Dominic Anthony Walsh / Houston Public Media
A car reverses on a street in Houston’s Cottage Grove neighborhood, blocked by a garbage truck on the narrow road.
Thursday in the Cottage Grove neighborhood is Katie Niemann’s least favorite day of the week.
“This is like an example of a typical trash day scenario here,” Niemann said as a vehicle backed up to make room for a garbage truck. “One car can get through and God forbid you have someone trying to get the other direction.”
Sign up for the Hello, Houston! daily newsletter to get local reports like this delivered directly to your inbox.
Garbage and recycling cans lined the street, dotted with potholes, cutting the narrow two-lane road in half.
“It requires a lot of patience to live in this neighborhood and kindness or else you’re going to lose your mind,” Niemann said.
That’s on the west side of Cottage Grove. The 100-year-old neighborhood is near Memorial Park.
But on one street in the neighborhood, it’s a different story — thanks to the city’s Capital Improvement Plan (CIP).
On Darling Street on the east side of Cottage Grove, the street and sidewalks are wide. Cars parked on both sides, with room for vehicles to navigate in both directions.
Darling Street is the first tiny piece of the more than $29 million street and drainage project for the east side of the neighborhood — which has been on the list of CIP projects for nearly 10 years, without much progress.
Dominic Anthony Walsh / Houston Public Media
Darling Street, on the east side of Cottage Grove, saw improvements as part of a delayed capital improvement project.
The city’s CIP is essentially a five-year wishlist of infrastructure projects across Houston, many of which are repeatedly delayed. The CIP approved by the city council this week comes with a nearly $18 billion price tag. It includes major projects like a $3.2 billion overhaul of a water purification plant and $3.5 billion for wastewater treatment facilities, along with about $1.6 billion in street improvements and $1.3 billion in stormwater mitigation.
Niemann and other residents have been trying to get the west side of Cottage Grove added to the plan for years — without much luck.
Neimann and a group of residents spoke to the city council and Mayor John Whitmire in January 2025.
“Cottage Grove is facing a crisis,” Neimann said at the time. “Our infrastructure is falling apart and I cannot overstate the urgent need for repairs, particularly when it comes to our streets and ditches.”
“I’ve looked at your infrastructure request,” Whitmire responded. “I know of your years of neglect by the city of Houston. It’s one of the reasons I ran for mayor, and my administration is focused on it.”
Whitmire’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the status of Cottage Grove improvements. The Cottage Grove West improvements are now in the capital improvement “inventory” — meaning the project is not funded but is in the planning pipeline for consideration.
The area is not unique in facing project delays and difficulty in getting new improvements.
Newly elected council member Joe Panzarella represents District C, which includes Cottage Grove.
“The CIP is … a living, breathing document in the sense that every year projects get shuffled around, funding gets shuffled around,” Panzarella said. “A lot of times it’s considered an infrastructure wish list. … It is frustrating, and it’s difficult to just kind of bring together so many partners and so much funding, frankly.”
According to Panzarella, major improvements to eastern Cottage Grove will kick off by the end of this year — after about a decade on the wishlist.