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Great Expectations

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By 1991, Bancroft had decided to save his neighborhood and his church in a very different way. He became a redevelopment advocate. Midtown had infrastructure, empty land, a prime location between downtown and the Medical Center, and prices cheaper than Houston's most far-flung outskirts. Furthermore, after 17 long years, the city had finally built enough new sewage and water treatment plants to lift the sewer moratorium. "What more could you want?" he asked.

Bancroft visited other cities to observe their redevelopment efforts and found that all the successful projects had one thing in common: a tax increment reinvestment zone, or TIRZ. As property values go up in a TIRZ, the additional tax revenue is used to pay for improvements to the infrastructure and public spaces within the zone, thus spurring development and further increases in property values. Bancroft and his Midtown Redevelopment Association spent years mapping Midtown and convincing property owners, the school district and the city of the merits of a TIRZ. By January 1995 the TIRZ had been established, and within two to three years it had proved to be one of the most successful uses of tax incremental financing in the city. Bancroft says that property values skyrocketed from $1.50 to $2 a square foot all the way up to $18 or $19.

The Midtown Redevelopment Association had a dramatic vision for Midtown: a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood, with mid-rise apartments and ground-level retail, sidewalk cafes and tree-shaded plazas. A few apartment complexes and mixed-use developments have already been attracted by the TIRZ. And while Bancroft did not support Metro's first plan for light rail, which would have bypassed most of Midtown on an elevated track, he thinks the current line will help further his vision for the neighborhood. Charles LeBlanc, the man who has since taken the reins of the redevelopment authority, says that new and potential Midtown residents invariably ask two questions: Where is the grocery store? And when will light rail be ready to ride? (Incidentally, a Randalls grocery store has just broken ground a few blocks from Joe's shop.)

Metro's DeLibero expects to see more than $500 million in development along the light rail line -- much of it in Midtown. "You're not even going to recognize this town in the next ten years," she says. "These stores and blocks of nothing right now, almost boarded-up old businesses that have been like that for years -- it's going to take on a whole new dimension."

But there are businesses on Main Street that aren't boarded up, that have been serving Midtown's working class for a decade or more. Will they have a place in the new Midtown? Bancroft had hoped that they would.

"We had a plan…in which we were going to take some of our original money and buy some land that was going to be used to maintain a certain character of the lower-income quality of the neighborhood so that you'd have a mixed-income neighborhood," he says. "Also, there would have been some helping out of the already existing businesses -- maybe to help them buy their own land or deal with the thing you're noticing now."

But others in the authority and outside experts thought Bancroft was too optimistic about Midtown's turnaround. They thought it would take ten years rather than two for the property values to come up. They thought there was time to wait. "The fact is," says Bancroft, "we didn't step up and buy the land when it was cheap enough to buy. The property values went up so fast that they were not able to capture enough land in places where you could actually do low-income housing."

As for the aid to small businesses, Bancroft says he might have been able to push that through, but he left at the wrong time. The priest moved to Detroit in 1995 to take over a cathedral there and start new redevelopment projects. The authority he left behind has no current plans to help the businesses.

"It's a difficult question, and people's lives are being hurt by it, and that's a shame," says LeBlanc. "In 2004, when the next layer of development comes in, those people will get a benefit, but the people that were there before got all the pain. That's not right, and I'll admit that. But I don't have an answer how to solve it."

Even though there are still plenty of rundown, vacant buildings along construction-ravaged Main Street, it looks as if a new, upscale, redeveloped world is closing in around Joe. The residential developments on the west and east sides of Midtown are filling up, with shops and restaurants serving residents on the ground floors. Richard Ziegler, director of research at the real estate consulting firm of O'Connor & Associates, says that apartments in Midtown are renting for the highest rates in the city, 10 percent higher than even the tony Galleria area. Robert Duncan, a property owner in Midtown, says the time to develop is now, so that construction ends just as the light rail is completed. LeBlanc talks about projects that are too "pie in the sky" and "confidential" to divulge.

Bill Sharp, who manages the retail center that houses Joe's, says that the owner likely will challenge the property's next appraisal in light of the fact that the construction has cost them tenants. That will help keep rents low for the time being. But even he admits that "in the long run, the small mom-and-pop tenants that have basically been up and down Main Street there will get pushed out." As property values continue to go up, owners will have to charge higher rents to keep up with the associated increase in taxes -- and to make up for rent profits lost because of construction. Owners also may be tempted to sell the property by offers they just can't refuse. Metro may bring new customers to Joe's neighborhood via light rail, but it also may usher in a pricey environment where a simple sandwich shop can't compete.

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