chamberscreek

I drove by the new Vintage Market last night and looked inside. Though they have a ways to go outside the building, they've got quite a bit done inside (stocking, etc.). Can't wait until this thing opens and the initial buzz dies down...

Yes, these are the ones at Louetta and Jones, north of the HP campus.

One overall comment -- we need to remember that Alicia was only a Category 3 storm. Were Houston to see a direct hit from a Category 5 storm, I fear we'd see some very different results out here. I don't know that all the trees would be able to withstand some real winds, which would then result in some wood transfer to our roofs. I've ridden out some "real" hurricanes on the coast, but never with 80 ft. pine trees looming over my house... As for the rain, Allison wasn't the worst case scenario out here in the NW area, because we get in the most trouble when the areas to the north and west of us get drenched first, THEN we get a bunch of rain (thus doubling the drainage issues). Allison (according to the nearest county rain gauge) dropped 20 inches at my house in 24 hours, and we didn't have nearly the flooding issues we had in earlier years with much smaller rains (when a pre-drenching occurred in areas north and west).

The irritating thing about the Berry Center is that it was not presented honestly during the corresponding bond election. If you took 100 random people to the Berry Center today and asked them to describe it in a few words, I don't think anyone would come up with "Educational Support Center," yet that was how it was pitched to the public during the bond election. I think the CFISD board was intentionally deceptive in presenting the project. If the Berry Center was truly needed (and it may be), why wasn't it simply presented in a straightforward fashion with all the arguments laid out? I'll look forward to seeing the package for this bond election to see if it is more up-front on things. I'm not a knee-jerk "don't spend any money" person, but I hate being lied to...

As musicman stated, we've been burned once by intentional deception with the Berry Center being presented as an "educational support facility," so forgive me if this Cy-Fair resident is skeptical. I have no doubt we need more schools and infrastructure in this area -- I simply have very little confidence in the ability of CFISD to be efficient about it. My vote defaults to No, and I'll leave it to the CFISD board to convince me otherwise.

Actually, I would argue that Cy-Fair residents didn't KNOW what they were voting for when they passed the bond election. If you took 50 people over to the Berry Center complex today and asked each one, "What do you see?", I'd argue that at least 40 of them would say "an athletic complex." Yet the facility was consistently referred to pre-election as simply an Educational Support Center. IMHO, a concerted effort was put forth to downplay, if not hide, the athletic facilities portion of the project. That's what irks me -- have the guts to call it what it is. Whether the facility was necessary or extravagant is a different question altogether. I have tried to find the support materials originally provided before the 2001 bond election, but they seem to have been removed from the Cy-Fair ISD Web site. Anyone know how those can be located?

I live in the Cy-Fair district, and what annoyed me about this project was that, when it was up for a vote, they constantly referred to this as an "educational support center," and totally downplayed the athletic facilities. Now, whether or not the athletic facilities were needed is a different debate, but at least have the guts to be honest about what you are planning to build.

Last I heard, Dillas was history as well...