In this week’s Houston Press, Rich Connelly notes that a big downtown booster isn’t exactly leading by example:
Just off Market Square, near the center of the area that’s supposed to be triggering a downtown revival, one property owner has persisted in keeping up ugly, sidewalk-blocking scaffolding and barriers.
The eyesores have been there for more than two years; the property owner, not satisfied with simply annoying downtown visitors, also at one point failed to pay thousands of dollars in permit fees — more than a year’s worth of payments to the city. When the city asked to see their plans to determine how long the unsightly project would continue, the property owner blew them off and didn’t respond.
Sounds like a story you’d read about in the Houston Chronicle, which has tirelessly pushed every scheme, no matter how harebrained, to rejuvenate downtown Houston and has been harsh on those deemed insufficiently civic-minded.
But maybe you won’t read that story, because the property owner in question is the Houston Chronicle.
The Chron is replacing the exterior facade and modernizing its offices at 801 Texas, a spokeswoman says. The project should take another 14 months “once required permits are obtained,” she says.
Wes Johnson, spokesman for the city’s public works department, says the paper first asked permission for the “sidewalk covers” in 2004. “About a year later,” he says, “we asked them if they were going to continue with this because their permit was running out — they said, ‘Yeah, we are; we’ll get back to you’ — well, they didn’t.”
Maybe James Howard Gibbons could write an Editorial LiveJournal about it!
Of course, the Chronicle editorial page is about as timely as the Chronicle remodeling project, so it may not appear for a while.
