Greenway project links local parks throughout NW Houston

Greenway project links local parks throughout NW Houston

By Josef Molnar Friday, 22 January 2010

Plan connects green areas along Cypress Creek

NORTHWEST HOUSTON — Whether hiking the green trails along Cypress Creek, riding the placid waterways for miles or playing at nearby parks, residents and landowners are being encouraged by a local group to enjoy the creek and do what they can to improve it.

The Cypress Creek Greenway Project’s goal is to have a series of interconnected trails, bridges, parks and other recreational areas along Cypress Creek so residents can enjoy the benefits of living near the waterway.

“It’s in your back yard,” said Jim Robertson, chairman of the Cypress Creek Greenway Project. “You can come home, grab your kids and go out and enjoy the waterway, and even drop your canoe in the water.”

The project also encourages schools and amateur adventurers to enjoy the cultural and historical aspects of the area, he said.

“A lot of Native Americans settled along the creeks, and there are archaeological sites there,” Robertson said. “Sam Houston also followed the creek on the way to the Battle of San Jacinto.”

“At the (adjoining Kickerillo Preserve, which was donated by developer Kickerillo Mischer), they had archeological work done and identified some sites that needed to be taken into consideration,” he added.

The land included in the project is in excess of 2,500 acres, said Robertson, who has been working on the project for five years.

“Our intent is to go across northwest Harris County,” he said. “Potentially this could go all the way from the Bridgelands to The Woodlands.”

He even hopes the project will join with the Katy Nature Preserve in Waller County, further expanding the reach of the recreational and educational resources available to area residents.

Project plans

The project’s breadth is ambitious in its scope, and Robertson said it would take years to realize a continuous Cypress Creek greenway with more than 40 miles of interconnected trails and walkways linking community parks. However, he said the completed project would offer residents a place to enjoy nature in whatever way they choose.

Southeast of the town of Spring, where the Spring and Cypress creeks intersect, Robertson said residents already ride horses along the water and kayak or canoe.

“I encourage people to go to Meyer and Collins parks [in Spring] and walk the section of trail between the parks,” he said. “There are incredibly beautiful sections that are not available yet, but this allows people to get a sample of what it could be.”

The greenway project is headed by a committee within the Cypress Creek Flood Control Coalition, a nonprofit group established in 1999 to explore area flood mitigation issues and to encourage the recreational use and preservation of the lands bordering Cypress Creek.

“We’re not buying land or working on it, but coordinating the activities of the entities working on this,” Robertson said. “Although this had been talked about for years, nothing was done to develop a system to develop the greenway.”

While the desire to make the best use of the Cypress Creek area has been on the minds of various developers of the area, the number of entities in control of its lands had been a prohibition to coordinating it. Forty-seven MUD districts, as well as Harris County Precincts 3 and 4, the Harris County Flood Control District and numerous community developers do not easily work together, Robertson said, and it took the development of the Cypress Creek Greenway Project to focus the efforts of some and convince others of the viability of the program.

Communication

The work over the past few years has resulted in a nature trail built by Harris County Precinct 4 connecting Collins and Meyer parks, Robertson said, as well as the passage of at least four major bond issues in the last year and a half to fund other park projects.

The project offers opportunities for developers and municipalities to take advantage of the waterways that run throughout the area, Robertson said.

“When this was started it was a quality of life issue, but clearly it was an economic development issue,” he said. “We’ve seen a significant bump in the value of the land, both residential and commercial, in areas close to the greenways.”

Local community

Peter Houghton, developer of Bridgeland community and vice president of master-planned communities for General Growth Properties, said he is impressed with how much the group has accomplished in a few short years.

“The scope (of the project) is fairly unprecedented,” Houghton said. “I was skeptical a few years ago because there’s so much private land and it’s a large project, but Mr. Robertson’s tenacity has helped a lot. This will be a great addition to the area.”

Bridgeland has done its part to contribute to the project: It opened its first trails to residents a year and a half ago and plans to expand them from a mile and a half of walkways to about 6 miles. Along with crushed granite trails, the development includes benches and even signage pointing out historical facts, flora and fauna, and other areas of interest.

“We hired a history professor to do research on the area, and we’ve incorporated in signage on the trail,” Houghton said. “Every 600 yards there’s something to see.”

He said the improvements go a long way toward attracting people to the area.

Floodplain

Cypress Creek follows a 100-year floodplain and floods during the area’s heavy rains, but Robertson said it only overflows its banks just a few days each year, allowing development of the area for recreation without affecting the flood area.

“This is not like the San Antonio Riverwalk, where they have floodgates and the river can rise 10 feet without a difference,” he said. “We’re working with a natural system here; this is very different, and the area along the creek will flood and sections of the trail will be underwater. We’ll lose a few days out of the year, but it’s not as if we can’t use it at all because of flooding.”

Although nine major tributaries feed into Cypress Creek, Robertson said the group is focusing its efforts on the creek and the immediate areas. He said neighborhoods surrounding those fingers of water could spearhead efforts to tie many of the trails along the tributaries into the network.

Although there are environmental benefits to keeping the Cypress Creek area in its natural state, such as reduced erosion, Robertson said, the project is primarily for the people who live, work and play in the area.

“It’s an incredible resource in our backyard that people are not aware of, and we want to open it up so people can enjoy it,” he said. “It’s a quality of life issue; we’re not trying to develop The Woodlands, but we have the potential to certainly improve what we have.”