Dallas residents were up in arms on Wednesday at a community event, voicing their frustration with City officials over how the upcoming update to the comprehensive land use plan has been executed and the threat it could pose to single-family zoned neighborhoods.
The summit was co-hosted by The Dallas Express and CandysDirt. Upwards of 100 attendees packed into a conference room at the Cooper Hotel on Preston Road to discuss the proposed urban planning framework.
As previously reported by DX, ForwardDallas has stirred consternation among some residents who feel its advocacy for increasing density puts single-family neighborhoods at risk of being rezoned to allow for multifamily housing units.
“Dallas has the most vacant development parcels in the United States. We’ve got a lot of land that’s available for development. There’s more than 90,000 acres — 140 square miles,” said Jack Kocks, president of the Neighborhood Coalition of Dallas.
That undeveloped land, a lot of which is concentrated in southern Dallas, came up multiple times throughout the three-hour discussion, as did anecdotes involving City officials and staff pushing for density across the cityscape. One unnamed City employee allegedly told a group of concerned residents that everyone needed to “share in the pain of density,” multiple attendees said.
While some in the crowd expressed support for certain aspects of ForwardDallas, the overwhelming majority of people who spoke up expressed their disapproval of the plan as written, mainly because of the potential for zoning changes. With no explicit protections for single-family zoned neighborhoods against townhomes, duplexes, and triplexes, the plan would force residents to challenge individual zoning cases that crop up when developers look to build such housing in their neighborhoods.
The move toward increased density has become a trend in many cities across the United States, with urban planners pushing for zoning changes, ostensibly to encourage builders to throw up units to alleviate the national housing shortage.
Whether City officials are seeking the larger tax base some claim multifamily housing offers or developers are looking to profit from established infrastructure, homeowners in attendance seemed to feel that single-family neighborhoods are being targeted.
Some expressed that the problem with the ForwardDallas document lies in the limited input stakeholders and industry experts had in the development of the plan. Others pointed the finger at the mismanagement that has been evident across a number of City departments in recent years, an issue DX has highlighted on numerous occasions.
“In a word, our planning department, all our technocrats, and all these hired people, they’re inept. And they’ve come up with a very bad plan using flawed planning techniques,” said architect Bob Ikel. “It’s incumbent upon everyone in this room to go to the presidents of their HOAs and inform them of what they heard today … and then the presidents of the HOAs need to send that message to their council members and tell them that this is going to damage the single-family neighborhoods.”
One City official, however, was applauded for their support for explicit protections for single-family neighborhoods: Council Member Cara Mendelsohn (District 12).
“Cara is the only one that has made the statement. She won’t stand for it because she’d rather do nothing than take the chance it’s going to harm the quality of life that we expect to live in Dallas,” someone said.
Mendelsohn has repeatedly been given high marks by her constituents, beating out every other council member in DX’s monthly Rate Your Council Member Survey.
The mood throughout much of the event was sober but energetic, with attendees appreciating that defeating the current plan or securing explicit protections for single-family neighborhoods would be an uphill climb. Various speakers encouraged greater civic engagement, calling on attendees to lobby their council members and make it clear residents want to maintain the character of their neighborhoods and the value of their homes.
ForwardDallas will be getting a hearing before the Dallas City Council on September 25. At the meeting, council members may approve, amend, or reject the plan as currently written.