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Bensman & Riggs
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02/17/06
Comprehensive Plan is Wrong for Dallas!
Ever so often, even a cynic like me sees a ray of
hope when just enough people on the city council seem to come out of the fog at
City Hall to draw a line in the sand.
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Council delays action on development
plan;
Dallas: Leaders question housing, parking ideas, lack of
DISD input
February 16,
2006 by EMILY
RAMSHAW / The Dallas Morning News |
Dallas City Council members took
their first crack at the city's new comprehensive plan on Wednesday – but
few were ready to sign off on the 450-page document.
Their biggest gripes? A lack of
collaboration with the Dallas school district. A
perceived emphasis on new apartment, townhouse and condo units, as opposed
to single-family homes. And an aggressive timeline for approving the
land use and development plan, released in draft form last month.
"I see conflicts among these
different sections. I'm not comfortable with the idea
that we're not encouraging homeownership to the degree I thought we were,"
council member Angela Hunt said.
... The plan, designed by renowned urban planner
John Fregonese after more than a year of community meetings, emphasizes:
• New mixed-use development, including retail and owner-occupied condos and
townhomes, around light-rail stations.
• Stabilizing existing single-family neighborhoods, and providing creative
homeownership opportunities for middle-class residents.
• Preparing for a housing boom in the city's southern sector and new
mixed-use developments along the Stemmons Corridor.
... To make these changes, Mr. Fregonese said,
Dallas would need to have the right tools, including more
appropriate parking standards and better zoning
categories.
... Planners had hoped to have the plan approved
by the council in April. But Wednesday's council meeting altered that
timeline.
A few council
members, including Ed Oakley and Bill Blaydes, thought the plan was on the
right track.
... Others felt quite the opposite. Council member Mitchell Rasansky
demanded to know how much the city's contract was with Mr. Fregonese ($1.4
million), and pointed out proofreading errors that he said made it look like
the report was a fill-in-the-blank for Dallas.
"Some of this in my opinion was done
for another city," he said.
... Council member Steve
Salazar warned that neighborhoods in his district don't want to turn away
from single-family residences.
... Ms. Hunt was the
plan's sharpest critic. She said she liked the language about
protecting neighborhoods but couldn't find "anyplace in this 450-page
document" where these communities were identified.
... Ms. Hunt also said she worried that the
planners' idea to reduce or eliminate parking standards in some areas would
be detrimental. Neighborhoods around Lower Greenville and parts of Oak Lawn
are already strained from a lack of sufficient parking, she said.
... Mr. Fregonese said he understands the housing
element is a big concern. Dallas is "majority multifamily rental," he said.
At the same time, the city is running out of vacant land for single-family
homes.
... And he said the parking standards deserve a
closer look. The Bishop Arts District requires the same amount of parking
"as a Wal-Mart," he said. ... |
When you read Oakley and
Blaydes "thought the plan was on the right track", you have to ask right track
to where? More multi-family is the last thing Dallas needs. Lake
Highlands and Vickery Meadow are the direct end result of allowing a
concentration of multi-family. Bill Blaydes is supposed to represent Lake
Highlands, but he sure doesn't pay much attention to the problems of the area.
On the other hand, Mitch Rasansky is keenly aware of the detrimental impact of
multi-family because his biggest headache as District 13's council
representative is trying to make things better in Vickery Meadow.
| We have 3 light rail stations coming in Northwest Dallas along Denton Drive and
Harry Hines. The first is at Community and NW Highway (the old Circle Inn
area). That section is already disastrously covered with apartment
buildings that have outlived their construction. One apartment complex was
originally an LPC project, the Barcelona, and was the hippest place to live in
the early 70's. As old as it is, that complex is better than most of its
neighbors. Everything between Bachman Lake and Denton Drive needs to be
replaced. Because of the height restrictions from Love Field, there is a
limit of how high any buildings can go. |
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02/17/06 Mike Perry:
At the Steve's townhall meeting at Bachman Rec Center, I complained
about the excessive apartments in Dallas.
Ramshaw's article just supports my comments
that until more single family residences are built,
this city is not going to attract anything but a bunch of transient
people, too many low
class people.
What may seem like an upscale
apartment community today, will be a run down
absentee-landlord property
in 30 years as NW Dallas
is now.
The city must find some legal way to
tear some of these apartments down and replace them with single-family
homes. Land inside the 635 loop is some of the
most valuable in the Metroplex. Until the goons
at city hall understand this and make
this city attractive to middle to upper
income home-owning people,
Dallas will continue to decline.
I am most concerned that any new bond
money will be diverted south rather than improving the northern sector where
the tax dollars are generated. This is why I cannot support a bond program
until we have new blood at the horseshoe. |
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With the regional therapeutic recreation center at Bachman Lake,
the land around the upcoming NW Hwy station could make a
wonderful community for seniors, young professionals and hospital personnel
because the Parkland light rail station will already be completed by the time
the NW Highway station is on line. The section near the NW Highway station
is not an area where families with children should live. There are no
schools for the kids.
Councilwoman Hunt is right to want the city to be coordinating with the DISD
before we commit to a long range development plan. There are areas around
Love Field where building new schools is prohibited because of the airport.
That's why any new multi-family should only go on the South side of NW Highway
to replace the worn out buildings that are there now.
Councilman Steve Salazar is right to want to protect existing single-family
neighborhoods in his District 6, both in West Dallas and NW Dallas. We
must protect communities where people of modest income can live in detached
housing with yards for children. The neighborhoods north of NW
Highway needed two schools, but thanks
to the Dallas Diocese's greed, the poor children of our area will only get one new reliever school to ease some of the
horrible overcrowding at Burnet and Crocket elementary schools. The last thing we
need are more apartment or multi-family units North of NW Highway.
I intentionally mentioned the "poor children" of the area, because everyone else
has their kids in private schools or they are planning to leave the area when
their children are school age. No one who can possibly afford to keep
their children out of DISD schools or the parents who have no choice want their children used as lab rats for the
latest politically-correct or social-engineering whim.
Councilwoman Hunt is also right to be concerned about further reductions in
parking requirements. It's one thing to encourage more use of mass transit
where there is nearby rail service. It's a whole other discussion when you
let developers under park their projects where mass transit is not convenient or
not even available. Parking is at a premium in business areas like Preston
Center at NW Highway, and yet one developer had the audacity to ask for a
variance of over 200 parking spaces for his new building. You know what's
worse, they got their outrageous request approved!
It is really a reason to be concerned with Bill Blaydes and Ed Oakley
both trying to out do each other in their efforts to endear themselves to
developers and Ray Hunt in particular, as DallasArena.com has pointed out
several times since last Fall when the dynamic duo engineered a $6.2 million tax
abatement for that Son of a Bigamist Billionaire.
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Sugar Ray;
Why council members love Mr. Hunt so much
By
Jim Schutze; Article Published Feb 16, 2006 |
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The noose tightens. Keep an eye on the tax incentives the city
gives developers and the bickering about it at City Hall. They've been
giving away the store for years, and now all of a sudden they feel the
pinch.
... But just keep your horse sense tuned
up: 1) City needs money. 2) City gets money by collecting taxes. 3) City
lets big boyfriends skate on taxes. 4) Trouble.
The trouble with the Dallas City
Council? Half of them are running for mayor. And
they assume the only way they can raise campaign money in this town is by
making bedroom eyes at a sugar daddy.
Trouble with Dallas sugar daddies?
They don't care about the bedroom; only place they want to go is the
vault. "Button up your negligee, sweetheart, and show me where they keep
the cash."
North Dallas council member
Mitchell Rasansky told me an amazing story recently:
... Gleeson shows Rasansky a plan to
redevelop an area on the east side of Central Expressway, about
seven-tenths of a mile northeast of NorthPark Center. "He said, 'We're
going to build $250 million, $350 million. We're buying all these
apartments. We're going to close on them.'"
Then Gleeson
sets the hook. He tells Rasansky that he and his partners need a
tax abatement from the city ...
"I said, 'David, I don't know.' I talked to our assistant city
manager, Ryan Evans. He said, 'Well, I don't know
where we're going to get it from.'"
... Gleeson said. "Frankly, the feedback that we
got, from him and from talking to others who are familiar with what's
going on at City Hall, was that it probably wasn't real likely.
... since there had just previously been granted
a TIF for the Park Place project."
Yeah. I wrote about that heist a
while back ("Drunk Tellers," December 15). You'd think after that one, in
which the council gave some guys $20 million in tax
money to build a Whole Foods on prime ground across from NorthPark
Center, there might have been a bit of morning-after shame.
... Gleeson sells the project to an outfit called Valencia Capital
Management, which is basically, as far as I can tell, four guys in an
office on Turtle Creek. And now Valencia Capital
Management comes back to Rasansky with the same deal again but with
one important change: ... Rasansky said, "and
they want $37 million."
... Rasansky got curious. He wanted to know some
things, such as who their money was. ... They
told him. And everything became clear.
Ray Hunt.
Originally it was a project that
deserved, according to its promoters, a $4 million to $6 million tax cut.
Now it's a project that deserves a $37 million tax cut. And what has
changed?
Ray Hunt. ...
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If you haven't already read the
full column, please do so now.
Ray Hunt will probably get his $37 million tax cut, then Valencia can come out
of the closet and we will still not be able to
increase funding for new police hires. All of these tax-abated projects
actually increase the demand for police officers, but they aren't generating
property tax revenue to pay for the service their project will require of DPD
personnel. That's why you can't get the police when you need them.
Don't blame Chief Kunkle or the police officers, BLAME RAY HUNT and the council
members who give him all the tax abatements he wants.
One other ray of sunshine, looks like that Son of a Bigamist Billionaire is not
going to get Reunion Arena -- at least not just yet. Of course, Blaydes
and Oakley are probably busy looking for a way to give it to him anyway, with or
without that half of an unused parking lot.
I've no doubt that after everything calms down, the new Comprehensive Plan will
pass in pretty much the same form it was presented to the city council this
week. Four or five of the council will vote against the Comprehensive Plan
for the right reasons, the rest will make whatever excuses as necessary to be
able to accommodate Ray Hunt and his colleagues.
Still, it was really nice to read Emily Ramshaw's report that at least three or
four council members were expressing reservations and concerns with all of the
multi-family encouragements in the proposed Comprehensive Plan.
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