Palm Center (Houston)

"[6] Oscar Holcombe and Sterling T. Hogan, Sr. had the shopping center built to serve White Houstonians living in newly developed neighborhoods in Southeast Houston that were not in proximity to the shopping places in Downtown Houston.

Irving R. Klein & Associates had designed the center, Stanley Krenek and James Bishop served as the project architects, and Fisher Construction Company completed the structural framework; Holcombe and Hogan had selected Klein & Associates in 1954.

[7] Collins Tuttle & Co., a real estate company headquartered in New York, purchased Palm Center from Holcombe and Hogan.

J. R. Gonzales of the Houston Chronicle wrote "the center resembled a ghost town by the early 1980s.

In 1987 the city began to redevelop Palm Center to attract small businesses as part of the Target of Opportunity program, funded by loans made by the federal government.

[2] The Palms Center Management Company and the Tillman Trotter Foundation cooperated with the city government in this endeavor.

[5] That year the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) stated that the Houston redevelopment program had over-reported the number of jobs created and not accurately report spending; the HUD stated in a report that the city overpaid the private development team that renovated Palm Center $1 million and that there was $800,000 in other unnecessary expenses.

[5] The HUD approved the construction of a building for light manufacturing and the use of the community development funds for renovation of 12,000-square-foot (1,100 m2) of space.

[9] Carroll Parrott Blue, a research professor at the University of Houston, applied for a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to improve the center; she did so on behalf of the university's Third Ward Arts Initiative.

[10] The university consulted 64-year-old Paulette Wagner, the president of the MacGregor Trails Civic Club in the Riverside Terrace community, for ideas on what to do.

[3] The opening of the facility, the United States's first YMCA named after an athletic team,[21] was scheduled for January 3, 2011.