Developer Windy Gladney has acquired a 35-acre parcel of undeveloped land along Burbank Drive from attorney Mary Olive Pierson, whose family has held the property since 1949.
Court documents show he paid $400,000 for the parcel, or slightly more than $11,400 per acre.
Pierson says she doesn’t know what Gladney has planned for the tract—which is roughly between Ben Hur Road and South Kenilworth Parkway, on the river side of Burbank—but she assumes he will eventually develop it, as he already owns several tracts in the area.
The developer did not return calls seeking comment in time for publication.
“He said he liked this parcel because of its shape,” she says. “It has significant frontage along Burbank.”
The parcel was originally part of a 100-acre tract Pierson’s father, the late Clint Pierson, acquired nearly 70 years ago. The original tract was bounded roughly by Bayou Fountain and what is now West Lee Drive, Burbank Drive and South Kenilworth Parkway. Over the years, the family sold off other chunks of the property. The 35 acres Gladney acquired was the last of the original parcel.
Clint Pierson was instrumental in the development of Burbank Drive, built in the 1970s. He donated part of his family’s land for it and also encouraged other property owners to put up property so the thoroughfare could be built, Mary Olive Pierson says.
In the 1980s, the family donated nearly two acres to the city for an EMS station on Burbank. When the station closed several years later, the city returned the property to the Piersons.
Pierson says Gladney is now donating that 1.9-acre parcel to the city, which will build a new fire station on the site to serve the rapidly growing area.
