METRO Forces Owner to Close Business

HOUSTON - Bringing MetroRAIL to the multitudes has cost one local man his livelihood.

All that’s left at the corner of OST and MLK in southeast Houston is a shell of a Shell gas station.

Its convenience store doors are locked tight. Its pumps have dispensed their last ounce of gas.

As of Friday, March 5, the property belongs to METRO.

After all, light rail is coming through.

And right in its path sits the former Shell station operated for a quarter century by Nick Boulos.

“Everybody know me by Nick,” he says. “I mean you ask anybody in the neighborhood, they will know who's Nick.”

And Nick Boulos feels railroaded by METRO, which acquired his property using eminent domain laws.

Boulos understands that his Shell station literally stood in the way of progress.

“This is something that they have to do,” he says, “but they should deal with the property owner in a different way.”

Boulos had his own lawyer but says METRO held all the cards.

He believes he was paid about $200,000 less than what would have been a fair price.

METRO doesn’t see things that way.

“We feel that it would be appropriate for him to speak with his attorney about that, because he agreed to all of the terms,” says Margaret O'Brien-Molina, spokeswoman for Metro Solutions.

O'Brien-Molina says the transit authority is working on three different light-rail extensions.

Eminent domain allows public entities to force the sale of private property for public use.

Using that law, METRO has purchased 17 parcels along its Southeast Corridor, 9 along the North Corridor and 34 along its East End Corridor, for a total of 60.

“That's not an awful lot when you consider the magnitude, the scope of the program,” says O'Brien-Molina. 

-- See Current MetroRail Extension Map: http://www.gometrorail.org/go/doc/2491/420203/