THE FASTEST way to Westheimer Rd., if you happen to be wandering north looking for it in the 76210 ZIP code, is a left off of Heights Blvd. and an immediate right off Gessner Dr. Lauren Meyers captured some scenes this weekend around the Summit Oaks subdivision on the south side of Denton, TX, which has a whole section of streets sharing names with major Houston roadway (with a few bizarro-world tweaks here and there, like Chimney Rock Dr. and an only-1-L Hilcroft Ave.)
The Summit Oaks (as opposed, perhaps, to the Compaq Center Oaks or Lakewood Church Oaks?) subdivision off of FM 2181/Teasley Road in south Denton (outlined in red in the Google Earth screenshot below) was platted in the late 1990s. All of its streets have Houston street names, even if some of them were misspelled. Needless to say, as a native Houstonian I thought it was rather humorous.
The Swamplot article intimates that the street names may have been inspired by the presence of a Houston Street in Denton State School, immediately to the subdivision's east. If I recall correctly however, the reason for the street names as much simpler: the developer was based in Houston and needed some street names that weren't already taken by other subdivisions in the rapidly-growing city.
The Swamplot article intimates that the street names may have been inspired by the presence of a Houston Street in Denton State School, immediately to the subdivision's east. If I recall correctly however, the reason for the street names as much simpler: the developer was based in Houston and needed some street names that weren't already taken by other subdivisions in the rapidly-growing city.
I was not the case manager for this particular development, although I do recall an attempt to convince the Summit Oaks developer and the developer of the subdivision directly to the north to create a roadway or pedestrian connection between Weslayan and Hollow Ridge, so that people (especially children) could get between the two neighborhoods without having to go all the way out on Teasley. They declined to make the connection because it wasn't required at the time; Denton's development code would later be updated to require such connectivity.
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| Google Earth |
Fifteen years after I left the City of Denton, I'm still chuckling at the above screenshot. Not because of the names of the streets in Summit Oaks, but rather because of the property below it, at the southwest corner of Teasley and Ryan Road, circled in light blue.
Not long after I was hired at the City of Denton, I was assigned a case regarding a piece of property at the corner of Teasley and Lillian Miller, just to the north of the area shown on the above map. A developer wanted to put a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market grocery store on that property. The councilmember for that part of Denton at the time (who was the socialite housewife of a local physican) was outraged. She did not want a Wal-Mart anything in the upscale neighborhoods she represented, so she rallied up her (equally elitist) constituents in opposition. People showed up to public meetings and P&Z meetings en masse, their NIMBY-fueled anger directed at staffers such as myself (even though we had no control over the brand of the store to be located there) just as much as at the developer. Faced with such tremendous opposition, the developer backed down and the property eventually became a CVS pharmacy.
A short time later, another developer approached the city about placing a Tom Thumb (the Dallas-Fort Worth equivalent of Randalls) on the piece of property circled in the map above. The same councilmember who was livid about the Wal-Mart proposal was ecstatic about this one, and helped to push the rezoning and platting of the property through the city's review and approval process (I was, once again, case manager) in hopes of bringing the high-end grocer to her area. It was only after the zoning and platting was completed that the developer discovered that, thanks to the city's byzantine liquor laws, beer and wine would not be permitted to be sold on that site. Tom Thumb backed out. (See my post about this from many years ago for more explanation.)
The land sat vacant, the councilmember got voted off council, I left the City of Denton, and a few years later local voters regularized Denton's liquor laws. The grocery store originally planned for the property was finally developed, as the photo above indicates.
But it isn't a Tom Thumb. It's...
Yeah, you guessed it.
Not long after I was hired at the City of Denton, I was assigned a case regarding a piece of property at the corner of Teasley and Lillian Miller, just to the north of the area shown on the above map. A developer wanted to put a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market grocery store on that property. The councilmember for that part of Denton at the time (who was the socialite housewife of a local physican) was outraged. She did not want a Wal-Mart anything in the upscale neighborhoods she represented, so she rallied up her (equally elitist) constituents in opposition. People showed up to public meetings and P&Z meetings en masse, their NIMBY-fueled anger directed at staffers such as myself (even though we had no control over the brand of the store to be located there) just as much as at the developer. Faced with such tremendous opposition, the developer backed down and the property eventually became a CVS pharmacy.
A short time later, another developer approached the city about placing a Tom Thumb (the Dallas-Fort Worth equivalent of Randalls) on the piece of property circled in the map above. The same councilmember who was livid about the Wal-Mart proposal was ecstatic about this one, and helped to push the rezoning and platting of the property through the city's review and approval process (I was, once again, case manager) in hopes of bringing the high-end grocer to her area. It was only after the zoning and platting was completed that the developer discovered that, thanks to the city's byzantine liquor laws, beer and wine would not be permitted to be sold on that site. Tom Thumb backed out. (See my post about this from many years ago for more explanation.)
The land sat vacant, the councilmember got voted off council, I left the City of Denton, and a few years later local voters regularized Denton's liquor laws. The grocery store originally planned for the property was finally developed, as the photo above indicates.
But it isn't a Tom Thumb. It's...
Yeah, you guessed it.
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