Get Ready

Even though it wasn't Gilbert, I grew up in a small town, so I am well aware of the benefits and shortcomings of that experience - which are often two sides of the same coin. For example, everyone in town knows everything about your family (it feels like), which is wonderful when you have a need and don't even have to ask for help. On the other hand, it's not so great when you have one of those embarassing family members that tend to drag the entire family's reputation down with them. It's nice that the place is so small that you can get where you're going without spending too much time; but if where you want to go doesn't exist because the place is so small, that doesn't work so well. It's easier to form lifelong friendships with people you spend your whole life with; but it's easy to get into a rut without some new people injecting novelty. You get my drift.

I have posted before about some of the thought that went into formulating Morrison Ranch. When it became easier to sell the land than farm it in the middle of a growing town, we could have chosen the path that many of our neighbors did, without shame, and sold the property piece by piece to various homebuilders and developers. The choice was agonizing, but the idea that won out in the end was to masterplan the property as a way to recapture some of the small-town feel of the old Gilbert, and to honor the agricultural heritage of The Mister's family even though farming was no longer viable in this location. Our intent in crafting Morrison Ranch is to capture the best of both worlds, by fostering the relationships you might find in a small town, while at the same time being surrounded by the shopping and dining options of the bigger places.

Promoting community - like the place where everyone knows everyone else - has always been of high value for us, from the planning stages until now. Having sidewalks that are pleasant to walk on, shaded and not too close to the road, with the hope that neighbors will actually run into each other and connect, is an example of an early detail. Providing a web portal for residents of Morrison Ranch is our latest attempt.

A web portal is like a virtual meeting place on the internet. It's a place where a great deal of information can be gathered into a single site, and can be used by residents in a very specific way. For example, I could read my email, get the weather forecast for Gilbert, see when my son's little league team is practicing and whether it's my turn to bring snacks, and find out when the next blockwide garage sale is being held in my neighborhood. Then I could report that faulty sprinkler head in the common area that keeps making a puddle in front of my house, check who's hosting my bunco game this week and whether I need to bring snacks, and read the CC&R's to see what the regulations are for my son's basketball hoop. I might go on to post a classifed ad for my son's skateboard since he's switching to basketball, and while I'm there put the next Pecan Festival Organizational meeting on my calendar and decide if I'm bringing snacks. (Hey, I'm a CPA who cooks; so if they don't ask me to be the treasurer, they ask me to bring snacks.)

The idea is to provide a sort of community bulletin board where the residents who are interested in certain things can find each other. There will be an opportunity for paid advertising for businesses, which some residents may want to take advantage of, but for the most part it's a free service to connect people.

I'll tell you more about the inception of the portal later, but I just wanted to give you a heads up for now. You can go look at the entry page here, but you can't enter the portal yet; that will happen on February 3 of next year with our official grand opening.

However; if you are a leader of a group, and you want your group to be one of the first on the site, send me an email and I'll let you know how group leaders can get the training to set up their information and maintain it. A group can be comprised of anything from a bunco group to a scrapbooking club to a kid's (or adult's) team to a blockwatch group; any kind of group where people get together for a common reason and need to disseminate information.

So get ready; this is an electronic way to get connected with your neighbors.