To Texas ‘angel,’ heaven is his old hometown : But not everyone in Galveston applauds millionaire’s efforts to give the city a face lift--in his own image.

This island city has the shopworn look of a place that has seen better days. And it has.

The paint is peeling off clapboard houses. Shops and warehouses on the road leading into the city are boarded up, the buildings for sale. Not the best of first impressions for Houston’s beach playground, only an hour down the freeway from Texas’ largest city.

Time after time of late, the city has found itself disappointed in efforts to bring in new money. It was designated to be a U.S. Navy home port until Congress scuttled that idea in 1989. The Galveston shipyard closed. The city lost its bid for the state’s first big-time dog racetrack.

People are moving away from Galveston because better schools and cheaper houses can be found across the waterway. Each day, more than 35,000 people commute from the mainland to their jobs here. The casino ship, Pride of Galveston, is no longer running out of the city’s near-bankrupt port. More than 10% of the population lives in a public housing project.

Bad as things are, they would be so much worse without George Mitchell, a man with deep pockets determined to forge Galveston in his own image.

“I would think we would be in very sad shape,” said City Manager Doug Matthews, an unabashed Mitchell fan. “He has dared to dream and put his money where his dreams are. He has stayed the course and been an incredible guardian angel.”

Mitchell, who made his fortune in oil and gas, has poured in more than $100 million to help the city for one reason: He grew up here and he does not want to see Galveston die.

Turn left off Broadway and drive the few blocks to downtown. The Strand, they call it. The entire street is lined with turn-of-the-century buildings that have been lovingly restored, compliments, mostly, of Mitchell and his money. One street over, the old Tremont Hotel sparkles. Its renovation prompted Mitchell to begin a Mardi Gras celebration that this year drew an estimated 800,000 people to the island.

At the harbor, Mitchell is spending $9 million on a complex that will contain a hotel, shops and restaurants. He is adding on to another of his hotels on the island, to the tune of $3.5 million. He is expanding a subdivision at the west end of the island, adding 339 lots for luxury homes. The trolleys going through town were inspired and partially funded by Mitchell.

And according to Matthews, Mitchell is losing money in more than half his ventures.

So why does he keep pouring money down what looks like a black hole?

“It has a great future,” said Mitchell, who predicts a turnaround for the ailing city in three to five years. His recipe for revival: tourism, an expansion of the port and a rail line to Houston that would attract new residents.

“I would say the town has been neglected, but it has great potential,” said Mitchell

While Mitchell has done a great deal for the island, he is not without detractors. Chief among them are preservationists with whom Mitchell waged a 15-year legal battle to expand the west- end subdivision. The preservationists claimed that the land was an archeological treasure trove that should not be developed.

Bob Moore, a lawyer who took the fight to Mitchell during all those years, likened Mitchell to a “bully on the block” who used his wealth during tough economic times to wring concessions from the likes of Matthews. He said Galveston political leaders were “handmaidens” to Mitchell.

“His followers tend to genuflect to him,” Moore said.

And Sandy Sheehy, who profiled Mitchell in her book “Big Texas Rich,” likened his sway on the island as more that of a benevolent monarch than sugar daddy. She said the distinction is that he is not the kind of man to give Galveston what it wants, but rather gives the city what he thinks it should have.

“I think he is a person who is almost a mythic figure made real,” Sheehy said. “Now he has come back to rule, to reshape the island to his own conception.”

Mitchell, the son of an illiterate Greek immigrant, left the island as a young man to make his fortune. A geologist, he seemed to have an uncanny knack for finding natural gas. He found so much he became a millionaire many times over, diversifying into fields like land development.

When he returned to Galveston, he took his place beside the old money, the powerbrokers, because of the enormity of his wealth. He started restoring old Victorian homes in the mid-’70s and now his projects employ more than 1,000 people.

Matthews contends that the news is not all bad. The University of Texas Medical Branch, with its $400-million operating budget, is going strong. The shipyard may reopen. Another Galveston benefactor, the Moody Foundation, is spending millions on a project that includes a huge tropical conservatory. He said what Galveston needs to do now is market itself better to the people up the road in Houston.

“We’re not as healthy as we want to be, but we’re not sick,” he said. “You’ve got 2 million people in Houston looking to get away on weekends. We need to do a better job in marketing that.”