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Green Highways

Local governments cooperate to bring beauty along the Interstate: “If you’ll buy the plants, we’ll put them in.”

by Bruce Wright

Texas’ highway system is the nation’s largest, and many would say the finest. It’s absolutely essential to the state’s continuing prosperity.

Motorists driving along I-45 near The Woodlands, in a six-mile stretch also including the cities of Oak Ridge North and Shenandoah, suddenly find themselves in the beginnings of an urban forest, planted both along the feeder roads and in the strip of land between the feeders and the main highway lanes.

It’s a great advertisement for an area that prides itself on its natural beauty. And it’s the result of a project that linked local communities with the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT).

Planning for the I-45 Beautification project began in the late 1990s, according to Paul Mendes, city administrator for Oak Ridge North. “We started with a coalition of entities that all worked together,” Mendes says. Cooperating cities included Shenandoah, Oak Ridge North, Montgomery County, the South Montgomery County Municipal Utility District, the South Montgomery County Woodlands Chamber of Commerce and the Town Center Improvement District, the local government for The Woodlands (and now called The Woodlands Township).

 “TxDOT was widening 45 and had done a lot of construction in this area,” says Mendes. “They were getting ready to start cleaning up afterwards, and we partnered with them.  We said, ‘Look, if you’ll buy the plants, we’ll put them in.’ TxDOT supplied all the material, vegetation, irrigation pipes and so forth, and we provided the ‘sweat equity’ of putting them in the ground. We provided the water; TxDOT provided the irrigation equipment.”

But it wasn’t just a matter of sticking plants in the ground. “You’ve got to take everything into consideration,” Mendes says. “Such as the view corridors to the businesses on the roadside, so you don’t block off your businesses — but it also doesn’t look like the highways are running through a bunch of parking lots. So we looked at the type of vegetation we could use, low vegetation that hid the cars but still left visible the signs on the front of the buildings and so forth. It enhanced the businesses, as opposed to blocking them out.”

The plantings are of native vegetation, intended to restore the area’s natural forest. “We’ve got more than 11,000 trees in this project,” Mendes says. “It’s changed the entire appearance of the area.”

TxDOT provided about $800,000 for the first phase of the project and about the same amount for the second phase, Mendes says. The coalition provided matching funds in sweat equity.

The coalition partners also assumed responsibility for maintaining the plantings. “We mow around the trees, pick up the trash and so forth,” Mendes says.

The project payoff has been a beautiful gateway to one of Texas’ most prosperous and carefully planned regions. “We’ve got beautiful vegetation on both sides of the highway, on the feeder roads, and excellent growth between the main lanes and the feeder roads, which is really looking nice,” Mendes says. “It looks beautiful all along here.

“So often, the only impression people have of your city is through the windshield on their way past it,” Mendes says. “But now the region has a unique ‘front door’ that brands it in the minds of travelers.”

The project enhanced the area’s visual presentation and attraction and was the perfect blend to tie in the I-45 corridor with the beauty and majesty of the town center and Woodlands area.

“As the project matures it will be a greater signature for The Woodlands area than any sign could ever provide,” Mendes says.

For information and resources on how your community can use beautification and revitalization projects in your economic development, contact the Comptroller’s Local Government Assistance and Economic Development Division at (800) 531-5441, ext. 3-4679 or visit www.TexasAhead.org. TR