Devonshire Pointe news just a click away Website improves communication between residents, association By Gene stowe Tribune Correspondent

In  Devonshire Pointe, the neighbors have learned how to make their relationships click.

The homeowners association has launched a new website — devonshirepointe.drupalgardens.com — and plans steady updates for increased interactivity.

“We really didn’t even have the website to speak of until a couple of years ago,” says association president Heinz Mantel. “This is the most current iteration.

We’re fortunate enough to have a gentleman who does some of that. He’s made it more robust.

“That’s our main line of communication between the homeowners and the board members now.We’re able to get things out to the homeowners in a matter of hours instead of a matter of days.”

The webmaster is Dave Riley, who moved to  Devonshire Pointe from Chicago in 2001, the year his first child was born.The lower cost of living allowed him to stay home with the children for several years while his wife worked as a speech therapist.

“We couldn’t do that in the Chicago area,” he says. “Her folks lived out here. It was a nicer area.”

Now Riley works in information technology, where he noticed an advertisement for Drupal Gardens with a free resource to design a website.

“As long as you know how to use the Internet, you can set up your own Internet site,” he says. “I’ve offered to do it for our subdivision because we needed something better.We wanted an actual website.We didn’t want to pay for it.”

The site includes annual meeting minutes, news reports including warnings of a rash of vandalism, announcements such as Granger Paths meetings, and an archive of the neighborhood newsletter, “Getting to the Pointe.”

“It is already interactive,” Mantel says. “If somebody posts something on there, a question, they get an automatic response,” assuring that the message has been received and will be directed to the appropriate committee for an answer.

“We’re starting to use it much more for Neighborhood Watch, for developing a Safe Home project here in this subdivision, and the main line of communication. Nowadays, so much of it is electronic anyway.”

Mantel, who had lived in Granger before moving to Lansing, moved to  Devonshire Pointe in 1999, buying a house that was under construction.The neighborhood, surrounded by Knollwood subdivisions, was developed by Jim Russell.

“I attended meetings through the last number of years in the association,” Mantel says. “I noticed that it sort of petered out a little bit. I have some time at this

point. I said rather than go to meetings and complain, I’d jump in and try to make things better.”

The nine-member association board has four officers and five others who have committee posts, a shared responsibility under Mantel’s arrangement for the next two years to avoid overtaxing volunteers.

The development, with 127 families and a handful of vacant lots, has a mix of homes, from 1,800-squarefoot ranches to 4,000-square-foot two-stories — association restrictions call for larger homes on the lake — and prices from about $250,000 to $400,000.

“We’ve got a lot of people that have been here a number of years,” Mantel says. “We’ve got a number of business owners.We’re starting to get a younger demographic.The ones we’re getting, a lot of them are coming from out of state.”

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