NEWPORT The completion of the Boulevard of South Diamondhead was marked last Wednesday by Precinct 2 Commissioner Jack Morman with Newport Developer Jim Carpenter, the School District Superintendent, the engineering company representative, Angel Brothers Paving and Utility Contractors representative and local civic groups.
Jim Carpenter said of the completion of widening South Diamondhead into a Boulevard, I think it is a grand event for Newport and Crosby. It continues to open up the whole area for additional expansion and particularly with the other things that have gone on like the overpass, the new high school and all the new projects that are being undertaken in Crosby, I think we can expect to see an exponential growth in this area not just because of the growth in these areas but because of all the new projects that are going on all over this area.
After enumerating a great number of factors that will impact the east side of Harris County Carpenter referred to the project in Mount Belvieu, I heard a projection by one of the partners with the Houston Partnership the other day saying it is probably going to produce 10,000 new jobs in the area.
According to Jack Morman the project was Born out of a community meeting went redistricting was underway we inherited this area and one of the first things we did was come out to Newport and say, What do you guys want after we explained what our Better Streets 2 Neighborhoods was about. We said we wanted to do something for the neighborhood but we are not going to dictate what that is. What is your wish list? And this was on it. We made South Diamondhead a priority and we funded it at nearly $2 Million, we hit some snags along the way but we had a good consultant and good construction crew with Angel Brothers, we managed to clear that hurdle and still finish on schedule in spite of some unexpected landmines. All in all a pretty good project.
Jeremy Phillips, Senior Director of Infrastructure, answered some pointed questions about finding gas lines in surprising places. We typically dont like utilities running between the road surface. And utility companies are able to work inside a right of way. There are some regulatory aspects that are supposed to take care of these things. It is not if it is a matter of when and when you do it is how you react to it and that speaks volumes to how well the construction crews and engineers dealt with the situation.