Tile plant sale fits redevelopment pattern. Nancy Sarnoff, HoustonChronicle.com ($)
(Mysteriously, the chiefs at the Chron don't appear to want people to read this. Why else hide it behind a pay-wall? One small quote then, and the typical request for you to go read the entire thing.)
Other properties have been trading hands in this area, most often as longtime industrial users sell out to retail and residential developers. Upscale apartments and big-box retailers have replaced sprawling industrial sites along Interstate 10.
One thing is for sure, the current team of peacocks residing in City Hall are fascinated with 'upscale' townhomes and apartments. I'm reminded of several penguins all moving their heads back and forth as a light is moved around on a wall above them. One thing that they're not noticing while distracted by that dot is the city's rapidly eroding industrial base.
While I understand that it's "neat" to attend ribbon-cuttings for 'parklets' which make Houston something entirely unlike San Francisco, it just might be of importance for someone in the peacock flock to take a look around at Houston's rapidly shrinking jobs diversity.
I understand that there are plenty of jobs in Houston, mainly due to the surging oil & gas industry and the Texas Medical Center however, those jobs are typically quite specialized and, in many cases, require either specialized education or a degree. What Houston is seeing leave the city in droves are manufacturing jobs that can provide lower-middle class wages to families whose primary care-giver might not have a degree. In short, blue-collar jobs not related to the oil-patch.
While I freely admit that a tile factory, or almost any other factory for that matter, doesn't have the curb appeal of luxury apartments inside a multi-use, walkable facility whose energy is derived primarily from the sweat of those in the fitness center, the jobs they provide are much, much higher paying than that of a towel attendant in the pool changing lounge. On the one hand, the peacocks are dismissing the value of the retail/service sector while actively promoting policy that increases these low paying jobs.
To further the problem, the biggest of the peacocks (Mayor Parker, Peter Brown and the do-nothings at Houston Tomorrow) also promote policies that make it impossible for this growing number of low-wage workers to live close to their jobs in the walkable communities that they are advocating for so strongly.
This is not by accident. I've said it on this (and other) blogs many times before, the goal of new-urbanists is to displace the poor and allow the relatively affluent to populate the city-center. Those who provide a service to this new elite are forced, via supply, to move outside the city core, with all of its amenities, and live on the periphery where access to the central city is also limited. This planning means that the poor 'need not apply' when discussions of great new goings-on in Houston are discussed. They are simply not part of the vision.
Soon they won't be an active part of the economy either, nor part of the city's cultural fabric. Right now Houston runs the risk of becoming a soulless expanse of luxury apartments and multi-use retail centers which will end up just slightly better than the suburban strip-centers that the new-urbanists hate so. It was never the sameness of the suburbs that the new-urbanists took exception to, after all, they argue against everything in Houston that's unique and not a copy of some city they say is doing it better, it was the fact that the same-ness was the same-ness of the poor and working class, which they, with their starched white collars and thick-rimmed reading glasses, cannot handle being around.
Unless said poor are in uniform, pouring them drinks, the new-urbanist elite would prefer that they know their place. That's the type of interaction they want to have most. It keeps them feeling superior without requiring them to leave their hermetically sealed luxury bubbles. Let's build s'more.
