The Woodlands faces a crossroads at 40

Don Gebert moved "to the middle of nowhere" in the early 1970s and had to have an electrician run a line for half a mile in the piney woods 30 miles north of downtown Houston just to light up his newly built home.

A pastor from Philadelphia, he had come to develop social services in what would become The Woodlands - an innovative master-planned community envisioned by Texas billionaire George Mitchell. The arrival of Gebert's seven-member family increased the population by 10 percent.

Gebert, now 85, still remembers how amazed folks were to see another soul on the newly blazed roads. They'd screech to a stop, roll down their cars windows and chat.

"If I tried to do that today, there'd be a major wreck," he said, thinking back to those early days when planners hadn't envisioned much more than homes and culs-de-sac. "We never imagined it would become what it is today," said Gebert.

As The Woodlands turns 40 this weekend, it's no longer a far-flung outpost of Houston.

Amid Houston's sprawl, The Woodlands is widely viewed as a masterpiece - a meticulously planned community nestled in pine trees that's part well-kept neighborhoods and part gleaming skyscrapers, with an outdoor performing arts center, a thriving Market Street entertainment area and man-made canals and water taxis.

Some 108,000 people call The Woodlands home, making it twice as large as Galveston, and the residential building boom shows no signs of slowing down, especially with Exxon Mobil Corp. building a corporate campus just to the south that will be home to 10,000 employees.

But The Woodlands is also at a crossroads. This "new hometown" - with $15 billion in property values - is wrestling with the challenges of growth as some fear it is drifting away from the founder's original vision.

Mitchell wanted a community in harmony with nature that preserved trees, but since new owners acquired The Woodlands Corp. in 1997, there's been clear-cutting. He championed a community that would be inclusive and affordable for all economic levels, but The Woodlands' prosperity has priced many low-income buyers out of the market. Mitchell thought Houston would one day annex his community, but instead residents struck a deal in 2006 to keep its autonomy - for now.

And finally, Mitchell saw his community as providing an escape from the urban bustle but now residents find often themselves stuck in traffic.

The changes worry Pat Woodson, a 63-year-old resident who's lived there 27 years. "On the ground there's still a bunch of beautiful trees, and it's nice. But if you take a bird's-eye view of the area, concrete is taking over. In some parts there's more concrete than woods."

She and others also complain about traffic-congested roadways.

"We're dealing with the struggles of growing too fast," said 43-year-old PK Gordon, a longtime resident. "It's not the home I knew growing up."

Opened in 1974

In the beginning, it was Mitchell's baby.

The oilman, who died last year at the age of 94, first conceived of The Woodlands after viewing Los Angeles' ravaged Watts neighborhood in the wake of the race-fueled riots there in 1965, said his granddaughter, Katherine Lorenz.

"He knew we could do better. So he went to work creating a sustainable community," said Lorenz, noting how he began purchasing land that would become the 43-square-mile community.

To some, an oilman known as the "father of fracking" would be the anti­thesis of a nature conservationist. But Lorenz said her grandfather was both: "He cares about sustainability in energy as well as the earth's resources."

So he created a master-planned community that left a third of the acreage as green space for wildlife and recreation. To date, some 130 forested parks, a nature preserve and 200 miles of winding trails are interlaced with the homes and businesses there.

The Woodlands had its grand opening in October 1974, a few months after Gerald Ford was sworn in as president.

It wasn't long before The Woodlands was catching people's eyes. Its opening was followed by the creation of a 200-acre artificial lake with its own "Loch Ness" monster - a humped sculpture crossing it - in 1985; the opening of the performing arts center and high-end shopping mall in the early 1990s; and the 2004 opening of Market Street, which resembles an old-fashioned town square.

The community is now governed by The Woodlands Township, which began as a community improvement district in 1993 and expanded to an elected board of directors in 2010. It currently oversees $105 million in revenue from sales and property taxes to do everything from enforcing deed restrictions to maintaining the parks and greenbelts.

Survived sour economy

Bruce Tough, the township's president, said the development wasn't always this lucrative. He said Mitchell poured a lot of his own money into the project to prevent bankruptcy when the economy soured. "It was a huge gamble, but he was a wildcatter and a risk taker," Tough said. "Who else would build a convention center before there was any downtown? Or risk $85 million on a 1.5-mile long waterway to connect the mall to a man-made lake for a water taxis? He was spending millions to attract businesses."

But while it could have been a career-ending failure, it wasn't, said Tough. He has vivid memories of all the construction, because his father, Coulson Tough, was hired by Mitchell to be the chief architect. Bruce Tough himself spent his summers during college working on the construction crews for the convention center.

His father is also responsible for 50 outdoor sculptures that are sprinkled throughout the development. The cast-iron sculptures range from a herd of deer to three-story figurines symbolizing a family.

In the process, The Woodlands went from being just a bedroom community for commuters to a tourist destination in the Houston area.

"Mitchell wanted to build a model planned community. But he wound up building a substantial-sized city with its own employment center," said former Houston Mayor Bill White, a longtime friend. Records show 38 percent of those living in The Woodlands also work there.

Bruce Tough's father envisioned office buildings that were the height of trees, not 30-story office buildings like Anadarko Petroleum's two towers for 1,400 employees.

The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion is the No. 2-ranked outdoor venue for attendance in the world, drawing acts ranging from Bruce Springsteen to the Houston Symphony. The Woodlands also boasts six golf courses, two sports complexes, 14 pools and countless restaurants and shops.

Lack of racial diversity

Urban planner Frederick Steiner, the University of Texas architecture dean who authored a 2005 study of The Woodlands, calls the community a success. But he also sees room for improvement.

He praised the landscaping design as "accomplished and pleasant," but he said the buildings "lack innovation and excitement."

He was also critical of the community's social track record, which shows little racial diversity. The Woodlands is currently 90.8 percent white, 12.3 percent Hispanic, 4.9 percent Asian and 2.3 percent African-American.

"Over time, The Woodlands has become a more affluent, more exclusive community," Steiner said.

Lorenz acknowledged that her grandfather had wanted his community to be more inclusive, but that ideal fell by the wayside as property values soared. The median price of a home has more than doubled in the last decade, from $195,880 to $412,482. For example, a 30,000-square-foot manor valued at $19 million was recently posted for sale, and another resident received widespread publicity when jewels and clothing were stolen from her 3,000-square-foot closet that was said to be one of the largest in the world.

Disappearing trees

Although Mitchell began his planning with a $50 million low-interest federal loan that required some low-income housing, most of that stopped after the program ended in 1984, Gebert said.

Some residents also complain that developers have been cutting down too many trees. "It was different when Mitchell was still in charge. I had to move my house to a different part of my lot to save a 24-inch tree back then. But not any more," Gebert said. "It's disappointing."

Tough attributes the road congestion to more than residential growth, but from the people who flock there for restaurants, entertainment or medical care. "Our daytime population is nearly twice the number who actually live here," he said, adding that massive development nearby will aggravate the situation.

The Woodlands will soon find itself sandwiched between Exxon Mobil's 385-acre energy center, opening in 2015 to the south, and Johnson Development Co.'s mixed-use project on 2,046 acres that once was a Boy Scout camp to the north.

Transportation concerns now dominate township meetings, and nothing is off the table.

Everything from a bullet train to expanding roads and trolley service is being explored, officials say.

Incorporation question

But perhaps the most complex problem ahead will be whether The Woodlands incorporates as its own city, or allows Houston to take it over.

Under a 2006 agreement, The Woodlands pays Houston 1⁄16 of a percent of its sales tax - or $1.3 million a year - as a sort of "protection money" to prevent annexation while helping to maintain Houston as a vibrant urban core. The deal also allows The Woodlands to incorporate, starting this year. But residents so far have balked at the idea after a consultant reported their property taxes would soar 70 percent.

The master-planned community has until 2057 to incorporate. If it doesn't, Houston gets another bite at the apple and can gobble it up.

White, who helped negotiate the 50-year agreement that has prevented annexation of The Woodlands by the nation's fourth largest city, said, "This was neither a give-away for Houston or sell-out for The Woodlands. Everybody got something. It was fair." He said Woodlands residents must decide what they want: "We don't want communities feeling that they are a tax plantation for Houston."

Elaine Smith, a 15-year resident of the community, is dead-set against becoming part of Houston. "We're The Woodlands. If you want to move to Houston, go inside The Loop," she said.

'An identity crisis'

Tough predicts The Woodlands will take another serious run at becoming a city in about five years after building a savings account to cover the cost of everything from police to public works. By incorporating, The Woodlands can make laws to control its burgeoning population, he said.

Another Township board member, Gordy Bunch, agreed, saying incorporation will give The Woodlands the respect that it deserves for its size.

Gebert is well-aware of the growth. He bicycled to every house to collect data for the community's first phone book. Then just a few pages stapled together, it has since grown to 1,400 pages with $1.3 million in advertisements.

"Truth of the matter is, we have an identity crisis," Gebert said. "We are not really a city. … We're not even a dot on a real Texas map, and that bothers some people."