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Korean premium water care brand NECOA is opening showrooms in The Woodlands and the Bay Area in May and will tentatively open another Houston location this summer.

The details: NECOA’s showroom at The Woodlands Mall opens May 8, and the second showroom will open at Baybrook Mall on May 15, the brand’s publicist said.

Why it matters: The Korean brand chose Texas to make its U.S. debut, opening its first showroom in Frisco in 2025 before opening another showroom in Austin in March, NECOA Marketing Manager Paul Smith said. 

The Harris County Flood Control District is on track to finish a $4 million channel restoration project later this year along Berry Bayou, part of the Sims Bayou watershed in South Houston.

The overview: Construction crews began the restoration in September and have completed roughly half of the work needed along the 1.25-mile stretch of channel, officials told Community Impact.

HCFCD Executive Director Tina Petersen said the channel was identified as needing repair in 2016, but the project was delayed for nearly a decade before the county secured enough funding through a voter-approved tax rate increase.

Why it matters: Petersen said the area had been experiencing slope failures, several types of erosion and sinkholes over deteriorating outfall pipes along the bayou. The damage caused portions of the land to collapse in the channel due to instability and disrupt the water flow, which she said increases the flood risk to neighboring homes during heavy rainfall events.

Looking forward: HCFCD expects to complete the project in the third quarter of 2026.

Friendswood City Council voted unanimously at its May 4 meeting to enter an interlocal agreement with Galveston County to secure $6 million in funding for the Friendswood Parkway expansion.

The details: The expansion involved building 2,100 feet of two lanes of roadway connecting West Pakwood Avenue to Wilderness Trail, as well as storm sewer infrastructure and a bridge over Chigger Creek, according to city documents.

Also of note: City staff recently gave an update on over $23 million of capital improvement projects in Friendswood that are making progress, including the effort to connect Friendswood and Pearland parkways.

Need to catch up on Community Impact’s coverage from this week? Check out five trending stories in the Greater Houston area from May 4-8.

Grand Parkway project moves forward with $1.4B contract

Sugar Land launches ticket reservations for FIFA World Cup watch parties

Triten Real Estate Partners completes 400K-square-foot distribution center in Humble

Friendswood awards $8.6M contract for Blackhawk Boulevard improvements

From her grandmother’s garden to Houston storefronts, Bree Clarke grows something bigger than plants

Manvel’s residential development has expanded in recent years with the addition of several ongoing and planned master-planned communities, including Pomona, Valencia, Del Bello and Meridiana.

According to the developer: Russell Bynum, senior vice president of Hillwood Communities, the developer behind Pomona and Valencia, said Manvel’s location and regional growth made it a key investment area.

Zooming in: Manvel’s population increased by nearly 41% between 2018-23, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. The city’s approach to managing that growth is centered on zoning, infrastructure capacity and location of development, including where master-planned communities are built, Mayor Dan Davis said.

More than 53,000 students will be invited to join Texas’ education savings account program this week, the state comptroller’s office said May 4.

The details: Families will be notified by email between May 4-6 if they were awarded funds in the second round of the Texas Education Freedom Accounts program, per a news release from the comptroller’s office.

To date, nearly 96,000 students have been selected to participate, with these students set to receive about $820 million of the $1 billion state lawmakers allocated for the program, an agency spokesperson said. Of the 53,000 second-round awardees, over 51,000 are from low-income families. The other 2,000 students accepted this week were found to qualify for disability-related funding, the agency said.

The background: Families accepted to the TEFA program will receive state funds to send their children to private schools or homeschool them for the 2026-27 school year.

Proponents of the new program have said it will expand educational opportunities, while critics have expressed concerns that the program will unfairly benefit students already enrolled in private schools.