Texas Transit Association

Transit-oriented development (TOD) begins in earnest.

Joint development plans draw backers, critics
By MIKE SNYDER
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle Nov. 22, 2003

In a city where the average household owns 1.5 vehicles and 72 percent of workers drive alone to their jobs, it may be hard to imagine a lifestyle that offers the chance to work, shop and enjoy culture without a car.

Yet new patterns of urban development triggered by the light rail lines voters approved Nov. 4 can create this opportunity in Houston, particularly if public policies are developed to support the creation of mixed-use “transit villages,” planners, developers and civic activists say.

The light rail system “is going to be a draw for people who want to work and live in a situation where they don’t have to get in their car at all.” said Zane Segal, a developer and broker who recently chaired a panel that advised Metro on transit-related development projects.

According to this vision, stations on the new rail lines, particularly those where lines converge or where trains and buses both stop, will be magnets for pedestrian-friendly developments that mix housing, restaurants and shops.

This is what Metro Chairman Arthur Schechter had in mind when he declared on election night that the rail system “is going to completely change the nature of Houston, especially the core of the city.”

In a subsequent interview, Schechter acknowledged that Houston’s traditional growth model of “ever-widening concentric circles” — a pattern commonly known as sprawl — probably will continue. But a number of experts say rail-induced development can help create an alternative lifestyle.

This has happened in varying degrees in Los Angeles, Dallas and other cities that have built rail recently. Some major projects are joint efforts, with transit agencies buying land around stations and partnering with private companies to build on it. Others are done by developers alone.

Metro is planning a joint development project around the Wheeler station on the Main Street rail line from downtown to the Reliant Astrodome area, scheduled to open Jan. 1. The agency has purchased 6.7 acres surrounding the station, which will be a hub for buses as well as rail, and is preparing to solicit proposals from developers.

Metro officials say joint developments are a good way to boost ridership and are encouraged by the Federal Transit Administration, which Metro is counting on to help pay for its rail lines.

But City Councilman Michael Berry, who opposed the rail plan, said the transit agency shouldn’t be involved in real estate projects. Money spent on joint development, he said, reduces funds available for bus service.

“The reason we have a public transit agency is to move our people,” Berry said. “They ought to be out of the development business and in the business of moving people and reducing traffic congestion.”

Metro’s voter-approved plan calls for 80 miles of light rail by 2025. Since much of this system will be inside Loop 610 and almost all of it inside Beltway 8, local planners say, the development it attracts could nudge the metropolitan area’s growth pattern back toward the center — not dramatically, perhaps, but significantly.

Even a 10 percent increase in rail-triggered housing production in the central city would affect the balance between urban and suburban growth, said city planning director Bob Litke.

He cautioned, however, that such changes will be gradual and limited in scope.

“Certainly, the rail system is not touted by anybody to fundamentally change the fact that we are an automobile society,” Litke said. “We’re still going to be dominated by highways, by one person in one car. That is our lifestyle.”

In Los Angeles, the transit agency has aggressively pursued joint development projects along its 56-mile light rail system, which it started building in 1990. Roger Christiansen, a Los Angeles transit activist, said rail-induced development is only now beginning to create opportunities for urban, car-free lifestyles.

“You’re not going to find the urban form transformed, but corridors are transforming,” Christiansen said.

In Houston, considerable new development has emerged along the Main Street corridor during the years that Metro has been planning and building its first rail line. Property values have risen throughout the corridor, even doubling in certain areas, said Ed Wulfe, chairman of the Main Street Coalition, which is overseeing redevelopment in the corridor.

But the new development has mostly taken the form of single-use projects — retail or residential, but not a combination — and much of the new housing has been built on parallel streets rather than on Main Street.

The one “mixed-use” project in the area is Post Midtown Square at Bagby and West Gray, which features shops, apartments and restaurants. But this project is six blocks west of the rail line and 11 blocks from the nearest station, at Main and Wheeler. This places it beyond the quarter-mile distance that planners use as a benchmark for convenient walking distance.

Once the Main Street line has been operating long enough for developers and lenders to see its potential, developer Segal said, momentum will build rapidly for more transit-focused development projects.

“The day we all get on board the train and we can ride it from one end to the other, there’s going to be a horde of developers looking to get on board, and my fear is we’re going to get everybody on board and a lot of those people aren’t going to know what they’re doing,” he said. “They will build projects that aren’t appropriate.”

Houston’s limited experience with mixed-use developments, and certain features of the city’s development code, may make it more difficult to produce transit-friendly projects, local planners and developers said. A proposed “area plan” ordinance that would authorize unique development guidelines in different parts of the city has drawn opposition from real estate groups and faces an uncertain future at City Hall.

Litke said other tools, such as tax incentives and street or utility investments, are available to encourage transit-oriented developments along Houston’s new rail corridors.

“If you have a good, cooperative game plan between the city and Metro and a series of public policies and programs that attract the kind of developer you’re looking for, you can in fact make it work without some of these land-use restrictions,” Litke said.

One example of this approach is a large, mixed-use development planned on a site just north of downtown, near the base of a planned light rail line from downtown to Northline Mall. This rail line, scheduled to open in 2008, is the first one Metro intends to build after completing the Main Street line.

The Hardy Street Partners, a development group that purchased 43 acres of an old rail yard between Main and Hardy Streets, agreed to follow guidelines intended to create a pedestrian-friendly environment: wide sidewalks, buildings brought close to the street with attractive facades, parking tucked out of public view, and mixed uses such as apartments above shops.

The city planning department has proposed creating a Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone on 242 acres surrounding the site. The TIRZ, a tax-incentive tool commonly used by the city to promote economic development, would support the Hardy Street Partners’ plans to build 3,900 houses and apartments, 1.3 million square feet of retail and office space and 300,000 square feet of parks and civic space over 25 years.

Rail stations planned at the University of Houston-Downtown and at Quitman Street would be within walking distance of some areas of the TIRZ.

Patricia Knudson Joiner, owner of Knudson & Associates, a planning consultant for the project, said it is modeled on Mockingbird Station, the best-known mixed-use project on the Dallas light rail line.

“We have an even more strategic location,” Joiner said, because of the potential convergence of light rail, commuter rail and bus service near the Hardy Street Partners’ project site.

Joiner said the project is expected to be a catalyst for other developments in the TIRZ. Infrastructure and other public services funded by the tax increment — the revenue produced by rising property values — will be used to support projects with similar design features.