Not very many people have spent a month on a working ranch sleeping under the stars, feeding cowboys three meals a day as they prepared the spring herd. Germantown resident and longtime FedEx employee Steve Gibson is one of those people, cooking from a chuck wagon in an atmosphere far removed from suburbia. “I love being out there and thinking about how it once was like – what were people doing back then and what was it like to eat back then?” said Gibson. “It’s quite interesting studying U.S. history. Everything cowboys are doing now is what vaqueros, descendants from Spain, were doing back then in Mexico.

Neighborhood leaders and concerned citizens met at the Carrefour shopping center on Monday, Sept. 17 to discuss a proposed mixed-use redevelopment of the property at Germantown’s western border. The outline plans from property owners Cannon, Austin and Cannon were submitted to the Germantown Planning Commission earlier this month.

Germantown's self-imposed 18-month mixed-use multifamily moratorium just passed its halfway point, and only two of the four projects approved before the action took effect are still alive.