The Next Battle
Condo complex tries to follow Walmart's successful Heights move, residents gearup for a fight
Just after Heights residents learned they'd be welcoming — and paying incentives for — a Walmart store bordering their neighborhood, a decade-long debate over a controversial condo development near the Freeland Historic District has reemerged.
The development, whose name has changed from "Viewpoint at the Heights" to "Emes Place Subdivision," would occupy 1.3 acres near the corner of East 5 1/2 Street and Frasier Street on the White Oak Bayou. Surrounding residents have fought the development before, and fear traffic increases, the necessary widening of Frasier Street and the rerouting of the popular hike and bike trail.
The developer, a Canadian group who go by Inner Loop Condos in Houston, also constructed the Piedmont in River Oaks and the Serento in the Medical Center and said they don't expect construction to begin right away.
Still, area residents are gearing up for a fight — they've already collected 800 signatures on a petition to stop the development, which they say would "forever alter the original street symmetry of Freeland Historic District, the last 100-percent-intact district in Houston," hinder emergency vehicle access to residents, increase flood danger and destroy a valuable natural green space that has existed since the early 1800s.
