Is Houston’s Downtown Development Saturated?

Henry Han, Creative Commons license

A report by Commercial Café places Houston 19th among 25 U.S. cities in the acreage of vacant land in their central business districts.

It says downtown Houston has just under nine empty acres.

That ranks it far behind the state's other big cities. Downtown Dallas, for example, has more than 86 acres of empty lots.

Bob Eury, president of Central Houston, an organization focused on downtown development, is not worried they'll run out of land to develop any time soon.

"If you add the green grass and you add the parking lots together, I think we have quite a bit of land in reserve for development right now," he said.

The report doesn't count surface parking lots as vacant land.

Eury estimates downtown Houston has about 30 blocks worth of developable parking lots.

Will developing those create a shortage of parking?

Eury said no because the new parking garages being built create even more parking spaces.