09/23/04  The Garland Approach to Blighted Apartments

About three decades ago an apartment community, named East Gate, was built in Garland on Saturn Road near Centerville and 635.

At the time, it was THE apartment complex in which to live if you lived in Garland.  It included an athletic center and covered swimming pool, really was quite swank.  

Back in 1995 or 1997, the City of Garland bought this complex from HUD, which was the current owner, for the grand sum of $1.00, with the restriction that the City would run it for seven years, which the City did.

Now this complex is fenced off and ready for tear down, which will free up 42 acres for economic redevelopment in an area in Garland that once was very well-to-do, but has since become very run down.  This is a good thing.

Over the past several years, Garland has  been rezoning vacant parcels of land from multi-family to single-family or retail uses.  Why?  Because the City of Garland recognizes apartment development eventually brings high crime rates and other problems.

If the Dallas City Council cannot learn from past mistakes, not only of others, but mistakes made in the City of Dallas as well, then people need to be elected who can and will learn to abide by the City Charter.  

Building more apartment ghettos will only exacerbate the problems Dallas already has, and probably create some new ones as well.

The problems in Vickery Meadows can only be solved by removing the apartments.  That will only happen if the City of Dallas provides the needed tools, including:

		increased police presence,
		increased code enforcement,
		taking corporate owners to court to force improvements and repairs, and
		encouraging tenants to also take owners to court for blatant neglect and allowing known problems to continue to exist.

A couple of class action lawsuits would grab the attention of the overseas owners of some of these complexes since they use their "investments" as tax hedges.  The only way to address the problems is to make their investment too expensive to continue to hold.  That would open the door for the City to purchase apartment complexes, relocate the residents and tear them down.  This will make available very nice pieces of property for economic redevelopment and thus solving several problems in one move.  It will improve an entire section of the City of Dallas.

Economic redevelopment attracts more redevelopment as surely as high crime rates attract more criminals.

What about the East Gate project?

As last reported in the Garland section of the DMN, the developer who will tear down the existing structures estimates a cost of $5.6 million for demolition at which point the property will be worth an estimated $3 million. The developer is willing to shoulder the cost of demolition and pay the City of Garland $100,000.00 for the 42-acre site and then build a retail/office/residential development which will be far more likely to raise area property values, generate sales tax revenues, and generally increase the quality of life in South Garland.

All for the spending $1...