GALVESTON - The house owned by pop star Beyonc? Knowles' father, Matthew, is one of dozens left on the public beach easement after Hurricane Ike made landfall last year.
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The Galveston City Council approved buyouts for three houses surrounding the Knowles property last week. Once the houses are removed, the Knowles family's Pirates' Beach retreat on San Crab Lane will stick out conspicuously from its nearest neighbors. Some might say the house violates the Texas Open Beaches Act, which gives state officials the ability to remove houses in the public beach easement. The Texas General Land Office set the public beach boundary at 200 feet landward of the low mean tide line earlier this year. But not everyone believes the state law is right. "Maybe the beach law violates the house," Mike Orlando, the contractor hired to repair the Knowles house, said Thursday. City building inspectors ordered Orlando to stop pouring concrete under the house earlier this year because it is on the public easement. Orlando repaired almost all other storm damage.
Although Orlando is not allowed to pour the concrete necessary to make the house accessible to a handicapped member of the Knowles family, Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson has said he has no intention of removing the house. "There are houses that are clearly on submerged land and clearly hazardous," Patterson said. "We're not going to spend our time on those that are not. We may in the future, but right now it's not our priority." The piecemeal enforcement of state law leaves homeowners in limbo, Orlando said. "Nobody in the land office is taking responsibility for making a decision about whether the house stays or goes," he said. Under the Texas Open Beaches Act, Patterson can use his discretion about which houses should be removed. Patterson has said for months he would seek removal of only those houses that posed a health or safety risk or that hindered public access. Knowles' house does neither, but the state won't allow the family to make the final repairs necessary to make it usable, Orlando said. But by next spring, the Knowles' house could be out of the public beach easement because of the state's beach rebuilding project, which will widen the beach by about 200 feet between the western end of the seawall and about 13 Mile Road. When the low mean tide line moves, the beach easement boundary will move, Patterson said. "We haven't got the sand on the beach yet," he said. "But when we do, that changes the complexion a little bit."
