A decade ago, when they were expecting their first child, Allison and Steve Lewis bought a house in Champion Forest, an established neighborhood of traditional brick homes bordering the Raveneaux Country Club. The club, an anchor of the community, has tennis, swimming and golf and hosts weddings and holiday events at its clubhouse, a 60,000-square-foot building designed to resemble a French chateau.
The Lewis’ house backs up to Raveneaux’s 18-hole course, where towering pines and moss-draped oaks fill the space between the fairways and greens and deer meander at dawn.
But they and their neighbors are now at risk of losing the semi-bucolic lifestyle that attracted so many to this northwest Harris County suburb east of Texas 249 and south of Louetta. The Harris County Flood Control District wants to buy the country club and golf course and turn the property into one of the county’s largest stormwater detention basins. The project, the district argues, would provide much-needed protection from flooding, which soaked this area during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, as well as during other storms.
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The clubhouse property is owned by Dallas investor Michael Block through entities called Kera Development LP and Cypress/Raveneaux LLC. The golf course is owned by the Cypress Forest Public Utility District.
Early this month, Harris County Commissioners Court gave the Flood Control District the green light to negotiate a contract to acquire 27.6 acres, which encompasses the clubhouse, driving range, swimming pool and tennis area.
A deal has been reached, though its terms have not been disclosed. It is slated to be presented to Commissioners Court, which is expected to decide whether to approve the acquisition at its Jan. 28 meeting. The purchase price will become public when the court releases the meeting agenda on Friday.
If commissioners approve the purchase of the 27.6 acres, Matt Zeve, deputy executive director of the Harris County Flood Control District, said the district plans to close on the property as early as Jan. 30. After the closing, it would lease the club back to Raveneaux’s operator for a year. It will then begin negotiations with the PUD for the more than 206-acre golf course.
The Harris County Appraisal District values the 27.6-acre parcel at $2.5 million.
Funding would come from the $2.5 billion flood infrastructure bond that voters approved a year after Harvey inundated more than 200,000 homes and apartments in Harris County.
Recognizing need
Club members living in the community said they recognize the need to make drainage improvements, but they don’t understand why the district needs to take their country club to do it when there are other large parcels nearby. Perhaps the biggest fear is how the loss of Raveneaux will change the character of their neighborhood and, more tangibly, how it will affect their property values.
Allison Lewis shuddered at the possibility of thousands of trees coming down and the potential loss of wildlife.
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“I don’t want anyone else to flood up here, but I just want thoughtful consideration for the right use of this land,” she said.
Champion Forest, a neighborhood of more than 1,400 single-family homes in the Cypress Creek watershed, was developed in the 1970s, about a decade before modern drainage requirements were put in place. Now, the district sees the golf course as a unique opportunity to mitigate flooding.
“We rarely have the opportunity to buy 200 acres for a detention basin in a developed area,” Zeve said.
More than 650 homes in the vicinity of the country club flooded in the last three major floods: Memorial Day 2015, Tax Day 2016 and Harvey.
Taken aback
Residents and Raveneaux employees said they were taken by surprise when they learned a deal was in the works to sell the club.
Mary Finnegan, Raveneaux’s membership director, has been fielding calls from concerned members wanting to know what’s happening. More than two dozen have canceled their memberships.
“This kind of took everybody by surprise,” she said. “Why take down an icon that’s been so great for the area?”
Developed on farmland in the 1970s, Champion Forest is a deed-restricted suburb where homes average more than 3,000 square feet and sit on large lots. Residents are active in their community, coming together for 4th of July parades and Easter egg hunts.
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The neighborhood offers starter homes for young families and opulent mansions rivaling those in River Oaks. A collection of million-dollar homes line Cypresswood Drive across a tree-studded esplanade from Raveneaux.
Janet Lunsford, a real estate agent who grew up in the area, said Raveneaux had always set the tone for the neighborhood, giving it a genteel, country-like quality away from the hustle and bustle of Houston.
Even after Hurricane Harvey, the community bounced back and people continued to buy homes there. But without the country club, Lunsford worries the community will lose its identity.
“Whenever you list a home in that community you list it as a golf course community, so what is that now? What’s that community going to be?” she said.
The clubhouse at Raveneaux took on several feet of water during Harvey and was closed for a year. Block, its owner, spent $2.5 million on renovations.
Many residents dropped their memberships, but a core group continued to pay dues.
“A lot of us said we’re going to stick it through. It’s the heart of Champion Forest. We don’t have our own park, our own pool,” said Lewis, who now has three children.
Holding out hope
Lewis is hopeful that the district will consider other options. She said a local buyer’s group is interested in taking over the club and working with the district to incorporate detention basins.
The golf course has flooded several times. Each time, said Lou Mills, the club’s vice president of operations, it costs the owner about $200,000 to remove the silt and recondition the grass. Still, he said he hoped there could be a compromise that would satisfy all the stakeholders.
Plans for the flood mitigation project will be developed after the county closes on the land. The district said it planned to have community engagement meetings to solicit input and ideas about the project.
Zeve said he wanted residents to have a say in how the detention project comes together. Other basins have trails, dog parks and places for community events. Still, he knows the district won’t be able to please everyone.
“Some people in the community are totally against this altogether. They don’t want to see the golf course and country club go away,” Zeve said. “Some wondered why we haven’t done this years ago and protected them of flooding.”
nancy.sarnoff@chron.com
twitter.com/nsarnoff
2020-01-21 06:00:00Z
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/Raveneaux-Golf-Club-long-a-lure-for-Champion-14990502.php
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