REVITALIZING COMMUNITIES story and photos by Crystal Simmons
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hopping is more convenient than ever. With the click of a button, customers can order food, groceries, clothing, specialty items, and furniture from their phone or computer. But that convenience comes at a price. As the need for traditional brick-and-mortar shops declines, retail centers, restaurants, and malls continue to close, even as the COVID-19 pandemic subsides and consumer spending reaches pre-pandemic levels. When these buildings remain vacant, communities can suffer. Bobby Lieb, the president of the Houston Northwest Chamber of Commerce, says the closures have left many wondering what's next for retail hotspots like the Cypress Creek community. "People who live around here, who remember the good old days, intuitively want it to go back to that," says Lieb. "It's never going to go back to the way it was. What we're looking for is an economically viable area. It could become something completely different. And what that something is remains to be seen." Lieb says the area's high visibility along the heavily trafficked FM 1960 corridor traditionally attracted retailers, making it a top retail destination in the 1970s and 1980s. But blight, vacant buildings, competition from surrounding communities, aging infrastructure, and online shopping have driven customers away since its heyday. "We have 60,000-70,000 cars up and down this corridor every day," he says. "That's a good number if you're in the retail business." But those vehicles are now passing boarded up buildings, graffiti, and empty parking lots. To attract businesses to the area, Lieb wants to create
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a management district directed by a board of directors, which would have the power to regulate commercial properties and apartments along the corridor, eliminate nuisance buildings, clean up litter, pay for public art, and add security. His goal is to encourage business along the corridor, not shape it. The process would require Lieb to receive permission from enough property owners along the corridor to equal at least 51% of the assessed property value and then apply to the state. If approved, the management district could fund improvements through assessments on its properties. "They're like a MUD (municipal utility district), but instead of streets, water, and sewer, it's economic development," he says. "They do things like nuisance abatement, litter removal, safety, and security. It's essentially cleaning up the area." Lieb says the process could take years because many property owners aren't local. "I can't walk into Starbucks at Champions and FM 1960 and say, 'Hey, do you guys support a management district?' because they'll just say, ‘I don't know, you're going to have to ask my landlord,’" he says. "It's the property owners directly who have to sign on to it." In the meantime, Lieb says the chamber works closely with law enforcement, the Harris County Fire Marshal's Office, Harris County Public Health, Harris County Precinct 4, and the Harris County Attorney's Office to address vacant buildings that have fallen into disrepair or attract criminal activity. In most cases, Lieb says, the owner will clean and secure the property. But in others, the building may need to be demolished. The chamber and many concerned residents spent years appealing to InvestCorp Partners, the owners of the Mill Creek office building at 4702 FM 1960 West, to clean up the old office building. But it sat vacant for at least a decade before the Harris County Attorney's Office ordered its demolition. By that time, the building had become a homeless encampment littered with trash and debris, with broken windows and graffiti-covered walls. Break-ins were common, and pieces of the facility had been removed and used for kindling. Peter Merwin, the principal design director at Gensler and subject-matter expert on retail-centric, mixed-use environments, and walkable urbanism, explains why landlords sometimes let buildings sit empty.
