Clear Lake City, Houston, Texas
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Clear Lake City is a master-planned community located in southeast Harris County, Texas and is one of the largest master-planned communities within the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown metropolitan area. The majority of the community lies in the corporate limits of Houston, while a small eastern portion is in the city limits of Pasadena.
The community is adjacent to NASA's Johnson Space Center, as well as other major aerospace companies including Boeing and Lockheed-Martin. Clear Lake City is a very diverse and has the largest Asian American concentration within any master-planned communities inside the city of Houston. The community and its adjacent areas have a high concentration of engineers due to both NASA and the local petro-chemical industries.
The master-planned community was named Clear Lake City for a lake south of the Johnson Space Center that separates Harris County from Galveston County and connects Clear Creek to Galveston Bay.
History
Clear Lake City was originally developed by the Friendswood Development Company on land sold to Humble Oil and Refining Company (later Exxon Company) by James Marion West in 1938.
The portion of Clear Lake City that was Houston's extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ) was annexed by the city of Houston in 1977 despite a grass-roots campaign by its residents to stop it. Their slogan was "Free The Clear Lake 25,000!" Lawsuits over the annexation resulted in the conversion of Houston city government from at-large city councilmen to the current-day nine district and five at-large council seats. Resulting was the fall of influence of the traditional developer-led power structure behind Houston government.
Since 1980, part of Clear Lake City within the Houston City Limits is located in Council District E.
Kathy Whitmire was elected Mayor of Houston, in large part because of voting support from Clear Lake City, an area she promised to disannex; she did not keep her promise. For several years after the annexation, Clear Lake residents were paying Houston taxes but receiving no services, such as fire and police protection. Later on, the eastern portion in Pasadena's extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ) was annexed by the city of Pasadena.
The community became the focus of worldwide attention in the summer of 2001 when Andrea Yates drowned her five children in a bathtub in their home within the community.
The West mansion is still located on NASA Parkway overlooking Clear Lake.
Education
Pupils in Clear Lake City attend Clear Creek Independent School District. Two of the three high schools in the district, Clear Brook High School and Clear Lake High School, serve the community. Despite being located in Houston and Pasadena, it is not served by the Houston Independent School District nor the Pasadena Independent School District.
The community is served by the Clear Lake City-County Freeman Branch of the Harris County Public Library. This branch is administered by Harris County, but is funded in part by the Houston Public Library.
The University of Houston-Clear Lake is adjacent to the community (the majority of the 400 acre (1.6 km²) UHCL campus lies in the corporate limits of Pasadena, while the part of campus south of the bayou lies in the city of Houston).
The community is particularly noted for its high school, Clear Lake High School, widely considered to be one of the better high schools in the state.