The Houston Chronicle reports of the spring opening of the 3rd YMCA of The Woodlands in the (still) new Village of Creekside Park, the first Village of The Woodlands on the south side of Spring Creek, which formally lands it in Harris County as opposed to the rest of The Woodlands in Montgomery County.

Despite originally being anchored by the uber-prestigious Fazio Carlton Woods Golf Course Community, some doubted whether a Village could fare well "south of the border." Those doubts have been put to rest especially now that the Village of Creekside Park has done so well selling its planned areas off the golf course in the main areas. And now it's getting its very own YMCA. Village of Creekside Park, you have officially arrived.

From The Chronicle:

The 21 acre site, located adjacent to the 1,700 George Mitchell Preserve, will offer outdoor adventures to children and their families. It will include a series of themed tree houses, a 60-foot high challenge course featuring a tower, zip lines, climbing walls and rope courses, teepees, an outdoor amphitheater, an archery range and outdoor chapel. Its centerpiece will be a 14,000 square foot lodge, with a large multi-purpose room for special events, group exercise, community meetings and expanded programming.

The third YMCA in The Woodlands, to be located in Creekside Park, looks like it jumped off the pages of the Swiss Family Robinson storybook.

Beth Kuhles, The Chronicle Correspondent and story writer, has a delicious taste for irony. I'm sure the place will look very much like a storybook camp retreat, maybe even something one might expect to see in the older southeast or northeast, or Great Lakes midest, or Smokies, or Ozarks, or Rockies... In west Texas, well, how do we say it, well, like southern Louisana, west Texas is not exactly well endowed by its creator with inestimable storied camping scapes. One doesn't exactly think of west Texas when reading about the Smith Family Robinson shall we say.

But those sorts of things have never stood in the way of The Woodlands. The genius - or luck - of The Woodlands is that its developers over the years, beginning with George Mitchell himself, bought all the land it needed in order to have the effect it wanted to create. The extensive parks? Owned by The Woodlands. The roads with no tacky road signs? Owned by The Woodlands. The charming and expensive outdoor shopping malls that feel like the set of a Disney movie? Owned by The Woodlands. And on and on. In Texas, if you own the land, you get to zone it. It's a myth that "there is no zoning in Texas." Oh there is zoning in Texas alright. The zones are the ownership boundaries.

Anyway, this new YMCA is another crown jewel in an already blindingly bejeweled crown of The Woodlands, and I can't wait to see it. Anyone who underestimates The Woodlands does so at their own chagrin. This is another case in point. Like the other 2 YMCAs already in The Woodlands, like all the other hundreds and hundreds of acres of parks (getting into thousands), and the thick lush tree-lined roads throughout and tall canopied lots -- The Woodlands would make the Smith Family Robinson a little green with envy.