Ideas to make Katy proper better looking? (San Antonio, Portland: houses, live in)

[HookTheBrotherUp]

I live in Katy proper, and have lived in the Katy area for over 20 years. However, I must say, Katy is UGLY! If you drive down I10, and take the spur to HWY90, the first impressions of Katy are terrible.

You see old, abandoned looking rice driers, a cement/drywall factory, and a chemical company. Along with that, you have the side shops along the old highway reminiscent of the 1950s, and not kept up all. aAso, the trashy strip centers squeezed between HWY90 and the railroad tracks.

So, what can Katy do? I'd be nice to suspend disbelief and hear what ideas people have on what can be done. I know some will see the old rice driers as nostalgic, part of Katy's heritage, but they are not in the same league as say the old Imperial Sugar building in Sugarland. Besides warehouses, what else could those towers be used for?

[EasilyAmused]

I thought they were going to build some retail development over there.

I like Old Town Katy. Midway Processing and BBQ. yum! You have to keep parts of "old" Texas, otherwise it's all going to go the way of Shiney Stucco and chain stores. The Rice Storage is a landmark. Maybe they'll do something with them like San Antonio did in it's Retail/Shopping/Center deal.

[Hayato]

keep it like that. the urban look will only trigger the ghetto gangsta in every kid out there

[texasdiver]

The rice dryers are essentially grain elevators. Other cities around the country have renovated and converted grain elevators into new uses. Portland Oregon, for example, is currently exploring options for converting a grain elevator into a district of shops and restaurants. It is the old Centennial Mills plant on the downtown Portland waterfront. Here's the plan and drawings. (warning, large .pdf)

http://www.centennialmills.org/asset...cmills-web.pdf

The difference between Katy and projects like the one in Portland and Minneapolis is that the other projects are redevelopment of prime inner-city waterfront land. The project in Portland is right on the waterfront at the edge of downtown so it is an absolutely prime location for development. Katy is a distant suburb where land scarcity is not an issue. So there probably aren't investors eager to do things with the industrial sites in Katy.

If I was in charge of Katy, I'd focus on improving the commercial strips like Mason Road. Put in nice sidewalks and landscaped traffic medians. Put in new signage codes. That sort of thing. It's much harder to repair the damage once the sprawl has happened. But it can be done. In places like Seattle I've seen ugly commercial strips like Mason Rd become redeveloped quite nicely.

[HookTheBrotherUp]

Originally Posted by EasilyAmused

I thought they were going to build some retail development over there.

I like Old Town Katy. Midway Processing and BBQ. yum! You have to keep parts of "old" Texas, otherwise it's all going to go the way of Shiney Stucco and chain stores. The Rice Storage is a landmark. Maybe they'll do something with them like San Antonio did in it's Retail/Shopping/Center deal.

Yes, on the south side of HWY90 there was supposed to be a large development, initially proposed by the Hines Group, but it was then sold to someone else, and as far as I can tell, it has stalled. The property is to be called 'The Village At Katy': The Village at Katy

[LizzySWW]

Katy could use more trees.

[Supermac34]

Transplant Katy to the North side of town so it can have lots of trees.