Time was when Katy’s skyline was a couple of white rice elevators, the city water tower and a big microwave-relay derrick with blinking beacons out on the north side of town.
By this time next year, though, a distinctly un-Katylike profile will have been added: a 60-foot, blue-and-green Chinese pagoda.
Technically speaking, the pagoda won’t be in Katy. It will be, appropriately, just east of the city on an 80-acre tract of former rice land near where the new Grand Parkway dead-ends into Franz Road.
The pagoda will serve as the focal point of a new $20 million entertainment venture called Forbidden Gardens. The site has been under construction since last summer and is scheduled to open this fall, possibly in late September, with expansion continuing through 1996.
The project, a sort of Americanized Chinese history park/retreat, will display downsized but elaborate replicas of such famous Chinese landmarks as:
– The Forbidden City, legendary imperial cloister and seat of government in Beijing from the 14th to the 20th century, to be presented here as a 1:20 scale model incorporating 200 palaces and 20,000 ceramic figurines.
– The Tomb of Emperor Qin, an ancient burial crypt where archeologists 20 years ago unearthed a ghostly “army” of 7,500 life-sized clay soldiers, arrayed as for battle in tribute to their leader, the unifier of China.
– The Great Wall, to be recreated in part and in miniature along a high berm that bounds the rear of the park.
As Phase 1 of the park opens, Phase 2 construction already will be under way to add new temples, exhibit halls, ponds, waterfalls, the five-tier pagoda and, eventually, perhaps even an amphitheater.
“It’s going to be a place that’s both educational and entertaining,” project coordinator Dianne Gordon said recently. “We call it an outdoor museum, but you could say it’s a theme park, too.”
The attraction will occupy about 40 acres of the site. about the size of Astroworld, Gordon says. Plans call for property fronting Franz Road to be developed commercially, perhaps to include a hotel.
Grand Parkway eventually will bound the east side of the property, but no plans have been announced for the outer loop’s development past Franz Road, about a mile north of Interstate Highway 10.
Forbidden Gardens is the brainchild of reclusive Seattle businessman Ira P.H. Poon, described by project officials as a Chinese-born, U.S.-naturalized investor-educator with diverse interests.
“He’s very soft-spoken, very intellectual, very interested in education, 50-ish, very shy,” Gordon said. “He has various companies that do various things, mostly in real estate.”
As contract administrator with Poon’s Green Ever Co., a limited partnership created in 1992 to develop Forbidden Gardens, Gordon oversees the site work and gives Poon regular updates. Poon has been by to visit twice and probably will look in again sometime this summer, she said.
Like Poon, who Gordon says consistently declines interviews, Forbidden Gardens itself has remained something of a mystery in the Katy area.
Why this? Why here? Why now?
First things first: This seemingly one-of-a-kind project actually isn’t. It is closely patterned after a similar enterprise in China’s Shenzhen province, across from Hong Kong.
Gordon said China’s park was built by the government to serve that country’s growing tourist industry. The Chinese government since has built a history park in Orlando, Fla., for U.S. tourists, she said.
Called Splendid China, it employs rare types of wood, where Forbidden Gardens uses less-costly steel.
Poon’s original plan was to replicate China’s hugely popular history park in his adopted hometown of Seattle. But he ran into problems with planning commission limits on growth and development, Gordon said.
His preferred alternative was “somewhere in Texas, probably Houston,” where he had visited, Gordon said. Beyond that, he set no conditions.
“We looked at different parts of Houston-east side, south side,” Gordon said. “We found what we wanted out here.”
As for the project itself, work is going briskly after a rather slow start. Buildings are up and site work is moving along.
“Over there, we’ll have our 8,000 half-size imperial soldiers,” Gordon said, pausing to point to what looks like low, uneven rows of concrete walls.
“Back there,” she said, turning toward a sprawling hangarlike structure several hundred feet away to the north, “is where our Forbidden City display will go.”
The 60,000-square-foot buildingwill protect the intricate Forbidden City exhibit.
The proposed pagoda/observation tower will go up on the west side of the site, not far from the Great Wall replica.
