[1] Bob Stein, the dean of the School of Social Sciences of Rice University, said "Hillcroft is disorganized but not necessarily unorganized development.
Manisha Gandhi Mehta, a spokesperson for the opening event that was held on January 16, 2010, said that the organizers of the district found difficulty in getting non-South Asian merchants to agree to the renaming of the street.
In 2009 the head members of the India Culture Center and several South Asian merchants agreed to pay $10,000 for the street signage that designates the area as the Mahatma Gandhi District.
[2] The first section of Hillcroft Avenue, between Bellaire Boulevard and what is now Bissonnet Street, was built in the mid-1950s as part of the Sharpstown development.
The road's exceptionally wide right-of-way (140 feet (43 meters) allowed for this widening while maintaining a landscaped median.