Northgate Forest, Texas
Northgate Forest is a golf course community in unincorporated Harris County, Texas. It is located directly off of FM 1960 roughly one mile west of Kuykendahl Road.
Northgate Forest is zoned to Spring Independent School District, although a controversial legal battle has recently ensued over this fact (see below).
The community is located in Texas' 2nd Congressional District, currently represented by Ted Poe. In the Texas Legislature, Northgate Forest is part of District 7 in the Texas Senate (Senator Dan Patrick), and Texas House District 150 (Rep. Debbie Riddle).
History and Development
Development of Northgate Forest began in 1982, with the golf course and clubhouse being completed in 1984.
The community is divided into eight neighborhoods:
- Section One (opened 1982)
- The Greens of Northgate Forest (opened 1988)
- The Woods of Northgate Forest (opened 1995)
- Fairway Estates (opened 1998)
- The Estates at Northgate Forest (opened 2000)
- The Village in Northgate Forest (opened 2002)
- Villa Verde (opened 2004)
- The Fountains of Northgate Forest (opened 2007)
Home prices in the neighborhood generally range from the $400s to upwards of $2 million.
Residents are zoned to Reynolds Elementary School, Wells Middle School and Westfield High School.
Golf Course and Country Club
Northgate Forest features three nine-hole courses - The Bridges, The Creek, and The Bunkers - for a total of twenty-seven holes. The course was designed by the firm Von Hagge and Devlin.
The two-story clubhouse was built in 1984 and features a porte cochere going underneath the upstairs banquet hall and leading to the parking lot. The first floor contains a small bistro and wine cellar, the foyer, and some administrative offices. The dining and reception areas are upstairs along with the pro shop and locker rooms. The swimming pool is directly behind the main building. The tennis courts are adjacent and have their own smaller clubhouse.
The country club is often used for weddings and other events, and social activities available to members include various golf and tennis leagues and a service sorority for adolescent girls. Until recently, the club also fielded a competitive summer league youth swim team called Northgate New Wave.
School district secession controversy
Northgate Forest garnered attention all over the Houston area when several residents filed a petition to withdraw from Spring Independent School District and join neighboring Klein Independent School District. The petition for detachment began circulating in December 2006, after Northgate residents helped defeat a bond issue for the district that November. Northgate Forest's primary complaints were that the district's SAT and TAKS scores had been declining consistently in recent years, that the district was spending money inefficiently, and that taxes were too high. Residents cited a section of the Texas Education Code that allows a given area to secede from the school district they are zoned to if another district will agree to absorb them [1]. Spring ISD is an unusually diverse school district, including Northgate Forest and other more affluent neighborhoods along with much poorer, predominantly black and Hispanic areas south of FM 1960. Upper-class Northgate Forest's large property tax revenues contribute significantly to Spring's budget, and their desire to leave the district was interpreted by many as selfish and mean-spirited. In April 2007, the Klein ISD Board of Trustees denied Northgate's petition for detachment, shortly after Spring ISD had done so, claiming that the petition did not fulfill all the legal requirements stipulated by the Texas Education Agency for the detachment to be valid. A small contingent of Northgate residents filed a new claim immediately after, however both school districts involved have declared they view the matter as closed [2].
Trivia
Northgate Forest was one of the filming locations used for the 1996 Kevin Costner film Tin Cup.
Notable past and present residents of Northgate Forest have included Houston Rockets center Hakeem Olajuwon, Grammy-winning singer Marcos Witt, and Houston businessman Jim "Mattress Mac" McIngvale.