Inside Today: Council Member Abbie Kamin honored by domestic violence advocacy group Page 5
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Covering the Heights, Garden Oaks, Oak Forest & the neighborhoods of North Houston
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Saturday, May 17, 2025 • Vol. 70 • No. 20
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INSIDE.
3-1-1: The purpose, process, and progress of Houston’s first source for city services By STEPHANIE SHIRLEY The Leader News Contributor For The Heights, Oak Forest, Garden Oaks and neighboring communities, the weather events of the last two years have increased the dependence on and demand for 3-11 to serve as the primary source in navigating a multitude of city departments. This division is the most frequently utilized, but also the most
misunderstood. The 3-1-1 telephone number provides a central hub for local residents to access a variety of city services, ask questions or lodge complaints. It is intended to address routine inquiries and non-urgent concerns and divert non-emergency issues and requests away from 9-11. In a city the size of Houston, with a current population of over 2.3 million, an effective 3-1-1 program is essential to being able to efficiently
integrate citizen needs with a wealth of city services. As is the case with most municipal intermediaries, its success is contingent on the public’s understanding of how it works and what its goals are. Houston’s Administration of Regulatory Affairs (ARA) has many divisions within its scope, includPhoto by Stephanie Shirley ing 3-1-1, water customer service, BARC, parking, permitting, and The Leader was given a rare look inside City of Houston contact centers, where agents address thousands of resident questions, complaints and service requests daily.
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FROM ISOLATION TO CONNECTION
NoScrubs: Houston’s new laundry service promises same-day clean clothes and a lot more free time By LISA MORALES The Leader News Contributor
Drink Responsibly: Sheriff's office offers free Lyft rides this Memorial Day weekend
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Audition Call: Houston Children's Chorus seeks new singers
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Submitted photos
The Riverside Project staff is tiny but mighty as they work to connect the dots between children and families in need with resources and relationships.
The Riverside Project: Oak Forest-based nonprofit builds a bridge of hope for foster families
Apartment Living: Artistry Design District celebrates grand opening on W 12th St
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Powering Forward: Harmony Electric marks 40 years in the Heights
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By LISA MORALES The Leader News Contributor The foster care system in Harris County is often described as broken— a system overflowing with need and lacking the coordination required to help children and families thrive. But from her home base in Oak Forest, Amber Knowles is helping rewrite that story through The Riverside Project, a nonprofit that has become one of Houston’s most innovative support networks for foster care. Founded in 2018 by Knowles, a pediatric nurse practitioner and mother of four, two of whom were adopted through foster care, The Riverside Project emerged from a very personal journey. “I never set out to start a non-
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individuals and community to provide essentials for families in need.
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Submitted photo
NoScrubs launched in Houston this month and has a special coupon code for The Leader readers.
The fate of this W. TC Jester retail center remained a mystery…until now By STEPHANIE SHIRLEY The Leader News Contributor
you’re reading this, so are your potential customers call today to advertise!
profit,” Knowles said. “But after adopting our first child and seeing firsthand how isolated and overwhelmed families could feel, I knew something had to change.” She and her husband, a pastor, began asking how they could rally their church and the broader community around these families. “Everyone talks about how the foster care system is broken,” Knowles said. “But no one talks about how we can make it better. We wanted to be part of the solution.” The Riverside Project started with one clear goal: connect the dots between children and families in need with the resources that can help Through their Response Network, The them thrive. Riverside project works with churches,
Imagine a world where your laundry is picked up at your front door and returned just a few hours later—washed, dried, folded to perfection, and ready to put away. No sorting, no matching socks, no piles of clothes haunting your weekends. Sound too good to be true? Noscrubs.com is a new on-demand laundry service that officially launched in Houston this month. Behind it is co-founder and CEO Matt O’Connor, a former early employee of Instacart who knows a thing or two about turning time-consuming chores into techenabled convenience. O’Connor comments on his experience launching Instacart in Houston by saying, “That was a really formative experience learning about consumer preferences and the logistics to empower them, which included the partnerships on the supply side.” In the case of Instacart, those partnerships were with grocery stores and ultimately created what’s now a household convenience service. After a disappointing personal experience with a national laundry service that took four days and $50 for a single load of laundry, O’Connor recognized a gap in the market. “I thought, what if this could be done faster, better, and more affordably?” O’Connor and NoScrubs co-founder and CTO Sudhanshu Gautam began to build a model that worked smarter, not harder. “The idea with NoScrubs is that we partner with the best local vetted facilities so that the customer’s order is
Questions surrounding the future of a long-standing Oak Forest retail center on W TC Jester have been answered after months of uncertainty. The shopping center is located in the 2700 block of W. TC Jester @ Dacoma, just north of Loop 610. It has been a fixture for decades and is home to a few neighborhood restaurant icons, including Mexican favorite Juanita’s, anchoring the east end of the center. The west segment
of the center is home to Supreme Sandwiches, which has been there since 1967 when it began as a neighborhood meat market, and a host of other retail establishments, including a convenience food store. The center was reported to have been sold back in 2021 to Braun Enterprises for possible redevelopment. With the news of potential new ownership, several smaller retailers had preemptively initiated relocation. However, an executive with Braun Enterprises subsequently revealed that, although they had
originally been under contract to purchase the center, the acquisition never occurred. The current property manager, Brad Miller, representing Demar Properties LLC, recently agreed to speak with The Leader to resolve the mystery surrounding the shopping center. When asked about the condition of the center, Miller said that it was over 40 years old, but that Photo by Stephanie Shirley its original owner, now deceased, Once home to the gentlemen’s club ‘Solid Platinum’, had been very good at making the space’s most recent tenant, ‘The Library’, was See STRIP P. 2
raided in March of this year, leaving a large void in the retail center.
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