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Galveston Residents Like Shorter Buildings
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Galveston Residents Like Shorter Buildings
Bolivar Peninsula residents with homes on the beachside enjoy the view of the ocean due to the shorter buildings surrounding them.
Bolivar Peninsula residents attribute their higher vacation home rental occupancy and rates to the unobstructed beach views. | 
South Padre has high-rise beachfront condominiums blocking the view of the beach for other interior homes, lowering their value. |
Courtney Walker wrote in big block letters “absolutely not” next to a proposed development plan that would allow high-rise development along the seawall.
Her table mates nodded their approval and sat back in their chairs, almost in unison, as if they felt their work was finished.
The small group was working on one of the exercises presented during Tuesday’s height and density development plan public workshop. Walker’s conclusion was the final word left by a majority of about 100 participants — no more high-rise buildings.
The city’s consultant, Noré Winter, brought three development scenarios to the meeting. Each was based on input Galveston residents gave during the last public workshop in October.
The first scenario — the one most popular during Tuesday’s meeting — provided only two places for tall buildings, East Beach and the area between the port and the Galveston Island Yacht Club. The gateway area along the north side of Offatts Bayou and the seawall both included low and mid-rise buildings. But the West End was for low-rise development only.
"The tone of this scenario is good,” said Diana Stevens, who was working with her husband, Kevin Allen, to come up with pros and cons for each scenario. “This is reasonable development, and it won’t change the way the island looks.”
The second scenario allowed for some high-rise development along the seawall between 42nd Street and 7 Mile Road, but none east of 42nd Street.
The third scenario allowed very limited high-rise development west of 7 Mile Road, mostly high-rise development between 7 Mile and 42nd Street and some high-rise development east of 42nd Street.
Although the meeting was dominated by residents who wanted to limit the number of tall buildings on the island, several local developers came to make a pitch for more density in appropriate places.
“Anything high scares us,” said Louis Conrad, who is developing a five-story condominium at 802 Seawall. “But as a community it’s very useful to expand our tax base by taxing the sky.”
Conrad said he would support the second scenario if it were modified to allow more dense development where it would sell — near deep water canals on the bay and in front of the beach.
But Harris L. “Shrub” Kempner said the city did not need tall buildings to create new jobs or taxes.
“We are not job poor, and we are not tax poor,” he said. “Both of those are false notions. The problem we have is getting people who work here permanently to live here permanently.”
Kempner earned himself a round of applause when he said he would urge the city not to pursue tall development on the seawall.
The consultant told workshop participants he would use their feedback to draft new development regulations he would present at another workshop in January. Winter has promised the council his work would be finished by the end of February.
Stevens, who also attended the first height and density public workshop, said she thought the group exercises were nothing but busywork at first. But after she saw the initial feedback reflected in the scenarios presented on Tuesday, she changed her mind.
“I can hear the citizens’ comments in the language they’re using tonight,” she said. “It’s nice to know people are being heard.”
But Walker said she wasn’t sure they were.
“As we know, what we think doesn’t really matter,” she said, referring to the council’s approval last week of a 15-story beach-front hotel on the West End that area residents opposed.
“But, who knows? Maybe it will this time.”
By Leigh Jones
The Daily News |
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