A standing-room-only crowd of 800-plus people packed the Kingwood Community Center last night for a high-rise meeting. They were there to hear for the first time from Romerica and the people who hope to build high rises in an area deed restricted to single-family residential. Gabriel M. Haddad, one of Romerica’s partners, seemed decent and […]
Romerica packed the house with perhaps 800 to 1000 people. Both large rooms of the community center were standing room only. Contrary to pre-meeting guidance, the Romerica developer and his team DID take questions from the floor. The meeting lasted more than three hours. Gabriel M. Haddad was not what I expected. He was disarming […]
For weeks, Barbara Hilburn (Kingwood Lakes President), Bill Fowler and Dianne Lansden (Lake Houston Area Grass Roots Flood Prevention Initiative leaders) and I have been calling and emailing Manlove Marketing and Communications. We asked whether the high-rise developer would take questions from the audience tonight. We were consistently ignored. No answer. None. Nada. Silence. Barrington […]
On March 4, Romerica announced a “free” public meeting at which they and their suppliers plan to “discuss”: USACE Corp Process Phases of the Development Current and Future Initiatives of Romerica At that time, the guest panel was to include: R. Thomas Sankey, PWS, CSE Senior Project Manager / Senior Ecologist, SWCA Melvin G. Spinks, P.E., […]
Donna Dewhirst’s home did not flood. But the flood came within feet of her foundation and left debris strewn across her yard. Based on Harris County Flood Control estimates, 154,170 homes flooded in Harris County during Harvey (see page 13). The US Census Bureau estimates that there were 1.56 million households in Harris County in […]
On Tuesday this week, I created a post in response to a question about whether they really were taking sand out of the river. Someone thought the presence of dredges on the river was a government hoax because they didn’t see any trucks carrying sand away. Shades of Roswell and UFOs! I explained that they […]
Interview by Bob Rehak Jim and Melissa Balcom live in a spectacular three-story home built on pylons 12 feet above the ground and 20 feet above the San Jacinto West Fork. Their home fronts on the north bank immediately west of River Grove Park. They named one son River, another Talon (like the eagles that […]
John Rocco lives in Kingwood Greens where 225 out of 225 homes flooded according to statistics compiled by the Kingwood Service Association. John is a man of few words. He let these images tell the story for him and sketched out a few details (see below). All images were taken after he was able to […]
This is another in a series of looks back at Harvey, as told through the photos of its victims. Melissa Sturgis, self-described “oil-patch gypsy,” is still angry. “My entire home. Treasured antiques, three generations back from New England, are on this curb. Furniture and collectibles from eight years overseas in Malaysia, London and Russia. It’s a […]
David Burress, head of the Kings Forest architectural review committee, sent me this picture yesterday. It shows what he believes to be the last FEMA trailer leaving Kings Forest. It’s a modest, although important sign of recovery. Kings Forest lies north of Kingwood Drive, 1.5 to 2 miles from the San Jacinto River. Despite the […]