HOUSTON HOMES / The Inner Loop:
Clashing visions of urban living / The big question is how neighborhoods will look after they are developed

By DAVID KAPLAN

Four and a half years ago, Shelley and Babak Elham bought a house in the West End neighborhood, east of Memorial Park.

The good news is that the value of their home has since tripled. The bad news is that they have no idea of what their street eventually will look like.

The Elhams were drawn to the West End because of its proximity to the park and the abundance of birds and trees.
But within the past few years, the neighborhood has changed drastically. The clash and crush of old vs. new can be seen everywhere.

Metal houses and townhouses have been popping up, replacing wood cottages.

At Wabash Antiques and Feed Store on Washington Avenue, for example, you can hear roosters, hens, ducks and geese. Soon miniature horses and calves also will be for sale. Looming above the 93-year-old feed store are new upscale townhouses.

The Elhams worry that the vacant lot next door to them will become the site of a townhouse that takes up most of the property. If so, trees will be cut down and if it's three stories, they said, they'll lose their privacy.
The West End is a stark example of what's happening to neighborhoods inside the Loop. After decades of heading to the suburbs, many Houstonians are moving back toward the center of town, and it is radically transforming some neighborhoods.

What might the Inner Loop look like, say, 10 or 15 years from now?

Perhaps it will be like the West End, a hodgepodge of tightly packed townhouses beside tiny old cottages.

Some say it will follow the model of the new Midtown area, which has started from scratch to develop block after block of high-density apartments. Or, it may hope to be like Eastwood, an old east end neighborhood that is striving to return to its original glory by restoring its existing houses.

No two neighborhoods share the same destiny, but one thing is certain: Real estate throughout the Inner Loop is increasingly expensive.

Over the past five years, the value of land inside Loop 610 has risen 70 percent, and in some parts it has increased much more.

It is a dynamic time to be living in or moving to the area: Exciting, maddening, hopeful, depressing - it depends on your point of view.

Within Houston's Inner Loop are clashing visions of what housing and urban living should be.

Is living inside the Loop mostly about having a great location, or will Inner Loopers want something more, such as an environment more socially engaging and culturally diverse than what they knew in the suburbs?

Historical preservation is another issue. Some experts believe it is a high priority to protect the integrity of a neighborhood, while others say that it makes more sense to tear down old houses when they are in bad shape.
It is equally hard to find agreement on new housing.

"One person says, `Give me a nice size back yard,' while the next guy says, `Give me a nice size house and to heck with the land,' " said Robert Litke, the city's director of planning and development.

Meanwhile, Litke said, the builder might be thinking, " `I'll squeeze as much as I can get out of the land and put up several townhouses.' "

"We have all of these issues that grind against each other," Litke said.

Some urban planners are hoping the interest and activity inside the Loop will cultivate a new Houston attitude: A desire for a more a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood, with more public spaces, more inviting destinations within walking distance, and one that blends residential and commercial life . And they are sprouting in places.

The most notable example is downtown, with its lofts, restaurants, nightclubs and sports venues; and on a smaller scale, Midtown Square, a new apartment development in Midtown.

Others say that such an "urban village" concept has its limits in Houston and see it as the antithesis of the city's car-oriented lifestyle.

In an effort to make neighborhoods more pedestrian-friendly and to empower residents to a degree, Litke's office crafted amendments to Chapter 42, the city's land development ordinance. They were approved by City Council about two years ago.

One of the amendments requires front-facing garages to be set back 17 feet from the street so that cars parked in driveways won't block sidewalks. Other Chapter 42 amendments are meant to encourage Inner Loop townhouse developers to build shared driveways, by designing townhouses behind one another instead of side-by-side.
One Houston builder feels constrained by the amendments.

"We're caught between what the buyer wants and what the city wants," said Larry Davis, president of Urban Lofts Townhomes, who has built metal townhouses in West End, Midtown, Fourth Ward, Montrose and the East Side.
Noting that the amendments will in some instances persuade developers to decrease the size of backyards, Davis countered: "I think Houstonians want backyards and their privacy. They like to barbecue . . . "

Davis had a sarcastic take on local urban planners who advocate pedestrian-friendly urban environments: "I guess they want everybody sitting on stoops waving to people."

Said Davis, "It's like Los Angeles saying, `Let's be like Boston.' "

The desire to live near the center of town is itself an anti-Houston phenomenon - at least the Houston of much of the last half century.

Robert Fisher, a professor at the University of Houston's Graduate School of Social Work, noted that for decades there has been a centrifugal growth away from the city, which has led to more suburbs, malls and what Fisher calls an "antiurban bias."

"Now we're seeing a return to the center," Fisher said. "People are tired of the sameness of suburban living and being caught in traffic, and when you get a vibrant core it begins to attract people."

Barton Smith, professor of economics at the University of Houston and the director of the Institute for Regional Forecasting, said the Inner Loop's population rise should be viewed with perspective. Despite some impressive numbers the past five years, the Inner Loop housing market still represents a small part of the overall market, Smith said. In the 1990s, it was about 4 percent of the city's overall growth.

However, Smith said, housing activity within the Loop is noteworthy, "considering that it had been losing people from the '60s until the mid-'90s."

The high cost of real estate may prevent the Inner Loop from experiencing an explosion of new residents, Smith said, because "the prices got bid up to the point where they've choked off most of the market."

Before the real estate boom, it was easier for the less affluent to move to the Inner Loop.

In West End, for example, "the first migration, in the '80s, was comprised of artsy people who were attracted to the neighborhood because it was interesting, funky and diverse," said Betty Heacker, owner of Wabash Antiques and Feed Store. The new wave of West Enders, she said, "chose the location, not the neighborhood."

Barton Smith has identified those currently moving to the Inner Loop as old and new Houston immigrants.

"Houston experienced extraordinary growth in the '60s and '70s," he said. "A lot of the people who immigrated to Houston in those years have recently become `empty nesters' who are more comfortable with less living space and don't have to worry about schools. They're saying, `Enough's enough. I don't need to commute anymore.' They're willing to pay the price and downsize."

Along with the very wealthy, who can afford to pay $150 per square foot in places such as West University, are the recent immigrants: "The well-employed young who don't need as much space and want to be where the action is," Smith said.

Both of those groups are candidates for townhouses, and townhouses do have their detractors.

"If we don't get any help from the city, townhouse upon townhouse will be the norm," said Mike O'Brien, president of the Houston Homeowners Association, who maintained that "they're not compatible with many existing neighborhoods."

Local Realtor Tim Surratt, who sells houses and townhouses throughout the Inner Loop, said that his clients who have transferred from other big cities are typically happy to move into townhouses. Cities such as Washington, D.C., Baltimore, New York and Chicago, Surratt said, "have nothing but row houses" near the center of town.

Davis, who has built many townhomes in West End, said he's beginning to see a slowdown in townhouse development in that subdivision, partly because the land has gotten so expensive.

Similarly, some lots in Montrose have become dramatically more expensive in the past few years, said Ed Gonzales, president of the Neartown Association, representing 22 civic groups in the area.

"How long will builders be able to pay that type of price?" Gonzales asked. "Rather than buy a lot and put up several townhouses - is the (Montrose) market ready for just one big house? That's being explored right now."

Houston's Midtown and adjacent Fourth Ward also have undergone considerable development recently.

The Midtown apartment complex Midtown Square, developed by Atlanta-based Post Properties, has gotten the attention of Bob Eury, president of Central Houston.

"It's establishing what people often want when looking for the urban experience," he said.

Midtown Square features wide brick sidewalks, ground-floor retail space, including sidewalk cafes, and a striking view of downtown.

Other Midtown apartment complexes, Eury said, have sidewalks and nice landscaping, but, unlike Midtown Square, "their orientation is still introverted," offering "environments like you'd find at the corner of Richmond and Gessner." They lack the "enhanced pedestrian experience," he said.

Eury said that the more people see pedestrian-friendly, urban environments, "the more they will demand it."

Fourth Ward has seen the destruction of many old houses to make way for upscale and low-income housing.

"When I look at what's happened to the Fourth Ward, I'm encouraged about what might happen to the Third and Fifth Wards," said Al Calloway, president of the Houston Citizens Chamber of Commerce, a predominantly African-American organization. "What's happening between Gray and Dallas is an attempt to offer affordable houses along with the upscale development nearby."

It's disappointing to see the destruction of shotgun houses in Fourth Ward, Calloway said, "but many of the old houses were not owned by the residents. They were rental properties."

Calloway saluted the Fourth Ward-area churches that have created community development corporations to build low-income housing in the neighborhood. Others are saddened by the destruction of Fourth Ward houses and believe it's unnecessary.

"Such architects as Hill Swift and W.O. Neuhaus demonstrated how existing houses could be adapted for modern standards without destroying the Freedmen's Town Historic District and displacing an entire residential community," said Stephen Fox, a Rice University architectural historian. "Revitalization has become a code word in Houston for mass destruction of low-income housing and mass displacement of low-income minorities."

Other Inner Loop neighborhoods are holding on to what they've got and resisting new development. Only subdivisions with strong deed restrictions can take such a stance.

"In a city with no zoning, deed restrictions are a neighborhood's saving grace," said Max Samfield, data services manager for the Houston-Galveston Area Council.

Eastwood, east of downtown and one of Houston's first planned subdivisions, is experiencing a comeback, with young families moving in and fixing up old homes. What's keeping Eastwood intact are its deed restrictions, said Bill England president of the Eastwood Civic Association.

"We get accused of gentrifying the neighborhood," England said, "but we're actually taking it back to what it was originally."

Nondeed restricted neighborhoods now have some recourse, at least in terms of setback lines. One of the amendments to Chapter 42 stipulates that a block or a group of blocks within a neighborhood can determine how far houses and garages must be from the street, pending city approval.

So far the city has granted approval each time a block of residents petitioned, Litke said.

Houston is known for being a city opposed to regulation, but its residents may now be more willing to take a bolder approach toward the shaping of their neighborhoods, said Steven Klineberg, a Rice University professor of sociology and director of the Texas Environmental Survey. Among the findings in the most recent environmental survey poll released earlier this year: 80 percent of Harris County residents support "better land-use planing to guide development."

"There is also a clear shift in rhetoric among the city's business leaders," Klineberg said. "It reflects a clear understanding that Houston's success in the 21st century is much different from its strategy in the 20th, and that Houston has to refashion itself as a more attractive and healthier city that offers more choice."

How will it all turn out for Inner Loop neighborhoods?

"A lot will depend on whether we create enforceable public policy," said Samfield, "and whether we make sure that the right things happen as opposed to hope that they happen."