The invaluable Swamplot blog posts an update on the Ashby high rise project, whose developers saw their latest proposal rejected (unsurprisingly) by city bureaucrats who understand very well that Mayor White doesn’t want the plans approved.
Swamplot notes that the Chronicle‘s Mike Snyder has blogged that since one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, perhaps the developers have just been trying to build a record for a lawsuit all along. Well, Snyder doesn’t quite blog that — rather, unnamed “observers” are said to feel this way. Snyder further notes,
The developers are portraying this case as an example of heavy-handed and inequitable city regulation that all developers should worry about.
A more thoughtful criticism is that some of us are worried about non-transparent government that seemingly changes the rules in the middle of the game because certain elites in the city have the mayor’s cellphone number and don’t want high-density development in their neighborhood.
Swamplot also notes that in contrast to Snyder, the Houston Business Journal does not downplay the changes proposed by the developers:
In order to address traffic concerns, Buckhead recently made some changes to the project design and commissioned an expanded traffic study.
Under the new plan, the Ashby driveway would only be used as an emergency exit. Buckhead also relocated the main driveway on Bissonnet to the center of the project, instead of having it on the east end of the site.
“It optimizes the traffic movements in and out of the driveway from both directions,” Morgan says.
All quibbling about the extent of the changes aside, we do concur with Snyder’s characterization in this sense: it is indeed insane to think that any bureaucrat is going to sign off on the last roadblock to this project so long as Mayor (Boss Hogg?) White remains in office and he (and fellow elites) remain opposed to it. We know how The Houston Way works.
