September2008

News

09/08/2008

“Discover Cy-Fair” Golf Tourney Oct. 29

A decade ago the Chamber launched its “Discover Cy-Fair” Economic Development Golf Tournament to showcase the Cy-Fair area’s selling points and to provide a dynamic networking opportunity for those who do business – or want to do business – in this growing region.

The 10 th annual tournament underwritten by Bay Architects will take place Wednesday, October 29 at Longwood Golf Club, 13300 Longwood Trace Drive in Cypress.

The tournament kicks off with registration at 9:30 a.m. During that time participants can also take part in a putting contest and fuel up at lunch. Golfing gets underway at 11:30 a.m. with a scramble-shotgun start. An awards dinner and auction will start at 5 p.m.

Talk will focus on doing business in Cy-Fair, and the many reasons it makes economic sense to invest in the area. Some of those highlights include:

• Available Industrial/Office Sites and Buildings: 50% raw land; almost 14 million square feet in industrial space/4 million square feet in new construction; and over 17 million square feet in office space

• A Growing Population: 701,539 (2001); about 773,625 in 2006; and projected for 2012 - 1.2 million

• Households: 245,368 (2001); about 270,148 in 2006

• Tax Incentives: Cypress-Fairbanks ISD Freeport Exemption; and City of Jersey Village

• Trained Workforce: Cypress-Fairbanks ISD is the 3rd largest school district in Texas and the largest “RECOGNIZED” school district by Texas Education Agency; the Lone Star College System is the 4th largest community college system in Texas, offers contract customized training and a small business development center, three locations in Cy-Fair including the Willowchase Center at State Highway 249/Grant Road, the Fairbanks Center at Highway 290/West Little York Road, and Long Star College - CyFair - a 450,000-squarefoot facility on 210 acres at West Road and Barker-Cypress

• An excellent road and highway system

• Healthcare facilities including Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center , Methodist Willowbrook Hospital and North Cypress Medical Center .

• And shopping, recreation and trees

A portion of the proceeds from the tournament, dinner and auction will benefit the Adam Skinner Memorial Scholarship of the Cypress-Fairbanks Educational Foundation. Adam Skinner was a 12 year-old Cy-Fair youth who died in a tragic traffic accident in 1999 and a scholarship endowment has been established in his memory. The Chamber has contributed more than $60,000 to the endowment.

Companies are urged to sign on as event sponsors from $1,100 - $7,500. Player spots are also available at $200 each. Non-golfers are welcome at the dinner and auction for $25 each.

In the event of inclement weather, all activities except golf will continue as scheduled. Participant fees will be a donation to the CFEF’s Adam Skinner Memorial Scholarship and the Cy-Fair Houston Chamber of Commerce.

For sponsorship information or to reserve a spot for the dinner, call Sherri Padalino at the Cy-Fair Houston Chamber of Commerce at (281) 373-1390 or visit the website at www.cyfairchamber.com.

09/08/2008

Troyer Leaves Impressive Legacy as she Embarks on New Career Venture

Eight years ago, Dr. Diane Troyer, then Cy-Fair Chamber chairwoman of the board, launched an exciting and visionary new chapter in her already stellar career when she was appointed president of Cy Fair College, an arm of the then North Harris Montgomery Community College District that had not even opened its doors to students.

On the cusp of her eighth anniversary at the newly-named Lone Star College–CyFair, Troyer is poised to embark on another amazing journey as she prepares to relocate to Seattle to work as a senior program officer for the Bill & Melinda Gates Educational Foundation. In that role, she said she would participate in the planning phase of a massive initiative aimed at doubling the number of community college graduates in the next two decades.

Lone Star College–CyFair’s vice president of administration, Dr. Bob Williams, will serve as interim president for the next year.

“It will be very hard for me to leave,” Troyer said. “I cannot even express what this community has done for me personally, and for our students, over the years.”

With heavy hearts full of pride, Cy-Fair Chamber members recently toasted Troyer’s successes and, somewhat reluctantly, bid her, “Farewell” as she prepared to venture into the next chapter of her professional life.

“It requires a lot of words to sum up what Diane has meant to this community,” said John Fox, a former Lone Star College System board member and Chamber board member. “We are proud that she has led the college to its present level of excellence. She is a student advocate, team player, and community leader.”

“When I served on the (Lone Star) board, she never once came to me complaining or asking for special favors,” Fox said. “She will be sorely missed, but will continue to positively impact students’ lives in her new role.”

Fox said he knew she was the one for the job when he served on the committee that interviewed candidates for the CyFair College presidency. Troyer was then serving as president of Tomball College and had already formed strong ties with the Cy-Fair community.

Immediately after her appointment in October 2000, Troyer and her small staff embarked on an intricate and work-intensive assessment and community-input process that pulled input from various sectors of the Cy-Fair community to determine what educational, technological, cultural and social classes, programs and facilities the college should offer to meet the needs of the community.

By the fall of 2003, the Troyer-led team had opened a state-of-the art community college campus at Barker-Cypress and West roads, and was already serving students out of the Fairbanks satellite center at Highway 290 and West Little York Road.

Enrollment is expected to surpass 13,000 students this year.

During her tenure at Lone Star College–CyFair, the college has earned the distinction as a national model for innovation, community responsiveness and collaboration with a unique learning signature dedicated to learning engagement for each student.

Troyer served as president of the National Council for Occupational Education and was recognized by that organization with the John F. Grede Board Service Award in 2001. She also received the Shirley B. Gordon Award of Distinction from Phi Theta Kappa in 2004, and has been inducted into the El Paso , Texas Women’s Hall of Fame.

She played a key role in the launch of CyFair College ’s endowment program, which will award $52,000 in endowments to students this year.

Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District Superintendent Dr. David Anthony said it is often the case that a friction developer between superintendents and community college presidents who serve the same area, but that was not the case with Troyer.

“We both faced the same challenges – fast growth, (state) funding challenges, bond elections, and changing demographics – but there was never any finger-pointing,” Anthony said. “We worked together to clear the hurdles.”

“Every human being alive wants to work for the Bill & Melinda Gates Educational Foundation, and they tapped Diane,” Anthony said. “We give our thanks, and congratulations, to you (Diane).”

She came well prepared to work for the Lone Star College System.

Prior to her appointment as Tomball College president, Troyer was vice president of instructional and student affairs at Harford Community College in Maryland and faculty member and administrator at El Paso Community College .

Troyer received her doctorate in community college administration from the Community College Leadership Program at the University of Texas at Austin where she was recognized as an Outstanding Graduate in 1997.

She also holds a master’s in health education from the University of Texas at El Paso and a bachelor’s degree in dental hygiene from the University of Nebraska .

“Diane is a genuinely nice person – she is successful, yet humble,” said Cy-Fair Chamber Chairman Reginald Lillie. “She has opened the doors to education for so many people.”

“The Bill & Melinda Gates Educational Foundation will be even richer after she arrives,” Lillie said.

09/08/2008

Mobility Forum Sets Stage for Transit-Oriented Movement

Discussion at the Chamber’s first annual Mobility Forum – which drew a distinguished crowd of over 300 members and guests - touched on a variety of projects and subjects but circled around a common theme: The Cy-Fair area needs a combination of several modes of transit to serve the needs of residents and businesses – and to ward off a sea of congestion - in the next 20 years and beyond.

The population boom experienced by northwest Harris County ’s Cy-Fair community in the past decade has put pressure on Highway 290 and the roads that are charged with shouldering the added traffic burden that comes along with that growth.

“We have to come together collaboratively to solve our mobility issues,” said Cy-Fair Chamber President Erin Al-Salman.

Chamber leaders organized the forum to provide a venue for representatives from the Harris County Toll Road Authority, Harris County, Texas Department of Transportation, Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, Houston Airport System, and the Houston-Galveston Area Council to discuss issues and answer questions submitted by Chamber members and forum attendees.

Those issues ranged from the size and scope of the Houston Airport System’s economic impact on the Houston region to the status of the Grant Road widening project. Though the Highway 290/Hempstead Highway reconstruction project served as backdrop – or a common thread – for many questions, the project did not dominate the panel’s discussion.

Patricia Waskowiak, a forum panelist and the Houston-Galveston Area Council’s Public Outreach and Policy Program Manager in the agency’s Transportation Department, said H-GAC is developing a long-range transportation plan – the 2035 Regional Transportation Plan – for Harris and seven surrounding counties that details transportation projects, programs and strategies to improve mobility, and air quality in the area.

Waskowiak said H-GAC is developing the plan in cooperation with several transportation-related agencies, included many represented on the Chamber’s panel.

“This is a growing diverse region with many transportation needs,” Waskowiak said. “It will take a multi-modal system to provide the options that people need.”

She said the rapid growth taking place in the Cy-Fair area is representative of what is happening in several suburban centers throughout the Houston region. She said 60 percent of the region’s growth is in unincorporated areas, which have relatively minor regulatory controls over development.

“We are working to determine how transportation issues affect our quality of life,” Waskowiak said. “We took a step back from the 2035 plan and asked, ‘How do we want to grow, and how do we connect up with our transportation systems to ensure quality of life?’”

For example, she said, several master-planned communities in the Cy-Fair area, such as Bridgeland and Towne Lake , have well-planned and managed internal transportation corridors and systems. The question is, How can those plans be extended beyond those boundaries?

“We all would like to live in a well-developed, well-planned community,” Waskowiak said.

Road projects are part of that picture, as are mass transit systems, alternative transportation methods (bicycle paths) and transit-oriented development.

Though the timing of the Highway 290/Hempstead Highway project is unclear because of budget challenges facing the Texas Department of Transportation, panelists discussed various projects that could ease congestion in the meantime. Those include the Grand Parkway “Segment E” project, and a proposed Highway 290 corridor commuter rail project.

John Tyler, the Harris County Toll Road Authority’s assistant director of engineering, said the toll road authority is negotiating the terms and conditions of agreements with TXDOT that are needed to move forward with the Hempstead Highway and Grand Parkway toll roads.

The toll road authority is also analyzing the financial viability of both of those projects, said Tyler .

The timing of the Hempstead Highway toll road project is unclear at this point but if the two parties come to an agreement and Harris County takes on the project, the toll road authority’s plans include the construction of a four-lane toll road with frontage lanes on each side from the interchange to Beltway 8.

Tyler said that design work could start on Grand Parkway “Segment E” - from Interstate 10 to Highway 290 – in the next few months.

Tyler said Harris County Precinct 3 Commissioner Steve Radack’s office recently contacted the toll road authority about getting started on the Grand Parkway “Segment E” - from Interstate 10 to Highway 290 - as soon as possible. Design work could start in the next few months if the toll road authority and TXDOT work out the terms of an agreement.

The Segment E project would include direct connector roads between sections of the Grand Parkway constructed near the Highway 290 and Interstate 10 intersections to those major roadways. The remainder of Segment E would be two lanes in each direction with a limited number of entrances and exits, and limited frontage roads. Construction would take about two to two-and-a-half years to complete.

“We have to negotiate with 32 property owners along the route, so that could take some time,” he said. “We are working to move the project ahead.”

Metro’s Patrick Porzillo, a panelist and lead project manager on the agency’s commuter rail project, said the Highway 290 commuter rail project team is studying two scenarios: building a commuter rail system in a 50-foot-wide corridor on Hempstead Highway that has pinpointed as a location for mass transit in TXDOT’s U.S. 290/Hempstead Highway project plan; or incorporating commuter rail service into Union Pacific Railroad’s north-south “Eureka” freight railroad corridor that runs along U.S. 290 and Hempstead Highway to the Eureka junction at the crossroads of Hempstead Highway and Old Katy Road near Interstate 10.

The Chamber’s Transportation Committee/Highway 290 Passenger Rail Coalition (290 PRC) has been lobbying for a Highway 290 passenger rail line for years, and recently applauded the corridor’s designation in H-GAC’s Regional Commuter Rail Connectivity Study as one of the five existing railroad corridors that could form the “baseline system” for a commuter rail network in the Houston-Galveston region.

Porzillo said the agency is hoping to have a Highway 290 commuter rail system up and running in two to three years. He said the pathway appears to be relatively clear from Loop 610 outward bound, but inside the loop is a different story as there is limited right-of-way, and the UPRR line is heavily used by freight traffic.

Challenges aside, the project has caught the attention of many key players, he said.

Al-Salman said the Chamber was pleased with the turnout and the issues discussed at the inaugural forum. The next step, she said, it to form a Chamber-led task force that would work with transportation leaders to develop a strategy that could help move our Cy-Fair area projects along.

“We are not trying to reinvent the wheel here, but we do want to pack the wheel bearings that we have,” Rowden said.

Archived News

08/07/2008 Toll Road Projects could ease Congestion on Highway 290. The Questions is: WHEN?

08/07/2008 Democratict Congressional Candidate Vows to Better Represent Chamber, Residents if Elected to District 7 Seat

07/02/2008 Bury+Partners, Inc. Underwrites the First Annual Chamber Mobility Forum

07/02/2008 Houston Distributing Company Monte Carlo Night is set for Friday, July 25!

07/02/2008 Cy-Fair Houston Chamber of Commerce Eighth Annual Business Expo has changed to a new location

06/29/2008 Bury+Partners, Inc. Underwrites the First Annual Chamber Mobility Forum

06/22/2008 Towne Lake Independence Celebration is set for July 5th

06/17/2008 Chamber Member Offers Advice on Wading Through the Revised State Business Tax

06/22/2008 Sprint Presents Salute to Law Enforcement donates to local Charities

06/22/2008 June Officer of the Month