COMMENT OF THE DAY: NEW URBANIST FLIGHT “Several posters are spot-on about walkable neighborhoods commanding a premium over traditional suburbs, if all else is equal. Unfortunately you can’t have it all in Houston – neighborhood charm, architecturally interesting houses, walkability, safety, good public schooling, AND affordability. Our growing family is being “forced†out of the Heights for several of the above reasons. If a New Urbanist development existed in the Houston area that was priced similarly to the traditional lollipop surburb, we would go there in an instant. Instead, we’re moving to what we see as the best suburban compromise – the Woodlands. Outside observers will no doubt think we are going to the suburbs because of the cul-de-sacs, but the truth is, we are going despite them.” [CV, commenting on Cul de Sac City: Houston’s Ban on New Street Grids]
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The Woodlands
Guess it didn’t really matter too much that there’s no prize to give out to the winner of this week’s Neighborhood Guessing Game. None of you would have won it anyway.
Weren’t there enough guesses? There were 2 of you who guessed Meyerland, 2 who guessed Willowbend, 2 for Bellaire, 2 for Clear Lake, and 2 for Oak Forest. Not to mention Wilchester, “somewhere between Wirt and Blalock,” “around Timmons Lane,” River Oaks, Garden Oaks, Southgate, Gulf Freeway Oaks, Pearland, Alief, Braeburn Valley West, “the Pasadena Arts & Crafts fair, booths 1-30,” “off Briar Forest, west of Beltway 8, east of Dairy Ashford,” “between Westheimer, Briar Forest, Dairy Ashford, and Kirkwood,” Glenbrook Valley, Linkwood, “Hunter’s Valley/Hunter’s Wood or Prestonwood or Lakewood or Heatherwood or something with the word wood in it,” “in smelling distance of Bellaire/Beltway 8 Chinatown,” on Fountainview, north of Memorial between Wilcrest and Kirkwood, Greenwood Forest, Hunter’s Creek Village, Timbergrove Manor, Lazybrook, “close to Traders Village or Old Towne Spring,” Spring, Maplewood, Oakbrook subdivision in Clear Lake, Briarmeadow, Copperfield, “the Kempwood/Gessner area,” Flower Mound, Garden Villas, Inwood Forest, “somewhere west of Oak Forest in the Antoine/Pinemont area,” Tanglewood, “that area below the old Rosewood Hospital,” Spring Branch, and “Augusta/Bering Drive area just north of San Felipe.”
Plenty of highly entertaining comments this week. But . . . no dice?
How about we roll with this one — since really, it’s the best we got:
i would guess this is actually an 80’s build somewhere in nw houston, maybe in hunter’s valley/hunter’s wood or preston wood or lakewood or heatherwood or something with the word wood in it.
Congratulations, brandy c, you’re this week’s winner!
But really, where is this place?
Who won that Rice Design Alliance membership?
Four of you guessed the Champions area in this week’s game. We also had 2 votes each for Quail Valley, Kingwood, and Sweetwater. The rest of your guesses? Atascocita, Huntwick Forest, Champion Forest, Meyerland, one of the Kickerillo neighborhoods off I-10, The Woodlands, Northgate, Sugar Creek, “Conroe-ish,” Sugar Land, Pearland, Green Tee Terrace, Newport in Crosby, Friendswood, near the Hearthstone Country Club, Deerwood Country Club, and Clear Lake Country Club, near Terry Hershey Park, Plano, Hilton Head, and Ashford Forest.
The winner is Beth, for catching . . .
The place has a Woodlandsesque sort of feel to it, spaciousness, pine trees, golf course, large cement pond….
Congratulations, Beth! You’ve won a one-year individual membership in the RDA!
Special shout-outs this week to skillful deceivers Cynthia and Porchman, both of whom wrote in with the actual listing, then helped lead other players astray. Cynthia’s entry:
Totally 70s redo (but kept the wood accents in a lot of rooms for dead give away). Big house and lot with pool in an older suburb near or on golf course…Sugar Land! Let’s say Sweetwater!
and Porchman’s:
Well, if you’re going to do the whole earth tone thang in updating your 70’s home, why not throw in a bit of camouflage, too? To complete, they should string mosquito netting off the beams in the family room. I’m going to say Champions area either near a golf course or maybe adjacent to one of those creeks in that area.
Come home to The Woodlands, everyone!
Houston, the Toll Brothers have been looking for just the right home for you:
“We have been studying the Houston market for a long time and have been looking for the right opportunity to enter it,†Robert Toll, chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement. “In 2008, Houston was the second-largest home building market in the nation.â€
Actually, the “nation’s leading builder of luxury homes” is headed to The Woodlands. The Pennsylvania-based company, which already operates in Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio, promises its first houses in the Village of Creekside Park will be complete early next year. Sales will begin this August.
Toll Brothers at Creekside Park will offer homes on 80′ wide home sites and will showcase five floorplans with multiple exterior designs.
A Swamplot reader comments on the photo accompanying the announcement that appeared in the Houston Business Journal:
The story includes a photo of one of the exterior choices: A French provincial pastiche. What in the name of pete does anything like this have to do with the climate and traditional architectural style of the Gulf Coast? Do the Toll Brothers even pay attention?
Well, that may not have been the company’s intent. On its own website, Toll Brothers illustrates its press release with this separately tuned sample:
The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion will have twice as many seats, and a greatly enlarged tension-fabric structure to cover them, when it reopens for its first concert on May 1.
A new section of about 2,000 additional reserved seats is being constructed behind the existing uncovered seating area. The new canopy structure will cover all 6,387 seats. The result will be 2,147 fewer seats on the lawn, cutting the venue’s overall capacity by about 460, to 16,040.
The original Teflon-coated Fiberglas-fabric roofs were torn to shreds — and their support structures seriously damaged — by Hurricane Ike:
Just another happy family scene in The Woodlands:
Feeding time is usually what most people ask me about so I will try to describe how we feed everyone. We put all five babies in boppies and use bottle proppers to start everyone eating. Then we “play zone!” We get to whoever needs burping or help with the feeding and re-prop.
- Becca Rolled and Doctor’s Appointment [The Phillips Family – Adding Quintuplets!!!]
- Quints give family full house [abc13]
Photo: The Phillips Family
[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=dkUjSpRr93Q 400 330]
The two “Marking Our City” billboards near Grace Community Church‘s north and south I-45 locations depict a plain white cross, an American flag, and the words “150 FT CROSS COMING SOON.” But they probably show only the top portion of the structures the church is planning — and the 150-ft. label may be selling the project short. The Chronicle‘s Lisa Gray says
. . . the pastor hopes both structures will be 200 feet tall, roughly the height of a 20-story building. The Federal Aviation Administration, he said, may limit the south campus’s cross to 150 feet because it’s near Ellington Field.
Five-and-a-half minutes into the Grace Community Church video above, Grace senior pastor Steve Riggle walks viewers through a drawing of a more elaborate structure. Riggle asks
What if there was one of these at every entrance to the city? And it was there for the prayer movement in the city, not just a church. You talk about marking our city for God.
After the jump: More crosses on the side of the highway!
Nancy Sarnoff’s short interview with the woman responsible for naming new streets in The Woodlands is just too rich:
We use a lot of words that are just appealing, pretty images, like Peaceful Canyon. That neighborhood sold really well and I think it’s because of the name. We even did radio commercials that played off the name and it really helped market the area. Others are Racing Cloud, Amber Glow and Destiny Cove. We even have ones from Star Wars. That day I was really desperate. Nothing was popping into my head. We have lots of nautical names around Lake Woodlands like Outrigger’s Run.
Woodlands Operating Co. marketing director Susan Vreeland-Wendt confirms every cliché about the origins of subdivision street names, from the historical revisionism (“One of our presidents is Alex Sutton, and we have a street named Sutton Mill”) to the what-I-drank-for-dinner-last-night story (“I’ve been known to pore over wine bottles looking for inspiration”) — except the one about suburban names coming from geographical features that were demolished or removed so the place could be built. Fortunately, The Woodlands does carry on the proud Houston tradition of naming places after imaginary or wished-for amenities:
We’ve got Arrow Canyon, Kayak Ridge, Arbor Camp and Rocky Point.
Surprisingly not on Vreeland-Wendt’s list of inspirations: Harlequin romance novels. But she does consult the internet, because it’s full of useful resources.
- Moneymakers: 5 questions with Susan Vreeland-Wendt [Houston Chronicle]
- A random subdivision/housing development/rest home name generator [adrian.gimp.org]
Photo: Flickr user kaatiya
Swamplot’s many readers eager to return to Houston-area Fig. Medical Body Shaping clinics for continuing fat-reducing injections will be saddened to learn that the national chain has abruptly shut down and discontinued all operations. A note on the fig.com website indicates the company will likely be seeking bankruptcy protection.
There are three local Fig. clinics: in Sugar Land at 59 and Highway 6, next to Panera Bread; next to Jamba Juice at the Summit Plaza by Lakewood Church; and at the Portofino Shopping Center across I-45 from the Woodlands. (Yes, that’s the same Portofino Shopping Center that was home to the statue-genitalia controversy a few years back — which was ultimately solved with . . . a fig leaf.) All three Houston-area Fig. locations had been open only since April.
Okay, whose inside joke was it to locate all three fat-reduction clinics in shopping centers on feeder roads?
What happened to Fig. that would cause it to shut down so suddenly? (Reader caution: suggestive uh . . . medical detail below.)
Former Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion director David Gottlieb, speaking at the Town Green Park dedication of the latest bronze likeness honoring The Woodlands founder George Mitchell, presents a better suggestion for what the statue could have looked like:
. . . [We were] observing a crowd at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion during a performance of that incredible classical music group, Poison. Mr. Mitchell was standing next to me, and he studied the many [characters] and said, “For this we cut down trees and added more capacity?
Now here is my vision of that statue: He’s standing, he’s got his fingers in his ears and he’s looking up to the heavens.
Maybe for the next one? Anyway, sure looks like the one they put up is popular enough!
- Statue lauds The Woodlands’ founder Mitchell [The Villager]
- A Bronze Tribute [Houston Chronicle]
Here it comes: A 87,000-square-foot sports behemoth. On more than 12 acres. A gym, aquatic and athletic center, kiddie playground, and spa, all wrapped into one . . . membership fee. The Wal-Mart of health clubs — without the low prices, of course.
Construction of the VillaSport Athletic Club and Spa will begin early next year and open in early 2009 on Technology Forest Dr., across from the Fox Network Center in The Woodlands. The VillaSport website features an interactive tour of the first facility — in Colorado Springs — which is slated to open later this month.
With indoor and outdoor spaces including an indoor soccer field, indoor and outdoor zero-entry kiddie pools, hot tubs, saunas, a Pilates studio, water slides, and a pro shop, VillaSport appears to merge features of an athletic club, spa retreat, sports lounge, country club, resort, water park, and summer camp. All in a gigantic compound you’ll easily be able to lose your family in.
- The Woodlands set for VillaSport facility [Houston Business Journal]
- VillaSport Athletic Club and Spa
Last year’s agreement between Mayor White and State Senator Tommy Williams was meant to save The Woodlands from the evil menace of annexation by Houston. Here’s how: Houston would allow The Woodlands to escape from its extraterritorial jurisdiction if The Woodlands would start using its taxes to pay for regional projects.
But did the agreement say anything about The Woodlands annexing its neighbors? While Williams has been shepherding bills through the legislature to finalize the agreement, he’s also sponsoring legislation that would allow the Town Center Improvement District, a special tax district meant to support the Woodlands Town Center, to expand so that it covers almost all of the Woodlands. And then there’s that special feature of improvement districts:
Unlike a city, which has limits put on its annexation capabilities, the existing TCID law allows the district to overlay other city boundaries or extraterritorial jurisdictions, which are designated areas for future growth. In addition, while cities may only annex contiguous property, TCID is permitted to annex property that is not located next to its boundaries.
These issues became a major concern for surrounding cities as legislation was introduced that would allow Town Center to expand to provide municipal service to The Woodlands. [emphasis added]
Brilliant! All those regional projects Houston is demanding could be paid for by other folks! Except that neighboring Shenandoah, home to the Venice-In-A-Parking-Lot Portofino Shopping Center (above), would have none of it. Shenandoah has worked out an agreement that would prevent Town Center from annexing any part of it—including any expanded boundaries or nearby planned developments.
In addition to the city limits, which includes 126 homes in the Grogan’s Forest neighborhood of The Woodlands and areas of extraterritorial jurisdiction, TCID could not annex new developments that are partially located within Shenandoah’s extraterritorial jurisdiction. These include Northline Oaks, Tamina, Lakeland and a new development on Forest Park Drive. This means those areas also could not become part of any future city of The Woodlands, VanSteenberg said.
See? Once The Woodlands decides to set up its own government, it might come up with a new set of boundaries. And who knows where they’ll be?
Next in line for a land grab: Conroe. And then, why not . . . Huntsville?
The TCID Executive Committee approved $10,000 for a study by Sarmistha Majundar of Sam Houston State University’s Political Science Department to survey students, faculty and residents in the Huntsville area about the need for public transportation to The Woodlands Town Center.
- Town Center sets annexation agreement with Shenandoah [Houston Chronicle]
- Woodlands may avoid annexation with projects [Houston Chronicle]
- Town Center considers bus service to Huntsville [Houston Chronicle]
Photo: Hermes Architects
