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Tag: Gates
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT A GATE GETS YOU “I can tell you why I have a gate. It’s not to keep out someone that REALLY wants to get in (as I can hop over in about 5 seconds if needed). It’s to keep randoms from coming up and knocking on my door. I work from home a lot and hate when I get a knock on the door during the day (or at night when I’m spending time with my wife) only to go to the door and find some pandhandler ‘fundraising’ for a trip or other nonsense. And while I don’t subscribe to the fact they’re a big problem, I have heard warnings that people come by, knock on the door for a ‘legit’ reason, and if no one answers they target the property to break in. A gate will keep most of these fishing expeditions out. So a gate isn’t going to keep someone out that’s committed themselves to getting in, but it’ll be a deterrent to the passers by that want to bother you. Other reasons? I park my car inside the gated area (yet still outside) so I add some security there. I have furniture on my patio that is much more secure due to the gate. I have a daughter that’ll soon play outside and I like the idea of her not being able to run out to the street. If I had a dog I could let them run around without bothering anyone walking by or running into the street. There are several legit reasons for a gate. The least of which is a means to make your house impossible to access.” [Cody, commenting on A Preview of a $110K Modest Mod]
H-E-B agreed several months ago to wall off the ends of Sul Ross and Branard streets, which dead-end into the site of its future Montrose market at West Alabama and Dunlavy, and which served as entrances for the Wilshire Village Apartments that were torn down there last year. But what about devotees of that obscure local Montrose pastime known as walking to the supermarket? If they’re coming from the neighborhoods to the west, should they be able to get through that way?
Over the weekend, the Lancaster Place Civic Association worked out a “compromise” between homeowners on the dead-end portions of Sul Ross and Branard — mostly opposed to having pedestrian gates at the ends of their streets — and homeowners and renters in that neighborhood to the south and southwest of the site, most of whom wanted them included. H-E-B Houston prez Scott McClelland says he’ll have H-E-B’s in-house architects design what the association came up with: A pedestrian gate on Branard, with a timer that will lock it after dark. Sul Ross, which is closer to the store entrance, won’t have a gate, but will have a panel in the wall that would make it easier to put one in later.
Joni Webb takes Cote de Texas readers on a driving tour of River Oaks houses, and reports:
. . . slowly yet surely, River Oaks has become a gated community of sorts without anyone realizing it. Instead of the one set of gates leading into the neighborhood, house after house is located behind their own iron gates now. Until my latest drive through, I hadn’t realized how many houses were gated in what was once a more accessible neighborhood. In America, we tend to think of gated communities as being far away, out in the suburbs, a place where people take flight against a rising crime rate. But here, in River Oaks, in the heart of the city, in the shadow of our downtown, this community has chosen to hide themselves behind formidable walls, and thus, have changed the look and atmosphere of one of our treasures.
Selections from Webb’s “exclusive” photo collection:
