Walking wonderland, Part 2

Good grief, Galveston Central Appraisal District (CAD) is a pain in the lower anatomy sometimes.

This error message occurs frequently.  And it often persists for days at a time.  Screengrabbed from what should actually be http://www.galvestoncad.org/Appraisal/PublicAccess/.   

I wanted to provide some additional ideas on walking routes around here, but in order to do that, I first have to verify which parcels are owned by whom, to ensure that I'm not accidentally describing something that would have the potential to be a trespassing scenario.  And that verification can't be done with an apparently-crashed CAD server.  Again. 

Anyway, what I'll offer instead today are a few cool pics of our neighboring subdivision, Oaks of Clear Creek. 


It's that subdivision due east of Centerpointe, on the other side of the retention ponds and the easement.
Screengrabbed from Googlemaps.

This development is almost 20 years old, and land in League City was a heck of a lot cheaper back then.  What this means is that this subdivision ended up with a larger ratio of common area to single-family lots compared to what Centerpointe has. 

This subdivision can be accessed on foot via the Interurban easement which is just on the other side of our stormwater retention ponds.

There's a foot gate in the wrought-iron fence that surrounds the subdivision's common areas.  It's got collision posts to prevent any type of small motor vehicle (such as ATV) from passing through from the Interurban easement. 

In a previous post, I questioned the strict legality of walking in the Interurban easement (I don't know the answer to that), while at the same time noting that it's not posted and many local people walk there on a daily basis.  Furthermore, at least half of the easement-flanking properties in Oaks of Clear Creek were constructed with back fence gates allowing property egress directly into the easement, as was this community park.  There is substantial evidence suggesting that this was conceived as an area where the public would, in fact, walk. 

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's common areas?  Well, I do.  The pool and park areas are HUGE by present-day subdivision standards.  It's so cool to see open areas like this.  Kids can throw balls here and whatnot - there's enough space for that.  Unfortunately, we don't have this kind of resource in Centerpointe. 

They didn't call it the OAKS of Clear Creek for nothing.  I don't know who the developer was, but the number of shady oak trees in the park is just fantastic.  The subdivision is also unique in that some of its single family homes have water oaks in their front yards, instead of the usual live oaks (and there's a street in the subdivision named Water Oak).  Water oaks are native and grow quickly into absolutely massive, upright trees - they can reach 100 feet in height.   

Free rodent control for the surrounding homeowners!! 
Lucky them!!

I did notice that one of the park's playscapes seemed to have met with some kind of recent misfortune.  Vandalism?  Arson?  I don't know.  I didn't hear anything about this in the local news, but then again, I don't hear about a lot of local things that happen, in part because League City doesn't have its own newspaper yet. 

Back in April of this year, I described a public outreach initiative pertaining to a new pipeline installation that was scheduled.  Initially it was suspected that the pipeline would be in "our" Centerpointe easement, but in fact, it's probably due to be installed in the Centerpoint  easement, which we think is the Interurban easement. 

I haven't seen any physical activity to date regarding that, but unless plans have changed, there's a good chance that there will be some construction-related disruptions in this area in the future.

Until such time, if watching sunsets is your thing, there's hardly a better wide-open location than this.  This is the view last night, looking west across the fields toward Centerpointe.  You can see our iconic pine tree just left of photo center.