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Wait a second, Ainbinder was supposed to develop SJ Stone? Source please. Speculation? Source please. Wait a second, Orr just does strip malls http://www.orrcommercial.com/development/ ....Do you have a link to the Orr pictures?

What the Haters are really afraid of is that some youngsters will actually work here, put themselves through school, become a manager or a crack salesman and buy one of the affordable shacks in the historic district. There goes the neighborhood.

The east side of Heights Blvd is starting to look shabby by comparison.....wonder what the tax bills look like there?

Ergo, the long-time moniker "Heightstonians" nails it.

Your experiment demonstrates that urbanization (cement slabs and buildings) removes water retention capacity and also proves that moving water to sea level is best accomplished via efficient channelization. Since we are not going to dig up the city, we must have the best channels possible to evacuate the runoff. However we live in a political world and channelization was combined with retention as the new environmentally-friendly policy by the late 60's. But in no way is the natural state better than channelization for urban flood control. And without cement and maintenance, erosion eventually would return the entire area to its natural state. Here's a good history of the evolving politics of White Oak: http://www.hcfcd.org...ak/history.html EDIT: This link is better with pics and old maps: http://www.hcfcd.org/downloads/historical/PresentationBuffaloWhiteOakHistory.pdf

Oh Omniscient One, can you please provide a source for your supposition of wide-acceptance. And by "wide-acceptance", I don't mean coffee-house revisionists but instead, employed hydrologists. This article was in the Chronicle when I first moved here: Houston Chronicle 4/28/91: "Near-Northwest Houston In 1964, the Corps of Engineers finished lining 9.4 miles of lower White Oak Bayou with concrete. But flooding in subdivisions upstream of the concrete channel got progressively worse as urbanization north of Loop 610 increased. In 1976, the Corps' Galveston office proposed channelizing another 9.6 miles of White Oak, beginning at the upper end of the concrete ditch and extending north. It was to be an earthen channel, with concrete applied only at erosion-prone bends. The plan wasn't authorized by Congress until 1986. By that time, people along White Oak and the flood control district had grown tired of waiting. The Corps was told to keep its $69 million; the county, anticipating a windfall of bond money, would do its own project and even provide for retention. Storey said the county intends to make good on its promise. But he has decided that 2 1/2 miles of the sandy-soiled bayou should be lined with concrete to prevent erosion. Some homeowners who would be served by the project don't want it if it includes a concrete liner. The Corps of Engineers, which must issue a permit before the channel can be lined, last winter received more than a dozen letters about the project. "This stretch of White Oak Bayou has been severely altered by past flood control projects," wrote Larry McKinney, director of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's Resource Protection Division. "However, some fish and wildlife habitat remains. The placement of a cement channel within the bayou will result in a near complete loss of remaining habitat values." But G.J. Raindl, a resident of the Arbor Oaks subdivision, wrote that his neighborhood "was flooded in 1970, 1972, 1981 and twice in 1989" and urged the Corps to "approve this permit application as soon as possible." Storey said he is sensitive to environmental concerns, but believes the bayou would be a perpetual "maintenance burden" if it were not lined with concrete." So I believe your revisionist engineering is a sympton of your politics. At least Larry McKinney told the truth about his no-liner rationale in the above article, and it had nothing to do with flooding.

Ok, I was bored, so I read the comments for this petition posted on ipetition.com, some are priceless, my comments in italics: 168 cars going and coming down narrow streets that already have full capacity form the occupants who cannot even park on their streets, which are narrow and have open ditches alongside them……..I have never, ever seen a car on Frasier, so I guess the capacity is zero. this is a terrible and unsafe idea……..The future residents will be unsafe from the radical preservationists. please preserve the history that Houston has! ……especially all the weed-choked ditches along the freeway If we don't preserve these areas, who will? …….Ortho Brush-B-Gone This gorgeous natural habitat is an obvious extension of Stude Park………Obviously. In the 1800’s it was known as Stude Park West. I vote NO for any changes to the Heights Hike and Bike Trail……Whilst everyone was trying to find this lost piece of Yellowstone, the Heights annexed the Hike and Bike Trail and will place toll booths throughout Timbergrove. Only through respecting the past will we not make the same mistakes in the future……take our past voting laws for example. The long term effects on our historic neighborhood are being ignored, presumably for profit. My property taxes have gone up every year while other neighborhood values are lowering. If you are going to tax me to the hilt, the least you can do is preserve the quality and character of my expensive neighborhood………Translated: My profit good, your profit bad. allow the birds to maintain their natural state. the hike and bike trail is heavily used. It should be left along and more people should be encouraged to use it…..Except for the bums, they have to use the natural state along with the birds for shanty town ingress / egress. I'm paying my drainage fee, but not so additional projects can be built that increase flooding……….Instead let’s build 84 houses and see what that does to drainage. When is the City of Houston going to recognize that the White Oak bayou cannot sustain unchecked development? More hardscape along it's banks without drainage detention is just creating more problems in this already most flood-prone area of the city!........Dang, my real estate agent told me the Heights was the least flood-prone. Luckily the Corp of Engineers cemented both banks along its entire length decades ago to eliminate the annual flooding caused by its natural state. They should not mess with the safety of the bike trail. There is no other good way to get south to Washington Ave……Ah yes, the pedestrian haven of Washington Ave where hipster joggers and bikers can safely cruise the strip day or night. I bike for health and peace of mind in nature, after work. What are the politicians thinking. Maybe i should be working more in order to pay higher taxes. I guess i will be forced to mpve out to another county……….Please don’t stop there. There's not much in this city preserved from the 1800's. The city needs to save this area…………If you tell a lie often enough……. One of the reasons that I have chosen to live in the heights is because of the wonderful scenery and undisturbed greenspace around White Oak Bayou…….especially the historical cave paintings left along its rocky banks by the nomadic Houstones, in the 1800’s of course. More building on the banks of White Oak Bayou - WTF?........Yes, just wtf were those Allen Brothers thinking when they founded our city on the banks of the bayou instead of the Katy Prairie. Isn't it bad enough that green spaces have been taken to build condos, a Target, a Walmart………..I used to picnic at the ole steel mill, and I met my wife under the derrick on the banks of the laminates plant. The city can't become all concrete. And if you build on the bayou, the structure will flood……..Most assuredly it will. This undeveloped land serves as an important eco-system and has been located between the ravine and the railbed forever……….I was under the impression that the parcel was originally from Michigan and migrated here in the Seventies along with all those other black taggers.

Just drove down Yale today for the first time in months, and it looks GREAT already. What total PoS Yale was down that way before this development. Why did they even have sidewalks then? To serve as rape magnets? And I guess the trees were creature comforts for the criminals since the only other shade was I-10. Out with the bad, in with the good, and I am proud of Houston once again.

Turn on your monitor, rotate it so that map-north is at the top and take off your rose-colored glasses.

I walk and bike through that little slice of the Heights and man, it is boss. But I always thought it was just a matter of time until you had new neighbors with the empty loop and the hardwood company. I hear it was really, really boss before the lumber company, but back then trains were roaring through there all the time, heck it wasn’t too long ago that trains still passed that way. My friend who was born here in the 30’s says Granberry ran all the way to White Oak Bayou to the foot of the railroad bridge, and the kids would swim down there between two creeks that fed the bayou. One of those creeks is your eastern border and ran up toward Beverly and 8th or thereabouts before developers put in culverts, filled it in and built commercial and residential on the land east of Heights proper. The White Oak Rd bridge was built in the forties and for whatever reason they left the creek open south of the bridge, thus allowing isolation of your tract. Otherwise we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation. In 1946 industry encroached via the wood company, but I bet everyone was happy for the jobs, except the kids who lost access to the Granberry swimming hole. But it kept them in school so they could grow up to become businessmen. See this: A raid at the White Oak Bayou swimming hole. In ’68 the wood company was bought by long-time employee Mac Clark who was a great citizen (Mon 01/08/2007 Houston Chronicle) even though he lived in Timbergrove and coached their Little League. Yes, he was a tree-dweller, and given their pacifist nature (see Walmart thread post #2225) he probably sponsored HNLL also. By running a valuable industrial business on the site for decades Mac may have prevented Section 8 “condo” development there when property values were much lower than business values. So now we have more development proposed in the Heights, a neighborhood with a long history of industrial, commercial, multi-family and single family development, all of it contributing to the fabric we have today. Take away anyone piece and the fabric would be different, maybe “better” or not, only the omniscient know for sure. So let us see what the developers propose. I will support your efforts to build a coalition to gain a seat at the table as long as the goal is reasonable. And if stopping all development is unreasonable and unachievable, then don’t waste your time with that goal. Instead, work to consensus thinking of the future, perhaps trading neighborhood opposition to this development for City/County protection on your eastern front. I already hear rumors of completing the creek coverage all the way to the bayou so that our Venture Commercial friends can put up a parking lot. Bye-bye morning sun.

Urbanmad, I would like to hear what you have to say about this development to prevent the discussion from becoming petty. If you do not have anything to contribute, then lurk if that's your thing or ignore to keep yourself from being bored, but please don't troll. Save that for your overclocking and gaming usenet groups.

Holy crap, that's it. I really, truly couldn't understand the fervor these people have for such a baseless, inconsistent argument. People who are driven by greed for base gains will envy those whose wealth comes from personal accomplishment. Their rhetoric is telling, and unfortunately also quite boring.

I can only wish I had your connections and bravado to get my plans "rubber stamped" and then threaten my enemies with regulatory hell. But I guess such privileges only come with the omniscience you demonstrate in your posts with your typical "the City has always been biased", "The city knows...but dare not touch", and your divining the personal problems of "the scant few" whose "issues are usually self-inflicted". And now you are a regular Alan Greenspan knowing all about big city development and small business success. I am just humbled that I posted a question you couldn't answer, although Red has been doing it for quite some time. You should write a book, fiction of course.

s3mh, is it your point that the City is wrong in its over-regulation and onerous permitting of small business or in its permit "rubber stamping" for national chains? Would it be better for the City to lower the permitting burden on small business in the Heights or keep the burden on small business as-is and stop all this "rubber stamping" you cited? And what about "major delays (and major expenses)" Heights homeowners face "in getting their spaces ready due to City permitting issues"? Be careful with your answer (or don't answer) because your duplicity is showing.

Well, it's in the acorn stage and not quite ready for help from the forum, which will be essential for success. And actually I got the idea from you Leonard. We have had the privilege of caring for a tree that outdates all of us in the Heights. The tree is a Cherrybark Oak now approximately 120 years old and one of the biggest in Harris County when it was assessed by an urban forester for recognition as a Notable Tree in the Park People's Harris County Tree Registry in 1995. What was interesting was that five of the nine top Cherrybark oaks in Harris County were right in this neighborhood. So I always believed that these cool trees needed local propagation to keep the strain as part of the neighborhood fabric so to speak, but I never got off the sofa. I watched one of the others fall on a rain soaked night ten years ago, and I still didn't get off the sofa. Then I spouted off about planting trees on this thread, and your reply pointed out the obvious, that I didnt know crap about tree planting and I was still on the sofa. Every 2 or 3 years these trees will make a good acorn crop, and it has been a while for this one with Ike and subsequent pruning and drought. But this year is the best I remember, so about a month ago I started collecting and properly storing the acorns. It's not as simple as one would think, and I am attempting to get them to break dormancy at the right time to hit my goal of growing about 100 saplings for planting next season. I haven't thought much else past that, but my plan is to use this forum to find adoptive parents to take 2 or 3 for planting and care through the early years. That's it. Except I was going to use the old Registry to find other caretakers in the neighborhood to help out propagating other trees besides the Cherrybark Oak, which is one badass tree by the way. So wish me luck and stay tuned.

Just what is this 380-phobia affliction? Is it a new strain of Animalism? Are you just mad because you have no friggin' clue how to get yours? That's how I read it, just whining from stubborn people full of envy who refuse to get up off the sofa.

I'm giddy as school girl over all this new stuff in the hood. I just walked Summer Street from Taylor to Stude and, wow, they are setting up for development back there to compete with the Wal-mart hub. Sure, sometimes I miss how it "used to be", but I get over it real quick when I recognize that Houston is the greatest city in the country for bootstrapping oneself into a few million dollars the old-fashioned way: hard work and smart risks. I love the people in this city who make lemonade out of jogging trails to nowhere, who take on challenges like WLN, who can raise millions in dumb money to transform White Oak or put God's Little Waiting Room on Stude & 14th. I may not agree with every project but I respect the people who pull it off. And I respect the people who get up off their butts to protest or change plans to something that appeals to them. But at the end of the day, it's about confrontation to get to negotiation not confrontation for it's own sake, that's how it's done around here. And if you are still holding on to your anger now, well, you're just being an old fart. At some point you gotta give it up for the people who make this city great.

Will you stop speaking for the rest of us please? Alright already, we know you hate Wal-Mart, you don't even dispute Red's statement about your anger. You are on an island, face it and deal with it, alone.

The tax dollars would not be scarce if municipalities had not entered into corrupt agreements with greedy unions. And the guv doesn't HAVE to hand those dollars over, they choose to, and if you don't like it you'd better move to Alaska or start voting Libertarian instead of whining. I believe you mean "a vocal minority of the community whined loudly that they are not welcome among the elite and self-important." As opposed to rewarding politically connected Public Service Employee Unions? At least Wal-mart and developers play it straight rather than using scare tactics like "it's for the kids" or "your houses will burn" and "crime will crawl into your underpants" if you don't pay us a king's ransom in retirement...and by the way if you don't pay us we will hold your city hostage.

It's the ADHD not apathy. Moving too soon gives Mt Airy time to respond and time for our ADHD Hipsters to move on to the next great thing. October 1 is what counts, start the push in the last week.

Well that explains it. Charlie told me Saturday that Blue Jays been in and out of there all day looking for Bombay Sapphire, whereas for your common Grackle, it's strictly speed rack.

and some Beefeater Gin, unless you don't like gin, then you can get Bombay Sapphire.

Yeah right I won't forget, the interstate highway and the Yale St bridge, all because of Wal-Mart. Now I am really thankful for that company enabling the infrastructure improvement. And they keep me safe from pirates too!

I view government spending the way I view charity spending, and so I view taxes like I view donations. The closer to home those dollars are given and spent, the more efficient they are along with higher chances of having the desired impact. Also the source of the funds has more control over the use of the funds (as it should be) when closer to home. The reason for this is every time the money changes hands, some gets skimmed and intent gets redirected. For that reason I believe the federal government and federal programs are the least efficient at anything, and so barracuda's comparisons bear that out. The real issue to me is whether or not government should be in the job-creation business at all. Most politicians and certainly most bureaucrats know little about business and economy. Government does have a strong ability to destroy jobs and the economy as proven by the current jobs situation in the U.S. and everything in Europe. Coming back to our Wal-mart, at least the city didn't scare them off, and I really hope that the new employees find themselves better off than they are now, because that's what counts, people and quality of life. And looking at the surrounding neighborhoods before and after and having many under-employed friends, I feel this whole project is a big success.....except for those damn trees, but I have plan for that....

But not by you.