This blog is designed to be used as a community newspaper and web community center for the residents of the Kirby building. Merriam - Webster defines a community center as a building or group of buildings for a community's educational and recreational activities.
This site is NOT Kirby or Berkshire sponsored.
As a newspaper - you the residents are the reporters. Let’s report on events and issues going on in the building as well as outside the building. If a new restaurant opens and you think it was great or a flop, tell your neighbors here. Report on art shows, movie shoots, and especially anything free going on in our downtown neighborhood.
Are you selling a couch or table? Take a picture and put it online here. You have tickets to a Cowboys, Stars, Mavericks, or Rangers game and can’t go? Sell them here. You want to have an opening night Cowboy or a Texas/OU watch party in the clubhouse or lobby? Put it here. Are you walking over to the AAC to watch a game? Find out who else is going and tailgate on the way.
If you have an opinion / editorial on how the building is being run, put it here. If you are a pet owner and while you were walking your dog some panhandler or homeless person was harassing you, give a description of the person or better yet if you can safely take a picture do so and post it here.
Now for the community center part of the blog. The Kirby has always been big and some will say legendary on recreation, but it also has been short on education. Holding true to the recreation part of a community center, we want this site to be used as a bulletin board for resident events.
Just because the Kirby doesn’t do resident appreciation events like the other resident buildings downtown, that doesn’t mean we can’t come together and do them ourselves. As a building, we can do hallway parties / dinners / desserts, wine and beer tastings, or just plan old poker runs or pub crawls; and if they are posted here, more people will join in.
So as we do more together, we will know each other better and the building will become safer because we will know who lives in the building and who doesn’t.
As for the education piece of the community center, let’s change that trend and start educating each other to some of the unfortunate things that have been happening here in the building. Let’s create something similar to a neighborhood watch program but online.
With no fulltime concierge or security services in the building (like most of the other adult resident buildings in downtown), we are left exposed. We need to be the eyes and ears for each other.
If someone will steal candles from the clubhouse and a workout ball from the fitness center, there isn’t much else people won’t take.
Let’s set some Watch Program rules to follow…
The First Rule - If you see someone looking suspicious walking the building during the hours that management is on property or concierge is on duty, call the office immediately. If it is off hours for Kirby staff and no one is on duty, call 911 immediately. It is better to be safe than sorry.
Rule Two - Report everything to the manager that is in charge over the property. Not the office staff or the concierge, but the manager. Real change comes when you report issues to people who have the authority to make changes.
Rule Three - Report the issue to the Kirby Residences on Main news blog so that your neighbors can take the necessary precautions for their safety. If you have lived in an apartment complex for any amount of time, you know that the bad stuff is rarely discussed.
Example of things to watch for:
Non-residents punching in codes to enter the garage areas, the lobby, the pool, and workout area or even in some cases hallways. There are sites on the internet where people have posted codes to our building because they wanted revenge on the management.
There are also people who use old codes to access our garage on the weekends to park their cars in our building. Report it to management and then here. Take pictures if you can and post those. Usually those are the same people damaging or breaking into resident’s cars when they get done partying.
I heard a story where one resident had her car broken into 3 or 4 times in a 2-month time span before she finally got tired of it and moved out. This was with the secured gate in place.
Sometimes it’s one of our own. There have been residents exiting the garage who have witnessed a young male (a resident?) using his key fob to let in his five buddies cars. Who pays for their drunken stupidity at the end of the night? The residents do.
To wrap up, let’s use this site in a healthy adult way. Tell your hallway neighbor about the site. Let’s get everyone involved; because if we do, our community will be a much more safer place to live.
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