Yeah, this is pretty much the last thing my neighborhood needs:
Some Midtown residents are banding together to oppose a proposed convenience store and gas station on McGowen Street between Milam Street and Travis Street.
City officials are scheduled to meet Thursday to decide whether to approve the development.
"The first thing I thought was, 'Well, we're just going to have more people hanging out at a gas station,' and that discourages me from wanting to walk," said Brenda Franco, who lives across the street.
Franco moved to the area because she can walk to and from work, and she often uses the light rail, which is just a block away.
"Thinking of the impatience of drivers here, more than likely cutting through this gas station parking lot," she said. "That's concerning. I'm definitely against it. I want to keep Midtown as it is, which is walkable."
Midtown is one of three neighborhoods in our city that the city council has designated as a walkable place, which means special rules apply to development.
But the developer is asking city officials to make an exception.
I am familiar with the parcel of land where this gas station is proposed to be built because I walk or drive past it almost every day. The space is currently a parking lot; it was previously associated with the Cadillac dealership on the other side of Travis but when that establishment shuttered it became a pay lot for Midtown club-goers. The property is certainly ripe for redevelopment, but a gas station is definitely not its ideal use.
First, there are already multiple gas stations in close proximity to this one, including one just a short distance up the street at the corner of Travis and Hadley. I'm really curious to know how the market analysis that was conducted for this development, assuming there was one, justified the need for an additional gas station and convenience store in this corner of Midtown. It seems like oversaturation.
Second, this part of Midtown has a large homeless population and this gas station will become a place for them to loiter and panhandle the very second it opens. Anybody who has tried to get gas at any of the nearby existing stations (or, for that matter, has tried to get groceries at the Midtown Randall's) knows what I'm talking about. Another gas station in this location will just worsen the existing situation, which is already bad.
Third, this property is just one block away from a light rail station and across the street from two apartment complexes, one of which has a historic marker affixed to it. This property is a paradigmatic example of a place worthy of pedestrian-friendly, transit-oriented development. A gas station/convenience store is neither.
Finally, putting a gas station on this property will represent a huge lost opportunity. This is because properties that become gas stations tend to remain gas stations; the costs associated with removing the underground storage tanks (which usually involves environmental remediation) generally make redevelopment of gas station sites uneconomical. That means that once this is built, it's going to be there for a long time, even as the properties around it change.
The bottom line is that putting a gas station/convenience store on this site is an incredibly lazy, unimaginative, and unnecessary use of piece of a property that could be developed into something so much more valuable and restorative for the neighborhood. I'm rarely someone to criticize somebody else for the way they use their property, especially since I live in a city that famously does not have zoning laws, but this is a ridiculously stupid proposal that will do lasting damage to Midtown's urban fabric.
The KTRK article doesn't go into the nature of the variance the developer is requesting.
