In 1993, when Blackburn sued several federal agencies over the environmental studies of the West Side Airport, he also sued over the Grand Parkway. Even though that suit was eventually thrown out, Blackburn sees it as one of the most effective legal actions he has taken, because "it forced the highway department to do a much more careful assessment" of the unfinished sections of the Parkway. Once the final environmental impact statement on Segment E is published, possibly at the beginning of next year, it will be open to public comment and possible changes. A prolonged legal protest led by Blackburn could seriously delay developers' plans. And as Blackburn thought about it, he wondered if perhaps the revived West Side Airport was simply a chit the developers planned to use to get what they really wanted -- a free and clear Grand Parkway. In the fight for the Katy Prairie, maybe the idea was to have an airport to trade for a road.
If what the West Houston Association really wanted to avoid was a delay of the Grand Parkway, reasoned Blackburn, perhaps it was time the two sides sat down and negotiated. So he called West Houston Association's conservation chairman, Rick Rice, and put it out: You give us the West Side Airport and we'll back off of the Grand Parkway, especially where it crosses the Cypress Creek watershed.
So far, Blackburn has had no takers on his offer to negotiate. Jim Kollaer of the Partnership says he doesn't believe that Blackburn can deliver his constituency; he can't speak for all environmentalists, after all, and the Houston Sierra Club has denounced the Grand Parkway as a "road to ruin." But more difficult tasks have been negotiated. It's taken 25 years for ship channel industries and environmentalists to work out the dredging of the channel and its effect on Galveston Bay, but it has been done, and Blackburn was in the middle of that negotiation.
For now, all eyes are directed at the mayor or, if Lanier decides not to decide, the mayor to come. Creating the Grand Parkway was part of Lanier's developer's mode; now he would like to be remembered as the man who redeveloped the inner city. Eliminating the West Side Airport, and its notion that Houston must expand outward, could be a fitting symbol for that work. But it could be an even more important moment in Houston history. It could amount to saying that developers are not the only people who have a right to plan the city's future.
"Look," says one west side developer who has watched the scene closely, "a lot of this is symbolic. I can't find anybody who has any financial interest in the airport. I do know that the mayor has no passion for this project. Lanier could change it in a minute if he wants to."
A spokesman for the public works department says the mayor has lit a fire under them to complete its report on the airport site conversion, which is due at the end of this month.
"Lanier is in a Solomon-like position," Blackburn notes. "This could be the greatest thing he's done. It could be a watershed moment for Lanier and the city. It's a visionary moment."
