Want Your Name in Lights? Dublin can help
As a toddler, Guy Houston’s youngest child would often introduce herself to strangers as “Glynnis Rose Drive.”
Her confusion over her last name was understandable, given the road in east Dublin that shares her name. With age, Glynnis Rose realized the street had been named for her, and not the other way around.
In Dublin, for a price, a person with a hankering for fame can name a street after themselves or someone else — and help out a charity as well.
Houston, a former Dublin mayor and state assemblyman, bought the naming rights for Glynnis Rose Drive for $6,000 at a charity auction for Kaleidoscope Activity Center in 1999. He credits a U.S. Mayor’s Conference for the idea he brought to Dublin.
“We were just getting a lot of the eastern part of the community (developed) and were trying to figure out how to get money for nonprofits,” Houston said.
Ten years later, Glynnis Rose is now in junior high and more than a dozen street names have sold, bringing in tens of thousands of dollars for Dublin nonprofit groups. The record sales price for a naming is $10,500.
On Friday, the Dublin Partners in Education auctioned off the rights to name two new roads, one in the Schaefer Ranch development in the west Dublin hills and the other at Fallon Crossing in east Dublin. Both sold for $8,500 apiece.