Grand Parkway F-2 segment will require condemning many homes
Some new residents in Spring have just discovered what many of us have been railing against for a while now: The Grand Parkway F-2 segment is going to require the demolition of many homes (via the Chron):
Plans for the Grand Parkway have been on the books for 25 years, but only 28 of its proposed 185 miles have been built. Environmental and neighborhood groups have opposed the project.
It would include 11 segments traversing seven counties. The 12.1-mile Segment F2 would cut directly through the Lakes of Avalon Village, a subdivision with several hundred homes located on FM 2920 just west of Kuykendahl Road.
About 60 homes are in the right-of-way and would have to be demolished to make way for the parkway once construction began, Gornet said. Other homes, like Martin's, are just outside the right-of-way.
Houston's Planning Commission and Harris County's Public Infrastructure Department could not deny the developers the right to subdivide the land and sell houses on it because no government agency had committed to build the segment, officials said.
Developers sued the city in 1994 after they were denied the right to subdivide land that fell within a different section of the parkway's proposed alignment. They won $1.3 million in a case that was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The current F2 alignment was chosen in 2005 and was included in a draft environmental impact study the association published the following year, Gornet said. The developer applied to the Houston Planning Commission for the plat in late 2005 and received approval in 2006, he said.
Gornet said he met early last year with representatives from the Friendswood Development Company, a Lennar subsidiary that bought all the lots from Hudson, and told them the Grand Parkway would pose a problem for homes being built in its right-of-way.
The 60 homes mentioned in this story are only a portion of the homes in the way of the current F-2 alignment. There are many others, particularly in the Mossy Oaks subdivision, which will have to be demolished.
As for the developers, since the land was never bought up by TxDOT or HCTRA, there was no reason for developers to sit on perfectly usable land, waiting for something that might never happen. As the Chron's story notes, the current alignment was only chosen in 2005. While the subdivision in this story may not have been constructed then, there were many other homes in the way of the F-2 segment when the alignment was chosen. The Grand Parkway Association knows that and doesn't care.
And then there's the whole issue of whether or not this parkway is needed. Most of us who live in the Tomball/Spring/Klein area say no. Finish widening Kuykendahl, improve FM 2920, whatever. There are other options, rather than us having to sacrifice our communities.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 08/21/08 05:40 PM | Print |
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