Lake Highlands Podcast

The comments are still coming in on our website stories about Northlake Elementary and a new movement called "Let's Back Northlake," organized by three neighborhood moms. For today's podcast, we sat down to talk with the Let's Back Northlake organizers.

"I've never been so happy to see Porta-Potties in my life." So says Advocate blogger Carol Toler in this month's podcast, referring to the construction vehicles (and their necessary relief companions) on the site of the Lake Highlands Town Center.

Dallas United Crew officials visited the Advocate offices Friday, Aug. 3, 2012, to discuss their plans to build a floating boat house near Mockingbird and Buckner on White Rock Lake. Team coach Jonathan Stevens, president Donna Swanson and vice president Belinda McDonnell talked with Advocate editors Christina Hughes Babb and Rick Wamre about the $3 million-plus facility, its funding, the group's membership and the city's role in the project's development, funding and eventual ongoing maintenance, assuming that the Dallas Park Board and Dallas City Council eventual approve the group's plans.

Not branding in the hot-iron-on-cattle sense, but branding in the who-we-are and what-we-want-everyone-to-know-about-us sense. So what is branding, and why does Lake Highlands need a brand? In today's podcast, we talk about these questions with Lake Highlands Branding Committee co-chair Ginger Grinsfelder Greenberg and also committee member Jana Boswell, incoming president of the Lake Highlands Women's League.

Even after lots of coverage of of Winfrey Point, White Rock Lake, the Dallas Arboretum and all of the parking mayhem, we still have questions. What exactly are the plans, and who will ultimately make the call? Councilman Sheffie Kadane represents District 9, which includes the lake and most of its surrounding neighborhoods, and he agreed to talk with us.

In this week's podcast, we discuss some of the amazing students at LHHS who have beaten the odds to succeed. Also, we discuss a new "movement" among neighborhood churches, as well as churches and houses of worship all over the country, to close the doors on a Sunday morning and serve in their community.

In this Lake Highlands podcast, we discuss why a mass transit-friendly and hike-and-bike-friendly apartment complex makes some sense. But 350 units? Then Carol Toler recaps her recent experience witnessing a hit-and-run in our neighborhood.

We promised a podcast recap of tonight's public hearing, and here it is, recorded right after the meeting at the Audelia Library. A couple of highlights: No, no grocers or tenants were named, but Lake Highlands Town Center developer Prescott Realty gave an update on construction timelines: Late 2013/early 2014 for completion of the first 200 apartments, and, if city council votes to apply for the HUD loan and it is approved fairly quickly, the first 165,000 square feet of retail (including the grocer anchor) will be finished in early 2014.

Since when did HUD get into the business of building parking garages? And does a HUD loan for the Lake Highlands Town Center mean low-income housing to follow? We probe these questions today on the Lake Highlands podcast, as we look into the recent news that the city is hoping to jump start construction with a HUD loan.

What is the top requested day off of teachers and staff in the Lake Highlands Richardson ISD schools? This Friday, Dec. 2, which is the annual Lake Highlands Women's League Holiday in the Highlands home tour and market. On this week's podcast, home tour chairs Michelle Harris and Deah McCoy give us a preview of this year's event.

The Rev. George Mason of Wilshire Baptist Church and the Rev. Blair Monie of Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church both write worship columns for the Advocate, and coincidentally, they both chose the Advent Conspiracy movement as their December column topic. For this week's podcast, we brought the two pastors together to discuss why they decided to join the Advent Conspiracy, and what that looks like for their churches.

On today's podcast, Carol Toler explains why allowing state legislators to dip into the Permanent School Fund for operational dollars is like a recent college graduate using his parents' credit card between paychecks. We also discuss the effort to turn some of Dallas' streets into "complete streets," and talk about the streets in our neighborhood that the city is examining, including Park Lane and Skillman.

On today's podcast we talk with country artist Granger Smith, who will be performing Sunday night at his third annual benefit concert for the Lake Highlands High School Wranglers. Smith is a proud LHHS Wrangler alumnus, and current Wrangler seniors Michael Miller and Paige Maudy also join us for the podcast.

How does Lake Highlands High School compare to other Dallas high schools in terms of TAKS scores and state academic rankings? Are this year's drops indicative of something amiss at the school? In this week's podcast, we posed these questions (recently discussed on the Advocate Back Talk Lake Highlands blog) to LHHS social studies teacher Casey Boland.

Tate Gorman and Adam Meierhofer are a couple of neighborhood guys who love sausage and beer, and came up with an idea to parlay that love into a huge event that will raise money for the Exchange Club of Lake Highlands, of which they are members. The event is Oktoberfest, and it's happening from 11 a.m.-8 p.m. this Saturday, Oct. 1 at the Lake Highlands Town Center.

On today's podcast, we react to the news that Sprouts seemingly has all but signed a lease to open at the Lake Highlands Town Center. We also discuss Councilman Jerry Allen's recent efforts to curb the spread of payday lending and check cashing businesses in Dallas. Lastly, Carol recalls her "run-in" with a cyclist during a White Rock Lake race.

In today's podcast, writer Meghan Riney talks about the process of reporting and writing the "Where's the retail?" story in the September issue, and gives us a few more story-behind-the-story details about the retail landscape in Lake Highlands.

On today's podcast, we dig deeper into the city council redistricting process with Bill Betzen, who has been following the process on his blog for months. Betzen is an advocate of "compact" council districts rather than linear, spread out and, he says, "gerrymandered" council districts such as the ones in his neighborhood of Oak Cliff. Betzen tells us what he believes is at stake for both Lake Highlands and Dallas as a whole, explains why bacon strips make bad council districts, and poses the question of whether Lake Highlands is a good or bad community of interest.