Kingspoint Crier: November/December 2023
Letter from the KP Presidents
Happy Holidays Kingspoint!
We hope that you are enjoying the holiday season and all of the festivity and decoration that Williamsburg has to offer. We are scheduling our annual Luminary Night on Sunday, December 17 from 5-8 PM. Order forms will be distributed soon. For the past few years, this has served as a nice fundraiser for Club operations while providing an evening of beautiful ambiance throughout Kingspoint as we celebrate the Holidays.
Thank you to all of our volunteers who came out for the Fall Clubhouse Clean-up on October 22, and many thanks to Mary Kate Galke and the AMAZING Social Committee for organizing the 2023 Spooky Halloween Party!
Please keep in mind that the Kingspoint Club Annual Stock-holders Meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, January 16 at 7 PM at the Clubhouse. 2023 dues need to be paid in full by that time in order to participate. We will discuss pool contract topics, the proposed 2024 budget, and we will vote on the 2024 Kingspoint Club Board. Each household is encouraged to have a family member attend so that we can have a full turnout. If you are not able to attend, proxy forms will be available. Proxy forms will be uploaded to the website and emailed to members in January.
Nominating Committee: The Nominating Committee recommends the following members for the 2024 Kingspoint Club Board of Directors.
2024 Board Nominees:
President - Kathryn Haines
President - Scott Lerberg
Secretary - Matt Blinn
Treasurer - Catherine Mountjoy
Membership - Melissa Reeves
Clubhouse - Tara Peters
Facilities - Dave Stanhope
Social Committee: Join the KP Social Committee for a Holiday Movie and KP Ornament-making craft!
When: Sunday, December 10th, 3:00-5:00 pm
Where: KP Clubhouse
What: Please bring a blanket and/or cozy pillows to watch the movie
**Please do not leave minor children at the Clubhouse without a responsible adult.**
Please help the hard-working social committee by signing up for a task.
Club Rules: The Board updated and approved the Club’s Rules. They had not been officially updated since 2012. To view the complete list of Rules, please visit the Club Rules page on our website.
Dues: Thank you to members who have already paid their dues. Just a reminder that dues are $700. If you pay dues quarterly, the FOURTH payment of $175 is due now. Please pay in a timely manner. Jim Gravgaard, the KP Club Treasurer, will be sending electronic invoices to members via email; these invoices contain a link to allow you to pay the invoice electronically. You can also send your dues via a check made out to the Kingspoint Club, Inc., P.O. Box 365, Williamsburg, VA 23187. Questions? Please contact KPWilliamsburg@gmail.com.
Capital Campaign for the Dock: If you would like to make a gift to the Capital Campaign for the Dock, we welcome your donations. Gifts may be dropped off to the Treasurer, Jim Gravgaard, at 110 Overlook Drive (please call/text 804-370-3098 to let him know) OR they can be mailed to the following address: Kingspoint Club, P.O. Box 365, Williamsburg, VA 23187.
Facilities Committee Members: We are actively looking for additional committee members to assist on various projects throughout the year. Please reach out if you would like to help (KingspointFacilities@gmail.com).
Membership Committee Members: We are actively looking for committee members to assist in welcoming new residents. Please reach out if you would like to help (KPMembership@gmail.com).
Finance Committee: We are actively looking for committee members to assist the Treasurer throughout the year. Please reach out if you would like to help (kpwilliamsburg@gmail.com).
Clubhouse News: In addition to replacing the floor in the main part of the clubhouse in May, we replaced the floor in the kitchen. It was a much-needed update to a beautiful space. Come see for yourself! And, if you have a graduation, birthday, anniversary, baby shower, book club, work party, or other special event, please make a plan to book your rental today! Please contact Denise Koch at KPClubRentals@gmail.com or call 757-870-0900.
Clubhouse rental rates in 2023:
KP Resident Club Member: $50 rental / 1x per calendar year
KP Resident Club Member: $150 half day ( 4 hrs.) /$200 full day (8 hrs.)
Non-KP Resident Club Member: $350 half day (4 hrs.)/ $550 whole day ( 8 hrs.)
Non-Club Members: $400 half day ( 4 hrs)/ $600 whole day (8 hrs.)
Recurring rentals for KP Club members: $25 per hour / 6 mo. contract
Website: www.KingspointClub.org Be sure to check it out. You can find everything Club related, including current and past Criers, on the website. Let’s take a fun trip down memory lane. Please share any photos that you have of activities, members, and the natural beauty of the pool, the clubhouse, the green, and the dock with KPCrier@gmail.com. We would love to highlight the wealth of incredible Club memories we have created through the years.
Thank you,
Sarah Huber and Kim Lavach,
Co-Presidents, Kingspoint Club
Kingspoint Calendar
December 10 – Holiday Movie and Ornament-Making Craft
December 17 – Luminary Night
January 16 – Kingspoint Club Annual Stock-holders Meeting
Kingspoint Club Board
President — Sarah Huber and Kim Lavach
kppresidents@gmail.com
Treasurer — Jim Gravgaard
KPWilliamsburg@gmail.com
Secretary — Anna Thomas
KPSecretary757@gmail.com
Membership — Meredith Robertson
KPMembership@gmail.com
Facilities — Dave Stanhope
KingspointFacilities@gmail.com
Clubhouse Coordinator — Denise Koch
KPClubRentals@gmail.com
Additional Club Contacts
Social Committee Chair — MaryKate Galke
KPSocialComm@gmail.com
Landscape Director — Nancy McDonald
peachstreet258@gmail.com
KP Crier Editors — Margaret Pizer and Dave Parrish
kpcrier@gmail.com
The Kingspoint Club, Inc. oversees our community’s recreational property on Northpoint Drive. This waterfront site includes a beautiful clubhouse, neighborhood pool, picnic area, dock, and a children’s play area. The KP Club operates the pool and clubhouse and organizes neighborhood social events for members. Membership in the Club is optional for residents, and includes use of the pool, boat ramp and dock. Members may also rent the clubhouse and pool for social events. Membership is required to attend some Club sponsored social events. Non- residents may also pay annual dues to use the pool and the clubhouse. For more information or to join, contact KPMembership@gmail.com.
Kingspoint Neighborhood Association November News
There is a growing feeling of excitement during the holidays in Williamsburg. There are so many interesting things to do, great opportunities to shop, and beautiful places to visit. Colonial Williamsburg will spread its Grand Illumination events over three weekends again this year: December 2, 9, and 16. We will likely hear the fireworks here in Kingspoint. You can enjoy this, The Greensprings Garden Club’s historic home tours, and many other holiday events and opportunities at Colonial Williamsburg in coming weeks. You can enjoy the Christmas Market on Court Street, weekends through December 24. And Busch Gardens has its annual Christmas Town again this year. It will be a busy month in our area!
Yuko Sato has worked her floral magic again this year with beautiful evergreen arrangements on the Kingspoint sign at our entrance. We appreciate Yuko’s dedication to this annual project, her creativity and skill; and we appreciate those families who donate greenery from their yards for the arrangements.
Once Dominion Energy hooks up the electricity to the new spotlights and outlets, David and Wendy Miller will decorate trees and shrubs at our entrance with white lights. The lights will be on timers so we can enjoy the beautiful display deeper into the winter evenings than our previous solar lights allowed. David has done a tremendous job of shepherding this project with Dominion, and we can all look forward to enjoying the beautiful results of his persistence.
After the Dominion crew finishes their work later this week, we will need a few volunteers to help spread mulch over some bare spots on top of the mound. Please contact Ann Hobson, or me at kpwebmistress@gmail.com, if you can help with the mulch. We appreciate Ann Hobson and her volunteers for their continued work at our neighborhood entrance. Tom Mahone and Chris Bonday are continuing their dedicated efforts to keep the grass neatly trimmed. If you are willing to join our crew of volunteers to help with maintenance chores at the entrance, please get in touch with Ann at annhobson1010@gmail.com.
Special thanks to all those who have served on or volunteered to work with our Neighborhood Association Board this past year. Our very talented and generous volunteers have repaired signs, installed lighting, blown leaves, watered shrubs, mown grass, pulled weeds, painted, picked up trash, pruned, raked, mulched, and generally pitched in to help this year. Our community is better for the volunteer efforts of so many generous neighbors.
Our Board members do so much quiet work behind the scenes. We appreciate everyone who greets and talks with neighbors new and old, those who help keep our Directory up to date, those who distribute the Directories, manage the finances, and work with the companies we collaborate with to get things done. Many hands make light work.
If you have intended to drop off your KPNA membership renewal, please know that we will gratefully accept your contributions through the end of the year. Your contributions will help us cover the one-time expenses of running electricity to the entrance and purchasing new holiday lights. If you have misplaced the slip, no worries. Simply drop off your check with your name, address, and phone printed on it to Treasurer Karen Schneider. Our annual membership contribution has remained $25.00 for the past several years.
This is the season of gratitude for our many blessings as individuals, families, and as a community. We remember so many friends and neighbors who are no longer living with us in Kingspoint, their friendship over the years and the contributions they made to our community. We are also grateful for new friendships with families who have joined us over the past year. Our community continues to grow and thrive. Best wishes to all for the weeks of celebration ahead.
We are already enjoying holiday lights and beautiful decorations that neighbors share with us each December. This is 'the season of light' for many of us, and the comfort we take in candlelight and holiday lights during this darkest time of the year unites us. Our beautiful neighborhood is especially festive at the holidays, thanks to the efforts of so many.
We welcome many guests to our community during the holidays. Please ask your guests and visitors to drive cautiously, with an eye out for children, pets, and neighbors out walking. Now that days are growing shorter, please take extra care to make sure you are visible when you are out walking, jogging, or biking so there are no close calls with drivers. Lights and reflective clothing will help ensure your safety and alleviate stressful moments for folks heading out in the morning or coming home at dusk.
With winter approaching, you may want to sign up for jccalert.org notifications by text or email. This allows county staff to alert you to dangerous weather systems, water outages, and to provide other safety notifications. If you plan to be away from home for an extended period for travel, you might want to register with the police for safety checks of your home.
County residents may drop off leaves free of charge at the Jolly Pond Convenience Center, 1204 Jolly Pond Road, daily between 7 a.m.-5 p.m. during these dates: Nov. 12- and Jan. 15. (In past years, Christmas trees were also accepted in late December and January.) Leaves dropped off by residents will only be accepted in clear bags no larger than lawn or leaf-size (40 gallons or less). Outside of these dates, residents must buy ‘coupons’ to drop off yard waste.
Leaves must be in clear bags and left at the curb by 8 AM on December 1 for free county pick-up. The county will provide one round of curbside leaf collection, and leaves will be picked up in Kingspoint December 1-7. No other yard debris, such as downfall limbs, will be collected.
Here are tips and standards for recycling holiday waste. Trash and recycling pick- up schedules tend to get off this time of year due to holidays and winter weather. Please check with your trash provider for schedule changes.
Finally, the USDA issued a new Hardiness Zone Map in November which shows that our area has shifted from Zone 7b to Zone 8a. The hardiness map is based on the extreme low temperatures on the coldest night of the year (averaged over the past 30 years) and does not reflect warmer temperatures overall. Learn more about the implications of this Updated USDA Hardiness Map here.
If you are new to the community, or have a new family living near you, please let us know so we can visit with a copy of the Kingspoint Directory and include them in the 2023 listings. Contact kpwebmistress@gmail.com to be added to or removed from our email news list. Please visit our KPNA website for news and useful community links.
Elizabeth McCoy kpwebmistress@gmail.com
for the Kingspoint Neighborhood Association Board
Kingspoint Neighborhood Association
KPNA Board President — Elizabeth McCoy — e.mccoy105@gmail.com
Secretary — Kenita Hill — arubahill@gmail.com
Treasurer — Karen Schneider
Members at Large — Ann Hobson, Harvey Manning, Melody Nichols, David Miller, Mary Haines, Joseph Bailey
Kingspoint Women’s Club News
The Kingspoint Women’s Club met for a holiday luncheon on November 14th. We enjoyed each others’ company and delicious food. The hostesses were Virginia Bendura and Mary Grogan. Emily McDowell brought table decorations.
Our next meeting will be February 14th. Details to follow. All women residents are welcome.
Notes from Neighbors: Cutting Greenery
We want all neighbors to be aware that there is no 'un-owned' or 'public' common space in Kingspoint where they may freely cut greenery for floral arrangements or holiday decorations. Every lot in the community is owned by someone, and property lines extend to the street. The Clubhouse property is landscaped and maintained by the Kingspoint Club, Inc., and the land beside it is privately owned. The corner at the neighborhood entrance is carefully landscaped and maintained by neighborhood volunteers. While many neighbors have been exceedingly generous with sharing prunings from their evergreens, in past years, it is never OK to go onto someone's property to harvest evergreens, berries, or bamboo without their permission. This includes street corners, shoulders, and those plants growing near the street.
The trees and shrubs in Kingspoint aren't common property and aren't available for harvest, except with permission from the person who owns them. Harvesting greenery can destroy the appearance of landscape plants and in some cases also destroys a privacy screen that homeowners appreciate. The conifer tree and bamboo grove on the corner of Kingspoint Drive and Woodbine Drive grow on private property and are privately owned and maintained. A conifer tree isn't able to replace branches once they are pruned away, and bamboo takes a long time to re-grow new shoots. Let's all respect one another, and one another's property, for the benefit of peace and goodwill among neighbors in our community.
Subscribing to the Crier
Starting this month, we are using the new website’s email list management feature to notify subscribers when a new Crier edition is published. Current Crier subscribers have been manually added to the email list. If you know someone who wants to get emails when the Crier is published online, please ask them to visit this page and sign up using the form below. You can now also unsubscribe by clicking the unsubscribe button in any Crier notification email.
If you have trouble using the form and unsubscribe link, please contact kpcrier@gmail.com and we can make your changes manually.
Your Photographs in the KP Crier?
It is always great to see beautiful pictures of our neighborhood. If you want your photos featured in the Kingspoint Crier, then please send them to kpcrier@gmail.com. We cannot guarantee that every photograph will be featured, and we reserve the right to crop and rescale the photographs to limit the file size of the Crier.
Crier Format
With the launch of the new Kingspoint website, the Crier will be published in this blog format. Please contact the editors at KPCrier@gmail.com with feedback, corrections, advertising requests, and more. Thanks!
Publishing in the Crier
If you have an event to share with the Kingspoint community or some news to report that you would like to see posted in the Kingspoint Crier, please send your contributions to kpcrier@gmail.com before the 20th of the month. The editors reserve the right to refuse and edit any submissions; the editors will not run any articles that overly or covertly target specific demographics or neighbors.
Facebook Page
Kingspoint neighborhood has its own Facebook page to add info, photos, items for sale, invite neighbors to a last minute movie or bbq, post last minute updates for swim meets, cancellations, etc. This page is a "Closed Group", so you will have to "request" to be added (this prevents just anyone from joining the group and posting spam). But all residents are encouraged to request an invite!
Here is how you do this: Click to go to the KP Facebook group. It will say it’s a closed group, and then in the upper right corner, under the photo, you click on ‘JOIN GROUP’. The Admin for the group will approve all KP residents!
Little Dolphins
Looking to connect with other parents in the neighborhood? Consider joining the “Little Dolphins” Facebook page. It’s a network of parents in the neighborhood with kids ranging from babies to teenagers. (Just search for "Little Dolphins Kingspoint" on Facebook). It’s a nice way to meet parents in the neighborhood with similarly aged kids. If you aren’t on Facebook, or if you are having problems joining the group, email Tracy Sohoni, tracep@yahoo.com
Neighborhood Ads
Pet Sitting: Available Daily and Holidays, 4 years experience. Yuko Sato phone: 757-634-5447
Pet Sitting: Haley Elton offers dog walking and pet sitting services. Available daily. Contact her managing agent, Norman Elton, at 757-293-8346.
Baby Sitting and Pet Sitting: Carolyn Clinton is available for baby sitting and pet sitting. 757-903-7777. Twins John and Catherine Clinton are also available for baby sitting and pet sitting. John also mows lawns. Call their mother Susan Clinton @ 757-903-7205.
Baby Sitting and Pet sitting/walking: Hello all! My name is Lexi. I am a pet sitter and babysitter who has attended a CPR class and a training course for babysitting. I have lots of experience with animals of all types and breeds. Some other services I offer are watering plants, collecting mail, or taking care of your house while you are out of town. For reasonable rates and more details call or text 757-298-8798.
Daily pet visits, walks, overnight in your home: Experience with dogs, cats, birds, giving medica- tions. Retired teacher. In business since 2016. Lisa Garber. 757-848-8331 or beastiebestiesofwilliamsburg@gmail.com.
Advertising Policy
The advertising policy for the Kingspoint Crier is as follows: business related ads are $10/ edition for a business card ($100/yr); $25/ edition for quarter page ($260/yr); $50/ edition for half page ($525/yr). We can provide an invoice if necessary. The space will be limited to a reasonable size to be determined by the Crier editors and space constraints of each edition; small ads of one, or two sentences, from residents and non-resident club members are free as a community service; non-profit and children’s ads are also free.
