Yard Of The Month: 935 Ridge

It was a tough month for anyone in our neighborhood to have a good looking yard after the hard freeze a couple of weeks back. However, Randy McBrides' yard at 935 Ridge looks fantastic!

Randy has been in the Woodland Heights for over 19 years and tells us that the reason his yard looks so good is that he has endeavored to make it low maintenance. The two deciduous bur oaks out front with their unusual bark and huge acorns are a knock out along with ground trailing juniper, azaleas, and African iris. It really looks good!

Historic District Design Guidelines Visual Preferences Survey

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Click on the image to go to the city web site and begin the survey.

What are the keys to designing a compatible house or addition in a historic district?

At previous community workshops, participants evaluated a series of alternative building models for new houses and additions. Some models were rated as being either clearly appropriate or clearly inappropriate. For other models, opinions were mixed, or there wasn’t enough feedback to draw clear conclusions, and so this survey focuses on those models for which we did not receive clear direction.

We have also updated some illustrations to more closely reflect the character of individual historic districts. Your answers will help us recommend building design tools to be included in the Woodland Heights Historic District design guidelines.
The survey is divided into three parts:

Part 1: Overall Issues In the District
This section asks the extent to which you agree or disagree with issues that were mentioned in previous workshops.

Part 2: Building Design Tools
This section asks you to comment on the usefulness of design techniques that can affect compatibility, in terms of mass, scale, and relationship of a building to its neighbors. A background paper, titled Houston Historic Districts Potential Design Tools, provides further information about the design tools in Part 2.

Part 3: Building Scenarios
This section presents seven house designs -- three that show different approaches for constructing an addition to a historic single-family home, and four that illustrate new single-family homes in the historic district. Each scenario incorporates a combination of the design techniques described in Part 2 and will help us determine how effective these tools may be in achieving compatible designs.

All surveys must be completed online or postmarked no later than Friday, January 27, 2017.

Woodland Heights Civic Association Board Elections

The WHCA board elections will be held on Tuesday, March 21, 2017 at 7 PM at the Hogg Middle School Cafeteria.  The WHCA bylaws require that a nominating committee of five (5) individuals be established to receive nominations for the WHCA board positions.  The nominating committee is to consist of two (2) current WHCA board members and three (3) woodland heights residents.

Carla Reed, VP Beautification and Brad Snead, VP Security have agreed to serve as the two (2) current WHCA board members on the nominating committee.

If you would like to serve as one of the three (3) woodland heights residents on the nominating committee please send an email expressing your interest to William Getschow at president@woodland-heights.org.  Once the nominating committee is formed then further instructions will be sent out to the neighborhood about how to nominate someone for a WHCA board position for the next term (March 2017-March 2018).

As a reminder, all board positions will be up for election on March 21, 2017.  We hope that many of the current board members will serve in the next term but they will need to be nominated and elected. The WHCA board positions are as follows:  President, President-Elect, VP-Security, VP-Treasurer, VP-Deed Restrictions, VP-Membership, VP-Beautification, VP-Infrastructure, VP-Communications and VP-Secretary.

Thank you,
William Getschow
President

Spending Update

Newsletter subscribers: To view a larger version of this chart please select the article title to view the image on the Woodland Heights Civic Association website.

Yard Of The Month

Yard of the month goes to Arnold van Ek who for over a decade has been creating a sculpture garden in the lot he owns across the street from his home at 619 Euclid.

When Arnold retired after a long career in the oil and gas business in 2005 he decided to fulfill a lifelong dream of becoming an artist. He enrolled at the Glassell School of Art and for the first time learned to weld and cut metal. 

The first sculpture he created was a cardinal totem pole after a trip to Toronto where he was inspired by the totem poles of the American Indian Inuit tribe. Next he produced 3 large spheres; a giant marble, Pluto, and Earth.

Arnold invites you to walk the lot and check out the copperhead Medusa, casino wind chime, lazy Atlas, and the resident alien. At the back of the lot is a shed that features a short movie every night at 7:30 featuring many of his neighbors.

The New Faces Of The WHCA Board

The past month has seen some changes in the faces on the WHCA board. The current board is comprised of the following officers:

• William Getschow, President
• Tyson Greer, President-Elect
• Carla Reed, VP-Beautification
• Susan Pennebaker-VP-Secretary
• Michael Graves, VP-Communications
• Brad Snead, VP-Security
• Melissa McKee-VP, Treasurer
• Giji John-VP, Deed Restrictions
• Roger Moxley, VP-Membership
• Matt Johnson-VP-Infrastructure

These officers will serve through March 2017. In March the WHCA will be holding elections to determine the officers for the coming year, which runs through to March 2018.

LITH 2016 Wrap-up

Lights in the Heights came together nicely this year. It takes such effort from us the neighbors: from the committee, the porch volunteers, the Gala attendees, those who deck out their homes to the nines, to those who graciously attend LITH.

There are some key characters on the Lights in the Heights Committee who deserve our gratitude: Stephanie Leachman, who ran the Lights Gala to provide much-needed proceeds in a fun way with some particular challenges this year, Meredith Burk who did an amazing job recruiting and managing the logistics of TWENTY bands and porches in a way that made the evening perfect, Robyn Klepper in charge of all new, flashy signage and new, flashing merchandise and cloisonné ornaments and their distribution and the decoration contest, Katie McCafferty who took over Friday Night Lights from three co-chairs and added a food and toy drive, Andrea Gorney who took on the various maps and flyers and delivery, Terri Guerra who listened to me whine and managed the security as she has done for many years, Caroline and Lauren Earthman who kept the luminaria tradition glowing while eliminating the sandlot. Several others played key roles, especially doing the last-minute, overlooked tasks: Michael Graves, Desiree Ruiz, David Coyle, Philip Teague, Amanda Brown, Lauren Snead, Sara Metsa, Ginnie McConn, the Brock family and the Jordan family all took on something important for LITH2016.

The WHCA takes on so much work for us at this time of year also: Mark Sternfels put in hours creating online sales portals and adding and editing web pages and marketing material for us. Casey Ballard and William Getschow spent a great deal of energy on insuring us properly. Melissa McKee cut as many checks as I will have to write thank you notes and kept the budget on track. Marian Wright and the block captains helped with delivery of notices to the neighborhood.

While it would not be inappropriate for me to thank all our sponsors also, I am including Jason Glover and Memorial Herman Greater Heights staff because they took part of our workload this year. His graphic design team drafted many logos for us, updated them with our comments and drafted most of our signage design. MHGH volunteers collected our toy drive and food drive items, and arranged delivery to Heights Interfaith Ministries.

Thank you to my committee. I deeply appreciated each of you giving your extra time to this beloved holiday event. I love Lights in the Heights and I love the Woodland Heights and feel thankful. If you know anyone listed here, do tell them thanks. They absolutely deserve it.

- Jan Greer, LITH Chair

From the Editor: LITH fell into a gap created by the transition between people in the VP Communications position. This resulted in a delay in the January newsletter, including this post.