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Leader-area YMCA to host mayoral forum By Jonathan Garris jgarris@theleadernews.com
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Cycling with security Oak Forest residents may have noticed a colorful group of cyclists weaving their way through the community last weekend. The annual Tour De Oak Forest was a big success for the community this year - read about its fundraising success in this week’s issue.
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Feeling ‘Toasted?’ With a soft opening date confirmed for Ella Plaza’s newest tenant, residents are looking forward to yet another new face in the area. Find out when Toasted is set to open its doors and what else lies in stores for customers.
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Contributed Art Memorial Hermann Northwest Hospital will be reborn as Memorial Hermann Greater Heights with a number of sweeping changes to follow with the rebranding initiative, including a new entrance.
Memorial Hermann rebrands, rebuilds, reinvigorated By Jonathan McElvy jonathan@mcelvymedia.com The place you once knew as Memorial Hermann Northwest Hospital – if you ever knew the place – is no more. Before you hop in the car and drive to the intersection of Ella and 610 in search of wrecking balls, hold on a second. The hospital isn’t going anywhere, nor is the nationally respected brand of Memorial Hermann. But Jadlowski CEO Susan Jadlowski, now 18 months into her administration, has surgically taken a scalpel to nearly everything else. Start with the name. As of Oct. 14, that awkward “Northwest” – a better indicator of neighborhoods that begin with the letters “Cy” – has been erased. Introducing Memorial Hermann Greater Heights. “It’s really hard to resonate with a community when the name isn’t representative of who we are,” Jadlowski said. “At one point, this area was the northwest part of Houston. [But with growth], it’s not anymore.” Making a name change wasn’t easy in these parts, either. For starters, those neighborhoods north of 610 don’t exactly call themselves the Heights, and Jadlowski knew that going in. “We aren’t like other suburbs of Houston,” she said. “It’s easy to name a hospital in Pearland or The Woodlands. But we have several small communities, and we had to figure out how to [change the name] without offending anyone.” So hospital administrators hired a professional consulting firm that hosted six focus groups over three days. And they didn’t find much resistance to the name, given that many people already refer to this area as the Greater Heights (e.g. the Greater Heights Chamber of Commerce.) More than a name Slapping some new letters on a marquee hardly represents a fundamental change in the way a hospital operates, and Jadlowski knows that better than anyone. She has been at the Greater Heights hospital for nearly nine years, and as she describes it, the demographics have changed “wildly.” See Rebrand, P. 5A
Candidates in the city of Houston’s mayoral race are readying for another forum in The Leader area, this time hosted by local officials at the Harriet and Joe Foster YMCA on West 34th Street at 10 a.m. this Friday. Currently, six of the candidates have RSVP’d for the event, including Chris Bell, Bill King, Sylvester Turner, Stephen Costello, Ben Hall and Marty McVey. The forum will concentrate mainly on questions focused around community and youth safety, said community executive director Rosemary Lengefeld. The forum, a first for the local YMCA, will be moderated by former Channel 2 reporter Mary Benton. The event will be limited to around 150 people and currently 60 are signed up. “Both Paul Cannings, a board member and Tonya Knauth, the board chair, pushed for hosting the forum right here at our facility,” Lengefeld said. “We want the YMCA to be the See Forum, P. 6A Harriet & Joe Foster YMCA Mayoral Candidate Forum Oct. 16 9:45 to 11 a.m. 1234 West 34th St. Houston, TX 77018
New ER services coming to area The changes in the Memorial Hermann Greater Heights campus will be noticeable over the next year. From a name change to a new entrance to refurbished rooms, patients and visitors will feel like they’re in a brand new hospital. But that isn’t the only investment the Memorial Hermann system will make in this area of Houston. The hospital plans to spread its wings – and dollars – to other locations around the area, all in an effort to offer local patients more options for affordable healthcare. First, in either February or March, Memorial Hermann will open an urgent care facility at the intersection of Fowler and Washington Avenue. That facility will be designed to quickly see patients, eliminating some of the traffic at the main hospital’s emergency room. The more impressive addition to the area, however, is tentatively scheduled to open in June 2017. At the intersection of I-10 and Studemont, Memorial Hermann will construct a 44,000-square-foot Convenient Care Center and, as CEO Susan Jadlowski said, it will be designed as “an extension of our current emergency room.” According to a release from Memorial Hermann, “The two-story Convenient Care Center will provide one-stop, highly-coordinated access to adult and pediatric primary care, specialty physicians, sports medicine and rehabilitation, outpatient imaging and lab services, and a 24-hour emergency room.” In a sense, it almost sounds like a second, smaller hospital will be constructed in one of the booming neighborhoods of this area, and that’s exactly how Jadlowski wants it to sound. “We’ll have all levels of care there,” she said. “And that’s the entire reason we exist. To give this community what it needs in healthcare.” For patients who do need further care beyond the new convenient care center, Jadlowski said it will be easy to transport patients to the main campus of the hospital, which is about five miles away. And if the patient needs care only offered in the Medical Center, the new location is only 5.7 miles away. The I-10 and Studemont location will be built on the land that was owned by Grocers Supply. In late 2013, parcels of the land were sold to Kroger and other retail stores. Memorial Hermann currently has Convenient Care Centers in Summer Creek, Pearland, South Katy and Sienna Plantation. They are building other centers in Cypress, Spring and Kingwood, meaning the Heights location would be the eighth center in the Greater Houston area.
Photo by Kim Hogstrom Author and Heights resident Anne Sloan relaxes on her front porch with a copy of her book “Images of America, Houston Heights.”
Historian reaches out to Heights for help with new book By Kim Hogstrom For The Leader For years, the history of the Houston Heights has been lovingly recorded by resident Anne Sloan. In 2009, Sloan was tapped by prestigious Arcadia Publishing to write her book, Images of America, Houston Heights, which documents the community from its inception in 1891 to 1950 through vintage photographs and interesting narrative. Now, the publishing company has requested Sloan finish the job. Arcadia contacted Sloan to propose a second edition of Images of America, Houston Heights, with a target release date of October 2016. This time, Sloan will be documenting the Houston Heights from 1950 to 2010 and
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