Council Denies Lamson Project

Galveston County Daily News, September 14, 2007
by Leigh Jones

GALVESTON — The Galveston City Council voted to deny developer Lamson Nguyen’s condominium project Thursday.

The 4-3 decision could haunt council members during next year’s elections.

The project’s opponents warned of massive traffic jams and hinted at the council’s culpability in any evacuation process hindered by the congestion they said the project would cause.

Supporters, mostly from the business community, bemoaned a politicized process that encouraged council members to base their decision on what would be best for them in May.

Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas, Mayor pro tem Danny Weber and council members Juan Peña and Dianna Puccetti voted against the project.

Council members Barbara Roberts, Patricia Bolton-Legg and Linda Colbert voted for it.

Thomas said the election season threats were unnecessary.

“I do have a public safety issue with this project,” she said. “I will have that no matter what goes there. But two towers and that many people on that site would be hazardous.

“It’s dangerous as it is. And it will become even more dangerous.”

Nguyen had hoped to build two seven-story, 96-unit condominiums on less than three acres beside English Bayou.

He needed the council to approve two specific-use permits — one for residential use on commercial property and one for a mid-rise structure.

But during its many discussions about the project, the council spent very little time on the merits of the buildings.

Members focused instead on the traffic plan the Texas Department of Transportation would require Nguyen to follow if the project were approved.

State engineers want the developer to convert the curve connecting 61st Street to Broadway into a two-way road capped with stop signs. State officials, who studied the plan for one year before giving it their approval, said it would not have an adverse effect on 61st Street or its intersection with Interstate 45.

But the 21 people who addressed the council Thursday disagreed. They all said the street reconfiguration would be a nightmare.

The council chamber was filled well past its100-person capacity and, when one speaker asked the project’s opponents to stand, most people did.

The council had listened to most of their arguments against the project in July, when Nguyen first brought it forward for council consideration. But one was new.

Almost all of the opponents said Nguyen’s plans would forever end the city’s chance to build a flyover connecting 61st Street to the westbound interstate.

The flyover has been in the city’s comprehensive plan for 20 years. City officials have always rejected the idea as cost-prohibitive, and the state transportation agency, which controls the roadway, has not made it a priority.

While Nguyen will not get to build his condominium project on the site, he does have other options.

The land is zoned for commercial use, and he can develop it for many things that would not need council approval.

Reading from a long list of uses that included shopping malls and restaurants, Roberts warned the project’s opponents they could see a lot worse developments in their backyards.

Nguyen has never said what he intended to do with the property if the council did not approve his first plan. He did say last week that a fish farming company had approached him about getting access to the bayou.