Kendall Library to close, reopen on Eldridge
The west side’s homeless people will have to find somewhere else to bathe:
A new Kendall Library will be built on a 3.5-acre city-owned site on North Eldridge Parkway near Harris County’s Terry Hershey Park.
The existing Kendall Library, 14330 Memorial Drive, will be closed when the new library opens, city officials said.
Doris Harris, who raised her family in Wilchester subdivision near the Kendall Library, said she was surprised and shocked to hear the library was moving.
“I am very sorry to see it go,” said Harris, who now lives in Memorial Drive townhomes near Town & Country.
“But if it has to go, I’d like to see the building turned into a community center with meeting rooms that could be used by groups, like my bridge club.”
As tempting as municipally-subsidized geriatric loitering sounds, I like this next guy’s idea a lot better:
Diane Swan, a Nottingham Forest resident, said a Houston Police Department substation or storefront could be a good fit for that building.
I like that idea. The closest police station that I know of is the Westside Command Station. It’s a very large facility, but it covers a huge swath of territory with a rapidly growing population. That’s why HPD might divide the command, allowing for more local policing, and that’s a good thing:
Houston Police Department Executive Assistant Chief Tim Oettmeier told about 150 west Houston residents at the Aug. 2 community meeting on crime that HPD has been “toying with the idea” of dividing the Westside Command, possibly at the Galleria area, as an answer to handling crime in the district.
“We’re looking at that,” he said. “I don’t want you to walk out of here thinking it’s a done deal.”
“We’re trying to compensate for that by using overtime,” Oettmeier said, adding that Westside is also getting more officers from graduating academy classes. Eleven of 49 new officers that finished in late July were assigned to Westside.
More officers is always a good thing, but I’d like to think we’d get some experienced officers to help the rookies. Unfortunately, it sounds like that’s not going to happen:
“But in terms of uprooting officers from permanent assignments, the decision has been made that we are not going to do that,” he said. “We have taken a tremendous loss across the city. Everybody is suffering, including Westside.”
