MONTROSE — It takes James “Jimmy” Walker nearly five minutes to move from his electric wheelchair to a seated elliptical bike at the Metropolitan Multi-Service Center. 

It’s partly due to his transverse myelitis, a rare inflammation of a section of the spinal cord that can cause weakness in the arms or legs. But it’s largely due to the teetering seat in disrepair that he must stabilize with his hand just to sit down.

For Walker, 81, his condition mostly impacts his lower body mobility. 

“There’s no pill for it,” he said. “So the only thing I can do is rehab my way out.” 

Many disabled Houstonians like Walker rely on the MMSC, 1475 West Gray St., for physical exercise and rehabilitation, but are tired of settling for faulty equipment and a cramped facility. 

For nearly a decade, everyone from users to City of Houston staff and civic and elected leaders acknowledge that the community has outgrown the space and agree that the 42-year-old adaptive sports and recreation facility, which is the only one of its kind in the city, is in dire need for renovation. 

“We needed some money yesterday for the repairs to just keep it operating,” said District C City Councilmember Abbie Kamin, who represents the area. “But we’re also bursting at the seams; equipment is in a hallway and we have people working out in a hallway when they deserve much more than that. There’s a level of dignity that we need to restore to the way in which we’re providing these services.”

Despite the collective outcry for upgrades, the city has for decades rendered patchwork solutions to address immediate repairs. At the root of the problem — proactively securing funding to invest in a new facility that’s sustainable long-term.

Walker has been coming to the MMSC for physical rehab since 2006, about a year after his diagnosis. He goes about three times a week to supplement his physical therapy at TIRR Memorial Hermann. His goal is to hit two miles in about 30 minutes. 

Sometimes, Walker can find a rhythm on the elliptical bike. Other times, he misses the mark. But it’s not due to his stamina. He needs to take it slow because he might slide out of the seat or his feet might slip out of the strapless foot pedals. In the last couple of months, Walker hasn’t been able to hit his goal because the elliptical bike, now wrapped in yellow caution tape, is out of order.

“First the seat was moving and that was a problem. Now it’s to the point where it’s a hazard,” Walker said after a recent Tuesday Tabata class. “It was a hazard then, but you know you work through it.”

Kamin said her office has been seeking “stop gaps” for disabled athletes on wheelchair teams, who need practice spaces when the gym is being used for community meetings. They also need access to a track since the MMSC doesn’t have one. But according to Kamin, the problem is twofold: resolving basic maintenance needs and re-envisioning a new space.

‘Critical structural needs’

The Houston Parks and Recreation Department oversees the facility with the city’s General Services Department. In its 2023 master plan, it noted the building has “critical structural needs” and that expansion is the ultimate goal. The master plan also recognized the facility’s unique and regional significance, recommending that the city prioritize the expansion project in the Capital Improvement Project and explore public-private partnerships for funding opportunities. Yet, HPARD deprioritized its upkeep in the master plan. It ranked the MMSC 170 out of 186 parks based on highest need. 

Every five years, HPARD officials update the master plan. It assesses the conditions of Houston parks and neighborhood equity to guide long-term decisions on expanding, maintaining, and improving the park system, city officials say. It does not assess the building, said Michael Evans, HPARD’s deputy director of facilities management. It includes safety, amenities, sports pavilions, utilities, and greenspace. It also includes the neighborhood’s and playground’s accessibility, trail connectivity, and factors like population, income level, health factors, and demographics. 

“West Gray Adaptive Center lies in Neartown/Montrose while many of our other neighborhood parks lie in communities with lower income levels and areas of health disparity and higher density of minority populations,” Evans said in a prepared statement. “This would trigger a lower priority need in terms of equity.”

Evans said older parks that rank less accessible than the MMSC often have narrow sidewalks or completely lack them altogether.  

“In that sense, because of the demographic, it’s built (and) adapted for people with disabilities. The accessibility far exceeds most of our other facilities,” Evans said in an interview.

Kamin found the HPARD master plan rating to be “insane” given the years of deferred maintenance.

While she recognized that some areas around the city do not have a community center at all and that others also need work, she believes the MMSC’s uniqueness, its location in a prominent neighborhood and dual departmental ownership has unfortunately resulted in it getting overlooked. 

“You can’t fit West Gray into a specific bucket. And that’s the challenge,” said Kamin, whose district encompasses the MMSC. “So when parks is ranking it, it’s from a parks perspective. When GSD, our General Services Department, is ranking it, they’re looking at all of the buildings in the entire city, some of which are in worse condition. But nobody’s looking at it specifically for what it is, which is the only one of its kind in the city of Houston.”

Kamin also acknowledged that the city has several other priorities, as well as major funding constraints.

“I don’t think anyone is intentionally not looking at this for funding, but oftentimes, the disability community, unintentionally doesn’t get the attention that it deserves,” she said. 

‘Their standard is substandard’

Internal facility condition assessment records of the MMSC, obtained by the Landing, suggest a higher priority than the master plan and points to years of deferred maintenance.

The on-site assessment is used for budgeting and programming purposes, and measures the facility’s condition index (FCI) by calculating the ratio of the costs to correct a facility’s deficiencies to the facility’s calculated replacement value. The closer the FCI gets to 100 percent, the worse the condition is. 

A 2016 report using data collected from 2011 to 2012 ranked the MMSC very poor with a roughly 75 percent FCI based on a number of systems that were either near, expired, or exceeded their life expectancies. Some systems included the exterior enclosure, plumbing, electrical systems, the equipment, furnishings, rainwater drainage, and fire alarms. The report said a summary of building deficiencies were necessary, but not yet critical for two to five years. It estimated more than $5 million in repair costs. 

Since 2015, the city has spent nearly $1.6 million on capital improvements to the exterior building, including a new canopy for passenger pickup and drop-off, new lighting, pool upgrades, driveway repairs, and tennis court resurfacing, according to HPARD officials.

The FCI assessment from 2022 was redacted in the latest 2024 report. However, city officials said the MMSC ranked 67 percent. Although that represents a nearly 8 percent increase, it still reflects significant deficiencies in more than half of the site’s systems, including exterior doors, restroom fixtures, HVAC units and roof hatches, among several others that expired and need to be replaced this year or sooner. 

Since the 2022 assessment was completed, the General Services Department (GSD) has begun replacing major HVAC equipment in phases to limit impact of facility programming and other repairs, said Mary Benton, a city spokesperson for Mayor John Whitmire. The city has also completed other repairs, including replacements to the pool lifts and locker room faucets to meet ADA standards. The city is also actively working to complete all rooftop unit replacements by spring 2025, Benton confirmed. 

GSD receives eight to 10 work orders a month, with the majority related to the temperature, city officials said. The city spent roughly $1.3 million in the last three years, an average of $456,000 a year on reactive repairs and replacement services, according to the city.

While the MMSC is a hub for access to services for people with disabilities across the region, it is also the largest voting center in Harris County, something that some users and city officials said restricts accessibility to activities and services.

“There needs to be more than one court,” said Brent Key in a survey conducted last year by the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities. “It’s extremely limiting to only have one court, especially when the city uses it for polling and other events.” 

Key was among hundreds who completed the survey and voiced other urgent needs for the facility, including better bathrooms, heating and cooling system, and more storage space to avoid having equipment in the hallways and on the stage. 

The MMSC is also often used by youth sports programs and civic groups, who also want to see its revitalization prioritized. 

Medhi Rais, the vice president of the North Montrose Civic Association, which holds meetings there, said the community coexists nicely, but individuals with disabilities are entitled to the necessary improvement. 

“Their standard is substandard,” Rais said. “And they deserve — we all deserve a better standard than what we’re giving them.”

What efforts have been made? 

Records obtained by the Landing show that the City of Houston has tried twice to expand the MMSC. Neither attempt succeeded.

In April 2016, the city joined forces with TIRR Foundation, a nonprofit that aims to improve the lives of people with central nervous system damage, to chart out a multilevel gym addition and estimate the construction costs.

The preliminary design by English + Associates Architects Inc. would have expanded the gym, and added more courts and parking. TIRR Foundation paid $24,083 for the design, Richard Vella with GSD, confirmed. But, it failed to move forward due to budget constraints, city officials said. 

Cynthia Adkins, executive director of TIRR Foundation, declined to comment.

The project was estimated to cost roughly $6 million, records show. But, present-day estimated costs have more than tripled to $19 million, according to Vella, and the city calculates a 5 percent escalation cost each year. That amount does not address maintenance costs, however. That would take the projected costs to approximately $35 million, Vella said.

In summer 2023, the City of Houston revisited expansion plans, gaining momentum toward the end of former Mayor Sylvester Turner’s term. The city held meetings with elected leaders and community partners, conducted town halls and surveys to seek community input, and invested in a new site plan. The city paid $37,500 for a re-envisioning study from Page Architects that incorporated three options for private, mixed-use developments surrounding the facility, according to Vella. 

The plan would replace the existing one-story, nearly 38,000-square-foot building with a new vertical building. It would add over 23,000 square feet, rather than expanding it and consuming more land, Vella said in an email.

After setting aside land for parks, the city would lease the rest to developers and officially issue a request for information outlining its goals and requirements. 

The goal is to attract potential public-private partnerships from nonprofits, developers, Harris County, health institutions, private foundations and the Texas Medical Center, Vella said. 

But the Page Architects plan has been met with skepticism over accountability and fear by frequent users of the facility ever since it was introduced at community meetings last year on Aug. 29 and Sept. 20. 

Walker, a top critic, said he prefers the facility to remain in the public domain. 

“That’s not for us,” he said. 

The city would not only require a private developer to maintain the facility and continue services for the disabled, but also would prevent them from selling it or tearing it down, said Angel Ponce, director of the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, in a recent interview. 

At the September meeting, Page consultants and Vella reassured the community that the city would still own the property and the land. Ponce also communicated the benefits of involving the private sector, such as access to more money, and pointed to the newly opened Alief Neighborhood Center and Park as an example of a successful public-private partnership to model.

“My idea is for this to be a one-stop shop,” he said to the Landing. 

That would include a larger, multilevel building where voting is held in a separate area and does not interrupt services to the community, Ponce said.  

But the community pushed back, questioning why the city didn’t consult them sooner to see what they wanted before getting consultants involved. 

City staff and elected officials acknowledged that the community’s concerns are valid, but said a public-private partnership is the only way for the project to move forward. City officials stressed that the Page Architects design is only an option used to assess the site’s potential rather than a final commitment. They vowed not to move forward with a proposal without consulting with the community first. 

City leaders’ goal was to send a request for qualification before Turner left office to get proposals. But the city ran out of time and failed to complete the project. 

“I wish we had more time,” Turner said in December at one of his last council meetings. 

What will it take to move the project forward?

The city is still considering the plan and other plans that include construction of a new MMSC facility, Benton said. 

Kamin delayed approaching Whitmire’s administration until they settled in office, but now she’s reviving the conversation. She has met with all the involved departments: the General Services Department, the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, Houston Parks and Recreation Department, and Whitmire’s administration. Everyone is excited and aligned on the project, and want to see it succeed, she said.

“There has to be the institutional will to see this through,” Kamin said. 

Benton said via email that Whitmire considers the MMSC a priority due to delayed maintenance in previous administrations. 

But before issuing any procurement proposals or an RFI, Chris Newport, Whitmire’s chief of staff, said the city wants to re-engage the community and build off the intake that they already received to ensure that they’re encapsulating the community’s needs and wants in a re-envisioned facility.

Newport said they laid out a clear path with “high goals” in recent departmental meetings for what they want to accomplish and what steps need to take place to get there.

“I expect progress before the end of the year,” he said.

“We want to make sure that this is done right,” Kamin said. “But from the urgency perspective, the longer that we wait, the more that we’re having to … invest in more and more repair. … There’s a cost benefit to moving expeditiously.”

In March, the MMSC conquered a small feat when U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher secured $1 million for renovations. The city has not yet received the funding, but it will likely be used to renovate the bathrooms, Kamin said. Fletcher has requested an additional $4 million for fiscal year 2025 to address other renovations.

“That’s great we’re getting these little fixes in, but the entire facility needs a facelift,” Kamin said. “There’s only so many repairs you can make to a dilapidated building.”

Ponce, the MOPD director, said they will continue to apply for grants until the city’s role in the partnership is clear. Once the city has a solid plan, he’s confident they will attract more interest from private partners. Ponce said the city has talked to TIRR Memorial Hermann about a possible partnership. A representative from TIRR Memorial Hermann declined to comment. 

“They’re interested, but I think at the end of the day, they want to see what the city is going to be able to commit to first,” Ponce said. 

But, before funding, Lex Frieden, a longtime disability rights activist, said there needs to be better leadership. 

“Nobody really has any ownership,” he said. “In the best of all worlds, it would be its own agency.”

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