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On a cold Saturday morning earlier this month, Earl Henderson Park was coming to life. The chilly weather wasn’t stopping community members and Air Alliance Houston, an advocacy group that fights for cleaner air, from showing up to knock on doors and educate residents in the neighborhood about the risks posed by the Hardy-Downtown Connector project. 

The proposed tollway, first conceived more than 20 years ago, has found new life in recent years, and its footprint would run next to the park where a wooded area currently stands, hiding railroad tracks and an assortment of tents, trash, and old clothing. To critics, the toll-road extension was the latest in a line of battles against highway expansions, such as the Interstate 45 expansion project set to break ground later this year. 

“Very consistently since 2003, traffic volumes on I-45 have actually been decreasing, and that’s not just a COVID thing,” Michael Moritz, an engineering professional and transportation organizer, told the assembled group. According to Moritz and other organizers, the data the Hardy project is based on is outdated.

“One of the things we’ve asked (Harris County) Commissioner’s Court to do is to take a look at the purpose and need of this project armed with that hindsight, and also armed with the fact that the transportation priorities of Houston have changed dramatically in 20 years,” Moritz said to the canvassers. 

Advocates like STOP TxDOT I-45 founder Susan Graham believe that working with HCTRA should be easier than with the Texas Department of Transportation.

“These people live here, the funding is local,” Graham said to the group, referring to HCTRA. “It’s an easier ask.”

According to HCTRA officials, they’ve been in the community getting feedback for the last 14 months. In a statement, the toll road authority asserted that they had met with “100 percent of community groups in the area” and received 3,000 points of feedback and written comments from the community. They said the key themes include connecting neighborhoods, creating new public spaces, and restoring the ecology of the area. 

What is the Hardy-Downtown Connector project?

The plan for the Hardy-Downtown Connector began in earnest in 2003, but the project stalled for many years due to budget concerns. The basic plan is a four-lane highway that would cut through the Near Northside community, elevated in some areas and entrenched in others. The expansion would start at the Interstate 610 interchange with the current toll road and be built west of Elysian Street, running south past Interstate 10 and connecting with Interstate 69.

While work continued in various forms in the interim years, the Harris County Toll Road Authority received a directive from Commissioners Court in 2020 to provide better integration of a “north-south connection into the surrounding neighborhoods the project will be part of” according to a statement from the agency. 

“Back when it was originally conceptualized in the early 2000s, the Hardy downtown connector project was just a road, with no exits or consideration for how it would impact folks living in the area,” said Harris County Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia in a written statement. “I expect the version of the project that will be considered now will look much different, now with community concerns in mind.”

When looking at the plans put out by HCTRA, those differences come most obviously in the form of enhanced landscaping and green spaces throughout the project. These include multi-use trails, sports facilities, and community spaces throughout the footprint of the project.

A new generation and concerns about pollution

For the advocates with Air Alliance Houston’s block walk event, the green spaces aren’t quite enough. They believe a fundamental problem with the project is the air and noise pollution that a four-lane highway will bring to the area, as well as an increased risk of flooding with more pavement. 

“I just recently moved into the area, so I just don’t want to experience that,” said Christopher Rivera, a nonprofit worker who highlighted potential flooding and environmental concerns both from the construction and the highway as concerns he has. 

Rivera moved into the neighborhood in 2022 after living in Houston for a few years, and he recalls going to a community meeting about the project in March 2023 and feeling like HCTRA was trying to greenwash the project. 

“They tried to sell it as a park project, but really it was just a highway disguised as a park,” Rivera said. “I don’t really want that.”

James Graham and his partner moved into the area in 2015, and the more they learned about the project, the more concerned they grew. While they were assured they wouldn’t have any part of the project installed on their property, they live right off the Hardy Toll Road exit. 

“Eventually, if we have kids and we’re living in that house, I don’t want my kid in the backyard playing with dirt and the stuff flying off the highway,” Graham said.

Moritz, in his remarks to the group, said that HCTRA was mandated by state law to collect a toll, but wondered about a creative solution to expanding the toll road. One idea included a surface toll road with a 30 mile per hour speed limit that would integrate into the community, rather than cut through it. 

Longtime residents see benefits of toll road

But those perspectives come from a younger generation, people who have more recently started calling the neighborhood home. For Lorenzo Jones, executive director of Hardy Community Outreach, the near northside community has been home for almost 61 years, his entire life. Hardy Community Outreach is one of the many organizations that a HCTRA spokesperson said had been engaged as part of the public engagement aspect of the project.

Throughout his life, Jones has dealt with the problems stemming from ground pollution through years and years of contamination from industrial and chemical sites around Cavalcade Road. The pollution in that area became so bad that it became an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site on both the northern and southern sides of Cavalcade. 

Two years ago, Jones began working on getting something out of the Hardy Toll Road extension for the community. He had seen the problems in the neighborhood as drugs and crime have been a serious problem for years, and viewed the project as a chance to get resources for children and seniors, and a way to help the community pull together and police itself. 

“When I grew up, we had the Salvation Army and the YMCA’s. Where are they now?” Jones said. “I got nieces and grandkids walking in the street watching the drug dealers.”

Now Jones wants to help set up those avenues for kids to get away from those societal ills, and to encourage children to think about their futures. As he said, “Don’t worry about your past, because your future is bright.”

His plans took the form of a multi-phase project to get dedicated facilities for baseball, softball, football, and soccer to be built by HCTRA. He has also spoken with the toll road authority to build a community center-type building, where the first floor would be available for basketball facilities and other classes. In the case of a freeze, Jones said the facility would have showers and an industrial kitchen to help get senior citizens and families out of the cold.

“I’m not against fighting against the pollution. I get it. Or the sound, I get it,” Jones said. But if pressed to choose between the resources or lowering pollution, Jones said he would side with the resources and the opportunities they present for children. 

Jones heard about Air Alliance Houston’s block walk, and took some offense that the group had not reached out to him. For him, the neighborhood has always been home, and it felt like someone else was coming in and trying to work against what he had been trying to build. 

“This, this is my work,” Jones said. 

But after communicating with some of the members of Air Alliance Houston, Jones came to understand the other side of the fight. And he remembered meeting with Garcia, who had encouraged him to come with “numbers” to advocate for the changes he wanted.

“If we can come together, yeah, let’s do it,” Jones said. “Why can’t we get both?”

What comes next for the Hardy tollway extension?

HCTRA issued a statement that said that a “Final Visioning Report” on the project is currently under development and will consolidate the community input officials have received in the last 14 months.

According to organizers at the block-walk event, the Hardy-Downtown Connector project will be considered by the Commissioners Court sometime at the end of March or beginning of April. According to Moritz, HCTRA will have to provide a financial viability report which will be key in garnering political support amongst the court. If the project is not financially viable, then the project could lose steam.

“People are not shy about telling me about how they feel about the work that the county is doing or planning to do,” Garcia said in a statement. “I am hopeful that once the public sees (the report), they will feel confident that their voices have been heard.”

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