Astrodome Gets New Life + Her Brave Katrina Heroism

On virtual life support since the final Houston Astros game on October 9, 1999, the Astrodome now has a future, and an apparent vote of confidence that it won’t be demolished.

Harris County Commissioners voted unanimously, September 27, to move ahead with a major $105 million renovation project. The stalwart stadium, long the home of the Astros, the Houston Oilers, and varied events, was thought to be doomed, in 2013, after citizens rejected a $217 million bond proposal that would have allowed for renovations then.

She was even declared unfit for occupancy in 2009.

The September vote actually signaled the implementation of the first $10.5 million piece of the project that would raise the floor of the Astrodome two levels, and create 1,400 top-dollar parking spaces underneath. County officials believe that this arrangement would make the Dome suitable for conferences, festivals, and other commercial uses that would take advantage of the more than half-a-million square feet surrounding the core.

The newly-approved $105 million figure is expected to be paid, in generally equal shares, by the county’s general fund, hotel tax revenue, and parking fees. This amount represents the county’s biggest investment in the Astrodome since the curtain came down on the Astros’ 34-year tenure sixteen years ago.

Since one-third (roughly $35 million) of the $105 million figure will come from the county’s general fund (mostly property tax revenue), it’s interesting to note that the estimated cost to demolish the Astrodome has been estimated by experts at being over $30 million.

With seating rows strewn all over the Dome’s floor, the building has become home to dozens of feral cats, due largely to the overtaking of the building’s dark crevices by rats. It costs the county about $170,000 annually to maintain, as is, the Astrodome.

Related: Houston’s Astrodome is 50: Hats Off to the Grande Dame

Her Finest Hour…A Look Back

In the November 2005 issue of Texas Monthly, John Spong movingly recounts, in his “Dome Away From Home” article, the “two weeks in September, when the Eighth Wonder of the World was miraculously transformed into the largest emergency shelter in the universe, where 17,500 Hurricane Katrina survivors found comfort, hundreds of families were reunited, and New Orleans showed its first signs of rebirth.” Excerpts of Spong’s article follow:

There were signs of the building’s original use, but these were afterthoughts to the initial impression. The scoreboards above the green outfield walls showed the names of missing people, not ballplayers. The Dome was no longer a stadium. It was a big bedroom with thousands of beds, each one holding a person who’d just lost everything he owned.

The Dome provided a roof, and its locker rooms offered a place to shower. Clothes were dropped off and sorted in a building across the parking lot, arriving in such quantities that volunteers had to quit taking them each day around lunchtime. A medical center was set up in a building next to that one.

Most of the people I talked to bristled at being referred to as “refugees” or “evacuees.”

Security was everywhere, but quietly so. After the tales of rampant lawlessness in the New Orleans shelters-stories that were in large part debunked in the following weeks-the Dome and surrounding grounds were teeming with uniformed lawmen. But they weren’t patrolling so much as milling about in groups of five or six. These were cops simply being cops, their mission largely just to be present.

The only place where cops were actually acting like cops was in the fenced-off parking lot near Kirby and Main, where buses were still arriving one after the other. There was a checkpoint there, with metal detectors and pat-downs to make sure nothing made it onto the grounds that would threaten the safe haven.

The P.A. would announce that if anyone wished to relocate to Colorado, an airline had donated fifty seats on an afternoon flight to Denver. The message was repeated throughout the morning, with all fifty seats available each time.

One family said they’d gone to their Ninth Ward church (in New Orleans), to weather Katrina. When the water rose too high in St. Mary’s of the Angels, they’d climbed to the roof with their own family of 18. They were up there for two nights. “Everything was all right so long as the children didn’t look over the roof at the bodies floating past,” recounted one family member. “The worst part was at night. It was pitch black. No street lights or lights in the buildings because there was no electricity. It was dead silent except for the sound of people trapped in their attics screaming as the water rose.”

Another family member said they never lost faith up on the roof. “We saw people in boats loaded with so much liquor and beer you would have thought it was JazzFest,” she remembered. The Superdome was never an option. “Every time there’s a storm, people go into that Superdome and loot. I’m fed up with New Orleans. I don’t want to go back.”

The best measure you’ll get of how poor the response to Katrina was in New Orleans-no matter which level of government you choose to blame-is how quickly the Astrodome was readied. At three o’clock Wednesday morning, August 31, with New Orleans still filling with water, Harris County judge Robert Eckels was awakened by a phone call from the coordinator of Governor Rick Perry’s division of emergency management.

That morning the air-conditioning and plumbing were upgraded. While that was happening, the Red Cross shipped in tens of thousands of cots, blankets, and “comfort kits,” little bags containing toiletries.

The televisions along the level-four concourse, once wired for closed-circuit broadcasts of games so that fans at concession stands wouldn’t miss any action, were rigged with basic cable so the new residents could watch television. When the first buses arrived at ten that night, the Dome was ready.

Related: Requiem Mound: Astros Ditch Tal’s Hill, Bring in Wall

Related Posts

• Houston, We Have Contact: Astros Claim LF Nori Aoki From Mariners
• AFL Astros, Pt. 6: Garrett Stubbs: Tech Geek In A Catcher’s Mask
• TRS 2016 MLB Awards