What is The Woodlands, TX?

What’s Up in The Woodlands – Season 2, Episode 1: What is The Woodlands, TX?

I can spout off stats and read a carefully worded “About” on https://www.thewoodlandstownship-tx.gov/ or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Woodlands,_Texas – but what is The Woodlands to me?

It is a safe place to raise a family, an aesthetically pleasing place, a community of neighbors, and an econimic boon to the surrounding area. Those aren’t all it is, but that’s what was on my mind when I recorded this.

What is The Woodlands to you?

Automatic transcription via a Google service:

Hey there Kyle Susan here for, what's up in the woodlands. And I want to start off this year by talking about what is the woodlands? Now, I could go to the township blood page, or Wikipedia, or any other number of places, and give you stats and figures about it being oh, the largest master plan community, in a live work play community and it's a township, not a city and all this stuff, but if not what I want to do, I'll talk to you about. 

The woodlands means to me. What I see it as as someone who lives here and works here. Their my name is Kyle Souza. My blog is talkinggeek.com, and this is my podcast. Welcome to the woodlands. So the woodlands is where I'm raising my family, I am from Phoenix. Arizona are technically, chandler. 

Originally is where I lived and moved to spring at a very young age when my parents got divorced and was familiar with the woodlands because of the woodlands mall. And eventually, I grew up and moved out on my own and got married and all that, and I've lived in mostly spring and then North Houston and back in spring again and then in the woodlands, proper with some apartments on the waterway. 

And then a house in Grogan's Mill and all my children have been born at Memorial Hermann. The Woodlands. I currently work at a company that is near the waterway and because I live in Grosvenor, when the weather is good, I get to ride my bike tour work. So why am I raising my family here? 

Well, I needed a place where my wife felt safe, safety's very important to her and we have kids and we wanted to place where we could not be worried about them. You know, not that. We're gonna just let them go playing the street for hours on supervisors or something like that or, you know, anything crazy but we want to place where we don't have to worry when we're getting out of the car at a shopping center and not that we aren't vigilant, but that we're not constantly afraid of where we are checking over our shoulder, those kinds of things. 

So the woodlands is a safe place. All right, the woodlands is nice. You know, it's really fancy. They're even planning a bunch of renovations to the Woodlands mall. That'll make it. You know, the Houston gallery at 2.0 is out fields but the Woodlands is nice, there's houses, you know, ranging from mid-tier all the way up to multi-million dollar a states. 

There's a townhouses apartment complexes, but most of the residences are our single family dwelling units. The woodlands is established. One of the things that I love about the woodlands is all the mature trees. So it does, you know, make for a tough time sometimes all those pine needles and oak leaves in the yard and pollen in the spring. 

Lots of cleanup to be done, but is worth it. You know, I love these mature trees that are around and that's one thing that with all this new development we're losing a lot of that. There's so many parts of the woodlands that you know, cut down all the trees to build the houses instead of building the houses in the trees. 

It really arrives me of Frank Lloyd Wright and the the tally essay and style of building where Italian means shining brown. The idea is, you don't build a house that dominates the hill, you build a house that goes into the hill that that flows with it. That works with it and that's how I feel. 

Like most of the woodlands is most of the shopping center and the businesses and the homes are in the trees around the trees with the trees. But a lot of this new development, they're just taking the trees out and maybe they'll put some back in but there's no gantt. 

He's there. So, the woodlands is nice aesthetically. The woodlands is a community. I know my neighbors. I am not intimately involved in their lives and they're not intimately involved in mind, but may have more to do with me and my personality, and somewhat introverted nature than anything else, but it really is a community. 

I, I see everybody who walks their dogs around the neighborhood and we have one dog. Now, we used to have two but now we only have one sadly, but I see everyone else who walks their dogs around? I get to know them. I get to another dogs. I have kids, two young girls and a baby boy and I see other parents. 

Walking their children are playing outside with their kids. It's it's to be able to know the people that are around you. I don't necessarily rely on my neighbors for much, but I do feel like that if there was a disaster, they would get involved. At least to the point of. 

Yeah. Hey, your house is on fire, get out. You know, they would warn me about that when a lot of people see trash or something, I place they just fix it because they want to community to look right, and to be clean to do well, you know. So so people are involved, people are vested. 

They have a vested interest in the success of these communities. You know, the woodlands is broken into all these villages. I believe there's a 11 of them and like said I live in the village of Gergen's Mill. And there's these township boards, where anyone who owns residential property or lives here leaving renters. 

Get to participate and board activities. I think it's great. How many people get involved? Not just in the township board, you know, which is like a city council type thing. But at the village level, which is kind of like an HOA thing that I just think it's a great to have involvement at all levels, from all people who live here. 

So the woodlands is a community. And the Woodlands is an economic powerhouse. It is an affluent area. There's a lot of people, there's some oil companies here and there's a lot of people in the oil industry who live here. If they work down Houston or Memorial City, Katie even, they live here and the woodlands. 

And so it's an economic boom, to the local area. You know, you have cities near it, like Oak Ridge North that are you know, near the woodlands that benefit from the woodlands, Shenandoah Shenandoah, I believe and I may be mistaken by believe it has the highest hotel per capita or maybe per square mile. 

Highest number of hotels per square mile. Highest number hotels per capita of any city in the country in Shando is a city. They have a mayor and it's right near the ones fact. A lot of people will confuse Shando in the Woodlands. Yeah, you got part of Fino Center, it's around the other side of research forest, you know, things like that but they have just a inordinate amount of hotels. 

And I think it's fantastic that the woodlands helps the local area around it so much economically. And and I don't mean helps as in handouts I mean just like people want to be near the woodlands and the woodlands has so many amenities and offerings that people you know there's a symbiotic relationship there between us and neighboring cities. 

So the woodlands is a economic powerhouse and hitting close to home. Here is, is the Gorgons Mill, Village Center, which Randalls moved out back in 2020 and you know, Chef Chans, is there a blue lion pub the farmers market? You know there's things that are still there but it's missing a big piece and so I hope that we get that filled in soon and I know that Panther Creek has a similar situation or starling Ridge. 

You know there's you know Panther Creek and Groveland smell the oldest villages, starting rages also without a cornerstone grocery store at this time. So you know there's also within the woodlands, some symbiotic relationships and some camaraderie between these villages, even though we are kind of one community multiple communities. 

It's an interesting state. All right. So again, my name is Kyle, Susan, my blog is talking geekpack, calm. And this is been what's up in the woodlands where I just wanted to start off 2023 with a little bit of a fresh and personal. Take on. What is the woodlands? 

Texas to me, please rate review, leave some comments, give me some feedback. What does the woodlands mean to you? I would love to hear other people's input on what the woodlands is to them. Enjoy.