The first home I designed and built over 20 years ago on Wimberley Court was for my parents. After my 40-year-old brother was confined to a wheelchair with ALS, I wanted to make sure they lived in a house where they could comfortably age in place, with doors wide enough for his chair, and any they might need years later.
I’ve built nine more homes on this same street, including the one I live in today. Like me, many of my neighbors moved here a long time ago and we love our neighborhood. Which is why we can’t understand why the city is determined to ruin our quality of life.
. A former church building directly adjacent to our homes in northwest Dallas near Walnut Hill Lane and Betty Jane Lane was destroyed by the 2019 tornado. That property was recently purchased by developer Crescent Estates.
Crescent made a request to the city to change the zoning for this property from its existing single family R-16 zoning to one that would be even denser than the densest townhome zoning in Dallas (TH-3) with lots as small as 1,650 square feet (smaller than a tennis court). In other words, where only one home is allowed now, 10 could be built. The developer also wants to increase the maximum height of most of these “patio homes” to 36 feet, even though no single-family homes in our neighborhood, or in any of the surrounding neighborhoods, is three stories.
Opinion
Most frustrating of all is the city’s insistence that letting a developer cram in these units is in keeping with the goals of ForwardDallas 2.0 — the update to the 2006 citywide development plan that City Council passed last fall.
Homeowners across the city opposed the plan, worried that provisions allowing increased density would destroy the integrity of their neighborhoods. Language was included in the plan to ensure that wouldn’t happen, such as: “Changes to areas within Community Residential neighborhoods should look to add housing in a way that is gentle, equitable, incremental, and sensitive to the existing context.”
My neighbors and I agree with ForwardDallas and aren’t opposed to adding density to our neighborhood. Over July Fourth weekend, 48 of us signed a petition that, while stating our strong opposition to Crescent’s extreme proposal, said we would all support a more reasonable alternative — even one that would triple the current density as long as it was aligned with the message of ForwardDallas.
When we presented our petition to city officials, it was quickly dismissed because the developer had told them the numbers (i.e., profit) didn’t work for him. Is that the only standard now in Dallas?
Our frustrations increased when a dozen of my neighbors and I attended the City Plan Commission hearing on Aug. 21 with another eight participating online. We waited two hours for our case to be heard, were told we had only two minutes to speak, and were all duly cut off at the two-minute mark, as I was before I could quote the passages from ForwardDallas commissioners were ignoring.
After our comments, our city plan commissioner read aloud four of the emails he had gotten in support of the project, but not one of the approximately 80 emails neighbors sent to him in opposition. Two commissioners voted with us: Tom Forsyth and Tabitha Wheeler-Reagan. The other 13 supported the developer.
We are the test case, so far proving that the words so eloquently stated in ForwardDallas are meaningless. What is happening in our neighborhood is neither “gentle” nor “incremental” nor “sensitive to the existing context.”
When my Dallas City Council representative, Gay Donnell Willis, votes to either uphold those lofty words she voted for last year or ignore them, it will be more than just my neighborhood watching.
John E. Wimberley is president of the Wimberley Court Homeowners Association in northwest Dallas.