League City issues to watch

I see two trending League City issues that Centerpointe residents should be watching at the present time, and I wonder if the first issue will ultimately prove to be somewhat antagonistic to the second.

The first issue is that both the city manager and assistant manager have resigned.  Those two gentlemen were widely believed to be doing a decent job of running the city, and several City Council members expressed their approval and support of them.  I don't have time this morning to recap and link all the garbage that has plagued this city (and in fact The League City Blog can be counted on to address that stuff, so I don't need to do it), but Jahns's assertion that the work environment is toxic is not unprecedented, to put it mildly.  We may not be out of the woods yet regarding the expensive extent of mismanagement and power-struggling that has characterized our recent muni history.  Is Round 2 now underway?

Which brings me to the second issue, which manifested again recently in the mainstream news media under the innocent-sounding title "Officials to propose bond election".

To make a long story short, that beautiful tract of land to the northeast of Centerpointe is being considered as a development site for an administrative complex incorporating a regional JAIL.



This tract of land is located less than 700 feet from its closest Centerpointe residence.
Quoth Galveston County Daily News,
"The city is considering two locations for the building; on land across from the city hall complex on West Walker Street or near the Westover Park subdivision and state Highway 96 on the westside." 

I added the word "County" to the "??" in the annotated map above because of the following concerning statement from the aforesaid news URL :

"Officials from the city and Galveston County have discussed a potential partnership on the project, with the county possibly running jail operations..."

What I suspect is this:  Galveston County is not going to simply volunteer to run a jail without a fat vested interest in it - in other words, what's potentially being envisioned here is not just going to house League City prisoners - it's looking like the proposed development will be a relatively large regional correctional facility serving north Galveston County, complete with all the trappings that such a facility attracts:  a plethora of bail bondsmen, and plenty of traffic in and out of the area by persons charged with crimes, convicted of crimes, and all of their associates.

I question the potential choice of that tract of land for two reasons:

(1)  Jails are not usually sited in the middle of extensive residential developments for a variety of quality-of-life  and property-value reasons.  Sure, the existing relatively small city jail is across the street from this undeveloped tract - but that facility was constructed years ago, before this area fundamentally changed its development character.  There were no improvements on West Walker Street when the original jail was constructed - in fact, there was no West Walker Street at that time.  

1995 aerial photograph, which is the oldest I can retrieve on short notice:
West Walker stopped at the police station.  Centerpointe and Wilshire Place were distant dreams in their respective developers' imaginations.  

(2) That tract of land represents a unique opportunity for League City to instead develop assets that promote community identity and cohesion.  It's a beautiful parcel adjacent to the existing library and city pool, and it represents possibly the very last visible new-site opportunity for League City to strengthen its presence as something more than bedroom-community sprawl that most folks simply drive straight through as they're on their way to some more-desirable local venue.  Over the years, the city has spent big bucks on consultants in an effort to develop new ideas by which it might better define itself as a "destination" (I don't have time this morning to pull all the related URLs, but here's one reference story).  So here we have an opportunity to consider targeted development on a strategically-located tract of land for the purposes of raising the city's profile, and what are they considering instead?  A complex involving a regional JAIL.  Good grief!!  

So this is definitely an issue to watch, and not just by us - our surrounding neighborhoods have a vested interest in this outcome as well.  One of our POA Board told me that Centerpointe residents were instrumental in blocking the development of a dog park in that same general vicinity.  Dog park is microscopic potatoes compared to this.  What do you folks suppose might happen to property values if neon bail bondsmen signs start sprouting up like weeds around the periphery of our little area?