In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1797
Exactly 170 years after Coleridge wrote his famous poem about the mighty Khan, my grandfather “Papaw,” my uncle Gary, my aunt Dot, my cousins Dennis and Shannon, my father Lynn, my older brother Randy and I formed a two-car caravan headed southeast on Highway 45 from Dallas to Houston. It was the summer of 1967. Our somewhat struggling middle-class family did not take many vacations, so this was a big deal. Dennis, Randy and I had bought “racing stripe” T-shirts and wore them on the two-day trip to Texas’ biggest city.
Since the Washington Senators’ transformation into the Texas Rangers—based in the Dallas suburb of Arlington—was five years in the future, none of us had ever seen a major league baseball game. The Astros were facing the Atlanta Braves, but I remember nothing about the game. It’s a shame that no effort was made to preserve the next day’s Houston Chronicle or Dallas Morning News, so all the specifics have faded away. Who were the starting pitchers, who homered, who won the game? I have no idea. What I do remember is that all seven of us were suitably overwhelmed by the setting: the Harris County Domed Stadium, a.k.a. the Astrodome, completed just two years earlier at a cost of $31 million. We were watching indoor baseball! An architectural and engineering marvel, its roof spanned 710 feet. The Dome, embodying the optimism and zeitgeist of Houston at the time, was cavernous, gawdy and futuristic, way over the top. Judge Roy Hofheinz, the man most responsible for its conception and construction, wanted us all to have that wide-eyed reaction.
While the Astrodome hosted basketball—most famously the University of Houston’s 71-69 defeat of UCLA on January 30, 1968—, wrestling, rodeos, tractor pulls, heavy-metal concerts, political conventions and a multiplicity of other events, it was primarily about baseball and football. The Astros played home games there every season between 1965 and 1999, the Houston Oilers called it home from 1968 to 1997, and the UH Cougars did so from 1965 to 1997. By the 1990s, this famous facility was vacated in quick order by its three main tenants. The Astros, with a generous boost from tax dollars, built Enron Field (since renamed Minute Maid Park). The Oilers did more than move to a different part of the city, they left Texas entirely. Owner Bud Adams had been begging to have the Astrodome updated or, better yet, that he get a new stadium like the Astros had. He called Houston’s bluff and high-tailed it to Nashville as his team became the Tennessee Titans. The University of Houston was drawing small crowds there and thus chose to host football games at Robertson Stadium on campus. The last actual event at the Astrodome took place in 2003. Two years later, it was opened for 23,000 evacuees from Hurricane Katrina.
For more than a decade now, the fabled Astrodome has been sitting vacant, gathering dust and looking increasingly forlorn. The number of suggestions for its re-use is long. A hotel? A convention center? An amusement park? A shopping mall? An indoor ski resort? A casino? A space-age museum? Architects, urban planners, editorial writers and plain-Jane citizens have had their say, but Houston cannot seem to move on the issue. Any plan would cost a lot of money, far more than its initial investment 50 years ago.
Public perception of the Astrodome really sank in 2002 when Reliant Stadium opened virtually next door. This, a $352 million facility with a retractable roof and 196 luxury boxes, is home to the Houston Texans, an NFL expansion franchise to replace the departed Oilers. Its 71,000 seats are perfectly aligned and close to the field, which could not be said for the Astrodome as a football stadium. It was never ideal for the gridiron game.
Nearly $4 million is spent every year for basic maintenance of the Dome, which makes little sense. The question of its fate is heating up since Super Bowl 51—sorry, I just cannot do the Roman numerals—will take place at Reliant Stadium in February 2017. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell visited Houston not long ago and met with city and county officials, along with Texans owner Bob McNair. Goodell tried to sound diplomatic by saying that local people should decide what to do with the Astrodome, but his true feelings were not hard to discern. He regards it as a pug-ugly white elephant. Notwithstanding the fact that it is structurally sound, the Dome may be facing its final days. The commish, whose opinion carries significant weight, says the land on which the Astrodome sits just west of Reliant Stadium should be put to better use, such as parking. Yes, the iconic Astrodome, the so-called eighth wonder of the modern world, may soon be razed and turned into something as prosaic as a parking lot.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has compiled a short list of the USA's most endangered historic places, and the Astrodome is on it. Some romantic-minded citizens call the stadium Houston's Eiffel Tower, a signature landmark. Surely, they aver, it will not be torn down. And yet no financially viable option has been presented. Houston, a city that has embraced its reputation for swaggering ambition, may—and I hate to say, probably will—allow the wrecking ball to swing. If and when that happens, it will be a major failure of civic imagination.
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