Katy area bigger than Pittsburgh

The Katy area's call to "move over, Pittsburgh" came a year earlier than anticipated.

The suburb west of Houston - with 309,556 residents inside the Katy ISD boundaries - edged out the Pennsylvania city's dwindling population of 308,237 people, according to numbers provided by analytics company Alteryx.

Katy has had Pittsburgh in its sights, but a strong economy and good schools helped propel it faster than expected. "The Katy Area now boasts a larger population," according to a release this month from the Katy Area Economic Development Council.

Pittsburgh has its own dynamics: a seven-county metropolitan region that has growth areas, even as the city itself is seeing slightly smaller population estimates. It's home to Carnegie Mellon University, the Andy Warhol Museum and a slew of theaters.

"We don't have the steel plants like Pittsburgh, we don't have the Steelers," said Skip Conner, former Katy mayor and president of the Katy Insurance Agency, who moved to Katy in 1976 with his family for its small-town appeal.

"I wouldn't live anywhere else because you still have a city, you have the community, you have the people you work with and see every day," he said. And that extends to the large master-planned developments that have moved into the area, as well, where he said community activities are still important. The expanded population has been largely positive, boosting the city's revenues.

"It's generated a lot of income for the city," Conner said. "They've had the funds to expand with the growth. Now we have a fully paid fire department, a fully paid ambulance service, which, when I was mayor, was all volunteer." The new city hall under construction, for example, is being paid for not by new taxes or bond measures but from a fund created by previous administrations.

In addition to thoughtful budgeting and zoning, the city also has moved to add new land over the years, according to current Mayor Fabol Hughes. "We have annexed everything possible to this point and are working with Houston to release some of their (extraterritorial jurisdiction) for our possible future annexation," he said.

And the growth has meant convenience.

Conner can remember driving into the Memorial area for a sit-down meal but now, the options in and around Katy are plentiful. "We didn't have but one pharmacy out here," said Conner on the old days.

Katy Mills mall

Projects like the Katy Mills shopping mall helped draw people from the area to Katy.

Johnny Nelson, another former mayor, was city administrator when he helped bring the shopping center to the city. It's still one of his proudest achievements. "It was a big accomplishment for Katy at the time," said Nelson, "we had never done anything like that."

Since then, he's gone on to help run the Katy Heritage Museum, another project he holds dear as a way to share local history.

"I've been in Katy ever since I hit the ground" is how the longtime resident puts it. He remembers the area's farming roots, now largely gone, and the days when the city had dirt streets. Now paved, the streets are one of the few things to change in Old Town Katy, according to Nelson.

Still charming, Katy isn't small like it used to be though. "We don't know each other as well as we used to," he said.

Still, Hughes said, longtime institutions like the Katy football team and Snappy's restaurant remain staples in local life.

Future concerns 

Like the broader Houston area, the growth here has meant one thing for certain: traffic.

"Mobility is one of our strongest concerns," said Lance LaCour, CEO and president of the Katy Area Economic Development Council.

According to recent census numbers, the average commute for Katy area residents is just over 30 minutes. And expanding roads has become a major undertaking. Other issues residents raise include increasing tax burdens as property values, if not rates, rise. Home values here have risen faster than the national median from 2000 to 2010, according to Alteryx, which uses sources like the Census and Experian to generate reports.

The city expects to grow with more projects on the horizon. "With our recent annexations, commercial development should really increase," said Hughes, who pointed to projects planned for several new hotels and a Boardwalk District that will include a convention center.

And the broader area will follow suit, according to LaCour. The Katy Area EDC estimated the region's population would surpass 350,000 by 2020, putting it not far behind the current counts for cities including New Orleans, Cleveland and Tampa, Fla.