HomeMy WebLinkAboutGrowth - Blanche BrickThe Impact of Growth on College Station, “The Home of Texas A&M University”
Blanche Brick
College Station History
The community of College Station was created in response to the location of Texas A&M College “far enough from Bryan not be a threat to the young women of that city,” and it continues
to grow and develop in response to the growth of Texas A&M University.
As Dr. John Junkins, Director of the Hagler Institute at Texas A&M noted
The explosive growth of the University over the past 3 decades is a defining driver of the growth of the BCS community. Of course neither the cities nor the University “control” the
other, so their mostly peaceful and mutually constructive co-existence speaks volumes to generally insightful and collaborative interaction of the leadership of the University, Bryan,
College Station and Brazos county. Managing rapid growth, however is seldom pain-free. Roads/traffic, infrastructure, recreational facilities, taxation and zoning challenges are constant
issues that are mostly being handled well.
This growth of Texas A&M in College Station from 39,163 students in 1988 to 60,979 in 2018 is one of the biggest developments in the history of the city of College Station. As a direct
result of this growth, the population of College Station has grown from 52,456 in 1990 to 119,692 in 2018.
The traditional Town and Gown tensions that accompanied the location of many colleges in established communities throughout the United States was not an issue in College Station because
the town itself was created by members of the faculty and staff of Texas A&M College. From 1876 – 1938, and for the first fifty years of its existence after the city was incorporated
in 1938, the city of College Station was more concerned with its political and economic relationship with the city of Bryan than with traditional Town and Gown issues within College
Station.
From its beginning, the layout of the city tells the history of how it developed at the major entrances to Texas A&M on the north, east and south sides, while the west entrance faced
the railroad tracks that gave the city its name as the “College Station” stop on the Houston and Texas Central line.
One street north of University Avenue on the north side of the campus is Church Street, aptly named due to the location of the Presbyterian, Baptist, Christian, Lutheran, Methodist and
Catholic churches that once clustered along this street. Today, only the Methodist and Catholic churches exist on Church Street. Others have moved to the south as the population moved
further south and as the value of their land for commercial uses close to the campus provided a financial incentive to relocate. In 2018 University Avenue was under major reconstruction
to take care of the increased traffic in this area and plans have been discussed by the city and TXDOT (University Avenue is also a State Highway) for even more extensive reconstruction
to take place.
While some restaurants and bars have made Northgate a renowned social area for A&M students, other areas to the north of the campus now see high rise student apartments where once small
businesses were located. The city has made considerable investment in the revitalization of Northgate, including the creation of a police force housed there, and has encouraged more
dense housing development in this area as one solution to the traffic issues which have resulted from the growth of TAMU.
On the west side of the campus, the train station has long since been replaced by a McDonald’s restaurant and multiple apartment buildings as Texas A&M expanded the West Campus area
to include the Medical School and Research Park, along with the newly renovated Bluebell Park for baseball. Further west the location of the George Bush Presidential Library and School
of Public Service has pushed the West Campus to the Harvey Mitchell Parkway and Easterwood Airport has expanded to offer more commercial flights to Dallas and Houston.
In 2018 family neighborhoods located on the east and south sides of the university that were created when faculty moved off the campus are struggling to survive the invasion of commercial
student rental properties referred to as Aggie Shacks or stealth dorms. In these neighborhoods, valuations and taxes on single family homes are being driven up by these incompatible
high-occupancy commercial rental properties.
While many of these residents have long-standing relationships with A&M students as faculty and staff members, the life styles and expectations of students living in a neighborhood zoned
for single family homes, has created social
tensions as well as economic challenges for those hoping to maintain traditional single family residences and the lifestyle such areas were created to support.
As a result of these challenges, for the first time in its history, College Station has experienced its own version of a Town/Gown issue. Though many citizens of College Station have
supported the growth of both the university and the city, others have found that the pace of this growth has threatened the quality of life which they have valued as “the home of Texas
A&M.”
In 2006 neighborhoods on the east side of Highway 6 came together to oppose the relocation of Wal-Mart from its present location on Texas Avenue to the southeast side of Highway 6 on
Rock Prairie Road. Citizens formed a Task Force that presented Comments and Recommendations Related to Sebesta and Rock Prairie Land Use Proposals to the Planning and Zoning Commission
appropriately enough on July 4, 2006.
Comments by Bill Stockton, Associate Agency Director of the Texas Transportation Institute, who served on this Task Force, indicate the level of frustration many citizens felt in trying
to have meaningful input in this issue.
“I don’t think this makes much difference any more, as I think the stars are aligned to ignore a year of work by the neighborhoods. While ‘losing’ is disappointing, I am more saddened
than anything at the apparent inability of City government to listen to and work with its citizens.”
This battle also played out in The Eagle with an article on July 9 by Councilman Ron Gay entitled “It’s Too Late to Keep CS a Village.” This article was published as a response to an
article by Hugh Stearns, Member of Planning and Zoning Commission entitled “What Kind of Community Do We Want” published on July 3.
On July 13, Don Hellriegel, Professor of Management and Executive Associate Dean of the Mays Business School at TAMU, and a leader of the Task Force, sent the City Council a summary
of these concerns that included a “Win-Win Solution” for Council to consider a “window of opportunity” for the city, citizens and Wal-Mart. Hellriegel proposed that Wal-Mart acquire
the adjacent Albertson’s site and expand in its present location rather than continuing to request a land use change for the Rock Prairie site.
This culminated in a Council meeting that had to be scheduled in the auditorium of A&M Consolidated High School with hundreds of citizens expressing their support for the task force
recommendations and their opposition to any land use change for the Rock Prairie site.
Ultimately, the City Council voted to reject the proposal for changes in land use thus ending a very heated debate over the future of the city’s plans for this site. This story would
not end, however, until 2011 when the Council approved a $1.6 million settlement agreement with Weingarten Realty Investors to end litigation over the use and development of the 70
acres near the intersection of Earl Rudder Freeway and Rock Prairie Road.
At the time of the settlement the city had spent $2 million in litigation and Mayor Nancy Berry said she believed the city would have prevailed in defending the legislative decisions
of previous city councils, but at significant additional cost to taxpayers.
As a result of this decision the Medical Corridor was created and Baylor Scott and White Hospital now occupies that site on the east side of the Medical Corridor. College Station Medical
Center and a large commercial shopping center occupy the west side of the Medical Corridor. And Wal-Mart built a Super Wal-Mart in their present location on Texas Avenue.
In 2017-2018, residents on the Southside organized to adopt a Neighborhood Conservation Overlay as a means of preserving the character of their neighborhood. They published their own
neighborhood newspaper, The Guinea Gazette, named after the flock of guineas that wander the neighborhood and give it a certain “rural” charm.
In 2017 residents from neighborhoods across the city formed the College Station Association of Neighborhoods (CSAN) and created a website (NeighborhoodIntegrity.org) to support candidates
for the City Council who they believed would be willing to listen to the citizens who were concerned about the impact of the growth of Texas A&M and the city on their neighborhoods.
As of Fall 2018, however, the Council had not found a successful way to respond to the concerns of citizens seeking to protect single family neighborhoods from the invasion of stealth
dorms or Aggie Shacks.
In recent years, the City Council has adopted several measures to finance the infrastructure required by this growth while also maintaining existing roads and water infrastructure.
In 2015, the City Council voted to increase the property taxes by 2.65 cents to cover transportation infrastructure needs along with needs of fire and police departments and raised taxes
by 2 cents more in 2016.
The City Council also voted in 2015 to increase the return on investment (ROI) on electric utility fund to 6.99% to cover pay increases for police along with other city workers.
In 2015, after the state legislature passed HB 1378 which stated that if citizens voted down an item in a bond election the city had to wait three years before funding that item in other
ways. As a result of this law, the City Council cancelled the Bond election for 2015 in favor of funding $50 million in transportation infrastructure with certificates of obligation.
(The Transportation Committee of the Citizens Advisory Committee had recommended funding $70 million of a projected $140 million needed.)
HB 1378 was a prime example of “unintended consequences” in action. It had been passed to ensure that the citizens’ vote would be respected, but it had the effect of cancelling citizen
voting in bond elections out of fear that major projects would be delayed by at least three years if not longer.
In 2016 the Council adopted city wide Impact Fees on new development for Water, Wastewater, and Transportation infrastructure having rejected these fees in 2010 and 2011. While these
fees only covered some 10% of the projected costs of new development from 2016-2027, it was estimated that they will provide $34 million of an estimated $300 million needed to meet
these costs over this ten year period.
In 2016, the City Council passed an 8% increase in the wastewater rate and adopted a roadway maintenance fee which provided $2,585,000 for funding existing road maintenance in that year.
In 2018, the Council adopted a 5% reduction on home appraisal values for home owners to offset a tax increase of .08341 for a property tax rate of .505841. .
In all of these ways, the Council was responding to pleas by citizens to find ways to support the growth taking place in the city known as “the home of Texas A&M University.”
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Blanche Brick is a former member of the City Council in College Station. This article was written in 2018 as part of a project to update the College Station History Book from 1988-2018