Eight Years, Enough Already!
For the past 8 years, my company has been dealing with one business catastrophe or another thanks entirely to TxDot. In its misplaced desire to make life better for all Texans, TxDot tramples the property rights of the small businesses intersecting their projects. TxDot does so with impunity… TxDot is slowly choking our company.
In about 2013, TxDot began work on the northbound side of Washington / Hempstead. Eventually the orange barrels, traffic disruption and construction drove most of the tenants at 8200 Washington out of the building for lack of traffic. I owned that building and because the loan covenants were not being met (insufficient rental income), the loan was foreclosed and I was forced to sell below market. (Note: the same orange barrels continue to affect the traffic at that same property to this day).
In 2018, TxDot began work on the southbound side of the same Hempstead / Washington project. TxDot placed concrete barriers, orange barrels, tore up the road, and thoroughly marginalized access to Motorcars from Hempstead / Washington. Visibility from Hempstead / Washington was blocked with construction containers and equipment such that our building could not be seen from the street. It became difficult to turn into our parking lot. If it was not constricted traffic, pot holes and detours, it was a slippery muddy slope.… low slung cars could not make it through.
Even so, our business continued to grow as it had for the past 50 plus years….
Throughout 2018 – early 2023, contractors came and went and the project would start and stop as quickly as one contractor was fired or quit and the next was hired….. truly, it was a case of “who was on first” …. it was more like “the noose was tightening.”
In February, 2023, the unbelievable happened: without warning, excavators arrived and started digging out the approach to our driveway, the approach to the shared drive with our neighbor (a TxDot maintenance facility), and digging out the southbound lanes of Hempstead. TxDot constructed a “new access to our property” – from Old Katy Road, about 532 invisible feet to the south!!!! The TxDot “solution” to land locking the front of our building was to have our traffic travel Old Katy Road west bound, and then suddenly jerk a hazardous high speed right turn into the no man’s land of the TxDot maintenance facility parking lot. Having survived the right turn, our customers are then obliged to navigate through the TexDot parking lot to Motorcars.
Many frustrated customers complained about the new “arrangements” while trying to get driving directions from us on the phone. Many, ultimately, never showed up. I cannot tell you how many deliveries we have missed because the carriers (DHL, Prime, FedEx, UPS etc) marked the merchandise as “un-deliverable”, “business closed” or “no such address”. The United States Post Office will not deliver to us because the alternative route is “too dangerous”. Uber drivers drop their customers off on the side of Old Katy Road or Hempstead because they cannot find the new Old Katy Road entrance.
Meantime… it has been six months since we were completely blocked by TxDot from Hempstead.
The new roadbed on the southbound side of Hempstead is now 4 to 6 feet below the northbound side of Hempstead… and cannot be traversed into or out of our building. There has been NO WORK on the project in four months. Since February, 2023, our service business has deteriorated for the first time in over 50 years…. we are missing the oil changes, the brake services and the air conditioning services (IN THIS SUMMER HEAT !!!). We are missing the easy in and the easy out convenience of our maintenance customers.
We still get the five star ratings on Google…. we still have the great staff that we had in the past… we still strive to deliver the best product available…
What has changed? Simple. TxDot. TxDot has put a strangle hold on our business by blocking easy access to our building just as they did at 8200 Washington. It is simply an unreasonable act.
WHAT DO WE NEED AND WHAT CAN YOU DO ?
#1. If you know an influential politician or journalist and think that they might be able to help us to expose the outrageous slow-death-treatment of small businesses by TxDot then please call us (713)-863-9388; and/or
#2. If you need maintenance or repair for your car / truck please bring it in.
Please click here to review the map on how to “navigate” the “entrance” to our shop and please make a Service Request so we will know how to best schedule your work.
Thank you for your patience with my frustration and this solicitation for help.
Sincerely,
Kent Edwards
President, Motorcars LTD
