A decades’ long plan to develop a third Houston airport on the Katy Prairie is officially abandoned, after the City Council voted this week to sell the 1,400 acres to Waller County for $19.7 million.
According to Houston Chronicle reporting from 1986, the City of Houston bought the tract for $5.7 million, or about $16.9 million in current value. The land was acquired for a proposed Westside Airport, a general aviation reliever facility that federal, state and regional planners had discussed since the 1970s. Early planning documents from the Houston Galveston Area Council and the Federal Aviation Administration identified the Katy Prairie as the preferred location for a new airport to relieve congestion at Bush Intercontinental and Hobby.
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Waller County Judge Trey Duhon said the county intends to use the land for parks and flood control. About 600 acres of the tract is under a conservation easement, he said.
“We will be operating under that, which is fine, because we can still do things like regional detention within a conservation easement,” Duhon said. “There will be a big chunk of it where we cannot do much in terms of development, but we can use it for a detention basin or lakes to help with drainage. That region needs quite a bit.”…