The time to start building Houston 2036 is now

Houston's bicentennial is now less than 20 years away; time to start thinking about what we want for our city.

Business leaders should especially contemplate the future. After all, Houston was founded by two New York real estate developers, and business has always done more to effect change here than City Hall. Great businesspeople take civic pride seriously, knowing that the city's success or failure will reflect on their personal and corporate legacies.

I recently pondered Houston's future while visiting Allen's Landing, Houston's first wharf, named after the brothers John and Augustus Allen. They paid $9,428 in August 1836 for the 6,642 acres that would become downtown Houston.

Thanks to philanthropists, the city is creating parks along Buffalo Bayou, and Allen's Landing is one of the best. But walk a few yards in any direction on Commerce or Main, and it's apparent there is much more work to do if we truly want a great city.

That gap between how we live and what we dream is why Lawrence Payne - author, radio host, activist and conscience of Houston - is asking every Houstonian two simple but challenging questions.

"What is your No. 1 goal for Houston for 2036, for the city at-large and for your community? That's the easy question," he said. "The second part of it is, how would you be acting and behaving today if you really wanted to see that happen?"

Nineteen years may seem a long time, but ask anyone who builds skyscrapers, deep-water drilling rigs or ship channels, and they'll tell you that great projects require years of careful planning and deliberate action.

Gov. James Hogg knew this in 1900 when he called on Texans to start preparing for the 1936 Centennial. Since Houston shares its birth year with Texas' independence from Mexico, there is double the work to be done here.

Houston's business leaders, though, have always led the way. Within a year of the Allen brothers arriving, there were 1,500 people and 100 houses in Houston. In 1840, businessmen founded the first Houston Chamber of Commerce.

Local businessmen funded the Ship Channel Co. in 1869 and built railroads to Dallas and San Antonio to make Houston the center of trade. William Marshall Rice, a Massachusetts businessman who made his fortune from Texas land, cotton and railroads, left the bulk of his estate to create Rice University in 1912.

Recognizing the need for charity health care, George Hermann donated land in 1893 for what would become Memorial Hermann Hospital in the Texas Medical Center. He later donated the land for Hermann Park.

In the 1960s, when other cities used firehoses and police dogs to attack civil rights protesters, business leaders like Bob Dundas, vice president of Foley's department store, and John T. Jones, publisher of the Houston Chronicle and president of Houston Endowment, worked behind the scenes to quietly desegregate the city's businesses after the first protests.

The list of Houston businesspeople donating their time and money to make the city better could go on for pages. And as 2036 approaches, today's businesspeople should add their names to the list.

Raising money for celebrations on Discovery Green, or re-creating the Main Street Festival and the Ship Channel Water Carnival that highlighted the 1936 celebrations, will be easy. What Payne and I want to know is, who wants to deal with the hard stuff? Like decreasing poverty and boosting unity, which will take a generation to tackle.

Scott McClelland, president of H-E-B in Houston, is one leader who has already made the list by working to improve public education, in particular, early childhood education.

Rich Kinder, founder of pipeline company Kinder Morgan, has a foundation that has helped finance Cristo Rey Jesuit College Preparatory School, the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts as well as Emancipation Park.

If education is the answer, then more work is needed to improve Houston schools, which will create a stronger workforce and make Houston businesses more profitable.

The Greater Houston Partnership and Mayor Sylvester Turner need help with the Hire Houston Youth program, which employs high school kids after school and in the summer months, when gangs are trying to recruit them and they are most likely to get into trouble. Showing teens what's possible for them is the first step to changing their trajectory.

Payne suggests that corporations give employees one hour a week to tutor at a local school. The most needy are all within a 10-minute drive of downtown.

"The business community is the driver in this city, unlike other urban cities," Payne said. "Public education is going to be the Achilles' heel that will either make us a great city or a Third World city."

I'm old enough to remember the national year-round celebrations of the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976, and the hullabaloo around the Texas Sesquicentennial in 1986. Anniversaries are rallying points for patriotism, pride and community improvement.

When you think about it, 2036 is not that far away. And there's no better time to begin building the city of our dreams than now.