NIMBYs in the news

WHOA - an article this morning in the Galveston County Daily News snagged my attention, as all local articles with the phrase "low-income housing" have a way of doing:  a new 'lower-income' development is planned for construction close to the Bay Colony subdivision on the west side of IH-45. 

Furthermore, the article went on to state that another similar development had recently been proposed for construction near the Victory Lakes subdivision to the south of us, but apparently it was not approved.

All that, of course, reminded me of the fact that it's in our interest to keep tabs on what's happening around us.  The type of "low-income housing" discussed above is apparently not as low as low can go, but I still would not want to wake up one morning and find out that some deal was already done and we're all going to be staring out our hard-earned windows at something we'd rather not see.

So in the interest of maintaining awareness, this post contains some general info pertaining to what undeveloped land remains around us, and what might happen to it.  The usual disclaimers apply here:  none of the stuff in this post even remotely constitutes legal advice of any kind - it's just a curiosity exploration on a beautiful Friday morning.   Not only is it not legal advice, it's not even an educated discourse.  It fits best into the category known as "well-intentioned but barely-informed rambling".   
:-)

Centerpointe's most obvious current "extra-territorial" development questions pertain to the undeveloped tracts to the southeast of us across West Walker and to the south of us fronting on state highway (SH) 96 (aka League City Parkway).  Most of this acreage is actively for sale (according to signage erected thereon).

 Not that I know much about real estate, but one would hope that the SH 96 frontage tracts have both a commercial valuation and a potential traffic impact that would exclude their zoning conversion to multi-family residential, so I won't speculate about that for the moment.

However, the tract that fronts on West Walker, adjacent to the existing apartments, is noteworthy. It currently appears to be posted with two separate for-sale signs, but when I did a map search in the Houston Association of Realtors' commercial and residential websites, I found no active listings.

When Googling this phone number, the only interesting bit I found was an entry in the popular Houston real estate blog Swamplot which basically asked the same question:
Who is this??

There's also this sign, but as of today the Cushwake listings website did not seem to have a listing in this area.

What's going to be built there eventually?  It's an important question, as it will impact all of us, especially the buyers in the new Section 9, around which the tract partially wraps.
 
I sure don't know the answer, but let's contemplate what could potentially be built there.  League City has published its zoning map:

http://www.leaguecity.com/DocumentView.aspx?DID=484

And here's the blow-up of the area surrounding Centerpointe:

This posted map version is dated August 2010, but the city obviously had not incorporated the improvements for Centerpointe Section 9 by that point (that undifferentiated chunk of bright yellow just below map center). 

And here's an excerpt of the map legend:

So according to these resources, that parcel would seem to be zoned "general commercial" as of the date of this post. 

Here's how the tract was presented as of this morning on Galveston CAD:

Screengrabbed from a map page associated with http://www.galvestoncad.org/Appraisal/PublicAccess/.

The internet reports that the owner LC Partners LP was the business entity authorized to sell a large tract of land along IH-45 and north of FM646 to University of Texas - Medical Branch (UTMB).  According to the CAD, that entity currently owns three tracts in our area, of which this West Walker tract is one. 

Anyway, at this point I must suspend my sleuthing so that I can attend to that pesky necessity known as a day job. 
:-)

Suffice it to say that, for the moment, it does not appear that we're at a high risk of facing a situation similar to the Bay Colony story referenced above.  The adjacent West Walker sale tract does not appear to be currently zoned "multi-family" as like what might potentially end up as "low(er) income housing". 

Of course, zoning designations can and do change, but in League City, there's a public notification process for that, so hopefully we'd find out about it, if it were proposed.   We will try to keep an eye on the development of this tract (and the other ones along SH 96) as the local universe continues to unfold.