Will The Heights Go Wet?

Heights future is at stake as voters decide whether to stay 'Weird & Dry' or 'Evolve and Change'

Tuesday's vote will shape the future of The Heights.

Houston Heights Beverage Coalition/Facebook; Keep Heights Dry/Facebook

While the presidential election highlights Tuesday’s election, a local vote could have a profound effect on the future of The Heights. Residents living in the neighborhood’s dry zone are voting to determine whether to overturn the restrictions that have prevented the retail sale of wine, beer, and liquor for off premise consumption in the neighborhood since 1912.

If the vote passes, Texas grocery giant H-E-B has pledged to open a new store at the site of the former Fiesta at Shepherd Drive and 24th Street. The company financed a petition drive to place the issue on Tuesday’s ballot and has been lobbying hard for it to pass through a group called the Houston Heights Beverage Coalition, even as it has also signed a lease to open a store near the Heights on Washington Avenue.

Around 10,000 voters in an area that extends approximately from West 27th Street to the north and White Oak Bayou to the south; and from Oxford in the east to Durham in the west are eligible to decide the issue.

Count Morgan Weber as one of the measure’s most vocal supporters. Together with his business partner Ryan Pera, Weber owns Agricole Hospitality, the company behind acclaimed Heights restaurants Revival Market, Coltivare, and the whiskey-oriented patio bar Eight Row Flint.

“My concern is that there’s a lot of misinformation out there, from the people who are opposing this,” Weber tells CultureMap. “A lot of them are just, like, H-E-B is going to come in. They’re the big guys trying to steamroll the little guy, have their cake and eat it, too, with this property. The reality, in my opinion, is a vote against Prop 1 highly affects small business in a negative way.”

Both Coltivare and Eight Row Flint have private club licenses that allow them to sell alcohol, and Tuesday’s vote won’t change anything for the way restaurants operate in the neighborhood. However, Revival Market stands to benefit if the measure passes, because Weber could begin selling wine there. Weber says that he and Pera converted Revival from a market that primarily sold meat and produce into more of a restaurant after other grocery stores opened nearby, including the Whole Foods on Waugh, a Kroger on Studemont, and an extensive renovation to the Kroger at Shepherd Drive and 11th Street, cut into Revival’s revenues.

“Overnight, we went from selling hundreds of thousands of dollars of meat out of our butcher case to now it’s probably five to eight percent of our gross sales annually. That’s not something to be butt hurt about. It’s just the way it is,” Weber says. "You’re either forced to evolve and change, or you go out of business without being able to sell alcohol here on a retail level. We have customers that come in almost daily. When they get a charcuterie board, they buy a bunch of meat and cheese, (they ask), ‘You guys don’t sell wine, do you?’ Nope. We don’t. We would love to, but we can’t.”

Specifically, Weber says he would like to sell the sort of small production wines served at Coltivare that typically aren’t available for retail purchase. Revival would offer 30 to 40 bottles at any time from producers people might not be familiar with, but that he and Coltivare sommelier Jeb Stuart think customers would enjoy having at home.

A special place to live

While Weber and other business owners are supporting the H-E-B-led effort, a group of Heights residents have organized a group called Keep the Heights dry to urge residents to vote no. Co-founder Ashish Mahendru is a commercial litigator who’s lived in the dry zone with his family since 2002, and he thinks preventing the retail sale of alcohol has helped make the Heights a special to live.

“We are big believers in the Heights and what it stands for in our community, for our city in general, and how it’s a magnet for responsible development and putting a beacon on how historical character and charm is an asset that should be preserved,” Mahendru says. “We stand for protecting the character and the vibe of the Heights, which is why our signs say, 'Keep the Heights Weird & Dry.'Maybe that’s a little bit quirky. We’ve stolen that from Austin. We want to keep the Heights the way it is.”

Mahendru makes two points clear. First, he’s not opposed to H-E-B opening in the neighborhood; second, he isn’t a teetotaler. He worries about the potential ramifications for the neighborhood if the vote passes. The ability to sell alcohol would attract businesses that have shunned the neighborhood due to their inability to sell alcohol, and their arrival could change the neighborhood’s residential feel.

“If you look at the Subway and the Pizza Hut at I-10 and Heights Boulevard, some might argue the best use of that would be to open a (gas station) there and put the (restaurants) inside,” Mahendru says. “I would suggest that is completely disproportion with what Heights Blvd is. That is the crown jewel of the Heights community . . . H-E-B’s off premise use would allow a gas station to come in right behind.”

Weber says that not only would he welcome a gas station — “Then I don’t have to worry about where the fuck I’m going to get gas in the Heights” — but that residential development that’s converted small bungalows into larger homes has already changed the Heights.

“The character of the neighborhood is gone. That’s what no one realizes,” Weber says. “It’s gigantic houses that kind of look historical or bungalows that have been rehabbed, or, because of the historic preservation office, they have 4,000 square feet tacked onto the back: a camelback house, we call it.”

Mahendru acknowledges that economic development has brought larger houses, but he disputes that renovating what he describes as "dilapidated or falling apart" homes has upset the neighborhood’s overall character.

“This isn’t an argument about staying stuck in a time warp from 1912. We’re fully cognizant of where we are in 2016,” he says. "The Heights is coveted because of all the activity. It’s consistent with its different historic character from the rest of Houston.”

Both Mahendru and Weber express confidence their side will prevail, but it will be up to area residents to determine which side wins in Tuesday’s vote.

politics drinks craft-beer wine the-heights

Winter weather warning

Arctic air will bring hard freeze to Houston this weekend

Photo by Uliana Sova on Unsplash

This weekend could bring ice to Dallas-Fort Worth and beyond.

With many Americans still recovering from multiple blasts of snow and unrelenting freezing temperatures in the nation’s northern tier, a new storm is set to emerge this weekend that could coat roads, trees and power lines with devastating ice across a wide expanse of the South, including Texas.

The storm arriving late this week and into the weekend is shaping up to be a “widespread potentially catastrophic event from Texas to the Carolinas,” said Ryan Maue, a former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“I don’t know how people are going to deal with it,” he said.

Forecasters on Tuesday, January 20 warned that the ice could weigh down trees and power lines, triggering widespread outages.

“If you get a half of an inch of ice — or heaven forbid an inch of ice — that could be catastrophic,” said Keith Avery, CEO of the Newberry Electric Cooperative in South Carolina.

The National Weather Service warned of "great swaths of heavy snow, sleet, and treacherous freezing rain” starting Friday in much of the nation’s midsection and then shifting toward the East Coast through Sunday.

Temperatures will be slow to warm in many areas, meaning ice that forms on roads and sidewalks might stick around, forecasters say.

The exact timing of the approaching storm — and where it is headed — remained uncertain on Tuesday. Forecasters say it can be challenging to predict precisely which areas could see rain and which ones could be punished with ice.

Meteorologists at WFAA say it's too early for an exact forecast across Dallas-Fort Worth. But it's good to start being weather aware.

Here’s what to know:

Cold air clashing with rain to fuel a 'major winter storm’
An extremely cold arctic air mass is set to dive south from Canada, setting up a clash with the cold temperatures and rain that will be streaming eastward across the southern U.S.

“This is extreme, even for this being the peak of winter,” National Weather Service meteorologist Bryan Jackson said of the cold temperatures.

When the cold air meets the rain, the likely result will be “a major winter storm with very impactful weather, with all the moisture coming up from the Gulf and encountering all this particularly cold air that’s spilling in,” Jackson said.

Texas could be a harbinger for other parts of the South
Some of the storm’s earliest impacts could be in Texas on Friday, as the arctic air mass slides south through much of the state, National Weather Service forecaster Sam Shamburger said in a briefing on the storm.

“At the same time, we’re expecting rain to move into much of the state,” Shamburger said.

Low temperatures could fall into the 20s or even the teens in parts of Texas by Saturday, with the potential for a wintery mix of weather in the northern part of the state.

Forecasters cautioned that significant uncertainty remains, particularly over how much ice or snow could fall across north and central Texas.

“It’s going to be a very difficult forecast,” Shamburger said.

An atmospheric river could set up across the Southern U.S.
An atmospheric river of moisture could be in place by the weekend, pulling precipitation across Texas and other states along the Gulf Coast and continuing across Georgia and the Carolinas, forecasters said.

“Global models are painting a concerning picture of what this weekend could look like, with an increasingly strong signal for ice storm potential across North Georgia and portions of central Georgia,” according to the National Weather Service's Atlanta office.

Highway and air travel could be tangled by the storm
Travel is a major concern, as Southern states have less equipment to remove snow and ice from roads, and extremely cold temperatures expected after the storm could prevent ice from melting for several days.

The storm is also expected to impact many of the nation’s major hub airports, including those in Dallas-Fort Worth; Atlanta; Memphis, Tennessee; and Charlotte, North Carolina.

Polar air from Canada to keep northern states in a deep freeze
Unusually cold temperatures are already in place across much of the northern tier of the U.S., but the blast of arctic air expected later this week is “will be the coldest yet,” Jackson said.

“There’s a large sprawling vortex of low pressure centered over Hudson Bay,” Jackson said of the sea in northern Canada that’s connected to the Arctic Ocean. “And this is dominating the weather over all of North America.”

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