Economic Summit News Is Gusher for Houston

City Hall is positively gushing at the news.

For days now, Houston officials have been sitting on the edge of their collective seat, waiting for word of whether the 1990 economic summit would be coming here. On Friday, the official word came from Malta, where President Bush is at another summit with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev--Houston would be the place.

The official crowd went wild.

“Everyone in the world will know about Houston, Tex.,” said Brian Levinson, a spokesman for the Houston Economic Development Council.

At a Friday morning press conference, George Strake, a former Texas Republican Party chairman who has been designated to head the Houston Summit Team, likened the 1990 meeting to the 1928 Democratic Convention that was held here and the opening of the Johnson Space Center.

Television crews were out in shopping malls on Thursday night, asking people what they thought of the possibility of Houston getting the summit, only to be greeted in large measure by blank stares.

The Houston Post, in its Friday edition, somehow extrapolated that if there were 5,000 reporters at last year’s summit in Paris, there could be as many as 7,000 coming to Houston. A television news director was quoted as saying that the event would be “pack journalism at its best.”

Clearly, this is a city in need of good news. There hasn’t been much of it lately and Houstonians are not above taking a bone and treating it like filet mignon.

Houston came close but lost out on bids for both the Democratic and Republican conventions. None of its sports teams have ever won it all. Its economy, although making a slow comeback, has been in trouble since the oil bust hit in the early ‘80s.

The July gathering of industrialized nations is seen by leaders here as a way of showing that Houston, which went from boom town to doom town, is on the way back.

“This city wants some kind of visible manifestation of its recovery,” said political scientist Richard Murray. “Houston has long wanted to be in the big time--the biggest city in Texas, the biggest in the South, now a world-class city. It’s a way of validating your status.”

While Houston officialdom is painting the summit as the “crown jewel of the recovery,” it might turn out to be something less than that--like a pain for the people who live here.

The 1988 summit was held in Toronto, and John Hamilton of the convention bureau there said that while the summit garnered a certain amount of world press, there were difficulties.

“From a citizen’s standpoint there was a general consensus that it was a big pain,” said Hamilton. “It just caused problems with the transit system, automobile traffic and foot traffic.

“It probably didn’t generate as much business as some of our larger conventions,” he said. “Summiters don’t go out and shop.”

The social agenda for the Western World leaders and their staffs is still indefinite, but it is fairly certain there will not be a great deal of outdoor activity because July is one of the hottest and steamiest months of the year here. Where there was pomp and ceremony at the last American summit in Williamsburg, Va., in 1983, there is talk of a barbecue or a rodeo here. The Houston Medical Center, the Astrodome and the Johnson Space Center will be touted as the top tourist attractions.

The centerpiece for the summit will be Rice University, selected by the White House for its leafy European ambience. Bush was once a visiting professor there and it also has a place in the family history of Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

Rice’s founder, William Marsh Rice, bequeathed a portion of his fortune to establish a technical school. Rice was murdered, and one of the men who killed him forged a new will that made no mention of the school endowment.

Rice’s lawyer was James Addison Baker, the secretary of state’s grandfather. He exposed the fraud and saved the endowment for what is now Rice University, where for many years any student accepted there was given a full, four-year scholarship.