Government
BY SHAWN ARRAJJ & MELISSA ENAJE
Gus Pappas steps in as Bellaire’s new mayor Following his win in a Dec. 9 runo election, Gus Pappas is the new mayor for the city of Bellaire. Pappas, an attorney, sat down for an interview with Community Impact in December, prior to being sworn into the position Jan. 8. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For a longer version, visit communityimpact.com. During your campaigning, what did you hear from Bellaire residents? I think the messaging out there is that the people of Bellaire are looking to move forward with tackling the issues they’ve been grappling with for probably the last 10 years. In no particular order, I think they are interested in—what are we going to do about our infrastructure, our streets, our water lines? What do we want to do with our library? What do we want to do with Evergreen Pool? ... I think over these rst couple of months, it’s really more about coming up
Methodist o ce project goes to Bellaire council A proposal by Houston Methodist to build a three-story, mixed-use building in downtown Bellaire is expected to go to Bellaire City Council with the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission slated to recommend approval of the project. The backstory Houston Methodist previously pitched a di er- ent version of its plan for the site, and members of the council voted to postpone a decision on those plans at a July meeting. Council members expressed concerns that plans would not be a good t for the downtown district. Since then, Houston Methodist has revised plans, including increasing the amount of retail space. The details The building would be at a site that was formerly a Randalls grocery store. The site plan includes
Harris County clinic to open $9M health lab The Quentin Mease Health Center, located nearly 3 miles east of the Texas Medical Center, will be on the receiving end of just under $9 million in federal dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act. That funding will support the opening of an outpatient gastroenterology lab after Harris County commissioners approved the agreement in December. Why it matters At any given time, more than 3,000 patients are waiting for a colonoscopy due to maximum capacity constraints, according to Dec. 19 court documents. The money will be used to create more capacity for colonos- copy procedures and support the purchase of equipment and software licenses, according to county o cials.
with a plan in terms of scheduling the timing of the discussion and the raising of these issues, and then their determination by council. Have you thought about if a future bond election might be in order? It takes time. I think rst we have to nd out what the appetite of council is in terms of some of these capital improvement items. At that point, you look at—what are the needs? What is the plan that we’d propose? And then my thought would be that’s going to take the better part of a year. If the council believed that ... was something that would be necessary to fund these [capital improve- ments]—we couldn’t otherwise fund them through our own moneys, through grants or other funding mechanisms—my thought is that probably within the next year after that is when that would be put to the residents. What is your message for Bellaire residents? The city is here to serve you. But it’s here to serve everybody. People need to make sure to under- stand that it can serve you, but it also has to serve everybody, otherwise it serves no one.
Houston Methodist o ce building site
5TH ST.
BELLAIRE BLVD.
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85,000 square feet of o ce space, 15,000 square feet of retail space and 454 parking spaces. The recommendation from the planning commission, discussed at a Jan. 11 meeting, was under the condition that Methodist reduce total parking to 373 spaces. However, project o cials declined to agree to those conditions at the meeting. What’s next As of press time Jan. 30, the commission was slated to present council with a signed recommen- dation letter at a Jan. 31 special session.
SHAWN ARRAJJ COMMUNITY IMPACT
BUFFALO SPEEDWAY 9733 Buffalo Speedway (713) 838-7486
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WESLAYAN 3902 Bissonnet (713) 218-8144
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