Pearland City Council approves city's first-ever master plan for cultural arts (2024)

After more than a year of development, Pearland City Council approved the city’s first master plan for cultural arts

What you need to know

The plan lays out five key goals, as well as details and tactics to help carry out each goal, according to the master plan. The goals are:

• Bring in staff and overhead, such as with training and sponsorships, needed to carry out the program
• Build and expand the city’s public art program
• Expand cultural tourism within the city
• Add cultural places, including a cultural district in Pearland’s Old Town
• Expand arts and cultural offerings for residents

As part of that, the plan calls for creating and hiring an arts administrator and a part-time public art manager, according to the plan.

It also offers a path to help fund the various art upgrades, namely through hotel occupancy taxes and various types of grants. However, the plan also leaves open a chance to receive city funds through the general fund, but Tracy Rohrbacher, executive director for the Pearland Convention and Visitors Bureau, clarified in a July 24 email the general fund comes with constraints, and the plan was designed to mostly use HOT funds.

Diving in deeper

Officials said they hope the plan will bring several benefits to the city, including:

• Increase hotel stays and hotel occupancy tax revenue
• Focus on Pearland’s cultural scene
• Enhance the city’s music and restaurant scene
• Advise on public art
• Help fund projects

Much of the discussion at the city’s meeting was about the public art aspect of it, namely how to best encourage and handle the city’s Pear-Scape Trail, which features fiberglass pear sculptures painted by local artists.

Some, such as council member Joseph Koza, said they wanted the master plan to be more inclusive in who could sponsor such a pear. Others, such as council member Chad Thumann, suggested maybe hosting an art contest between residents or schools.

As a result, City Council voted to reword a clause that called for setting a limit on new Pear-Scape installations to help open up the possibility to more people in the community.

“If you have somebody proud enough that either lives here, works here or owns property here and they want to put this forward, I don’t know why we’d restrict that,” Koza said. “We need to be more inclusive than exclusive.”

The plan also calls for hiring an arts administrator, which was something council member Rushi Patel did not support. Despite this, other officials believed specialized staff was needed to carry out the plan.

The background

The planning process for the plan began in summer 2023 when stakeholders in the community first met to discuss it. Following that, officials held meetings and carried out community surveys, which netted more than 1,700 responses, according to city documents.

More recently, the Pearland Convention and Visitors Bureau Advisory Board voted 4-0 in May to support a recommended version of the plan, according to city documents. That plan was presented to City Council later that same month in a workshop.

Quote of note

Mayor Kevin Cole said when he first did a listening tour on this topic three years ago, he found that above all else, the city needed direction.

“We needed to move the whole cultural arts community in a direction,” Cole said. “Everyone was kind of doing their own thing. ... It gave us the opportunity to sit down and listen and understand where and how we need to move forward.”

Editor's note: This story was updated July 24 to give more context to the funding mechanisms of the plan.

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