Getting Neighborly -- Town of Fairview

As a Fairview resident of 21 years, Angela Poen has enjoyed watching the town grow into one of the most prosperous small communities in one of the wealthiest counties in the country.. With that in mind, it might surprise some to know that 48,000 children in this county experience food insecurity at least once a year. Doing something to resolve that is where Poen, a former schoolteacher, has focused her efforts.    Poen has led an initiative to build the first community kitchen in Collin County that will serve meals to anyone who asks, no questions asked, and no paperwork required. The 4,800-square-foot kitchen and restaurant at 501 Howard St. in McKinney will be open from 6 to 8 p.m. daily and serve guests in a large dining space with private tables — just as they’d experience at any other restaurant.    She says while the community is blessed to have food pantries and other resources for people in need, this project fills a need for people in even more specific situations, such as not having access to a places to prepare or store food, seniors who will benefit from social interaction, or students who receive free or reduced breakfast and lunch but do not have options for evening meals.    “This is all about dining with dignity. Our volunteers will come and ask them what they would like to eat. We may have a slim menu, but we don’t want them  to feel like it’s one size fits all,” Poen says. “We just want them to have the opportunity to make the decision about what they are eating.”   The idea came about seven years ago when Poen and a group of friends who were conducting a Bible study at her home stopped to acknowledge and be thankful for the abundance of food they’d all brought to share. In attendance were a couple of local school principals who brought up their personal awareness of food insecurity in the community. That sparked the inspiration to research the scope of the issue, which planted the seed for a solution.    In this episode, hear from Poen about the many serendipitous events that happened next: Finding the perfect spot of land, raising $1 million to completely fund construction, receiving donations to equip a nice kitchen, partnering with local culinary students for food prep, and developing  a garden on the property that will help supply the restaurant and also serve as an educational garden for children and adults.   Poen says the  building is almost complete and the organization is ramping up efforts to fully develop its volunteer base. Visit www.communitygardenkitchen.org to learn more or volunteer to help with this incredible new effort.

Meet a new Fairview neighbor, Mike Waddell, President & Governor of the Allen Americans Professional Hockey Club. A 30-plus year veteran of the sports world, Waddell took the helm of business operations with the Allen Americans team in 2020 after most recently serving as president of World Team Tennis’ Orlando Storm. Just prior to that, he served as team president for the Orlando Apollos in the Alliance of American Football for the 2019 season and also has built his extensive experience in college sports and NASCAR.   Waddell said when he received the call from Allen Americans Owner Jack Gulati to consider a move to North Texas, there was no doubt he wanted to seize the opportunity.    “I said ‘I’ve gotta do this!’ This is a great place, and living over in Fairview, it’s a great place to live,” Waddell said. “I’ve lived in a lot of suburbs, bedroom communities …  you just want to be close to everything, but you also want to be able to feel like you’ve gotten away. This is the best area I have been for that, and my wife talks about it all the time. We actually know our neighbors here.”   Waddell and his wife, Heidi, have two adult daughters, and are experiencing first hand the community pride and quality of life that can be a game changer in helping  the Allen Americans recruit, he said.    “Part of being able to recruit, whether you’re in college sports or minor league professional hockey like we are with the Allen Americans, is you’ve got to have a great place to recruit to. We play in a nice arena but we live in a great area. These guys, they could be in Wheeling, West Virginia, or Kalamazoo, Michigan, or Orlando, Florida, or Rapid City, South Dakota. I mean, there are 26 teams in the ECHL that are in 20 states and two foreign provinces in Canada. … When you can come back to a super area like this, you can recruit solid talent. People want to come here and work,” Waddell said, citing our “four seasons” lifestyle and options for dining, cultural experiences, family fun activities and access to nature.    In this episode, Waddell shares more of his love for Fairview and the greater area, including future goals for the organization to more deeply engage in the community through its foundation and how the organization is eager to custom tailor experiences for fans.   “People are looking for things to do right now. Maybe it’s for their family. Maybe it’s just for them and their significant other. Maybe they want to come out with a big group from work. We can create that type of experience for you and make you have a really awesome experience whenever you come to the Allen Americans and the Allen Event Center,” Waddell said. “When you’re a member of our community, we’re a year-round lifestyle brand. I don’t want to be [just] a hockey team.”   Give a listen to hear more from Mike Waddell, and learn more about the Allen Americans Professional Hockey Club at allenamericans.com.

Colby Nate grew up in nearby Plano and began his career pursuing photography, which led him to photo and video work in the digital space as it began to take off. From there, he learned web development, eventually aligned with two like-minded entrepreneurs who had complementary digital skill sets, and launched Third Corner. The company began with a primary suite of custom software products designed to help oil and gas companies integrate disparate data systems of operational information into a single, shareable source allowing business leaders better visibility to increase process efficiencies.  They also have created EDOiQ, a product designed for managing and reporting useful data to provide visibility to key stakeholders in economic development projects.    Nate says taking the information they’ve learned from these products and looking for opportunities to apply their development capabilities toward addressing similar principles in other industries has been a priority during the Covid challenges over the past year. One of those areas is focusing more on the financial reporting aspect of their software, coincidentally something they had already begun prior to Covid. Now, Nate says, businesses that used the tools to increase efficiency during the past year can continue to capitalize on that to further grow their businesses.   A Fairview resident now, Nate initially chose this area for its affordability and family-friendly quality of life while raising his three children, who now are young adults. He’s chosen to stay for its “country/city vibe,” plus daily inspiration that comes from successful neighbors here, he says.    “I just see so many successful people in this area. I just want to talk to them and see, “Hey, how’d you get where you got and tell your story?’” Nate says. “[I appreciate] listening to the diversity of experience from people and then seeing if there are things as a software developer that I can bring to solve their problems and vice versa.”   Give a listen as Nate shares about his experience living in Fairview and learn more about Third Corner and its products at Thirdcorner.com

In 2014 Jeff Bednar and his wife, Lee, were looking to make a career decision that would have a profound impact on their family, so they started Profound Microfarms on 2.6 acres just three miles away in Lucas, Texas. The farm property has 17,000 square feet of controlled environment greenhouse space growing leafy greens, culinary herbs, edible flowers and microgreens. Since then, they’ve also started two more businesses — Profound Foods & Profound Kitchen, and what began as a venture to normalize their working hours as their young children grew has not only had the impact they initially intended but has become even more profound than they imagined.   Thanks to sticking with their initial mission of “farmers helping farmers” as the world encountered the Covid-19 crisis, they have managed to adjust their business model to grow and evolve the latter two businesses over the past two years. Locating two of the businesses in Fairview has had a critical role in that success, and their entire story is a lesson in drawing upon simple, solid values and choosing to innovate in the face of adversity.   The Bednars started the second business, Profound Foods, about 18 months ago, distributing to restaurants all the products from their farm along with those of a small network of fellow farmers in the area who specialize in beef, chicken, eggs and soil vegetables. That idea came from Jeff volunteering to run a friend’s chicken order to a Dallas restaurant where he already had a scheduled delivery. The chef pointed out how convenient that was for everyone involved, and a lightbulb went off. By the time Covid occurred, they were collectively selling to 25 restaurants, and thanks to a USDA grant, that number grew to more than 130. When restaurants had to close, they pivoted to a retail model within a week, reinventing their packaging and workflow to safely deliver their goods to households.   As word grew, so did their producer network, which diversified their product variety with many goods that wouldn’t fly at the wholesale level. They more than doubled their producer network and were also able to donate surplus wholesale goods to the community as they shifted the business model. Then they launched yet another business concept, Profound Kitchen, which grew from producers bringing them end-of-season goods that shouldn’t go to waste. For example, when life gave them cases and cases of peaches, they figured out how to turn them into jam, peach barbecue sauce, and dehydrated peach chips. Between the three businesses combined, they’ve also been able to provide jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities to chefs who were suddenly unemployed because of restaurant closures. For example, celebrated Dallas Chef Nick Walker came on board and has launched 60 products over the past seven months.   Profound Foods and Profound Kitchen are now located in a former restaurant space in Fairview Town Center, where they enjoy convenient access to I-75 and manage food storage and distribution from the back of house and offer food-focused private events and classes in front. Learn more about the businesses and the Bednar family in this episode, and be sure to check out profoundfoods.com for details about products, services and events.

Born and raised in Garland, home-mortgage extraordinaire Joe Boggs has experienced success in banking for 21 years. He and his wife, Patsy, moved here from Allen with their three children three and a half years ago. His son is a sophomore at Texas Tech, and his two daughters, ages 12 and 14, are students in the Lovejoy ISD.   Boggs has become a very active member of the community for over a decade, serving many years with the Allen Fairview Chamber of Commerce.   “In what I do for a living, I do networking, so I have been to every chamber meeting around. And not to say anything negative about others, but the Allen Fairview chamber - it can’t be beat,” Boggs says. “Getting involved in the chamber also got me involved in Leadership. … It blew me away. I had no idea what I didn’t know. I recommend that to anybody. It built my drive for leadership - to help in the community. I do way more volunteering now. I help wherever I can, and it was all from that little first step into a leadership program.”   Boggs is licensed in Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma, and provides especially informed insights about the booming real estate market that has him working 80-plus hours weekly these days. With that in mind, he also tells how easy and rewarding it is to take a short drive to unwind with his kids during weekend hunting, fishing and hiking getaways in the country.   Not that his own home here hasn’t become a calming retreat: “All of our friends when they come over say, ‘Wow! You live in the country and the city!’,” Boggs says. “If I go to Dallas or if I am working around other areas, when I drive through those gates to my house, my blood pressure drops 10 points. That has been wonderful for me. … And honestly I just want all of my friends and family who have that opportunity to share in that same thing. It has been great for me.”

Joe Groh began his career working for contractors, installing residential HVAC equipment before joining Lennox Industries Inc. Joe was an outside sales representative and dealer business consultant, working with contractors in Chicago and downstate Illinois. He graduated summa cum laude from Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago and held a Bachelor of Science Degree in marketing. You can also email the foundation at [email protected] or call them directly at 214-998-9749.

Greg was born and raised in Beaumont, TX, went to Texas A&M University for undergrad, worked in sales for a few years then attended SMU full time for an MBA. Upon graduating from SMU, he eventually ended up in the telecom industry for nearly 20 years, where he worked for Nortel, Tektronix Communications, and Netscout.   Greg’s entrepreneurial spirit was always alive but hadn’t surfaced fully until 2015 when he quit his comfortable job in Corporate America to purchase an existing company – Outhouse Tickets. However, he had toyed around with owning his own company for decades. He started a small advertising company in the early ’90s. He also created and later sold one of the first online apartment locators in Texas called FreeRentMoney.com. (Greg is still a licensed Texas Real Estate Broker) Finally, Greg took the plunge to purchase Outhouse Tickets to run full time. Outhouse Tickets is the easiest way to sell event tickets. They make buying and selling tickets easier and cheaper for any sized event. Their low convenience fees allow you to sell more tickets. Their high customer service level enables you to focus on your business rather than posting events and managing ticketing. They can ticket any size event: From 1 ticket to 100,000 tickets.  You can visit them on the web at Outhousetickets.com.   Greg married his lovely wife, Lori, in 1998 in his parent’s backyard in Beaumont after Hurricane Georges wrecked the Virgin Islands and their original plans for a destination wedding. After living in Dallas, Trophy Club, and Plano, they eventually landed in Fairview in 2010.   Greg and Lori have two children – Emma, age 19, is attending the University of Oklahoma, and Carter, age  17, is a Senior at Lovejoy HS.

Lori Satterwhite has found both her professional calling and the place she and her family are happy to call home. After being diagnosed with multiple autoimmune disorders as a young mother, Lori, a Texas A&M graduate, began searching for solutions and even returned to school, eventually obtaining certification as a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner and founding her holistic nutrition practice, Fueled 4 Life. Today, she is “about 98 percent symptom-free” and helps others transform their own health from the inside out with a focus on nutrient-dense properly prepared food as a foundation for healing. Lori has moved 33 times in her life, but she and her husband, Greg, also an entrepreneur, and their two children have lived in Fairview, Texas for nearly 10 years — the longest she has lived anywhere.   “We started searching for “THE place” (to settle down). My husband envisioned a place to raise our kids with trees and a little land, and I wanted to be near shopping and restaurants. We kept coming back to Fairview, Texas.”

Bill Baxter is a master at finding smart, efficient and economical solutions for businesses — including his own.   When Baxter was ready to leave the corporate world back in 2001 to put his technology expertise to work for clients of his own, he found Fairview, Texas to be a fitting location for his small business. That’s when and where he founded Baxter I.T., and he has never looked back.   Baxter I.T. has grown from a one-man entrepreneurship to a staff of engineers who hold multiple industry certifications. They provide technology services and support ranging from secure cloud data backup protection to alarm monitoring and electronic access systems. The thriving company’s clientele spans the DFW region and includes small to mid-size businesses and local government entities, including the Town of Fairview.   Since day one, Fairview has remained the ideal base for this thriving company. “It’s one of the best towns around,” says Baxter, who decided in 2005 that he not only loved having his business based in Fairview, but he wanted to live here, too. He and his wife, Donna, the company’s bookkeeper, now live in Heritage Ranch, just minutes away from their office in Fairview Town Center (FTC). Their golden retriever, Ginny, serves as the company’s HR manager, Baxter notes with a totally straight face.   “We’re fortunate to work literally onsite with the Town of Fairview, one of our major clients, because it makes for a symbiotic relationship and quick response time, and it feels like family,” Baxter says.

Getting Neighborly Podcast Episode 8 Katherine Ponder: Estate Life Magazines   The growth of Fairview, Texas is resulting in a richer community, says Katherine Ponder. She has witnessed this first-hand: Katherine and her husband have made Fairview their home since a wrong turn literally led them here in 1999. They became early residents of the Oakwood Estates neighborhood, where they still reside and have raised their two children, who have thrived in the Lovejoy school system. Katherine is a writer and the editor of Estate Life Fairview, a monthly social magazine exclusively for the residents of Fairview. The magazine connects friends, family and neighbors through resident-generated hyper-local content.   “I love telling people’s stories and sharing news and events, connecting everybody. We want people to know each other.” LINKS:   Fairview, Texas http://fairviewtexasedc.com/home.aspx   Katherine Ponder https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherine-ponder-97679a4/