by the ready to talk about some new sound- Wprivate interests began to develop the and other neighborhood activists vowed West Loop and by Memorial Drive, and absorbing structures they would use to cut comprehensive vision that public entities to lest Garrisons assertions in court and that already has significant noise prob- noise. Instead, they found themselves had failed to achieve. , through the political process and to do lems," Olson noted in a 1990 interview. confronted by an angry crowd of between which as a group knows that expansion of their best to knock the freeway-expansion "We don't want to lose any more land to 500 and 600 people, including city council mobility represents the difference between plan off the tracks. highway projects. And we want to see the members Jim Greenwood and Sheila its own growth projections and stagnation, mobility problems of the area solved in a Jackson Lee and a well-coordinated series has had consultants working on plans for Whether elevated, at grade, sunken, or comprehensive way that has the least of parks advocates, neighborhood repre- incorporating some form of public transit even not at all, the expansion of the West impact on the park, instead of having sentatives, and emissaries from citywide into a reworked street network for the Loop seems to have settled back down them dealt with piecemeal." Olson said he environmental groups. All expressed business center. What form that transit will into the realm of technicalities. By April was concerned about any solution "that outrage at the scale of the project, its viola- take keeps changing. Until last fall, it its future appeared seriously, if not fatally, will just push more traffic through the tion of the park, and its obvious intent to looked like it would be monorail. With the imperiled, as Silverman had predicted by corridor, making the relief valves more stimulate automobile traffic through the election of , that changed to the impending application of the 1991 congested" - and leading inexorably to corridor. The project would turn Houston light rail on existing railroad lines, and in Inter modal Surface Transportation calls to widen Memorial Drive. But it was "into one big shoulder to Loop (S 10." February it shitted to a regional bus plan. Efficiency Act, the effect of which even in opposition from Uptown Houston and said Greenwood, who suggested that the By then John Breeding said he believed that Houston was to shift substantial appro- individual commercial-property owners in department turn instead to comprehensive rail transit in Houston was dead, and that priations originally intended for highways the area that killed the double-decking planning to expand other traffic routes an all-bus system would be the choice of to mass transportation. Milton Dietert, plan. John Breeding, director of tin.' and alternative mobility measures. Lee was ihe future. With that realization, he hoped district engineer for the Houston district Uptown Houston Association, said in an quoted as saying, "This expansion goes to ensure that the future expansion of the of the Texas Department ol Transporta- interview in early 1990, just before right in the face of the city's efforts to West Loop would at least be coordinated tion, was reported in April as hoping highway officials abandoned double- comply with the Clean Air Act." with the plans emerging for increasing simply "to do small projects such as the decking, that "an elevated expressway is mobility in Uptown. "There's no way you Westheimcr entrance ramp, and leave the inconsistent with an urban situation like can justify having 24 lanes ol concrete out In December the Houston City Council loop widening headaches for the this" and urged highway department there," he said. What he anticipated at voted 13-0 (with two members absent) to next century."' planners to design a sunken roadway. that point was forgoing one lane in either oppose the 24-lane expansion plan. Out- direction of both the express and local going mayor spoke But whatever its fate, the 24-lane "com- highway lanes in favor of a single lane for HE matter moved out of public against the plan, even though officials ol promise" that had emerged under the high-occupancy or "fixed-guideway" discussion in early 1990, and a her administration had been involved in guidance of business leaders with the vehicles - buses, or even trains. West Loop Task Force was con- the task force negotiations and had pro- power to forge a working political stituted, with two representatives ceeded with her apparent blessing. consensus in the vacuum left by city and Tof the highway department (including Incoming mayor Bob I j n i er waffled on state officials signaled a shift in the city's Neighborhood activists were still hoping to then highway commissioner Wayne the matter, saying that the highway depart- kill every expansion option but the sunken political geography of far greater signifi- Duddlesten of Houston), five representa- ment's plan should proceed if it was the freeway. Dr. Robert Silverman, representing cance than the size or arrangement of the tives of Post Oak business interests, and right thing to do. Of those involved in the one resident coalition, felt that the 1990 freeway itself. The West Loop, which in a representatives from Metro, the city of negotiations, only the Uptown Houston amendments to the federal Clean Air Act, sense came into being as a guardian of the Houston Parks Board (including Don representatives held firm. In an interview which require city and regional planners to neighborhoods through which it passed, Olson) and Planning Department, the in early 1992, John Breeding of Uptown find ways to cut automobile emissions, had at last become an indistinguishable Greater Houston Partnership, and the Houston said that his group had given up would help block the expansion. He also extension of Uptown, the business center Citizens Environmental Coalition. Late in the sunken-freeway option, convinced by was o f the opinion that the 1991 Inter- it had done so much to make possible. In 1990, both Duddlesten and Olson were highway department officials that it would modal Surface Transportation Efficiency the process, the West Loop had been quoted in press accounts as saying that be too costly and technically too difficult: Act (signed into law by President Bush in socially leveled, and was now, like the widening the freeway at grade level looked "The widening option would bring the Arlington the day that General Motors other freeways of Houston, just another like the best compromise, even though it freeway within a few feet of some build- announced it was planning to cut 70,000 massive culvert of cars. Let Houston zone meant some loss of park land, which ings, but at ground level. We feel that is a jobs from its work force), which requires itself blue in the face, but if economic Olson put at 1.5 acres. lot more acceptable than at the third or that future highway-construction projects motives could override the Buffalo Bayou fourth floor," Breeding also vowed that, if not contribute unnecessarily to expanding barrier, no force for neighborhood Again, there was little reaction to this the compromise plan unraveled, his group the demand for automobile use, might stability could be depended on to count testing of the waters. Then came the would oppose any attempt to reintroduce make it possible to kill the project alto- for anything, anywhere, any longer inside public presentation in late November at the elevated-express-lane option. "There gether. Moreover, according to Silverman, the Beltway. • the Doubletree Hotel, at which depart- arc groups that have fought freeway pro- with the Houston City Council on record posals for thirty years and finally won, and ment officials hoped to release details and opposing the project, state officials would 1 Mel Young, "Loop Freeway Gets Tough Punch," answer questions about their quietly we are prepared to go to similar lengths if be compelled to bring forth a locally , 23 December 1954. negotiated compromise: a $280 million, necessary," Breeding said. acceptable solution. 24-lane wonder that would require three 2 Peter C Ripaileinetriou, Tmnsporuttion and Urban Development in Houston, 1830-1980 acres of Memorial Park and provide five With the compromise apparently undone, Not so, according to Don Garrison of the (Houston: Metropolitan Transit Authority of lanes in either direction for express traffic, highway department officials again Texas Department of Transportation. Harris County, 1982), p. B5. four in either direction for local freeway dropped back. The 24-lane proposal was "Legally, under the new federal funding traffic, and three on eirher side for front- only one of 12 options they were studying, bill, it's between the state and the feds," 3 Karen Wcintraub, "Mass Transit Gets a l.cg Up age, so as to accommodate not 275,000 they said. They were still plotting out says Garrison. He added that his office had at Expense ol Area Highways," Houston Post. 13 April 1984. vehicles daily but 350,000. everything from "no-build" ($50 million) kept both the Environmental Proteclion to closing the West Loop's entrance lanes Agency and federal highway administration The department officials did not want to to local traffic ($450 million) to variations officials abreast of plans from the start. emphasize what they saw as the true bin of a sunken freeway ($500 to $800 Clean-air requirements would be met by