There is a lot to like about the Houston Botanic Garden master plan proposed by the Dutch landscape and urban design firm West 8. It would boost Houston’s appeal as a tourist destination, increase surrounding property values, and repurpose a golf course in southeast Houston. So why are some residents in the surrounding Meadowbrook and Park Place communities opposed to it?

To understand that, you need to understand the site and the proposal. The former Glenbrook Golf Course is located just eight miles south of downtown Houston, right off I-45. If the botanic garden's supporters can reach fundraising requirements by the end of 2017, a lease agreement with the City of Houston will give them the 120-acre site for the next 30 years.

The West 8 garden experience would begin as soon as one exits I-45 onto Park Place Boulevard — a four-lane commercial street that will be enhanced with trees planted on both sides. An entry bridge would cross over the Bayou Meander, an oxbow waterway that snakes around the site's northern perimeter.

Visitors would drive down a scenic mile-long procession — the Botanic Mile — towards the South Gardens on the other side of Sims Bayou.

West 8 is known for highly original bridge designs, and its Houston proposal does not disappoint. As the Botanic Mile approaches Sims Bayou, an arched steel bridge would lift a row of full-sized potted trees high into the air, so that they arc over the cars below. The botanic garden's bridge, which would be visible from I-45, could become a Houston icon.

The bold gesture is not without its critics. In online posts, the "tree-bridge" has been called “bizarre” and “contrived.” But it captures the cultivated nature of the botanic gardens, as well as the idiosyncrasy of Houston itself — think the Orange Show, the Art Car Parade and even the Dome House just south of the garden site.

After parking in the South Gardens, visitors could enjoy the entry pavilion and visitor's center, browse the seasonal farmer's market, picnic in the gardens' expansive lawns, or perhaps take in a twilight movie or concert with the bayou in the background.

The final reveal of the gardens would be back on The Island. Visitors would return via a covered pedestrian bridge on the eastern edge of the site back across Sims Bayou. Renderings of The Island show a storybook-like world where children climb staircases that wind around trees and explore exotic plantings beneath a delicate water lily pad-inspired conservatory. On The Island, visitors might lunch in a café surrounded by lush plantings, drop in on a lecture, or even attend a wedding in the event pavilion.

WITH SUCH an intelligent and thoughtful proposal, why are some of the site's neighbors opposed? It's easy to understand why Glenbrook and Park Place residents are protective of their neighborhoods. The largely blue-collar neighborhood is unusually quiet and lush. On any given day scattered groups of golfers occupy the less-than-pristine course. Golfers seemed accustomed to pedestrians on the walkway, and despite the golf balls that fly over the links, the course is serene. Above the winding, gently undulating sidewalks, Spanish Moss sways from trees. The thick vegetation makes the course feel like a world unto itself.

On a Sunday morning in May, three men were fishing on Sims Bayou. One had already caught two catfish and a turtle. The fisherman said he has lived in Glenbrook all his life and not only fishes there, but frequently cuts across the course. The botanic garden, he said, "will draw people for a few years and then it will die back down. If you ask me it's basically a waste of money because the park is good as it is." He declined to be photographed or identified for this article, saying, "It's not the people with three cents that matter, it's the people with $3 million."

Some area residents support the garden, which is projected to raise property values. Ann Collum, president of the Glenbrook Valley Civic Club, is in favor of the Houston Botanic Garden site. But Larry Bowles, president of the Park Place Civic Association was quoted in the Houston Chronicle as saying, "This just isn't a good fit for our low economic area. Most of our people will be priced out of the garden once it is built."

There are the usual concerns of disruption during construction, and of traffic once the garden opens. And in addition, residents have also voiced more significant concerns that the gardens would mean a diminished quality of life for the those who live closest to it. Houstonians for Urban Green Spaces (H-U-G-S) and Save Glenbrook Golf Course oppose the botanic garden on the grounds that the privately run garden, with its entrance fees, would it deny the surrounding community access to what's now a public green space.

Chelsea Sallans, who grew up near the site, organizes Houstonians for Urban Green Spaces. She says that, as the Glenbrook Golf Course usage and accompanying maintenance fees declined over the years, the site fell into benign neglect.

Evelyn Merz is a key player in the Sims Bayou Coalition, which was instrumental in opposing plans to line Sims Bayou with exposed concrete. Merz says that as the neglected golf course returned to a more natural state, a variety of wildlife adopted the course and adjacent bayou as home. By happy accident, it became a nature preserve. Merz is concerned that the botanic garden would destroy what nature has reclaimed.

Animals were not the only ones that adopted the golf course. So did locals. Although the residents were charged a fee to play golf, a historic right-of-way gave them free passage along walkways that ran east and west through the golf greens and north and south across golf cart bridges that traversed the bayous.

On the course's paved walkways, neighbors take regular walks and children learn to bike. On the hike-and-bike trail, people jog along the bayou. Many of the area's residents do not own cars; people regularly cut through the site, on their way to and from bus routes, school, or the Park Place library on the northwest side of the course.

The site provides an important green pedestrian link between the Meadowbrook and Park Place neighborhoods. Charlton Park, with covered basketball courts, lies west of the site. Glenbrook Park, with a swimming pool and baseball fields, lies to the east of the course. Golf course walkways give residents easy access to amenities in both parks.

This local neighborhood linkage is not the only one that would be interrupted by a fenced-off Houston Botanic Gardens. Zooming out from the neighborhood to the larger city, University of Houston architecture professor Susan Rogers, who lives in nearby Meadowcreek Village, documented how the fenced garden would interrupt the “emerald necklace” of open green spaces linked by the bayous that thread through Houston.

Houston City Council voted unanimously in favor of the botanic garden's lease of Glenbrook. As council members saw it, the exchange was a simple one: a fee-for-use golf course for a fee-for-use botanic garden. Save Glenbrook Golf Course and H-U-G-S members argue that the exchange is more complex. Though residents were never charged a fee for access to the golf greens unless they were playing golf, the botanic garden would fence community members out, forcing them to pay a fee (albeit a discounted one for local residents) to enter the gardens or walk the perimeter of the fence to get from one side of the golf course to another. Residents would no longer be able to walk or bike between Park Place and Glenbrook. In addition, 1.5 acres at the corner of Charlton Park would be taken and used for the garden's entrance.

WEST 8's design for Houston Botanic Garden works great on two levels: at a distance and close-up. From the freeway, the iconic tree-bridge would offer a spectacle to visitors approaching downtown from Hobby Airport. And for visitors inside the garden, moving through the lush gardens would no doubt be a carefully orchestrated experience.

But the scheme breaks down in between, at the middle scale of the surrounding Meadowbrook and Park Place neighborhoods. Despite a 50-foot buffer between parking in the South Gardens and the residential area, the scheme feels alien to the mostly working-class Hispanic community, with its modest bungalows and ranch-style brick homes.

The site's lack of integration in the community's day-to-day life is a symptom of a larger problem: a lack of deep understanding of a site. Designers ought to take into account not only a place's streets and bayous, but also the people who live near it.

This middle scale is critical to Houston’s emerging efforts at urban planning and design. The success of the Houston Parks Board’s Bayou Greenways plan depends not only on the trails themselves, but also on their integration into sites along the way.

In the current master plan, the botanic garden would divert the public trail off the bayou, and a critical bridge would require a fee. By approving that, the city itself could set a dangerous precedent, undermining Bayou Greenways' potential to reconnect the city. “I fear that this garden will become a fenced compound designed to be accessed by car when it could be an integral part of the Bayou Greenways and the surrounding neighborhood,” says METRO board member Christof Spieler.

How can a private institution not cut off access to the larger public? Consider the Menil Collection, Houston's best example. Dominique de Menil wanted to engage all of Houston in the enjoyment of art, and that engagement began with the neighborhood surrounding the museum itself. Designed by architect Renzo Piano, the main gallery at the Menil Campus harmonizes with the bungalows that surround it: The building is modestly scaled, and covered in clapboard, like the bungalows; the little houses, also owned by the Menil Collection, are even painted the same shade of gray. On any given afternoon, teenagers lounge or toss Frisbees on the campus’s green lawns. No one is fenced out: It's not immediately obvious where the museum campus ends and the surrounding neighborhood begins.

Really getting to know a place takes time, and of course, this would probably expense to a project that has already been in the works for a long time. But many Meadowbrook and Park Place residents feel that their voices have not been heard.

The West 8 images of the Houston Botanic Garden are exciting — seductive, even — and will certainly contribute to fundraising efforts. But is the current proposal really the highest and best long-term design solution both for the city of Houston and the surrounding Meadowbrook and Park Place neighborhoods?

Could Houston Botanic Garden accommodate the community's concerns? Susan Rogers says, “It is not an all-or-nothing proposition," says Susan Rogers. "Just leaving a portion of the 120-acre site to the residents might be enough to reach a compromise solution that we can live with.”

Jeff Ross, President and CEO of the Houston Botanic Garden, says that the neighbors' concerns will be addressed as the design progresses. “We are continuing to meet with community,” he said. He's frequently said that the West 8 master plan is a “road map” — not a finished product.

With any luck, the friction will improve the garden. In the words of the urban critic Jane Jacobs, “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”

Sheryl Tucker DeVazquez is an architect and adjunct professor at the University of Houston.

This is an abridged version of a more in-depth article from Offcite.org, the blog of the Rice Design Alliance, a nonprofit organization based in the Rice University School of Architecture.

Check out more Gray Matters. The bold gesture is not without its critics.

