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Do you think the oil bust of the 80,s still weights houston down? I love my city and think it has alot of great things that tend to get over looked, but on the same hand I can not ignore how much Houston lags behind on certian things or drags them out. Houston does not go bold or daring, even dallas takes more risk. san antiono has a river walk for ages and we are still trying to figure out what to do with ours, Dallas laid tracks for light rails in the 90.s and expanded to commuters while we had to fight tooth and nails for one track on main street and almost a decade later we are just being to expanded and even that is meeting some push back.
We have one of the most stable ecomonies duing the recessions but that has only translated into a modest gain for Houston, while New York, Chicago have all continued with big plans for their cities even in the down turn. So what is it ? Do you think the bust on the 80.s still heavly effects investors,planners , and Houston population as a whole, on some level we are still a little gun shy ?
Well maybe we learned a lesson in the 80's. Don't spend what you don't have.Not being over extended in rail and massive city planning is perhaps one of the reasons we still are a float. It's akin to buying a fixer upper and remodeling a little each year as you can afford it, vs. buying the custom and slapping yourself with a 95% mortgage on a stagnant salary.
Yes, we are in debt but why start massively funded government projects...when the government is in debt as well. However, we are more than modestly gaining population, property values and traffic. So perhaps more plans/expansion will be made, the way Houston has always done it, organically. That said, I saw the Memorial City Mall area get a complete facelift and the evolution of CityCentre occur during one of the worst economic events in this country...and they are very successful.
Despite the political,social and economic diversity of this Metro, Houston is still a very Fiscally Conservative Girl. I do see that going away in a few decades though with all the transplants coming in. It will go from "wait and see," to "I want it all now, free, and it better be fabulous!!!" And then state income tax will start.
Neither Dallas nor Dallas County is on the hook for sports stadiums. The stadiums are in Arlington guaranteed with City of Arlington Bonds. That frees up sales tax money for other stuff.
The City of Houston also has to worry about their employee retirement. That has to be a factor when the CoH is contemplating any project.
EA, I'm speaking about the past, so I could be off. When we came back to Texas from St. Louis the last time, our property tax on a house here valued $100000 cheaper than the one we had just moved out of in Kirkwood,Mo. was higher than our combined property tax + state income tax + a 1% city earning tax in Mo.
Here is thing, we have a great economy right now mainly because of oil and gas doing so well and we are bring tons of people from all over to our city. What happens if we do in fact get another energy bust? What if alternative energy does actually take off?
We still have a long way to come to make our economy more stable for the long term. We have to expand our scoop of business and create more jobs for the middle class. Right now if you want a job in Houston you need to be engineer or go work some barely minimum wage job. There is not much in between.
Houston has always been decent at balancing it budgets, to maintain a decent work flow, but on the same hand I also belive you can caution yourself right out of being competetive, the time for a city to grow and expand to meet a growing population, land needs, mass transit etc is a small one , and that window can close very quickly , leaving your city to place catch up, take the convention distict, why do you think there is now a plan for a new 1000 room hotel ? They found that city that compete for major conventions tend to average 2500 rooms in their CBD, while Houston clocked in at just 1500
Do you think the oil bust of the 80,s still weights houston down? I love my city and think it has alot of great things that tend to get over looked, but on the same hand I can not ignore how much Houston lags behind on certian things or drags them out. Houston does not go bold or daring, even dallas takes more risk. san antiono has a river walk for ages and we are still trying to figure out what to do with ours, Dallas laid tracks for light rails in the 90.s and expanded to commuters while we had to fight tooth and nails for one track on main street and almost a decade later we are just being to expanded and even that is meeting some push back.
We have one of the most stable ecomonies duing the recessions but that has only translated into a modest gain for Houston, while New York, Chicago have all continued with big plans for their cities even in the down turn. So what is it ? Do you think the bust on the 80.s still heavly effects investors,planners , and Houston population as a whole, on some level we are still a little gun shy ?
I lived in Houston during the oil bust of the 1980's and Houston has come an extraordinarily long way since then. As far as risk is concerned, what type of risk are you talking about? Infrastructure wise? If this is the case, yes, to a degree it has. First off, there are 2 types to talk about... vanity and necessity.
As far as vanity is concerned, Houston has never been very big on vanity mainly because Houston is so big that necessity out weighs vanity. However, Houston is much more diverse now than back in the 1980's and has started loosening up the strings on vanity infrastructure changes. The biggest that I know of will be redevelopment of Eleanor Tinsley Park. Houston has committed $55M to make it the next "Central Park". Also, the revitalization of downtown was a huge step for Houston as well. I will have to say when it comes to downtown atmospheres in Texas, Houston totally takes the #1 spot. Our downtown streets are 100X better than before, nice flat smooth, the eastern side looks fantastic now than back in the 1980's and 1990's. For those of you who never saw downtown during the 1980's and 1990's it wasn't a place you go to visit and was literally a ghost town after 5pm.
Now when it comes to necessity infrastructure, the first topic that comes to mind would be light rail. Mass rail transit in Houston has never been looked at seriously because in Houston, the car is king! Back in the 1970's when citizens started asking for mass rail transit the answer was to build more freeways. Freeways led to tollways. Freeways then led to mega freeways (Katy Freeway). Yes, Houston finally put in a short light rail segment just to help with the downtown to med center traffic, but more is on the way. Houston's light rail will be contained mostly to the inner loop area. Don't except commuter rail in Houston til at least the mid 2030's and in all honesty, probably never. The reason behind this is that commuter rail tends to drain a city's population. If you make the center of the city too accessible, people can live further and further away. Why would Houston want this to happen? For each citizen Houston loses to a suburb, that is tax dollars out of the window for Houston. That is how Houston looks at it.
Now that Houston has had over 2 decades of real sustainable growth, you will see that in the near future newer "vanity" projects popping up to give the city a little extra beautification. In my personal opinion (being an avid visitor of San Antonio, Austin and DFW area) I think Houston is extremely beautiful and certainly absolutely unique. Houston is slowly breaking out of it's 1980's oil bust shell and with each passing great year is becoming more and more daring. Just give it some time and you will see
I lived in Houston during the oil bust of the 1980's and Houston has come an extraordinarily long way since then. As far as risk is concerned, what type of risk are you talking about? Infrastructure wise? If this is the case, yes, to a degree it has. First off, there are 2 types to talk about... vanity and necessity.
As far as vanity is concerned, Houston has never been very big on vanity mainly because Houston is so big that necessity out weighs vanity. However, Houston is much more diverse now than back in the 1980's and has started loosening up the strings on vanity infrastructure changes. The biggest that I know of will be redevelopment of Eleanor Tinsley Park. Houston has committed $55M to make it the next "Central Park". Also, the revitalization of downtown was a huge step for Houston as well. I will have to say when it comes to downtown atmospheres in Texas, Houston totally takes the #1 spot. Our downtown streets are 100X better than before, nice flat smooth, the eastern side looks fantastic now than back in the 1980's and 1990's. For those of you who never saw downtown during the 1980's and 1990's it wasn't a place you go to visit and was literally a ghost town after 5pm.
Now when it comes to necessity infrastructure, the first topic that comes to mind would be light rail. Mass rail transit in Houston has never been looked at seriously because in Houston, the car is king! Back in the 1970's when citizens started asking for mass rail transit the answer was to build more freeways. Freeways led to tollways. Freeways then led to mega freeways (Katy Freeway). Yes, Houston finally put in a short light rail segment just to help with the downtown to med center traffic, but more is on the way. Houston's light rail will be contained mostly to the inner loop area. Don't except commuter rail in Houston til at least the mid 2030's and in all honesty, probably never. The reason behind this is that commuter rail tends to drain a city's population. If you make the center of the city too accessible, people can live further and further away. Why would Houston want this to happen? For each citizen Houston loses to a suburb, that is tax dollars out of the window for Houston. That is how Houston looks at it.
Now that Houston has had over 2 decades of real sustainable growth, you will see that in the near future newer "vanity" projects popping up to give the city a little extra beautification. In my personal opinion (being an avid visitor of San Antonio, Austin and DFW area) I think Houston is extremely beautiful and certainly absolutely unique. Houston is slowly breaking out of it's 1980's oil bust shell and with each passing great year is becoming more and more daring. Just give it some time and you will see
Great post I like the part about two types of growth vanity and necessity
Neither Dallas nor Dallas County is on the hook for sports stadiums. The stadiums are in Arlington guaranteed with City of Arlington Bonds. That frees up sales tax money for other stuff.
The City of Houston also has to worry about their employee retirement. That has to be a factor when the CoH is contemplating any project.
EA, I'm speaking about the past, so I could be off. When we came back to Texas from St. Louis the last time, our property tax on a house here valued $100000 cheaper than the one we had just moved out of in Kirkwood,Mo. was higher than our combined property tax + state income tax + a 1% city earning tax in Mo.
Do you think the oil bust of the 80,s still weights houston down? I love my city and think it has alot of great things that tend to get over looked, but on the same hand I can not ignore how much Houston lags behind on certian things or drags them out. Houston does not go bold or daring, even dallas takes more risk. san antiono has a river walk for ages and we are still trying to figure out what to do with ours, Dallas laid tracks for light rails in the 90.s and expanded to commuters while we had to fight tooth and nails for one track on main street and almost a decade later we are just being to expanded and even that is meeting some push back.
I don't know as much about Dallas, but you must admit that not having our economy centered around Charles Barkley's favorite "dirty little creek" a la San Anton' is a plus. IF Houston was oil and nothing but, then there would be an issue.
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