The Airport That Wouldn't Die

Smith's goal is to put together contiguous acreage in the watershed through land donations, purchases and conservation easements. The conservation easements, which have been used extensively in the Northeast and Midwest, are a relatively new concept in Texas. They assure that the land will be used in perpetuity for wildlife purposes, but allow it to be held by its owners and passed on to their heirs. Smith is also working to establish the concept of mitigation banking, in which wetlands in the refuge would be bought by developers and highway builders in exchange for filling in wetlands elsewhere. That way, resources would be used to preserve contiguous wetlands valuable for wildlife instead of restoring small parcels near development sites.

Smith hopes to announce a major refuge acquisition in the next month. Meanwhile, he's staying out of arguments about the West Side Airport. Though the Katy Prairie Land Conservancy was founded by a former Houston Sierra Club president and its board includes Jim Blackburn and others who have fought the airport, the organization stays out of airport politics and takes a single-minded focus on the refuge. The West Houston Association is supporting Smith's application for a federal grant to secure a 550-acre parcel for the conservancy and is also working on a preservation concept for the Cypress Creek watershed. In April 1994 the association helped sponsor a conference on the Katy Prairie that brought environmentalists, state wildlife officials and developers into the same room for the first time.

If there is one area of agreement established between developers and environmentalists, it seems to be the Cypress Creek refuge. If nothing else, there is an economic incentive for preserving part of the prairie. At the Katy Prairie Conference, a Texas A&M professor pointed out that refuges and parks actually drive up the land values of adjoining parcels. A refuge might be seen as an attraction for developers, just like a golf course.

But if the refuge seemed to offer some common hope for agreement about the Katy Prairie, the controversy over the airport site appears to have separated parties back into their original camps. Is it just a case of pride, of developers not wanting the environmentalists to "win" on the airport? Or are they angling for something else, for a bargaining position in the looming environmental struggle for the development of the Katy Prairie?

Almost a year after he thought the airport had been laid in its grave, Blackburn ponders the question and wonders if what the development community really wants is not the West Side Airport site, but instead an end to his opposition to the Grand Parkway. The airport may be only a distant possibility, but the Grand Parkway is something else again, a red-hot development tool that has made millions for developers and promises to make many millions more. The Parkway, a four-lane thoroughfare designed as a 170-mile-long outer ring around the city, is a developers' tool pure and simple, and one of its leading proponents during the 1980s was Bob Lanier.

Lanier was frank about its purpose: build roads by using the "greed and avarice" of developers and landowners, who would donate rights of way and contribute the engineering costs of the Parkway in exchange for valuable frontage on a road ultimately constructed by the state. The right of way donations and engineering costs are collected by the nonprofit Grand Parkway Association. In the early years, it was run by the very developers and landowners who would benefit from the Parkway. Lanier, who owned 1,700 acres in the northwest segment, was one who stood to benefit. In 1986 a group of small landowners who saw the project as nothing more than big developers using the state highway funds to further their own interests accused him of conflict of interest for votes he made as highway commissioner.

The first segment of the Grand Parkway, a 19-mile stretch between US 59 and I-10, was completed in 1994. The state paid $74 million in construction costs and landowners donated about 85 percent of the right of way. Two of the beneficiaries of the project were mayoral candidate Rob Mosbacher Jr. and his father Bob Mosbacher, the former secretary of commerce under President George Bush. Anticipating the new thoroughfare, the Mosbachers and Josephine Abercrombie had bought the 5,200-acre Cinco Ranch near the intersection of the Parkway and I-10. In 1984 they sold the parcel for $83 million to the Mischer Corporation, which developed it. At the time, the transaction was reported to be the largest land deal in Houston history. Development of the Cinco Ranch subdivisions was made possible in large part by the development of the southern segment of the Parkway, which enables residents to drive easily to I-10 and the business parks on the west side's energy corridor.

The next planned section of the Parkway, called Segment E, is a 13.7-mile stretch of road reaching from I-10 to Highway 290 that will pass through the eastern edge of the Katy Prairie and cross the Cypress Creek watershed. It will provide more bedroom communities for west side business parks, such as those built by Ned Holmes in the Eldridge Parkway area near Highway 6.