Couple forges ahead with Virginia Point house

VIRGINIA POINT — For months after Hurricane Ike, motorists along Interstate 45 needed only to look east toward Virginia Point for a reminder of the storm’s destructive force.

Houses that once dotted the waterfront were wiped away, except for one structure that was cut in half by the hurricane.

Slowly, Virginia Point residents returned, and their weekend getaways were replaced with trailers and palm trees. Now, the first house along the point is being built as a reminder of the area’s recovery.

It isn’t without a bit of controversy, though.

Celina residents Kim and Tim Walden were lease holders of another plot of land on the point. Like most in Virginia Point, they leased property from the environmental group Scenic Galveston, which owns 1,500 acres of the point.

Kim Walden said she had just finished remodeling their getaway home in July 2008 when Hurricane Ike struck two months later.

“I spent a lot of heartache remodeling, and to have everything washed away like that, I was amazed,” Walden said. “I knew it was a risk. Sort of. I never imagined in 100 years that everything would just disappear. I never imagined all our stuff would wash away like that.”

Then she read an e-mail from some other Virginia Point residents who just so happened to have the one piece of property not owned by Scenic Galveston. The couple was interested in selling and sent notice to all their neighbors.

At first, Walden, who owns an industrial supply company in McKinney, said she didn’t bite on the offer.

After what she experienced with Ike, she was hesitant to consider a return to the coast, even if for just a vacation home.

While on a drive to Louisiana with her husband, Walden called her neighbors and asked about the property. When she found it still was available, she and her husband took 20 minutes to decide to make a deal.

“My husband and I thought at first we’d just build a pier and pull up a trailer to go fishing,” she said.

It was a stroke of luck. The property not only was the only piece of land not owned by Scenic Galveston, it also was in the unincorporated part of the county and not the city limits of Texas City.

Had it been in Texas City, building officials would have not issued building permits, officials said.

Construction didn’t come without a fight. The couple at first started to build a pier that Scenic Galveston Executive Director Evangeline Whorton said crosses the group’s property.

Scenic Galveston also objected to the house’s construction because it sits atop a corner of Fort Hebert, which was a Confederate Army fort and a key part of the Battle of Galveston during the Civil War.

The disagreement went to court, but it didn’t take long for the parties to discover the house was properly built. The pier is still in dispute, even though the Waldens insist they had all the proper permits.

Whorton said while her group decided to back off from a court fight, it has asked the Texas General Land Office and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which have some regulatory authority over the pier property and construction, to settle the dispute.

So far, neither agency has made a ruling. It is uncertain if either will review the dispute.

“I don’t know where we are now,” Whorton said. “It’s unfortunate, but we have no way to stop her.”

While frustrated the matter ended up in court, Walden said she and her husband respect what Scenic Galveston stands for and its effort to preserve the property the group owns. That’s what attracted them, in part, to rebuild.

She noted Scenic Galveston had an equal chance of buying the property before she and her husband did. Whorton said she was unaware the land ever was for sale and assumed the group already owned the land.

Meanwhile, the Waldens are looking forward to the completion of their 1,200-square-foot, two-bedroom house that has a living room and large porch with a great view of Galveston Bay.

Walden said she expects construction to be done within the next three weeks.

She said she’s also taken a different approach in the construction knowing that another storm could come this way.

“The house is well constructed,” she said. “But I have chosen less expensive things for the house knowing that it could all end up washed away. Once you own the property, it’s a whole different attitude.

“It’s like owning a piece of paradise.”