City, residents brace for a teardown showdown
Dallas: McMansions pitting builders against preservationists
By EMILY RAMSHAW / The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS, Texas - They've duked it out before city zoning boards, at community centers and in the gyms of local high schools.
They've flooded their representatives with e-mails and phone messages and gone to war with yard signs.
On Wednesday, homeowners and builders will come head-to-head before their most captive audience yet – the Dallas City Council – over a controversial zoning tool designed to limit teardowns and "McMansions" in Dallas neighborhoods.
Supporters and opponents of the proposed "neighborhood stabilization overlay," which would give homeowners a quick fix to halt incompatible redevelopment, know the stakes are higher this time.
Mayor Laura Miller has taken a stance on the measure. The influential City Plan Commission has passed along its recommendation. And nearly six months after its design, council members are lining up on either side of the overlay – and bracing themselves for what will likely be a marathon debate. A final council vote is scheduled Sept. 14.
"We've got to make sure we don't recklessly impede the redevelopment of neighborhoods," said council member Gary Griffith, who represents District 9. "At the same time, we've got a strong obligation to help protect the characteristics that have made those neighborhoods strong."
For years, North and East Dallas residents have sought creative ways to battle teardowns in their neighborhoods. Some became historic districts. Others achieved conservation district status, a less-restrictive zoning category.
But as the line to become a conservation district grew longer, the waiting period leapt from months to years. And homeowners watched, hands tied, as new construction took over their neighborhoods.
The neighborhood stabilization overlay was designed by the city's development staff as a short-term solution.
Under the proposal, residents could, with support from a majority of their neighbors, regulate height, garage location, front- and side-yard setbacks and the paved surface of future construction.
During the neighborhood's wait for council approval, builders would be forced to get development plans OK'd by the city, an attempt to protect homeowners from incompatible projects in the interim.
In the months since the overlay was unveiled, it has received harsh criticism from builders and real estate agents, who say it will stifle inner-city growth and inhibit the city's tax base.
The details were so controversial that the overlay was held up at the city's Zoning Ordinance Advisory Committee – the board directly below the Plan Commission – for more than three months. And when the commission got it, members tightened it up, recommending, among other points, that height and story restrictions be taken out of the measure and that 75 percent of homeowners be on board to approve the overlay.
City Council members are not bound by the Plan Commission's recommendations when the two bodies meet Wednesday to consider the overlay. But Mayor Laura Miller said she thinks the commission's compromise is a "reasonable place to start."
She supports setting a threshold of 75 percent of homeowners to approve an overlay, saying that city staff's recommendation of "50 percent plus one is not a good number."
She wants an overlay to apply to a neighborhood's "original platted subdivision," not a set number of homes.
And she wants city-issued petitions to be notarized and to pinpoint detailed, individual changes – not unspecified ones to be determined at a later date.
"The shorter the checklist, the smaller the number of items to change, the better," said Ms. Miller, who spent last week meeting with Plan Commission and council members on the overlay.
On one point, the mayor is more aligned with the homeowners. Ms. Miller thinks height and story limits are a fundamental piece of the overlay.
"I think the first- and second-story issue is a valid one," she said.
Council member Angela Hunt, the overlay's staunchest supporter on the council, said she's deeply concerned that anyone wants to make the overlay contingent on the support of 75 percent of homeowners – "by far the highest threshold" of any zoning category in the city, she said. She said the Plan Commission's version of the measure "eviscerated it."
"If the purpose was to simplify the process, why are we throwing up obstacles?" Ms. Hunt asked. "Where I'm hearing this going is that we're making it harder ... for an overlay than for a conservation district."
Council member Bill Blaydes falls on the other end of the spectrum. In the overlay's original form, he said, "I wouldn't have voted for it if my life depended on it."
And while he's considering the Plan Commission's version, he admits he hasn't warmed up to it yet.
"There's another way to take care of the kinds of problems they are dealing with, and it's called a conservation district," he said. "I do not believe it is in the best interests of this city, when you look at tax structures and increasing costs, to cut off the only thing we have today that is increasing in value, and that's our single-family homes."
Most residents and developers fall somewhere between the extremes and are hoping for compromise.
Wendy Segrest, an East Dallas homeowner who moved from the suburbs and then "watched the suburbs move in next door," said she hopes the council puts a height restriction in the overlay and lowers the 75 percent approval threshold.
"Now that builders have bought so many homes in the neighborhood, they would have a vote," she said. "There might not be enough of us left to get 75 percent."
Jay Wysong, a developer with Belmont Lakewood LP, agrees with the 75 percent threshold – "It takes more work and time, more thought process" – and said the overlay will be workable if "we come to a common ground."
"You're mixing the old with the new, and you have people that have lived in their houses for 50 years before new construction," he said. "We need to not come in and put up monstrosities that are offensive to the neighborhood scheme.
