Houston officials met with residents in the Westridge and Braes Terrace neighborhoods on Jan. 28 during the Westridge Civic Association meeting to update and address concerns over a street and drainage improvement project that has been delayed for more than a decade.

The overview

The three-phase Westridge & Braes Terrace Street Improvement project was originally slated to start construction of the drainage portion last summer and finish this summer, while the second and third phases were slated to begin construction in early 2026 and summer 2027, respectively, according to previous Community Impact reporting.

However, Mayor Pro-Tem Martha Castex-Tatum and Kenya Williams, a member of Engage Houston, the public engagement team for small projects, told residents that the project had to be pushed back for various reasons, including a new administration, like Mayor John Whitmire taking office, and wanting to ensure projects meet with the administration’s vision.

“When we change administrations, ... we get new people in the departments and sometimes there are stalls,” Castex-Tatum said during the meeting.

Additionally, no construction contract was awarded when the project was up for bidding last year, Williams said. HPW’s Public Information Officer Erin Jones told Community Impact that no contract was awarded because the bids didn’t meet the city’s requirements.

The revised timeline for the project is now:

• Phase 1: The relining of the trunk sewer that runs between Timberside and Bevlyn Drives, from South Braeswood Boulevard to Loop 610. The phase is slated to start construction this summer and finish fall 2026.
• Phase 2: Street repairs in a northern segment of the target area, including northern parts of Bevlyn and Timberside, as well as Deal and Gannett Streets, and Norris and Linkwood Drives. Final design work is slated to be completed this fall, with construction to begin in spring 2026.
• Phase 3: Street repairs in a southern segment of the target area, including southern parts of Bevlyn, as well as Elmridge, Cloverdale and Mariposa Streets. Design work will begin summer 2026 and finish summer 2027, with construction to begin in spring 2028.

The drainage portion of the project will reline a 120-line trunk sewer that runs along the Westridge and Braes Terrace area, from the Loop 610 westbound feeder road to South Braeswood Boulevard. Crews will also enhance the storm sewer inlets and manholes along the line.

According to project details, street work will include the removal and replacement of all curbs, gutters and driveway aprons, new sidewalks on both sides of streets, installing a new streetlight system, and putting in new concrete pavement. Water pipes underneath the streets will also be replaced as part of the process, according to HPW.

The backstory

According to previous Community Impact reporting, when Rebuild Houston was launched in 2010 as a way to prioritize capital projects in the city, Westridge and the nearby Braes Terrace were both included on the city's "worst first" list, as were other neighborhoods in the area, such as Woodside, Linkwood and Knollwood Village.

Earlier iterations of the drainage project dating back to 2013 would've involved building a new drainage system under each street within the neighborhood. Because of that, streets throughout Westridge would've also been repaired, and the cost of building new streets was included in the project estimates.

However, when new rainfall data was incorporated into the drainage analysis after Harvey, HPW officials said the building under the street no longer provided enough drainage benefits to justify the cost of the work. The project was changed to target the sewer line between Timberside Drive and Bevlyn Drive, and no longer involved any street improvements at all. However, this pushed an outcry from residents over the street improvements removal, prompting HPW officials to bring it back into the project.

What residents are saying

Meeting attendees voiced their frustrations over what they say is a lack of communication from the city on project updates. Westridge residents Melissa Schafer and Georgia Bouchoutsos are among those who said they have been frustrated with the city’s lack of communication.Schafer, who has lived in the neighborhood since 2020, said that residents were told construction for the drainage element was supposed to begin last summer, as well as design. However, residents began to worry when they didn’t see any construction happening, and no updates from the city on why.

“We have been following these projects on Engage Houston; we have not been seeing any communications or updates,” Schaeffer said. “We kept asking, 'what’s going on with these?'”

Bouchoutsos, who has lived in the neighborhood since 2019, said the street conditions are dangerous to walk on, especially at night when it’s dark and hard to see the different potholes on the street.

“We pay our taxes, but we’re not getting anything from those taxes,” Bouchoutsos said.

Schafer said she injured herself last year from tripping on a pothole after trying to move out of the way of a moving car.

“I face planted in the middle of the street,” Schafer said. “There’s no sidewalk to walk on and it’s dark because there were no street lights. I couldn’t tell that I had walked into a pit. So when I was walking back up again, I missed the level change and I just face planted.”

New street lights were later installed in the neighborhood in December after the Westridge Civic Association requested to install street lights in 2023, according to emails exchanged between Schafer and Martin Herrera, a division manager at HPW.

What’s next?

Williams said the project will have another bidding in March to find a contractor to do the work, and HPW will host a construction meeting in the future to prepare residents on where and when construction will be when it starts.

“I am very confident that this project is going to bid; it’s going to have a contractor and it will start this year,” Williams said.