Houston NW Chamber Recognizes Green Medians Donors

From the Houston NW Chamber of Commerce

HOUSTON—The Houston Northwest Chamber of Commerce and the Houston Northwest
Chamber of Commerce Foundation partnered with community leaders to raise funds and
contract with the Texas Department of Transportation and private contractors, to design and execute the beautifully landscaped medians that are now enjoyed along a nearly nine mile stretch of Cypress Creek Parkway.

This month marks the eighth anniversary of the Green Medians Celebration and Living Memory Tree Dedication.

This event took place on May 6, 2011, on the south side of Cypress Creek Parkway in the Home Depot greenway opposite the Houston Northwest Chamber of Commerce Office Building.

The event included a ribbon cutting and the burying of a canister containing the names of those
memorialized by gifts and donations under one Living Memory Tree.

“It was a beautiful ceremony on a beautiful day in May,” Barbara Thomason, Chamber
president remembered, “but it does not seem like eight years ago. We wanted to be sure the
donor’s names and those they were honoring were captured above ground, so we created a
sign to mount in our office with their names and photographs marking highlights of the Green
Medians journey. I wanted to be sure this was completed before I stepped down as Chamber
president in May.”

Green Medians was truly a community supported project and involved numerous activities:
working with TxDOT, fundraising and meeting the goal of $515,000, and meeting with 18 water
districts bordering FM 1960.

The Green Medians journey began when the FM 1960 Access Management Study was published in October 2004 and called for raised medians to be installed along FM 1960 to reduce crash incidents along the corridor.

When Chamber member and interior designer Barbara Schlattman learned of this, she set out to ensure that typically weed-infested medians would be landscaped.

Mrs. Schlattman delivered over 150 speeches, worked with the Chamber to hire contractors, and oversee construction. She organized a committee creating a student art show for Green Medians at the Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts and
coordinated the Stroll-A-Thon at The Vintage Shopping Center. The money raised was used to
install irrigation and landscaping along FM 1960.

“This was truly a community project with homeowners, businesses, and water districts coming
together to make a major impact on our “main street”, explains Barbara Schlattman.
The public is invited to come by the Houston Northwest Chamber office during office hours to
view the new sign dedicated to the many donors supporting the Green Medians. Tax-deductible
gifts to the Houston Northwest Chamber Foundation are welcome at any time and go to
support community projects like Green Medians, such as the planting of trees as well as student
scholarships.