PHEHA Crime in the News

Shoppers slow to venture back to tornado-damaged Preston and Royal

Sat, 09 Nov 2019 13:19:42 GMT

By Maria Halkias
The Dallas Morning News

Almost all businesses on the northwest and northeast corners are now open. The Toy Maven has moved to try to save her holiday business. Preston Royal Cleaners and Lucy’s Tailor consolidated spaces.

Temporary traffic signals are seen at a parking entrance on the northeast corner of the Preston Royal Shopping Center, which was damaged by October's tornadoes.(Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer)

“We’re open.”

That’s the message tornado-damaged businesses on the northwest and northeast corners of Preston Road and Royal Lane want to send to their customers.

Almost three weeks after a tornado put two of the four corners out of business temporarily, the stores and restaurants that are open are worried that people have decided it’s not safe to venture back.

Their recovery from lost power and leaky roofs has been overshadowed by the more severe destruction at the same intersection.

The southwest and southeast corners of the intersection, anchored by Central Market, McDonald’s and dozens of small businesses, are surrounded by chain-link fences and have a long way to go until they can reopen.

And a handful of businesses on the northern side of the intersection — the AT&T store, Cantina Laredo, EatZi’s, Lash Studio, Einstein’s Bagels and Bank of America — are still closed due to damage from the Oct. 20 tornado.

But most stores on the north side in Preston Royal Village have reopened, some as recently as a couple of days ago.

Edens, the company that owns the two corners that make up the Preston Royal Village shopping center, says 90% of its tenants have reopened as of Friday.

Internet service used for phones and checkout systems is still an issue for many.

Kory Helfman, who owns Ken’s Man’s Shop, said his staff had to resort to handwritten receipts Thursday evening. “We’re trying to make up lost business,” he said. He opened a week ago and had a good Saturday. “People came in and said they wanted some normalcy.”

That’s what Rick Young and his two young daughters were looking for when they approached EatZi’s on Thursday evening. They were disappointed to find that it’s still closed. It plans to reopen Nov. 21.

“It’s the first really cold day, and we decided to get some comfort food,” Young said.

The Young family is back in a two-bedroom apartment they had lived in for a few months after selling their house while looking for a new one. Moving day was Oct. 20.

“We were all crowded in the laundry room with the movers,” Young said. “Our things were still in boxes.” Their new house was severely damaged, but no one was injured.

Ken Fernandez stopped by Preston Royal on his way home, also to pick up dinner.

Five years ago, he and his wife moved to Uptown after raising their children from 1990 to 2014 in a home a block north of North Haven Gardens. The nursery and his old home were both severely damaged.

“People keep saying we must be so glad we don’t live there anymore,” Fernandez said. “Well, no, it’s where we raised our children, and other people were living there.”

It’s a mixed bag all along the path of the tornado.

Several businesses in the shopping center are part of big retail chains: Tom Thumb, Barnes & Noble, Ballard Designs, Chico’s, Su la Table, Starbucks, Shake Shack, Omaha Steaks and Sephora. Big companies can deal with one store being briefly out of commission, but the smaller merchants are counting on themselves, Edens, the city and utilities to get it together.

“We need some balloons or something at the front door so people know we’re here,” said Traci Clay, who works at Kosart, a gift and home décor shop full of breakable things. She said it had only water damage along a wall on one side of the store.

The family that owns Lucy’s Tailor and Preston Royal Cleaners had to consolidate operations into one shop. Their businesses were among the worst hit in Preston Royal Village. Owners John and Yoon Seok also lost their Midway Hollow home and had two cars totaled. Two other cars are in the shop being repaired.

The dry cleaner side of their business was severely damaged, and the family can’t proceed with repairs until the roof is fixed, said Reina Seok, the couple’s daughter who also works in the business.

They still don’t have power and have been operating on two generators, but the smallest generator was stolen this week.

Lucy’s Tailor shop has been there 20 years and the cleaners 17 years, Reina Seok said. “Some customers are understanding, but some are not.”

Lucy’s Tailor and Preston Royal Cleaners are on the same power grid as Einstein Bagels, which was severely damaged.

Right across the parking lot, Shake Shack, Ken’s Man’s Shop, Cousin Earl, Sports Clips Haircuts and Snap Kitchen have power and are open.

Signs at The Toy Maven directed customers to a new temporary location that opened Friday at Preston Road and Forest Lane. Owner Candace Williams says she’s hoping to salvage the holiday season.

Employees, former employees, toy vendors from the Dallas Market Center and friends were on hand Thursday to help her set up the new location.

The walls need painting, but Williams didn’t want to wait the two or three days it would have taken to get the paint fumes out of the 7,600-square-foot space. Most toy stores make all their profits for the year in November and December.

The temporary space used to be a real estate office. What was an office supply room with a large work area in the middle seems perfect for holding all the arts and crafts toys, Williams said. Another office will be filled with trains. Some of the names are still on mail room cubbies.

They’re making do with what they have, Williams said 24 hours before she planned to open. She was more upbeat than she’s been since her store was flooded from the roof damage.

“It’s going to be an adventure,” she said. “We’ll be as ready as we can and open for the season.”

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Grow Preston Hollow and the whole city will benefit

Sun, 15 Sep 2019 12:44:32 GMT

The Dallas Morning News Editorial

We can't wall off parts of the city from change.

A look at the brick structure known as the Pink Wall, which used to be the sign of status in Preston Hollow as homeowners near Preston Center, near the intersection of Preston Road and Northwest Highway in Dallas, battle high-rise expansion efforts that will affect parking, transportation and quality of life aspects in the area. (File Photo / Staff)

A struggle over the future of a crucial area of Preston Hollow is over, and the entire city should soon benefit because the right thing happened.

Development fights are hard. Good people on both sides have deep-seated feelings about the future of their neighborhood, the place where they have made their lives, raised their children or where they hope to grow old gracefully.

There is no setting aside the emotion that comes with major change in such a place, and we are respectful of those who opposed changing the zoning around the area known as the Pink Wall, at Northwest Highway near Preston Center. But it was important that a handful of opponents not be able to halt progress for the greater good of Dallas.

For those who don’t know this area, it’s important to understand that this is a place of high potential for the city’s future. It is central. It is affluent. It is along major corridors with easy access to highways. This is the sort of area that must and will become more dense, more walkable and more urban over time if Dallas is to continue to mature as a city.

The hope of many people who live in and around the 14.2-acre parcel at issue was that it wouldn’t change much. Or, if it did change, that the change would see the land less developed than it has been.

That would be nice for the people who live there. It would not have been fair, however, to property owners in the parcel who want to realize the fair market value of their assets. It would not have been fair to nearby property owners who might see greater value rise from increased density along Northwest Highway. And it would not have been fair to the city as a whole, a place where we need growth in order to build the tax base that will support a better future and help relieve the intense tax burden carried by single-family home owners.

The deal in Preston Hollow, approved through a unanimous vote of the City Council Wednesday will see greater density rise along Northwest Highway.

High-rises and mid-rises will likely take shape soon. Developers covet this land, as we might expect. Traffic will likely increase. That is an inevitable function of growth.

But we believe that smartly managed development that considers the need for green space, traffic-calming elements and pedestrian access will only make Dallas better.

All over the country, NIMBYism and zoning shenanigans have distorted housing markets, creating pockets of great wealth while people just trying to earn a living can barely find a place to live.

Dallas doesn't want to follow that path, and council member Jennifer Staubach Gates wisely led her constituents and her district away from that tempting but ultimately damaging path. And she did so at no small cost as she found herself attacked both personally and politically.

We expect that, after the changes come, many of those who found themselves opposed to the new zoning might come to see that their neighborhood not only isn’t worse off, it’s better off, and a richer place a number of ways.

In Preston Hollow, 'the no people' square off against Dallas' appetite for development

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 12:44:26 GMT

The Dallas Morning News
By Robert Wilonsky

"Residents want it to stay like it was when they moved in in 1970," said council member Jennifer Staubach Gates.

In the shadow of Preston Tower, this burned-out husk of a concrete parking garage is all that remains of the Preston Place condo building that still hasn't been removed or replaced since the fire of March 2017.(Ryan Michalesko / Staff Photographer)

Around 7:30 Labor Day morning, just as the sun began its ascent over the treetops, some 30 men and women gathered in front of a garden apartment complex for orange juice, cereal bars and pastry. There was to be a march along Northwest Highway, but some residents feared treading along the roadway despite the absence of traffic on a holiday. This is how a Preston Hollow protest became a Preston Hollow block party.

Breakfast was served by Citizens Advocating Responsible Development — a new group with a familiar story if you've spent the last three years following the tussle over 14.2 acres of prime Preston Hollow real estate behind a pink wall that's no longer pink and barely even a wall in some spots.

"We're called 'the no people,'" said Carla Percival-Young, who lives in the Athena high-rise on Northwest Highway. "And that was done purposefully by the other side," said Steve Dawson, a University Park resident who owns a condo complex on a corner of this neighborhood.

They shrug off the moniker, say they're just protecting the neighborhood, their investments, their people. They say they're all for new things as long as they're not too high or too close to the garden apartments planted in the 1950s and the high-rises that came after.

"We're very concerned by that label," Percival-Young said as we walked the neighborhood filled with residents who've lived there since the Johnson administration. But, Dawson added, "we've always been mischaracterized that way."

Residents at a Preston Hollow block party on Labor Day. Don't mince words. How do y'all really feel?(Robert Wilonsky / Staff writer)

Mischaracterized, they say, by staffers and officials at City Hall, where in June the plan commission endorsed adding more density to that slice of Preston Hollow. And by developers ready to build new things behind the falling-down pinkish wall. And by their increasingly anxious neighbors who actually do want tall towers and public parks weaved into an aging neighborhood still traumatized by the fire that claimed the Preston Place complex and one of its residents in the spring of 2017.

I walked up Monday morning to a giant banner draped over the exterior of the Gas Light Manor on Bandera Avenue. It read "STOP OVER-DEVELOPMENT!" with a red "no" circle stamped over a sketch of the downtown skyline. Two smaller signs stapled to a wooden stake were planted in the front garden apartment's yard. "NO MORE TOWERS!!" said one; the other, "HELP SAVE OUR NEIGHBORHOOD FROM DENSE URBANIZATION." Throughout the neighborhood, plenty of yards are decorated with "No More Towers In Preston Center, Fix the Traffic First" signs.

I mean, you must admit, that's a lot of no, people.

In a week's time, the Dallas City Council is scheduled to vote on a plan that would rezone this small area called Planned Development District 15. The new PD15 would essentially allow for twice the number of condos than currently allowed. And it would let developers build high-rises here, five decades after Preston Tower and the Athena, which bracketed the late Preston Place, were constructed to great fanfare — and not a peep of opposition.

This Lego model of PD15 was on display at Monday's block party/protest. The red is as high as some residents say they're willing to go.(Robert Wilonsky / Staff photographer)

Next week's vote, if not deferred, comes four years after residents began fighting development along Preston Road and Northwest Highway — shrinking or scuttling altogether proposals for the 27-story Highland House, the Laurel apartment complex, the sky bridge and parking garage in Preston Center. There have been task forces and town halls and area plans. Laura Miller even came out of political retirement to run against development, only to get run over at the polls.

PD15 is a zoning document, not a developer's plan. But the mere possibility of more — more stories, more people, more cars on Northwest Highway and the area's wide and quiet streets — panics some residents, among them high-rise dwellers who have lived here for decades along a stretch of Northwest Highway that resembles Miami Beach. C.A.R.D. members say they foresee a future in which they're surrounded by more tall towers and the greige boxes that have consumed so many other neighborhoods in this city.

"Residents want it to stay like it was when they moved in in 1970," said council member Jennifer Staubach Gates, who has spent most of her six years on the council trying to find a path forward for this well-off neighborhood encased in amber.

I've been to so many meetings on the subject, including one called by Miller in the Athena lobby on a snowy Sunday, I lost interest about three years ago. Except now, the neighborhood shows obvious signs of slow-creeping rot. A unit at the Royal Orleans, one of the six parcels making up this 14.2-acre area, was recently boarded up. Owners of the condos inside the PD, including the Diplomat, are doing what they can to keep the decades-old building just standing and sound.

If the council ultimately decides against the PD rewrite, it's possible if not likely that decay will only return. Developers will not want to sink more and more money into land where they will not find a return on their investment.

"I just want to do what's right," Gates said Monday. "I want to do what's right for the progress needed there."

Residents have chosen this new moniker — Citizens Advocating Responsible Development — because they insist they're not aginners. But that depends on your perspective: On what remains of Preston Place's charred parking garage, the PD15 redo could allow a building as high as 310 feet, if developers offer green space or affordable housing or other good things. CARD's pamphlet wants to stunt its growth at a mere 90 feet.

"We all agree there needs to be development," Athena resident Barbara Dewberry emailed me after Monday's meeting. "But it needs to be responsible, not too dense and not too tall."

Dewberry and other pink-wallers began writing a couple of weeks ago, insisting their concerns have been unheeded at City Hall, their compromises unwelcomed. Dewberry reiterated what a dozen others told me Monday morning: Theirs is "one of the most affordable, best situated neighborhoods in Dallas. We need unique neighborhoods like this in our city, and they are worth protecting and retaining."

And that is a point worth listening to, because this is a unique and lovely neighborhood; its ruination would be shameful. Averill Way and Bandera, behind the high-rises, look like New Orleans and Colonial Williamsburg had a fling with Miami Beach in the 1950s. The buildings have names that sound like something out of a film noir or retirement community brochure: Gas Light Manor, Royal Arms, Park Fontaine, Prestwick Manor, Fountainbleu.

Some have pools out front. They were empty Monday morning, though my whole life I can't remember seeing anyone using them. Some of the places look mid-century modern; a few, like the front of a Benihana. "Eclectic," Dawson says of this area.

"These are transitional properties," Dawson said as we walked down Bandera, meaning they "give you that single-family feel" without the upkeep that comes with having your own lawn and pool.

This is what the residents want to protect. Well, that and their views from the Athena and Preston Tower. As we stood on the street Monday, they kept insisting they don't want their neighborhood turned into Manhattan ... or the next West Village. Or Uptown. Or Bishop Arts.

"It's all throughout the city — develop, develop, develop," said Bill Kritzer, a Preston Tower resident serving as C.A.R.D.'s president. "And the city needs to respect the homeowners' view."

But this fight is nothing new. In July 1973 there were plans to construct a 22-story apartment building called Chateau du Monde between the Athena and Preston Tower. Residents found several reasons to oppose the construction, among them "snarled traffic" — plus ça change. The City Council ultimately approved the tower's construction.

Except it was never built. Because the developer ran out of money. So instead this area wound up with the far shorter Preston Place, whose destruction led to this new fight.

Man. In this town history doesn't just repeat itself. It doubles down.

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PD-15: City Staff Overrules Plan Commission To Rewrite The Rewrite

Wed, 07 Aug 2019 19:15:24 GMT

by Jon Anderson
CandysDirt.com

Will the city stop playing politics and do what’s right to help the Pink Wall’s PD-15 get the update it deserves?

Beginning in April 2018, city staff ran the Authorized Hearing process working with the Pink Wall’s PD-15 committee. The Authorized Hearing process, whereby the city oversees a community response to zoning changes, was kicked off because the original 2017 neighborhood committee stalemated. That stalemate can be blamed on the intractable NIMBYism of the Athena and Preston Tower (catch-up on last meeting here). The Authorized Hearing ended in a similar stalemate. At that point, November 2018, city staff was asked by council member Jennifer Gates to write the changes they’d propose to make to update the decades-old PD-15.

Of course, the “N” in NIMBY stands for “Not” and that pretty much summed up the towers’ response.

But at least a semblance of a plan was on paper, something two committees had failed to get anywhere near in two years. While I had my own beefs with it (various spacing and setback tweaks), at least there was something to work with – a far cry from the towers’ fantasyland that reached its zenith in a nasty city council race, pitting incumbent Jennifer Staubach Gates against former Mayor Laura Miller, who was backed by activists at Preston Tower and The Athena.

It was city staff’s recommendations that made it to City Plan Commission in a two-part session in April and June. While city staff and city plan commissioners were pre-briefed, the public’s applecart was upset by a last-minute plan put forth by Provident Residential for the Preston Place and Royal Orleans lots at the June Plan Commission meeting. It called for blowing the 240-foot height limit on Northwest Highway in exchange for lower lot coverage, which would transform the neighborhood with green space.

PD-15 Map

Provident’s push for a single 310-foot third tower along Northwest Highway ticked-off plenty of folks on both sides of the debate – but it succeeded in garnering support from all but Commissioner Michael Jung. That support came with increased mixed-income housing requirements. The last crazy half hour of the hearing was spent lassoing the additional things a developer would have to do to get to 310 feet. The City Plan Commission was smart enough to realize that it couldn’t just be the originally proposed 240 feet with proportional add-ons. It had to give more.

That baffling half hour saddled 310 feet with enough added requirements for affordable housing that sat on a razor-thin margin for even being constructed, or so I heard. It certainly pushed the grapevine to posit whether the building would go condo (a thought I had immediately) or whether Provident would drop/sell their hard-earned envelope and walk away.

In addition to 310 feet, commissioners also layered a new points-based system that included fully underground parking for gaining density bonuses and setback relief to push a great ground-level experience. Meeting attendees from the public were confused. However, plan commissioners had been briefed on the points and 310-foot height – an offer refused by city staff (which may explain their later changes).

Tower Spacing Ignores an Actual Tower

Before I hit the changes, there’s a big, fat omission on tower spacing (added setbacks between tall buildings). Everyone is so worried about the three parcels in play, they ignored potential redevelopment of Diamond Head Condos directly across Diamond Head Circle from the Athena. The point system allows a developer to “point” their way out of tower spacing on north/south faces. Diamond Head and Athena share an east/west property line … so whew? Not really.

Even before the “points,” the proposed ordinance states

Tower spacing. Along Pickwick Lane, Baltimore Drive, and the interior property lines that run north/south an additional setback of one foot for each two feet in height above 45 feet is required for that portion of a structure over 45 feet in height, up to a total setback of 30 feet.

No mention of the east/west Diamond Head Circle. So the only location where new construction will abut the main face of an existing tower and there’s no tower spacing? WTF?

And this tower spacing isn’t the only setback that forgets the Athena. Within the points system, a developer can “spend” two points to reduce east/west setbacks by 10 feet – pushing a redeveloped Diamond Head even closer to Athena. If the document actually means between Diplomat and Royal Orleans, say it.

Prioritizing Mixed-Income

There are a bunch of after-the-fact, city staff-driven changes, but two impact the viability of redevelopment. The first revolves around mixed-income housing. Both city staff’s original recommendation and the ordinance passed by City Plan Commission essentially allowed developers to pick and choose their poison to increase density above the base 90 units per acre. City staff’s rewrite after City Plan Commission’s approval prioritizes mixed-income housing.

You might be thinking that since a developer would likely max out density bonuses to reach the maximum of 125 units per acre, it doesn’t matter. But it does. Double.

Assuming 125 units per acre regardless, staff’s prioritizing of mixed-income housing between 91 and 115 units per acre results in projects with 20 percent mixed-income. Compare that to Plan Commission’s 8 percent when requiring mixed-income units only between 115 and 125 units per acre.

I recall council members flabbergasted when Lincoln Katy Trail offered an unprecedented 15 percent mixed-income – 20 percent is 5 percent beyond a flabbergast.

City staff is pushing excessive mixed-income on the back of underground parking, diminished building footprints, and perhaps even height (aboveground parking pushes buildings up). Given the near-universal concrete coverage within PD-15, better buildings and streetscapes benefit all.

Too Much Green Space?

The second big problem might be excessive green space. Yes, I said it – too much. The bare minimum required is 5 percent, with both plans incenting another 5 percent for five added units per acre.

Plan Commission added room for another 7.5 percent to the 5 percent minimum if Residential Proximity Slope (RPS) was breached, for a total of 12.5 percent connected open space. City staff added the two together to get 17.5 percent open space. Think about a one-acre lot, part of which is eaten up by private roads, sidewalks, and setbacks … now reduce that by 17.5 percent. Not a lot left to build on.

I think city staff pushing such high numbers for open space and mixed-income housing takes enough money out of the equation to put redevelopment in jeopardy.

I can hear the towers cheering, but they shouldn’t. I’ve said all along that mutual agreement gets the best outcome. And every time the towers have gone to the mat promoting their NIMBYism, they’ve lost big. Two years ago, there were no Trump tariffs, more/cheaper labor, and a Dallas unconcerned about mixed-income housing. Now all those things are biting into profits. The towers’ unending tantrums have made everything larger. If this set of deals craters, the next set will need even more.

There are other bad insertions by city staff that should be concerning. They advocate for less landscaping because City Plan Commissions’ approved plan would “cause clutter, and provide limited benefits.” Yup, the concrete jungle of PD-15 is in danger of being cluttered in trees.

City staff also wants typical boring Dallas architecture. The City Plan Commission wanted ground-floor units to have fences and stoops, multiple façade materials, and building articulation to make it more interesting than a flat stucco wall. City staff axed it all saying it was covered elsewhere – but it’s not as detailed.

One bite only …

Why is City Staff Taking a Second Bite, Usurping Plan Commission?

My day job requires me to understand complex information and repackage it so that it’s easily understandable and digestible by other groups. My first thought at seeing the latest version was that city staff was repackaging for simplicity. Nope. City staff is changing intent.

It’s a political “we said,” “they said,” “we’re saying again” situation where the intended goal seems to be to sap power from the City Plan Commission and Dallas City Council in favor of the Planning and Zoning department getting the last word.

It’s bureaucrats seeking to supersede elected officials’ will on a high-profile case at a time when there will be seven new members on the Dallas City Council that aren’t sure who to trust. It’s precedent-setting and will have long-felt implications.

As council members consider the final outcome for PD-15, they need to remind themselves that the process has always been that city staff recommends and plan commissioners approve. There are generally no backsies.

I’m reminded of Lincoln Katy Trail, who managed to convince one City Plan Commissioner to ask to reopen their case after failure. The City Plan Commission’s response was a resounding, “what’s done is done,” and that to reopen Pandora’s Box once, opened it to every case they heard.

The Dallas City Council needs to heed that history and thank city staff for their concern and move forward with the PD-15 version approved by the City Plan Commission. There are seven fresh faces at the horseshoe who must work with plan commissioners appointed by their predecessors. To them I say, “Just because you didn’t pick them, doesn’t mean they didn’t do their job.” To believe otherwise weakens the institution of the Dallas City Plan Commission, including for the new members you will soon appoint.

Dallas PD Reportedly Mulls Takeover of Popular ENP Program

Mon, 15 Jul 2019 14:15:41 GMT

by Candy Evans
CandysDirt.com

More than 80 neighborhoods across Dallas pay for off-duty police patrols in a bid to keep their respective crime rates down. As proposed changes to that system have been leaked and the rumor mill activated, 80 neighborhoods are now feeling some angst about the fate of the popular — and effective — program.

ENP is short for Expanded Neighborhood Patrol, a citizen-paid police patrol system utilizing DPD officers that has worked to lower crime in many North Dallas neighborhoods since 1991, when the Dallas City Council first established the program.

There are more than 80 across Dallas, from Midway Hollow to a nascent patrol in Lower Greenville, Oak Cliff to Preston Trails. More ENPs are developing to combat crime and guarantee rapid response times given the current slow response DPD response rates. The ENPs are paid and administered by private citizens through homeowner associations.

In fact, even newly-elected mayor Eric Johnson enjoys an ENP in Forest Hills. Full disclosure: my husband started the first ENP in Preston Hollow, the Preston Hollow North Patrol, in 1991, and I am a past board member of our Northlake/Hillcrest Estates patrol. For many reasons, I have great respect for and strongly support the private neighborhood patrols.

The private neighborhood patrols also enhance property values, especially during periods of high Dallas crime. And they indisputably help lower crime, as this Dallas Morning News story from 2015 attests:

In North Oak Cliff, crime is down by about 60 percent across several neighborhoods that have paid for off-duty officers to patrol since 2007, said Russ Aikman, president of the North Oak Cliff United Police Patrol.

“It works because they are proactive rather than reactive,” Aikman said. On-duty officers, he said, are “typically so busy responding to one 911 call after another that they don’t have a whole lot of time just to be driving around looking for suspicious characters, suspicious vehicles.”

That effectiveness is why ENPs make a home and its neighborhood more attractive to buyers.

Melshire Estates HOA

“ENPs absolutely enhance property values,” says Pam Freeman, who is marketing a home in Hillcrest Estates and has been on the police patrol board since its inception. “Numerous owners have bought in this neighborhood over gated communities because of the well-functioning patrol. And if people are having concerns about the rise in Dallas crime, the ENP puts their mind at ease completely.”

In Lochwood, property values have shot up. Median home prices from June 2004 to now are up 123 percent, from $168,000 to $375,000.

“Lots of other factors have added to that, but I think the fact that we prioritize community safety and our patrol has definitely helped foment these values,” says John Jones, an agent with Dave Perry-Miller and VP of the Lochwood Neighborhood Association. A vast majority of the LNA budget goes towards ENP, he says.

“We have had cases where the ENP officer has arrested criminals right in the neighborhood,” says Jones, “We fear adding an additional level of bureaucracy and higher cost for that bureaucracy could potentially discourage officers from wanting to work more hours — homeowners may be paying a lot more money for fewer hours.”

And the North Oak Cliff United Police Patrol turned ten last year. In that period, the patrols answered more than 10,000 calls for service.

Off-duty police pay ranges from $32 to $50 an hour. Each police division has an administrative coordinator who ensures officers don’t work too many hours off-duty, currently 72 after a 40-hour work week. (The limit was 40 under Chief David Kunkle, but Chief David Brown expanded to 72, according to officers.) Homeowners also like knowing the regular crew working in their ‘hood — they often become friends with the officers.

“Prior to establishing an ENP in Midway Hollow, the crime rate was concerning,” said our Director of Audience Engagement, Bethany Erickson. “But once it was established more than a decade ago, the rate has stayed in the low double digits at the highest, and generally it’s those nuisance-but-not-dangerous crimes, and the occasional burglary and crime of opportunity.”

She adds: “We established such a close relationship with our patrol that we actually hired one of the officers to fulfill our requirement for an off-duty officer when we had our wedding at the Farmer’s Market.”

When ENPs were first created, taxpayers complained it was double-taxation — paying tax dollars for policing, then paying for private police on top of it. There is less of that sentiment today, as homeowners understand how stretched and understaffed the department has become. While some used to complain the ENPs promote unequal policing — richer, safer neighborhoods get better police services — middle-class neighborhoods are now scrambling to add ENPs to help curb car thefts and petty crime.

Police cars, gas, and salaries are all paid for by private neighborhood associations. In fact, the program brings revenue to the city — the associations pay to rent a patrol car at about $13.50 per hour. In 2015, the city collected more than $1.3 million for patrol car rentals, according to Dallas Morning News reports.

But now, based on an audit in November, Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall is considering a take-over of the ENPs. Rank and file officers are not happy. According to an email we obtained that was written by Michael Igo, Major of Police, City Manager’s Office Liason:

For the August 12^th PSJC meeting, the Department will be presenting a briefing on off-duty employment performed by Dallas Police officers. The Department will be moving towards procuring a 3^rd party vendor to have complete managerial oversight of the program. The oversight is necessary to maintain compliance and decrease liability for the City and the Department. There will be a nominal fee charged to the off-duty employer by the vendor. Additionally, new policy will be released limiting the number of hours worked from 72 to 40 hours a week. Officers and coordinators working ENPs now will not lose their assignments.

Mike Mata, president of the Dallas Police Association, told me that officers have no beef with the limiting of hours — he thinks 50 would be better, but can live with 40. It’s the sudden intervention of the third-party administrator that will add extra cost to the program for citizens and could open the door to future DPD controls of the program. An officer who did not wish to be named told us that this move would discourage police from participating in ENP programs due to the added level of bureaucracy and having to deal with a third party. Another said the Department may be doing this in an effort to steer officer overtime to the department, not the ENPs, because of the city’s tremendous officer shortage.

“I look forward to understanding why staff believes we need to utilize a 3rd party and what the cost to the off-duty program will be,” said Councilwoman Jennifer Staubach Gates. “It is my understanding the recommended changes will be briefed to the public safety committee in August.”

Gates responded to my queries Sunday about the changes, and explained DPD management’s concerns — compliance with issues and risks highlighted in the November audit, and possibly an earlier audit from 2005.

I encourage crime watch leaders to review and understand the risks and recommendations contained in the report. It describes the benefits of having an off-duty program as well as the necessity to having internal controls in place to assure any risks are mitigated. DPD management agreed to making the management changes necessary to comply with the issues and risks highlighted in the audit.

The chief, says Gates, is in the process of drafting the new policy regarding Off Duty Employment (ODE), with the final draft 30 to 45 days away, for briefing at the August 12 public safety committee.

There will be changes to the policy, but they are all not determined at this point. The Chief did share in an email to me this week that some of the changes to the policy would include reducing the number of overtime hours officers can work. Currently they can work 72 hours of off duty work and management is proposing 40 hours. The new policy will require all off duty employment to be registered. DPD is currently going through a procurement process for a 3rd party vendor to help manage ODE. Currently DPD does not have staff to monitor and audit ODE to the level it is required. Management has determined a 3rd party manager is necessary to maintain compliance and decrease liability for both the city and the police department. The Chief has communicated there will be a nominal fee for oversight management and this could impact the cost of ENP. It is unclear what that cost will be and who will be incurring the increase. Better understanding of the changes and impact will be understood when all policy changes are made public and in the briefing to the public safety committee.

Gates says the chief has assured her no officers, or their coordinators, will lose their ENP assignments.

“I will continue to advocate for ENP and neighborhood control of the program as well as keeping management costs at a minimum. It is my belief ENP benefits the entire city. I also support the Chief complying with the audit recommendations and believe that can be done without harming the ENP program,” Gates wrote.

We have reached out to Igo and Assistant City Manager Jon Fortune, currently out-of-office, for answers to several questions, including:

How could a program that began in 2001 suddenly be “putting the Department at risk with compliance issues” in 2019?
Why were these concerns not voiced first to the 80-odd ENP leaders across the city as a heads-up?
Will the ENP be run by a third-party vendor, and if so, any idea who?
Will the administrative costs be passed on to the neighborhoods using the ENPs currently, and if so, do you have a roundabout figure for what that cost would be?
Will the State Fair staffing fall under this same scrutiny, and if so, what will that look like? And if not, why not?
Does the department have a plan to address the backlash that is already happening as the ENP neighborhoods begin hearing about the changes? What will the chief do to reassure them?

We’ve also heard from officers who question changing a popular program wholesale when it gives them a steady secondary stream of income, especially as the department grapples with manpower shortages and morale problems.

“It’s costing the department nothing, and is, in fact, enriching it,” says Officer Roy Watkins. “And it allows DPD officers to budget for extras for their families.”

To be continued…

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Dallas plan commission supports controversial North Dallas rezoning plan

Fri, 07 Jun 2019 16:04:35 GMT

Dallas News
David Tarrant and Hayat Norimine

A new high-rise could come to the affluent Preston Hollow neighborhood in North Dallas under a plan tentatively approved Thursday.

Over the objections of some neighbors who believe traffic will worsen on and around Northwest Highway, the City Plan Commission overwhelmingly approved a zoning plan that would effectively double the number of condominium units allowed on the 14-acre parcel, where a three-story condo building burned down two years ago.

The rezoning plan still needs full council approval.

The case has been one of the most contentious in the city in recent years. The parcel is part of Planned Development District 15, known as PD-15 — an area next to some of the most expensive homes in Dallas.

The zoning battle had also prompted former Mayor Laura Miller to challenge incumbent three-term City Council member Jennifer Staubach Gates this spring. Miller carried precincts around PD-15, but lost to Gates by a 2-to-1 margin. She did not attend the hearing Thursday and did not respond to a request for comment.

Before the vote, commissioners said the rezoning plan was right for the area.

“Clearly, change is hard,” said Margot Murphy, Gates’ appointee to the plan commission. “The goal is maintaining a great neighborhood.”

The prime real estate in question serves as a buffer zone of sorts between the Preston Center shopping complex to the south and Preston Hollow single-family homes. The city’s proposal capped the height of new buildings at 240 feet along Northwest Highway and restricted the slope down to 96 feet adjacent to the single-family neighborhood to the north.

But a friendly amendment from Murphy, which commissioners supported, would allow for a height of up to 310 feet in exchange for a percentage of mixed-income units.

A concrete slab, all that remains of Preston Place Condominiums, which was destroyed by a fire, is seen in at 6225 West Northwest Highway on Friday, March 8, 2019, in Dallas. (Ryan Michalesko/Staff Photographer)

The extra height could also come in exchange for added amenities, including an underground parking requirement and more green space.

"I support this because I think it's going to make this area beautiful," Commissioner Pete Schulte said.

City staff had recommended increasing the density in the area to make the site, where Preston Place Condominiums burned down in March 2017, more economically viable for developers.

The case had previously come to the commission April 18, but commissioners decided they needed more time for staff and interested parties to review a traffic study.

City councilwoman Jennifer Staubach Gates, left, and Laura Miller, who were candidates for City Council District 13, participated in a debate at Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas, Monday, April 22, 2019. (Brandon Wade/Special Contributor)

On May 20, the city received that traffic study, which was commissioned by the Preston Place Condominium Association — a group made up of the condo owners whose units burned down two years ago. That group has supported the city rezoning plan.

The study indicated that traffic in the PD-15 area would rise more than 70 percent if the zoning was 90 units per acre. And traffic would double if the zoning was 125 units per acre.

Opponents to the city proposal said the traffic study wasn’t comprehensive enough and believed traffic would be even worse than the document described, particularly on cut-through streets.

David Nevarez, the city’s senior transportation engineer, said he saw no reason to challenge the veracity and scope of the report. He added that the city will require another more detailed traffic study once a developer offers a specific proposed project.

“I certainly understand their concerns,” Nevarez said of opponents. “I gotta say, this is the first traffic study that I see as part of an authorized hearing. ... It is a comprehensive study.”

The opponents to the city's proposal had pushed instead to hold fast to an “area plan” approved by the council two years ago — weeks before the fire — that called for keeping redevelopment projects to a maximum of four stories to restrict density and traffic.

Steve Dawson told commissioners they ought to reject the rezoning because neighbors overwhelmingly opposed it.

Commissioner Michael Jung said he respects area plans but said he did not believe such plans are “holy writ.” The urban design elements, particularly the incentives for more open space, are important improvements, Jung said.

But Jung ended up voting against the plan after Bill Kritzer, a resident of Preston Tower for 10 years, said the city broke a “golden rule” by violating the residential proximity slope — a slope from the ground used to determine height caps — with the increased height limits.

Kritzer said he was “very disappointed” by the commissioners’ decision Thursday.

“I believe that, for the most part, they don’t know what they just passed,” he said. “Just as a citizen, I have no idea what they’ve done.”

Gloria Tarpley, the commission's chair, told the opponents of the proposal they “have been listened to.”

“Much thought has gone into this,” Tarpley said. “We have really tried very hard to put ourselves in the shoes of each one of you. All of you have mattered in this process.”

City Plan Commission Brings Surprisingly High Ending To Pink Wall’s Two-Year PD-15 Saga

Thu, 06 Jun 2019 16:13:28 GMT

Candys Dirt
Jon Anderson

New buildings set between the towers

Tonight’s Dallas City Plan Commission meeting had a surprise ending for naysayers bent on limiting heights in PD-15.

I have to give the neighbors credit for successfully coming together to put forward a plan to maximize green space in the area. Developers also upended the city’s recommended PD-15 changes with a bold plan to deliver on those neighbors’ request by offering 35 to 45 percent of open space between a combined Royal Orleans and Preston Place. The catch? A new tower on Northwest Highway would hit 310 feet in height, slightly less than Preston Tower. (I was agog when I saw this option gaining support.)

In exchange for that height, the neighborhood will gain the aforementioned green space plus 100 percent underground parking for residents and guests (limited above ground for delivery and prospective tenants). The kicker to the height is that they want fewer units than the city’s proposed plan calls for with its affordable housing and green space sweeteners (120 units per acre versus 125 with all the sweeteners).

The proposal that drove the Plan Commission’s decision is shown above. It will contain 360 units. Given all the cubic footage of the project, the units will have to be very large. It will be part of a semi-connected set of projects punctuated by connected greenspace. The building’s commanding views of downtown and North Dallas will be equal to the rents or selling prices charged. Yes, selling prices. Seeing the size of the building and the number of units, the resulting oversized units almost beg for condos – if not immediately, then converted at a later date. This is something the neighborhood has long wished for.

Contrary to the naysayers, a development such as this will resuscitate the Pink Wall in a way smaller buildings would be hard pressed to match. I believe once the dust has settled, the values and desirability of the area will quickly increase, bringing in new money to revive and restore the remaining walk-up buildings. It’s what a signature development can do. (Of course, this still has to pass Dallas City Council.)

Proposal viewed from Northwest Highway

And high-rise living isn’t going anywhere. This week, The New York Times noted that in 1908 just 26 percent of the city’s high-rises were residential. The last decade has brought that number to 64 percent (when accounting for those buildings currently under construction) – and New York has a lot of high-rises.

Above is a rendering of the new central green space. Diamond Head Circle is closed from the Athena to the old Preston Place and converted to a park. Ground-floor units that once faced concrete now have patios that bleed into the green. Traffic from the new developments is cut off from impacting the existing buildings on Diamond Head Circle as I had hoped.

Traffic-wise, the city also wrote into their changes that the redeveloped Preston Place, Royal Orleans, and Diplomat would need to shunt traffic to Northwest Parkway and (preferably) Northwest Highway via a new opening (probably Tulane). This will minimize traffic overflow to existing side streets and Preston Hollow – another win for the neighborhood.

Of course, for many, the positives will only begrudgingly be admitted in hindsight. The Dallas City Plan Commission was treated to a monologue of the same tired, slanted tropes – this time delivered by University Park resident and Laura Miller supporter Steve Dawson.

Nearly universal support

It’s Not Perfect

The city’s original draft proposal had built-ins for affordable housing. The new proposal at 310 feet along Northwest Highway needed tweaking. The proginal draft proposal had no way to break the 240-foot residential proximity slope even with the “points system” that rewards density for increased greenspace and smaller building facades (to avoid a solid wall on Northwest Highway). So to enable breakage or RPS, Plan Commission added affordable housing in a way that enables a building to go from 240-feet to 310-feet.

There would need to be 5 percent of housing set aside for those earning between 50 and 60 percent of Average Median Family Income and another 5 percent for those earning between 61 and 80 percent of AMFI. (But my gosh, it took forever for them to tediously get the wording right.)

Also, one of the things a developer can spend “points” on is the extinguishment of tower separation. In the case of Northwest Highway that only impacts the western edge of the Athena. It would behoove residents to meet with the developer and work out a compromise to keep a separation that’s frankly mutually beneficial.

Also, the Northwest Highway setback retains the city’s recommendation of 70 feet instead of today’s 100-foot setback. I think there is ample documentation for a fight to brew there.

But finally, it must be pointed out that contrary to political fudging, there will not be six 20-story high-rises, or even two. Just one.

In The End

Should this pass City Council, the end result will be very positive aesthetically and economically to the neighborhood. I’ve said for quite some time that it’s less about height, but what’s happening on the ground that really matters. In this case, the ground is a lot greener than expected while minimizing traffic.

Now, if only the Preston Center garage could see such a positive, park-like outcome.

Here's the North Dallas dispute at the heart of the Laura Miller and Jennifer Staubach Gates council race

Sun, 10 Mar 2019 16:40:08 GMT

David Tarrant, Enterprise writer
Dallasnews.com

A rectangular concrete slab, shaded by a few live oaks, is all that remains of what once was home to about 100 residents, most of them older retirees.

Two years ago, a fire destroyed the condominiums here, which were located within a 14-acre development on the north side of Northwest Highway between Pickwick Lane and Baltimore Avenue.

But the blaze did more than reduce homes to rubble and devastate the residents' lives. It tore apart a neighborhood.

This prime real estate serves as a buffer zone of sorts between the Preston Center shopping complex to the south and Preston Hollow single-family homes. But now, it's a prominent battleground — for a fight between developers and the city's most prominent and wealthy residents; between the condos' former owners and their neighbors; and between two Dallas political heavyweights.

Former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller speaks to reporters as she leaves the city secretary's office after filing the required petition signatures to secure a place on the ballot for Dallas City Council District 13 on Feb. 15, 2019, at Dallas City Hall. (Ashley Landis/Staff Photographer)

In one corner is Dallas City Council member Jennifer Staubach Gates, who wants to rezone the area and build anew. In the other corner, former Mayor Laura Miller, who says more density there will strangle the quality of life in surrounding neighborhoods.

Miller's battles with Gates over development in this area helped draw her out of political retirement. But she said her fight is more than a neighborhood squabble in Council District 13. When she decided to run, she called the election "a referendum on development in District 13 now and in the future."

Gates, in turn, said Miller's efforts are "not trying to get a good development." Instead, she said, the former mayor seems bent on "stopping anything from happening."

The battle in the larger Preston Center-area war comes to a head in the midst of the election season. On March 21, the City Plan Commission is scheduled to hear recommendations from staff for zoning in Planned Development 15, or PD-15.

“We are in a process,” Gates said, “and the community input will be included.”

City Council member Jennifer Staubach Gates during a budget discussion at Dallas City Hall earlier this year. (Ashley Landis/Staff Photographer)

Lifestyles of the rich and famous

The adage “location, location, location,” applies to PD-15, the largest part of an area commonly known as “behind the pink wall,” for the serpentine pink brick wall that stretches along Northwest Highway east of Preston Road.

The neighborhood began to develop in the early 1950s with luxury apartments and added condos over time. Later, the city approved zoning for the area known as Planned Development District No. 15, or PD-15 for short. The zoning governs six condo properties on a 14.2 acre tract of land in an area that includes the Preston Tower and Athena high-rises that flanked the three-story Preston Place.

The area drew its prestige in part because its sits between Preston Center and the luxury homes in Preston Hollow, a neighborhood that claims among its prominent residents billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and former President George W. Bush.

In 2015, after frequent zoning fights and concerns about traffic congestion in the area, Gates appointed 14 people to come up with guidelines for future development and plans to reduce traffic congestion in the area.

The task force included Miller, who lives in Preston Hollow west of Dallas North Tollway.

“We were all excited to do this plan for the area and stop all the raucous emotional zoning battles going on in the neighborhood,” Miller said.

A look at the brick structure known as the "Pink Wall," which used to be considered a sign of status in Preston Hollow as homeowners near Preston Center in Dallas, battle high-rise expansion efforts that will affect parking, transportation and quality of life aspects in the area. (2018 File Photo/Louis DeLuca)

The plan promoted smaller buildings and more green space. Both commercial business interests and homeowners supported the plan, Miller said. The plan also said residents wanted to “limit additional redevelopment projects to a maximum of four stories.”

Preston Center would serve as the main area for dense development, Miller said, invoking the concept of West Village in Dallas’ Uptown neighborhood.

The City Council signed off on the plan in January 2017. And eight weeks later, the fire broke out at Preston Place Condominiums.

Seven-alarm fire

The massive seven-alarm fire started the night of March 3, 2017. The blaze killed an 89-year-old woman who lived there and destroyed cars, belongings, memories. Some pets also died in the blaze.

Those who owned the condos in the 60-unit complex — mostly older, retired residents — want to sell the property to a developer so they could recoup their investment and move on.

Dallas Fire-Rescue personnel fight a 7-alarm fire at the Preston Place condos in the 6200 block of West Northwest Highway early Saturday, March 4, 2017. (Metro Video)

During a public hearing last month, former Preston Place residents described how the fire disrupted their lives. Several said they still have to pay their mortgages on the non-existent condos.

Kenny Dickson, whose parents were residents at Preston Place, said his father, Kenneth Dickson, a retired senior associate pastor at Highland Park United Methodist Church, has cancer and may not live long enough to see the property sold.

“Most of the people who lived in Preston Place were older,” Dickson said, when it was his turn to speak. “And this was their home. So what we're hoping for is that we move forward.”

The zoning issue is more humanitarian than political, he said.

“The longer we wait, the more risk there is that people will die before they recoup their investment,” Dickson said.

Fight heats up

But the stakes were high, and the politics began to heat up.

Miller, known as a combative politician in her decade at City Hall, accused Gates of scrapping the task force’s plan after Preston Place burned down.

The former mayor said Gates told her and others that developers could not build anything economically viable within the four-story limitations set out in the area plan.

Gates said she hasn’t scrapped the area plan and that “Laura is sharing wrong information.” The area plan was also a vision, not zoning law, Gates said.

She said the only way to redevelop the old Preston Place site without making a zoning change would be to rebuild the condominiums with exactly the same number of units with the same configuration. Otherwise, all six properties covered under PD-15 have to agree to changes.

That setup was a recipe for nothing to ever be done, Gates said, because the other properties within the PD-15 area couldn’t agree on any changes.

City gets involved

After Gates’ neighborhood steering committee couldn’t reach an agreement last spring, the council member and city staff then launched a process called an authorized hearing. Under the authorized hearing process, city planners hold public hearings and make recommendations on appropriate zoning to the City Plan Commission.

Gates’ idea was to “tackle new zoning for the whole area” rather than just Preston Place.

But Miller opposed the authorized hearing process in a letter to Gates dated May 11, 2018, that was also signed by several supporters, including former council members Donna Blumer and Mitchell Rasansky.

“As you know, the community of homeowners living in the vicinity of Preston Center is highly concerned about any increase in density or traffic,” Miller wrote. Developers want to “build big,” the letter stated, but “it is the surrounding neighbors who have to live with the consequences.”

One of those developers, Provident Realty, spoke to the steering committee about Preston Place. “We’re working with Provident as the city process proceeds,” said Preston Place Homeowners Association Board president Arnold Spencer.

Spencer declined to provide details, and Provident leaders couldn’t be reached for comment. He said Preston Place owners want to incorporate sustainable development and environment-friendly designs and respect their neighbors' positions.

The city's plan would nearly double the allowable units per acre — up to 90 rather than the current 52 — and give developers more units if they set aside some as affordable housing. Some parts of the development could be up to about 20 stories high.

A concrete slab, all that remains of Preston Place Condominiums, which was destroyed by a fire, is seen in at 6225 W. Northwest Highway on March 8, 2019, in Dallas. Preston Tower is in the background. (Ryan Michalesko/Staff Photographer)

Gates, in an interview, said the density for PD-15 "makes sense because you'll get a better quality project."

At the end of a Feb. 19 public hearing, Miller said the community had already spoken "louder and clearer than any other neighborhood over two years" with its message.

"And it was: Don't give us more than four stories when you redevelop behind the pink wall," Miller said.

Asked about the city recommendations’ detractors, Gates said “some people just want nothing.”

Several former residents of Preston Place displaced by the fire also saw the city's recommendations favorably. Spencer said the ideas “represent a reasonable compromise and an economically viable option.” And Sharon Anderson, who also lived at Preston Place, said former residents “are stuck in limbo through no fault of their own."

"This isn't about making money,” she said. “This is about recovery.”

Two extremes

The coming weeks promise to be a political brouhaha.

Miller said she has had to fight the same battle over and over in recent years. “For six years, neighborhoods have called me to help with zoning cases,” she said.

Homeowners need an advocate, she said, and that’s why she’s running. Near Preston Center, a row of homes on Northwest Highway display large "Laura Miller for City Council" yard signs.

Miller built her political career on that pro-neighborhood narrative. And Gates' background makes her a natural enemy. The council member’s father is Dallas Cowboys legend Roger Staubach, who made a second career in real estate. And her husband has real estate investments, too.

But Gates has also cast Miller, who has plenty of political baggage, as a single-issue candidate focused only on development in the Preston Center area. “Effective leadership requires ... a balanced and collaborative approach,” Gates said.

Gates said it is “very clear” that Miller “is using this one issue to promote her political agenda, which I do not believe is in line with District 13 voters.”

Claire Stanard — who lives on a street just behind the PD-15 and is the city liaison for Preston Hollow South Neighborhood Association — said she’s not happy with the Miller-Gates battle.

“I feel like the election has devolved into two extremes: pro-development vs. anti-development,” she said.

“Many people see Laura Miller as against any development, and people label Jennifer Gates as pro-development simply because her father and husband are in the development business,” Stanard said. “Neither of these are true.”

Stanard said what’s needed is a comprehensive plan for PD-15 “that takes in consideration the neighborhood, the sellers and the developers.”

Getting the city planners involved in the process was the only way to move forward, Stanard said. “None of the sides could agree. Everything kept ending up in a stalemate,” she said.

“But the city does need to listen to the community input,” she said.

Stanard plans to attend the March 21 public hearing on the city’s recommendations.

As for who will get her vote on Election Day on May 4? Right now, she said, "I’m not sure."

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Plan Commission Briefed on Proposed Staff Changes to PD-15

Fri, 08 Mar 2019 23:11:30 GMT

by Jon Anderson
CandysDirt.com

[Editor’s note: Jon Anderson is a columnist for CandysDirt.com. His opinions are his own.]

While Thursday’s meeting fell short of the usual fireworks expected, the City Plan Commission asked some great questions regarding city staff’s proposed changes to PD-15.

In the lead-up to City Plan Commission’s public hearing on staff’s proposal for updating PD-15, staff briefed plan commissioners Thursday morning at Vital. Groups. Knee. Senior Planner Andrew Ruegg, who’s led the process so far, presented essentially the same slides as were shown to the community two weeks ago.

What the few who went to the meeting were most interested in were the questions and comments from the other commissioners. I give a “Hallelujah!” to CPC chair Gloria Tarpley for commenting that the 3-D images shown of the proposed changes would have been welcome at other cases. How the city can be devising “words on paper” documents reflecting 3-D realities without 3-D models has always been a mystery. It should be ante to the game.

The first questions were from District 11 appointee Janie Schultz. First, she was curious whether the requirement for a street lamp every 50-feet was adequate. While boilerplate, staff said they’d look into it. Schultz’ second question concerned the affordable housing sweeteners and whether anyone would use them. The suspicion is that along the northern side they will be unlikely to be used, while on the Northwest Highway side they may if the developer wants to get near tapping any height. It kind of goes to what I’ve been saying that if the buildable envelope doesn’t grow, it’s just cannibalizing market-rate units for affordable units.

Commissioner Jung was next (at least I think it was, his back was to me). He wanted to know what would happen to all the non-conforming things that would result if the proposed changes were adopted. He called out the carports on the PD’s northern alley, two caretakers’ cottages-turned-condo, and the towers themselves (which would violate the proposed residential proximity slope). The answer was essentially nothing would happen until a property redeveloped.

Commissioner Shadid followed up Schultz’ comments on the usability of the proposed affordable housing sweeteners. Ruegg wouldn’t comment specifically on their likelihood of use.

District 14 appointee Paul Ridley focused on the burned Preston Place lot. He wanted to know if their existing footprint was grandfathered in. It appeared the current Tulane Blvd. buildable lot line would encroach on the proposed setbacks – should someone want to rebuild the old Preston Place exactly as it was. It got mildly confusing when Ridley seemed to mix the 66 surplus lots into Preston Place’s original 60 units. City staff didn’t seem to understand Ridley’s apparent misunderstanding. For clarification, Preston Place’s 60 units are not part of the 66 surplus units (which are a shared resource among the other PD-15 parcels). The surplus units are the result of PD-15 being changed to reflect the density of a never-built high-rise on Preston Place. When that planned 125-unit complex only resulted in the 60-unit Preston Place, the shared resource of today’s 66 surplus units was created because the PD was never changed to remove the unbuilt units.

The final commissioner to ask a question I’ll leave nameless because the question was embarrassing. This commissioner wanted to know how the area would be replatted should a single-family home builder wish to develop within the PD. I call it embarrassing because no one is going to pay the land price only to plop what would he hugely expensive homes in the middle of a neighborhood that on a generous day would be called middle-class. Although, never say never. In 2006, someone built townhouses in Farmers’ Market on land zoned CA-1 providing unlimited height, 100 percent lot coverage, and 20-to-1 density.

Now, since the public wasn’t allowed to speak, here are my two suggestions …

Proposed setbacks outlined in red

Northwest Highway Setbacks

From above, it’s easy to see the structure of the four Northwest Highway-facing buildings are essentially in alignment. There’s a reason. In 1945, “Preston Tower” was called out on a city survey and notes the 100-foot setback minimum. In 1963 there’s another survey that extends the 100-foot setback across all four parcels. In 1966, a contract was signed by each of the four parcel owners that called out the 100-foot setback and the 50-foot right of way – it states changes must be unanimously approved. Each owner’s title documents list the 100-foot setback.

Today, there are two parcels who could feasibly take advantage of a reduced setback. Preston Place has a roughly two-acre parcel and so given its size, doesn’t need it to build a good building. Royal Orleans is a small parcel with an equally small buildable envelope. Should one building be pulled out of alignment? And for what?

Even assuming it was legal (which seems doubtful), the proposed 70-foot setback guarantees a poor pedestrian experience. As seen in the yellow box above, the 70-foot setback is only good for the first 45 feet in height. Above 45 feet, the Northwest Highway urban form setback of 20-feet kicks in, producing a 90-foot setback above 45 feet in height. The only benefit of the 70-foot setback is to the first 45-feet of a potentially 240-foot tall building – you know, where the pedestrians are supposed to be.

Reviewing the numbers, the proposed changes call for 10 feet of (pink) wall/green space border along Northwest Highway. There’s a 50-foot public access frontage road. A 70-foot setback is 10 feet back from the frontage road. But wait, the plan also calls for up to 15 feet of encroachment for porticos and such. Someone’s missing 5 feet.

The result is that the neighborhood winds up with a landing strip of sidewalk and the occasional bush flanked by neighbors who, while having porticos, also have pretty good front yard landscaping. The towers also use the 100-setback for drop-off outside the active roadway. By comparison, a 70-foot setback would result in road-blocking drop-offs.

The solution here is obvious. If the urban form setback along Northwest Highway is ditched, it results in a flat face to Northwest Highway (boo-hoo) that if pushed back to the 100-foot line results in a potential building having the same (or more) buildable square footage without messing up the very streetscape the plan is trying to engender.

A four-story encroachment into the 100-foot setback is a poor exchange for an urban form setback that benefits no one (that would be challenged in court).

Multi-Family Residential Proximity Slope (RPS)

On the northern boundary is another setback that needs looking at. While I’m all for the single-family RPS being instituted, the multi-family version will cause unintended results. The goal for the “back” northern lots is to keep them lower than those on Northwest Highway – it provides a needed step-down between the existing height on Northwest Highway and the two-story developments to the north. Lower buildings also tick-off the existing towers less.

Single-family RPS does this just fine. What multi-family does is knock off the lower floor backs of potential buildings along an alley. The existing buildings across the alley are two-story with bedroom windows facing towards the alley. The ground-floor windows of those buildings are below the corrugated steel carport roofline – their “view” is of a car hood and a white painted steel sky. If a 100-story building was built, the views from those windows are unchanged. The second-floor windows are rarely unobscured by curtains or shutters, signaling their view is already not worth viewing. Being zoned MF-1 and deed restricted on top of that, change across the alley is extremely unlikely.

BUT, if the multi-family RPS chunks out enough of the lower floors to force a building to go higher due to less efficient geometry, that’s a poor trade-off for the neighborhood. For example, because the dimensions are known, would the currently proposed 85-foot Diplomat replacement be forced to jump up to a full 8-stories to make the geometry work? I don’t think there’d be much neighborhood support for an extra floor in exchange for the multi-family RPS. Especially when it impacts an alley and buildings whose poor views are likely to be impaired further. However, an extra story will make them darker as more sky is taken.

There are nuances to setbacks whose cost/benefit to the resulting neighborhood should be considered more closely.

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PD-15 Community Meeting: The Chaos That Didn’t Come To Town

Wed, 20 Feb 2019 16:30:57 GMT

by Jon Anderson
CandysDirt.com

Fifty years after last school bell rang for attendees, front rows are still last to fill

[Editor’s note: Jon Anderson is a columnist for CandysDirt.com who lives in District 13. His opinions are his own.]

The community gathered last night to discuss PD-15, and honestly, I expected this to be a “bottle of rotgut and a bullet to bite on” kind of meeting. But it wasn’t. To be sure, when the public comment section came around there was no shortage of strong words on every side of this issue. Former Dallas mayor and District 13 city council candidate Laura Miller gave her 2-cents when everyone else had gotten one. (More later)

In a bizarre coincidence, earlier in the day I’d read about the jet stream’s current velocity pushing eastbound airplanes as fast as 801 miles per hour — which is about how fast city planner Andrew Ruegg zipped through 96 slides in about 40 minutes at last night’s second PD-15 community meeting. While some of the city’s all-important graphics could have benefitted from a few more seconds on the screen, it was a comprehensive overview of the draft proposal being delivered to city plan commission on March 21.

Note to city: Graphics of exactly what’s on the table are critical to comprehension. They should be there at the get-go, not batting clean-up.

But just as the Preston Road and Northwest Highway Area Plan didn’t take economics into consideration, the city’s PD document really didn’t either. It would have been helpful to have had a “likely outcome” section.

You see, while the land bordering Northwest Highway is proposed to allow 240-foot heights, It’s not probable that’s what will be built. Let me explain …

RPS is a secondary stop-gap to height that can’t be zoned away in future

Royal Orleans

The city is limiting density to 90 units per acre. They’re also limiting lot coverage based on height – under 96 feet tall requires 65 percent coverage, and from 97 to 168 feet tall, coverage drops to 55 percent. Anything over 169 feet tall can only cover 45 percent of their lot.

For Royal Orleans and its existing setbacks, their coverage is less than 45 percent already, so they could theoretically build the full 240 feet of height. But at 90 units per acre and an 11-foot floor height (10-foot ceiling plus 1-foot gap between floors) that’s 21 stories.

But their lot is a pinch less than an acre and results in a buildable floor of roughly 16,000 square feet (minus setbacks, hallways, gym, office, etc.). Assume an average of 1,000 square feet per unit. That’s 16 units per floor and they can build 90. That’s six stories. If they wanted 12 stories, it’s 2,000-square-foot units on average.

Even maxing out the city’s affordable housing and green space sweeteners, bringing the total to 125 units per acre, those additional units will likely add two floors. Most likely resulting in eight stories – remarkably similar to A.G. Spanos’ plan for the Diplomat right behind Royal Orleans on a similarly sized lot.

And there’s another limiting factor the city can’t really address. The cost of parking a highly-dense building on a small parcel. Underground parking is really expensive. A developer would be hard-pressed to dig economically enough to provide the needed parking for a tall building assuming the 1,000-square-foot average. Of course, the larger the unit, the less parking needed, but units that size would almost have to be condo, and condo money is very hard to get from a bank.

Preston Place

Preston Place has two acres with half theoretically allowing 240 feet on Northwest Highway and 96 feet on the northern half of their lot. So double Royal Orleans’ math and you still don’t likely get a high-rise. Sure, they could pile all of their 180 units on the front, but no developer is going to build what would be an expensive building and leave half the lot as parkland.

As you can see above, one city scenario (green) showed two buildings split in half. But even that I think is a generous possibility. If the back building is assumed to have 90 units there’s no way the front taller building can also have 90 units. There’s too much of a volume difference unless the units on the Northwest Highway building would be a heck of a lot larger than those on the back.

The city did not share if any rough calculations of unit sizes went into their overall envelope calculations. I suspect not, but I don’t know for sure.

And remember, I’m not afraid of height. I’m the one who thinks one fabulous building would be a game-changer for the neighborhood. So while I’d love to see a 240-foot-tall starchitect building, I just don’t see it.

There were plenty of other parameters suggested for PD-15, but height always seems to be the bugaboo. If you want to see the city’s deck, you can download it here.

10-6-4 – The 70-Degree Snowman

The committee members behind the 10-6-4 plan that I took to the woodshed two weeks ago was presented. Many kept calling it a “compromise.” A compromise is when something rests between “bare minimum” and “overboard.” My new analogy involves a snowman.

The 10-6-4 draft is like offering to build a snowman on a 70-degree day. However, there is no snow to build the snowman above 32 degrees. Saying 70 degrees is a compromise from 80 degrees isn’t an actual compromise because you can’t build a snowman above the freezing point of water.

The same is true of development. It’s not a compromise unless it’s buildable, and 10-6-4 isn’t. It’s a collection of boxes with no volume calculated, no unit counts, not financeable, and no one saying they’d build it. It makes assumptions that sound good, but the city would be powerless to implement. It’s a 70-degree snowman.

Public Comments

I have to insert some irony. When the city speakers were done, they announced that commenters from the public would have one-minute to say their piece. A huge groan and grumble erupted about the city shutting off comments. However, they explained that 50 people had signed up to speak, so each additional minute given to everyone (to be fair) would be essentially adding another hour to the meeting. By the time the last person spoke, the room had lost at least a third of its audience. Had each person been given two minutes, the room likely would have been nearly empty. So much for the grumble. Anyway …

The noisiest comments came from Preston Hollow residents who’d seen Provident Realty present to the Preston Hollow East Neighborhood Association last week. They and their architect showed up with a 38-story building containing 320 units that many claimed the city supported. Council member Jennifer Gates spent too much time quelling nerves. There is no effing way a 38-story building will be built in PD-15. That would be over 400 feet tall, placing it in the top 30 tallest buildings in Dallas – just slightly shorter than the Renaissance Hotel on Interstate 35E and the W Hotel in Victory Plaza. At 160 units per acre it would be 60 percent more dense than the city wants. Provident has a habit of throwing crap against a wall and seeing what sticks – unfortunately, residents have no way of knowing that. All that tone-deaf tactic did was inflame the situation.

A few concerns popped up about the city’s density-based affordable housing sweeteners. More than a few pulses raced judging from the mummers of “no” heard through the room.

There were a few odd comments wanting to know if there were limitations on the ages of new residents. No, said the city. Two speakers were alarmed that people with children could move in next door to a retiree. (Now we know why the grandkids don’t visit). Behind me I heard someone respond to the kids concern by saying “black kids” which seemed to be combination racism when coupled with the affordable housing comment.

In a laughable moment, a Preston Tower resident said they’d distributed a survey to everyone whose email they had. Really? Everyone? I didn’t get one and I’ve got the biggest mouth in the area. My email is listed on every column I write and is well-known to the “no” committee he touts. And yet both he and Laura Miller make hay with the amount of support they have. The rank and file have not been educated nor polled. The HOA boards have likely just allowed their entire building to be represented by this group – and their residents can do little to stop them. I know. They don’t represent me and my HOA won’t give me a vote.

Example of paid consultant’s work left out of Area Plan

Laura Miller raised the issue of her Preston Road and Northwest Highway Area Plan and why all the money spent on research had been cast aside so quickly (cheers erupted from the audience). It’s a simple answer. Task force members (including plan co-author Peter Kline) told me that Miller and the task force tossed the research in favor of their own self-written plan that essentially wrote down whatever task force members dictated.

If you don’t believe me, read the plan here. You’ll note that anything to do with the hard recommendations for density and usage (that, for example, encouraged mixed-use with less focus on office space in Preston Center) are not in the report (graphic above). All the 3-D imagery and potential scenarios were left out. So aside from it having no economic backing, Miller presided over a plan with no data. (Note: I am not implying the consultant’s data was easy to digest or perfect – I gave it hell when it was happening – but it was better than the nothing that was delivered).

Returning to the other comments, a Preston Hollow resident lamented that they’re coming very late to this party and why there wasn’t better notification. I’ve said on multiple occasions that it’s hardly been a secret for the past two years. But there’s another, deeper answer and it involves ever-shrinking newsrooms across the country. I was happy to see a Dallas Morning News reporter at last night’s meeting, but it’s a rarity. Had candidate Miller not been there and fireworks expected, I’m not sure DMN would have shown. Local news coverage is evaporating before our eyes.

Another comment was a fearful cry about PD-15 being a first domino in remaking the entire area into West Village. Nope. First, PD-15 is unique, and in my opinion the only real chance the Pink Wall has at modernization. The rest of the properties are deed restricted to their current two-story build-out. Should the restrictions be lifted (a high bar) their underlying zoning is MF-1, allowing just three stories. There are literally no other dominos to fall. Once the four low-rises are rebuilt (most likely as mid-rises), barring catastrophe, they’re there for the next 30-plus years.

Finally, one Preston Hollow resident said the most truthful thing of the evening. He told the packed house that when be purchased his home, the towers didn’t matter to him. He continued that when he sells, the towers and whatever is built in PD-15 will not be a concern to him either.

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Preston Hollow Activists Offer Misinformation on Zoning, City Council Elections

Tue, 19 Feb 2019 16:27:38 GMT

by Jon Anderson
CandysDirt.com

[Editor’s note: Jon Anderson is a columnist for CandysDirt.com who lives in District 13. His opinions are his own.]

I have to admit, had I been drinking milk, it would have squirted out of my nose when I was forwarded an email from a few Preston Hollow residents. It blared out:

CHANGE IS COMING to District 13!!! (and I don’t mean Staubach’s supersized version) Click the links below – AND: SIGN the change.org petition – AND: GO PARTICIPATE IN DEMOCRACY FEBRUARY 19th at 6:30pm at Hyer Elementary!!!!!!!!! SPREAD THE WORD NOW!!!!!
(three pro-Laura Miller links)
SORRY JEN: LONG LIVE DEMOCRACY!

Its poor grammar, bombastic language, and the accompanying misleading images reminded me of the sound of a group of seagulls hovering over a restaurant dumpster – or basically, the internet. I wonder if they’ll be yelling “LONG LIVE DEMOCRACY” if Laura Miller loses her race against council member Jennifer Gates?

First, the campaign seems to be run by the same people who delivered the recent towers meeting. Everything is assumed to be the evil plot of council member Jennifer Gates – almost like it were politically motivated.

Let’s assume you live in a three-story, 30-foot-tall home (most don’t) and that Preston Place was indeed 40 feet tall. “Version 1” above is the height of a building along Northwest Highway that met the residential proximity slope the city is recommending in their draft. The current zoned height limitation is infinity. So even if 240 feet was likely, it’s still quite a reduction. But they’re also recommending 90 units per acre, which would produce units starting somewhere around 1,500 square feet. No one in Dallas is building that kind of structure. A.G. Spanos’ proposal is for roughly 115 units per acre delivered in seven stories. It’s math.

And that’s just parcels along the front of Northwest Highway. The northern parcels drop to 96 feet in height. Again, not the existing infinity – and not the 85 feet being proposed by A.G. Spanos for the Diplomat lot. On these parcels the proximity slope actually allows a taller building (~120 feet).

“Version 2” reflects a proposal by Provident Realty that was first seen at last week’s Preston Hollow East Neighborhood Association. The city had never seen it, council member Gates had never seen it, plan commissioner Margot Murphy had never seen it – I asked them – something the author of this email didn’t. It will never be built. Provident is famous to me as a developer who throws up ludicrously-sized renderings to see what they can get away with.

“Version 3” is similarly not a real plan. No developer has presented a 19-story building. The “compromise” is simply made-up.

Oh, haha, “diplomatic” because one of the buildings is the Diplomat. More misleading graphics. “Spanos/Staubach” is (and always has been) 85 feet tall. “Could be” isn’t on the table. It’s scaremongering.

The 240-foot tall “Staubach Place” would sit between two towers of similar height, an irony lost on residents of the 21-story Athena and 29-story Preston Tower. Council member Gates home is located in a single-family neighborhood. The Pink Wall was originally zoned commercial. When PD-15 was created in the 1960s, its base zoning was MF-3 – unlimited height. It’s not even apples and oranges, its apples and elephants.

Will something 240 feet in height be built with the density limits? Who knows? No one has come forward with a credible proposal.

You read “California developers,” which this “Illinois writer” translates as misplaced Texas exceptionalism. A.G. Spanos are based in California, but their local executive lives in Preston Hollow. And it’s not their 85-foot proposal for Diplomat that should be the most worrying. The uncertainty of the other lots (with and without developers) should be of far more focus than Spanos’ known quantity – whether you support it or not, uncertainty is always worse.

I have no idea if this is accurate, but it’s certainly misleading (shocking, right?). Which shadows are from existing buildings and which aren’t? Preston Place is shown as a high-rise front to back (which the city isn’t recommending). Royal Orleans is also shown as a high-rise, a configuration that is nearly impossible to build on their tiny lot.

You’ll also note this projection is based on Dec. 21, the shortest day of the year, but also when the sun is at its lowest and producing the most shadow. Literally the worst day of the year. Use June 21, the date of the longest sunshine of the year, and the shadows are completely within University Park.

I saved the best for last. First, I’d hope an 88-story building wouldn’t look like such a dump. Secondly, it’s more misdirected propaganda (of course). Preston Tower contains 85 units per acre but it’s spread over four acres. So yes, this may be what 88 stories of Preston Tower would look like, but it’s as illustrative as piling a block’s worth of single-family homes on one lot. Yes, it’s tall, but the rest of the block would be pasture. It’s simply taking a concept to absurdity. “Absurdity” has always been a great word for political campaigns.

Yes, the neighborhood should have been paying attention to the two-year process of figuring out what to do with PD-15 since Preston Place burned. But they weren’t. Now that pen is meeting paper, the propagandists are out in full force. Their all-too-easy goal is to incite the uninformed angry mob who’re so many political pawns in a game that’s not really about them.

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How a city steering committee could change your life when it comes to Northwest Highway near the tollway

Thu, 14 Feb 2019 17:13:30 GMT

The Preston Hollow Lifestyle
Advocate Magazine

In January, nearly 100 neighbors interested in Planned Development 15 packed the Walnut Hill Recreation Center community room. The PD-15 area is located north of West Northwest Highway between Pickwick Lane and Baltimore Avenue and encompasses six condominium complexes. At issue: What will become of the condos now after one complex burned down? What are the height restrictions? What’s the grand vision for redevelopment? Millions of dollars are at stake. City Council member Jennifer Staubach Gates told the crowd that she’d like for recommendations to be ready by March given that the last committee couldn’t come to a resolution. Why should neighbors care about what seems like a difficult-to-understand issue? If you care about traffic and Northwest Highway development, here’s what you need to know about PD-15 before the public meeting Feb. 19, 6:30 p.m. at Hyer Elementary Cafeteria, 8385 Durham.

What is a planned development?

It establishes planning and zoning regulations for an area of land.

What is PD-15?

PD-15 was established April 23, 1947, and includes approximately 14.2 acres.

Why a PD-15 steering committee?

Preston Place burned down in March 2017.
The city immediately created a study group, which ultimately couldn’t come to an agreement about how to develop the area.
In April 2018, at a community meeting, Gates invited citizens to apply to be on a new steering committee.

Who’s on the new PD-15 steering committee?

The City reports the organization represents all property owners within PD-15, with proportional representation mirroring land mass. Neighborhood representives from outside PD-15 also are included:

Preston Place: Trish Morin-Resch
Preston Tower: Tatiana Frierson and Robert Bowling
Athena: Margaret Darden and Barbara Dewberry
Royal Orleans: Ed Massman
The Diplomat: Maggie Sherrod
Diamond Head: Sandra Welch
Preston Hollow East Homeowners Association: Juli Black
Immediate adjacent neighbors to PD-15 (behind the “pink wall”): Grover Wilkins, Preston Hollow South Neighborhood Association; Kevin Griffeth; Jim Panipinto

Why should you care?

How much traffic will development bring to PD-15 and surrounding streets? How high should the buildings be? How much do you care about being able to walk to Preston Center? Are you concerned about underground parking? What about flooding and water flow management?

What has the new steering committee been doing?

Wilkins, desiring an urbanist’s counsel, invited architect Michael Friebele at Callison RTKL to offer a concept.
The Friebele concept: “One idea, and you build the whole thing.” Sources won’t allow us to publish a map of the concept, but the idea is for architects to design one concept for all properties, suggesting no more than 10 stories on Northwest Highway and four stories on the north side.
Here’s what owners at all condo properties want, according to Wilkins: plenty of green space and walkability; high rises on the south, low rises on north.

What should you do?

Ask questions. Contact Andrew Ruegg, at 214-671-7931 or andrew.ruegg@dallascityhall.com.

What’s next?

Attend the public community meeting Feb. 19, 6:30 p.m., at Hyer Elementary Cafeteria, 8385 Durham.

“This tract of land is incredible,” Wilkins says. “I am three minutes from the tollway, five minutes from Central Expressway. What more do you want? The design factor is essential. We think if we present this to the community, the community will go with this.”

Sources: Dallas City Hall, Grover Wilkins

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PD-15: Neighborhood Association Hosts Meeting to Address Accusations

Thu, 14 Feb 2019 17:10:32 GMT

By Jon Anderson
CandysDirt.com

A.G. Spanos rendering for Diplomat lot

I can’t seem to go a week these days without some wrinkle or shenanigan involving Planned Development District PD-15, located on a small patch on Northwest Highway near Preston Road behind the Pink Wall. Last week, the Athena and Preston Tower had their fact-free punch-fest, and this week it was the Preston Hollow East Neighborhood Association’s turn (PHENA). They’re the single-family neighborhood north of the Preston Hollow South Neighborhood Association (go figure).

For about a week, I’d been aware of a small but vocal (ok, accusatory) group of the neighborhood’s residents who appear to have awoken from a slumber now that PD-15’s future is finally getting serious. Granted, I know the world doesn’t all read my missives about PD-15 (here, on D Magazine – here, here – or Preston Hollow People), but PHENA has also sent scads of emails, texts, Facebook posts, and updates on the neighborhood’s website. My ears are cinders from what’s been said about me on ~~Backdoor~~, ~~Sidedoor~~, ~~Frontdoor~~ Nextdoor. Personally, I leave the social media trash talk, gossip-mongering, and digital curtain twitching to those with nothing better to do.

The point being, folks six feet under at Sparkman Hillcrest have heard about the ongoing redevelopment planning for PD-15. Given that the Preston Place condos burned down weeks shy of two years ago, you’d almost have to be willfully out of touch.

A.G. Spanos placed between towers (with MY suggested green roof)

And of course these folks are all in a tizzy with what’s been going on without them. Many were the same faces opposed to The Laurel on Preston Road and Northwest Highway. Accusations are flying back and forth, open records requests are being filed to get ahold of communications between PHENA president and PD-15 committee member Juli Black and city officials (below). These residents seem to want the train to stop while they get caught up. This is the point at which I hate zoning cases. Everyone does the best work they can and then back-seaters suddenly get riled up to stop the presses because they’re … them. It’s easier and more grand to upset an apple cart that someone else has grown, picked and placed in the cart.

Last night, a hastily called PHENA meeting attracted some 80 residents and interested onlookers. Here’s what went down.

A.G. Spanos rendering for Diplomat lot

The first 45 minutes of the meeting centered on walking attendees through all the communications that have gone on between PHENA and residents. Essentially it built the case laid out above that even death wouldn’t really excuse the neighborhood of not knowing what was going on.

The remainder of the meeting saw the two known developers showing their proposals. The A.G. Spanos team showed their vision for the Diplomat parcel while Provident’s Mark Miller showed an updated vision for Preston Place. Attendees queried after the meeting were pretty OK with Spanos’ project but were aghast with Provident’s ever-growing project.

One of those residents was Richard Wynne. Yesterday, he filed an open records request with the city searching for:

All communications (letters/memos/emails/text messages) between Council Member Jennifer S. Gates, her staff, or anyone acting on their behalf and Juli Black relating to PD-15, the formation of a steering committee relating to PD-15, and/or any proposed development within PD-15.
All communications (letters/memos/emails/text messages) between City Plan Commissioner Margot Brito Murphy, her staff, any staff members of the Dallas Plan Commission, or anyone acting on their behalf and Juli Black relating to PD-15, the formation of a steering committee relating to PD-15, and/or any proposed development within PD-15.
All communications (letters/memos/emails/text messages) from Jan. 1, 2017 to the present between Council Member Jennifer S. Gates, her staff, or anyone acting on their behalf and anyone employed by or affiliated with any real-estate development company relating to PD-15, the steering committee relating to PD-15, and/or any proposed development within PD-15.
All communications (letters/memos/emails/text messages) from Jan. 1, 2017 to the present between City Plan Commissioner Margot Brito Murphy, her staff, any staff members of the Dallas Plan Commission and anyone employed by or affiliated with any real-estate development company relating to PD-15, the steering committee relating to PD-15, and/or any proposed development within PD-15.
All communications (letters/memos/emails/text messages) between Council Member Jennifer S. Gates, her staff, or anyone acting on her behalf and any person employed by or affiliated with the Dallas Observer newspaper regarding an April 22, 2014 news article entitled, “In Preston Hollow Apartment Case, Staubach Gates Takes Recusing Herself to a New Level.”
All documents, internal or external (including electronic communications) relating to an April 22, 2014 Dallas Observer news article entitled “In Preston Hollow Apartment Case, Staubach Gates Takes Recusing Herself to a New Level.” This request shall include any communications between Plan Commissioner Margot Brito Murphy or her staff and City Council Member Jennifer S. Gates or her staff.

This is a pretty big net that seems to be attempting to make connections between The Laurel, PD-15, and its cast of city hall characters. What’s interesting is the request includes current PHENA president Juli Black while not seeking the same information for PHENA board members in The Laurel case. Hmmm.

A.G. Spanos rendering for Diplomat lot

Returning to The Laurel development for a moment, this cry of poor communication may sound familiar. Back in August 2015, I wrote about how prior PHENA president and then board member Ashley Parks managed to secure a City Plan Commission delay. She claimed she, and thus the neighborhood, had not been notified of the latest Laurel proposal that had been publicly available since the prior March. I listed emails she’d sent and received about the proposal and also noted that her husband was one of a group of homeowners negotiating on the neighborhood’s behalf with the developer Transwestern. To me, the story didn’t hang together

Is it credible for PHENA residents to again claim ignorance of communication? I can’t imagine anyone involved with the two-plus years spent on The Laurel dropping the ball so soon. Surely anyone who cared about development had signed up for any communication from both the city and PHENA? Surely at least one of this similar group knew and spread the word. In my experience, protesters don’t hide their lanterns under a bush.

It’s hard to believe an accusation of a willful obscuring of the events within PD-15 can be credible given the amount of communication. However, there may be significant disagreement about the level of redevelopment Black supported. During committee meetings, she was an indulgent counterweight to the towers’ “do nothing” approach. Not all PHENA residents will be thrilled by her generosity of vision.

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Why America’s New Apartment Buildings All Look the Same

Wed, 13 Feb 2019 17:02:15 GMT

By Justin Fox
Bloomberg Business Week

Cheap stick framing has led to a proliferation of blocky, forgettable mid-rises—and more than a few construction fires.

These buildings are in almost every U.S. city. They range from three to seven stories tall and can stretch for blocks. They’re usually full of rental apartments, but they can also house college dorms, condominiums, hotels, or assisted-living facilities. Close to city centers, they tend toward a blocky, often colorful modernism; out in the suburbs, their architecture is more likely to feature peaked roofs and historical motifs. Their outer walls are covered with fiber cement, metal, stucco, or bricks.

They really are everywhere, I discovered on a cross-country drive last fall, and they’re going up fast. In 2017, 187,000 new housing units were completed in buildings of 50 units or more in the U.S., the most since the Census Bureau started keeping track in 1972. By my informal massaging of the data, well over half of those were in blocky mid-rises.

These structures’ proliferation is one of the most dramatic changes to the country’s built environment in decades. Yet when I started asking around about them, they didn’t seem to have a name. I encountered someone calling them “stumpies” in a website comment, but that sadly hasn’t caught on. It was only after a developer described the style to me as five-over-one—five stories of apartments over a ground-floor “podium” of parking and/or retail—that I was able to find some online discussion of the phenomenon.

Texas mid-rises.
Photographer: Laura Buckman for Bloomberg Businessweek

The number of floors and the presence of a podium varies; the key unifying element, it turns out, is under the skin. They’re almost always made of softwood two-by-fours, or “stick,” in construction parlance, that have been nailed together in frames like those in suburban tract houses.

The method traces to 1830s Chicago, a boomtown with vast forests nearby. Nailing together thin, precut wooden boards into a “balloon frame” allowed for the rapid construction of “a simple cage which the builder can surface within and without with any desired material,” the architect Walker Field wrote in 1943. “It exemplifies those twin conditions that underlie all that is American in our building arts: the chronic shortage of skilled labor, and the almost universal use of wood.” The balloon frame and its variants still dominate single-family homebuilding in the U.S. and Canada. It’s also standard in Australia and New Zealand, and pretty big in Japan, but not in the rest of the world.

In the U.S., stick framing appears to have become the default construction method for apartment complexes as well. The big reason is that it costs much less—I heard estimates from 20 percent to 40 percent less—than building with concrete, steel, or masonry. Those industries have sponsored several studies disputing the gap, but most builders clearly think it exists.

They’re also comfortable with wood. “You can make mistakes and you can cut another piece,” says Michael Feigin, chief construction officer at AvalonBay Communities Inc., the country’s fourth-biggest apartment owner. “With concrete and steel, it’s just a lot more work to fix problems.” If supplies run out, adds Kenneth Bland, a vice president at the trade group American Wood Council, builders “know they can run to the nearest big box and get what they need.”

They can also run to the nearest big-box store to find workers. Stick construction allows builders to use cheaper casual labor rather than often-unionized skilled tradespeople. And it makes life easier for electricians, plumbers, and the like because it leaves open spaces through which wires, pipes, and ducts can run. Still, there’s a reason why stick wasn’t the default for big apartment buildings until recently, and why these buildings are limited in height: Sticks burn.

It was the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which destroyed thousands of balloon-frame buildings, that brought this lesson home. Before long, the city instituted a ban on wood construction that’s still partly in place today. New York City had declared its downtown off-limits to wood construction in the early 1800s, eventually extending the proscription to all of Manhattan, plus the Bronx, Brooklyn, and parts of Queens and Staten Island. By 1930, a list of fire-resistance best practices compiled by the U.S. Department of Commerce was recommending stick-frame bans in dense urban neighborhoods and a two-story limit for everywhere else. Stick construction had effectively been banished to the suburbs.

By the second half of the 20th century, the suburbs were where America was moving, and as they evolved from bedroom communities into a new kind of city, the stick building evolved with them—into forms such as the “dingbats” of Los Angeles (one or two stories atop a carport) and the parking-rich garden-apartment complexes outside Atlanta, Dallas, and other metropolises. Building codes evolved, too, as insurers and fire-safety-equipment manufacturers pushed for scientific, “performance-based” codes that emphasized lab-determined fire-resistance ratings over specific materials and incorporated new technologies such as the automated fire sprinkler.

This gospel spread fitfully in a country where codes were a municipal affair, but it did spread, abetted by three regional organizations that produced model codes for cities to adopt or adapt to their own purposes. The most successful body was the aspirationally named International Conference of Building Officials, based in Southern California, whose Uniform Building Code was by 1970 at least partly followed by 9 in 10 Western cities. The UBC, updated triennially, ushered in the age of the mid-rise wood-frame apartment building.

Some of the details are lost in the mists of time, or at least in dusty archives, but the tale seems to have gone like this: The first UBC, issued in 1927, allowed for wood-frame apartment buildings three stories high. The risk of earthquakes inclined officials to be tolerant of such frames, which handle shaking better than brick walls do; the presence of a large timber industry in the Northwest was also a factor. In the 1950s the story limit increased to four if an automatic sprinkler system was installed. Square-footage restrictions were eased if building segments were separated by firewalls—initially masonry, then simpler-to-install gypsum board. By the 1970s it was possible to build four wood-framed stories atop a concrete podium. Then, in the early 1990s, came a breakthrough.

Los Angeles architect Tim Smith was sitting on a Hawaiian beach, reading through the latest building code, as one does, when he noticed that it classified wood treated with fire retardant as noncombustible. That made wood eligible, he realized, for a building category—originally known as “ordinary masonry construction” but long since amended to require only that outer walls be made entirely of noncombustible material—that allowed for five stories with sprinklers.

His company, Togawa Smith Martin Inc., was working at the time with the City of Los Angeles on a 100-unit affordable-housing high-rise in Little Tokyo that they “could never get to pencil out.” By putting five wood stories over a one-story concrete podium and covering more of the one-acre lot than a high-rise could fill, Smith figured out how to get the 100 apartments at 60 percent to 70 percent of the cost. The building, Casa Heiwa, opened its doors in 1996, and the five-over-one had been invented. (“Let’s put it this way,” Smith says. “No one has challenged me to say that they did it first.”) The public didn’t take note, but West Coast architects and developers did. They could now get near-high-rise densities at a wood-frame price. Soon, the rest of America could, too.

Despite the regional groups’ efforts, many architects, developers, economists, and federal housing officials still found local codes parochial and backward-looking, charging that they thwarted innovation and inflated costs. One response came from legislatures, which began increasing state authority over codes. Another came from the regional groups, which in 1994 started work on a single national code. Faced with a major challenge resolving differences over building heights and areas, the responsible committee settled on a somewhat radical precept: If a building could be built under any of the three old codes, it could be built under the new one. Under the 2000 International Building Code (IBC), the stick-built mid-rise podium apartment building was free to migrate eastward.

These buildings wouldn’t be going up if no one wanted to move in, of course. Growing demand, brought on by demographic shifts, job-growth patterns, and a renewed taste among affluent Americans for city (or citylike) living, has shaped the mid-rise boom. So have the whims of capital. Most multifamily developers build to sell—to a real estate investment trust, an insurance company, a pension fund, or some other institutional investor. These owners aren’t interested in small projects, and their bottom-line focus determines not only materials but also appearance and layout.

The need for scale dictates hulking “superblocks,” and the desire to break up these blocks a little explains the colorful panels and other exterior choices. Efficiency dictates the buildings be wide enough for “double-loaded” corridors, with apartments on both sides, but not so wide that the apartments are narrow and dark. This in turn favors a structure shaped like a right-angled U, C, E, or S. Two- or three-bedroom apartments work best at the corners, so one-bedrooms and studios predominate.

The boom has also been shaped by zoning that sometimes leaves downtowns and suburban commercial districts as the only practical spots for new housing. Ordinances requiring a minimum number of parking spaces per apartment unit factor in, too: Where minimums are relatively high, as in Texas, the best solution can be wrapping the building around a parking deck, a style known as the Texas doughnut. Where they’re lower, the ground-floor podium will do. City planners also often require developers to devote street-front podium space to shops and restaurants.

Yes, the result can be a little repetitive, but repetition has been characteristic of every big new urban or suburban housing trend in the U.S. over the past century or two. There’s lots to like about stumpy buildings that provide new housing in places where it’s sorely needed and enliven neighborhoods in the process. A four-story Texas doughnut can get 50 or 60 apartments onto an acre of land, while the most aggressively engineered West Coast stick-and-concrete hybrid (two-story podiums are allowed now, along with other variations) can get almost 200. That’s not far from the range that the renowned urbanist Jane Jacobs deemed optimal for vital street life.

There’s also lots to like about building with wood, which, as long as the trees are replanted and allowed to grow to maturity, is now generally accounted to be a net consumer of carbon dioxide. Wood’s green credentials have helped spur a recent worldwide push for more construction with “mass timber”—softwood lumber glued together and compressed into thick beams, columns, and panels. The tallest such structure completed so far is an 18-story dormitory at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver. Oregon has already changed its code to allow mass timber buildings of that scale, and the 2021 IBC is set to do the same.

The advance of the mid-rise stick building has come with less fanfare, and left local officials and even some in the building industry surprised and unsettled. “It’s a plague, and it happened when no one was watching,” says Steven Zirinsky, building code committee co-chairman for the New York City chapter of the American Institute of Architects. What caught his attention was a blaze that broke out in January 2015 at the Avalon apartments in Edgewater, N.J., across the Hudson River from his home. “When I could read a book in my apartment by the flame of that fire,” he says, “I knew there was a problem.” Ignited by a maintenance worker’s torch, the fire spread through concealed spaces in the floors and attic of the four-story complex, abetted by a partial sprinkler system that didn’t cover those areas. No one died, but the building was destroyed.

There haven’t been many such fires in completed stick mid-rises, but the buildings have proved highly flammable before the sprinklers and walls go in. Dozens of major fires have broken out at mid-rise construction sites over the past five years. Of the 13 U.S. blazes that resulted in damages of $20 million or more in 2017, according to the National Fire Protection Association, six were at wood-frame apartment buildings under construction.

These fires often bring a local outcry to restrict stick apartments. The Atlanta suburbs of Sandy Springs and Dunwoody enacted bans on wood-frame buildings above three stories, but they were later overturned by the Georgia legislature. There’s also talk of new regulations in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Massachusetts, and Maryland. But the place where legislative action seems most likely is New Jersey.

Building permits have been issued for 105,000 new apartments in the state since 2012, and it sure looks like most are in wood-frame mid-rises. Glenn Corbett, a former firefighter who teaches fire science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, took me on a tour of some of New Jersey’s “toothpick towers,” as he calls them, pointing out places that fire engines can’t reach and things that could go wrong as the buildings age. “You’re reintroducing these conflagration hazards to urban environments,” he says. “We’re intentionally putting problems in every community in the country, problems that generations of firefighters that haven’t even been born yet are going to have to deal with.”

The toughest of the bills before New Jersey’s legislature would restrict urban stick buildings to three stories and 7,000 square feet per floor. Proposals with a better chance of passing call for, among other things, masonry firewalls between building segments and full sprinkler systems for apartment buildings three stories and higher. The Avalon at Edgewater has been rebuilt with these measures; Feigin, construction chief for AvalonBay, the building’s owner, says they’re now standard for all the company’s new mid-rise developments. The 2018 IBC adds provisions aimed at stopping fires from spreading through apartment-building attics, and a proposal approved late last year, over the objections of builders and apartment owners, will change the 2021 code to effectively require full sprinkler systems for all four-over-one podium buildings.

Can we rely on developers’ economic interests and the model-code process to work things out? Alexi Assmus, who’s been active in the New Jersey debates and the IBC process, is dubious. A businesswoman and civic activist who got involved when AvalonBay built a wood-framed complex in her hometown of Princeton, she tried to introduce changes to the national model code and didn’t get far. In theory, anyone can participate on the International Code Council committees that submit recommendations to the government officials who vote on the IBC, but in practice it’s mostly trade group representatives who do. “The special interests all have the money to go there and stay at the hotels,” Assmus says. “Don’t think that this third-party ICC is going to give us codes that are in the public interest, necessarily.”

Then again, the reason the ICC exists is because setting building codes locally came to be seen as not really in the public interest, either. Deaths in residential fires in the U.S. are down by almost half since the 1980s, so something appears to be working. And there are echoes in at least some of the agitation of standard-variety Nimbyism. Some parts of the country need lots of new housing, and builders of bulky mid-rise wood-frame apartment buildings have found an economic formula that provides it. Whether it’s the right formula for American cities is something we’ll have to wait to find out. —Fox is a business columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.

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PD-15: Towers Meet And Fact-Free, Anti-Development Propaganda Reigns

Thu, 07 Feb 2019 20:20:13 GMT

by Jon Anderson
CandysDirt.com

Incorrect and highly misleading graphic used to represent city’s draft proposal

When I first heard about Preston Tower and Athena owners meeting to discuss PD-15, I nicknamed it a “witch burning” and it did not disappoint. Bill Kritzer, the main speaker from Preston Tower, accusingly called out Council Member Jennifer Gates’ name so many times that if she had a dollar for each utterance, she could fund the Preston Center garage out of petty cash.

The troubles of the world were heaped on her shoulders, every real or imagined slight (OK, they were all imagined) dumped on her doorstep. Meanwhile praise was reserved for the Preston Hollow South Neighborhood Association (PHSNA) and its work for the neighborhood. I find that praise comical. It was PHSNA leadership that gave residents the Laurel apartments – that are universally reviled. So the talk track was that the Laurel process was better because the developer met with PHSNA leadership – but the neighborhood wound up with a building they hate. Somehow that irony was lost on the packed house at the Athena.

The Laurel: hated by a neighborhood that wants more just like it

Also lost on the group was the understanding that the Laurel building they hate is three and four stories – the same height they cheered for. While the biggest example, it was hardly the last piece of incoherent thinking observed. Had their been Kool-Aid, there’d have been a fight for the pitcher.

Another “praiseworthy” item was the Preston Road and Northwest Highway Area Plan. Many believing it to be a gold standard of biblical proportions, when it’s closer to manure. I mean really, what do you call a plan that purports to guide development that has no underlying data supporting the economic viability of its conclusions? How about when co-author Peter Kline told me, “To call it a plan is an overstatement”?

Another way to gauge its credibility would be if the consultants, paid to provide data, stood behind its conclusions. Comparing their (left out) recommendations with the final plan, that endorsement will never come. Don’t believe me? Check out my D Magazine story that dismantles it.

The graphics shown displaying the city’s draft PD proposal were inaccurate (lead story graphic). The cries of the process being developer-led ignore the fact that the one developer who’s come to the table (A.G. Spanos for Diplomat) is actually asking for a shorter building than the city’s proposal. A shorter building, it should be noted, precisely where lower matters. The trope about developer greed seems to call for non-profit developers to step forward.

The continued red herring of the 100-foot setback on Northwest Highway was again rolled out as being something to fear simply because the city’s draft calls for 70 feet. What they ignore, or have been kept in the dark about by their HOAs, is that documentation exists in multiple locations dating back to 1945 that supports the 100-foot setback. This evidence includes a contract signed in 1966 between all the Northwest Highway landowners that states no changes can be made without unanimous approval. Done and dusted, but the drone wears on and the rubes still get whipped up.

10-6-4

The plan known as 10-6-4, which reflects the stories proposed as a “compromise” by some of the committee members is shown above. It’s wholly unworkable. On the back side, four stories are not economically viable to build and even if someone agreed to build that height, the resulting build quality would be on par with The Laurel mentioned above.

The 10 stories outlined for Northwest Highway are similarly unbuildable. Hybrid construction enables buildings up to eight stories, after that, it’s concrete and steel, which raises the build costs by 30 to 35 percent. No one is going to incur that cost for a measly two stories.

As you can also see, the plan seems to think all the low rise properties are owned by one owner. They’re not. No bank will loan on a project that’s physically connected with other owners’ property. BUT the biggest folly of all is a one story concrete plinth under the whole thing. Part of it would be parking while maintaining Tulane Avenue running underneath through a ground-level tunnel. If the buildings themselves are not economically viable or financeable, there’s no way anyone would pay to essentially jack their buildings up over an enormously expensive shared concrete slab.

This group has presented their plans to developers, architects and others and have been told exactly what I’ve outlined here, namely that its UN-buildable. And yet they persist.

Their plan calls for units 1,600 to 3,000 square feet – much larger than neighborhood averages. What they seem to forget is that larger units equal larger buildings. Shown above, you can see what happens if unit size increases and the units per acre are stable. Regardless of whether it’s 90 units per acre or whatever, the percent increase in building size stays the same. For people hell bent on keeping buildings short, this makes no sense.

Behind the scenes, it is sadly even funnier. While tonight they said it would be all residential, the plan they presented to me (yes, to me) included a coffee shop that’s a pet project of one committee member. This same committee member told me the only reason they settled on 10 stories on Northwest highway is because another committee member’s condo was on the 11^th floor and she didn’t want people looking in. Oh, and that same committee member’s friend’s relative drew up the plan – not a licensed architect, never built a building in his life. They couldn’t even tell the group how many units it would contain – it’s just a picture thrown together by people who don’t know what they’re talking about.

They call it a compromise, but it’s only a true compromise if it has a hope of working. It’s like offering a naked person a sock … sure, it’s clothing … but not enough to keep from being arrested.

Water intrusion at 3-year-old Bandera apartments.

Prediction: If the 10-6-4 plan is actually built, residents will spend the rest of their days bitching about the low building quality and blaming everyone else but themselves. As I also pointed out, the 3-year-old Bandera apartments have already been repairing leaks to their stucco exterior.

It’s worth noting that former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller was there, and I can say it’s the first time I’ve ever seen her at an Athena meeting in over five years. As expected, she tried to attack Council Member Gates on a number of topics. Gates defended herself pretty well.

There was a fearful question about the city’s inclusion of sweeteners for developers offering affordable housing. Nothing gets people who think they’re wealthy in a knot like people who know they’re not rich living nearby. As I tried to point out – no one is going to build them the way it’s stated. The city is offering increased density (units per acre) in exchange for affordable units. But there’s no increase in the buildable envelope. So as you can see above, if you’re selling a dozen eggs for $3 and someone says you can sell 14 eggs in the same size box for the same $3 (or less), why would you? It’s a bad deal.

After the meeting, one Preston Tower resident tried to convince me that the 10-6-4 could be built. My response was that the rents would be too high for the neighborhood to bear. His flip answer was “we’ll see.” But we don’t have to wait that long.

The Laurel apartments have been for lease since May 2018 and are reportedly 22 percent occupied. That’s a failure. But the neighborhood is so unthinking that they can’t even understand that one way or another, those units will be rented. Butts in beds will win and so the quality of tenant will decline with rent decreases or perhaps advertising for higher-density roommate rentals who split the costs and fill units.

And of course, you had those who think nothing should be done. Preston Place should be a burned-out concrete platform and no other building should change.

Whatever makes these people think that repeating the Laurel mistake with the same crew of “negotiators” will achieve a different outcome is beyond me. The only answer I can come up with (that’s printable) is that they are grossly uninformed and have no desire to step outside of their bubble to learn – while reserving their right to complain if they actually get their way.

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Preston Center Parking Garage: City And Landowners at Opposite Ends of Right

Fri, 01 Feb 2019 17:47:23 GMT

by Jon Anderson
Candy's Dirt

Last night. Council Member Jennifer Gates held the second public meeting about what to do with the dilapidated Preston Center parking garage. Since the first meeting back in September, consultants from Houston-based Walker Consultants have been busy scoping out concepts based on the Preston Road Area Plan (a bright spot in a dismal plan). The plan outlined a completely underground parking garage with 1,600 parking spaces (double today’s garage) and a public park on top at ground level. Think Klyde Warren but instead of Woodall Rodgers underneath, it would be a garage. You may also recall that the surrounding landowners unanimously poo-poo that plan (put a pin in that).

The parking lot itself is 3.15 acres – 137,332 square feet – and 800 parking spaces on two above-ground levels. This … space … in the middle of an area zoned for high density. Understand just how rare that is. Klyde Warren had to cover a highway to get its space and here we are with a molding parking garage that could be so very much more. Like I said, very, very, rare.

Now, burying so much parking isn’t on the same planet as “cheap,” but it’s the right thing to do. It’s worth saving up for. It’s worth sacrificing for.

Show Me The Money

Regardless of what’s built underneath it, the park is estimated to cost between $7 and $8 million. It’s certainly more than a few Home Depot runs. The big number is the garage itself. The Walker folks had three scenarios based on different levels of parking.

To build 1,005 spaces across three underground levels would cost between $30.7 million and $36 million. The 1,005 number was arrived at by assuming all the existing surrounding buildings were 100 percent occupied and calculating their needs. That brings a total between $37.7 and $44 million for the underground garage and park.

That’s a lot of money right there. But remember, the project has $20 million already earmarked ($10 million each from the last bond and NCTCOG). So glass half full.

Next up they tackled 1,200 spaces also on three underground levels which came in between $34 .2 and $40 million. That’s an increase of between $3.5 and $4 million for the additional 195 spaces. Those spaces are breathing room for future needs and easier parking today. Total with park is between $41.2 and $48 million.

The half-full funding glass is now slightly less.

The Preston Road Area Plan called for a doubling of the existing garage to 1,600 spaces. Essentially tons of extra parking that might not be used until a ubiquity of self-driving cars. But, this is supposed to be a solution for the ages, so it’s worth considering. The problem is that 1,600 spaces spills into a fourth underground level which really jacks the price. The parking would cost between $49.6 and $54.5 million, an increase of roughly $15 million over 1,200 spaces. The grand total here with the park is between $56.6 and $62.5 million.

At this level, our $20 million in funding is about one-third of what would be needed. Now’s the time for smelling salts.

What We Get For The Money

First we get rid of the existing eyesore. We get an area where folks can sit in the grass, order takeout from a nearby restaurant and maybe visit a farmers’ market or art fair. There might be some splashy things for kids to run through in the summer. All sorts of things besides an unsightly garage.

I hear you saying, “That’s all well and good, but is any of it bankable?” Yes. According to Walker Consultant’s research, properties surrounding similar types of amenity parks appreciate on average $80 per square foot. Selecting a random low-rise property on the southern, Luther Lane side of the garage, DCAD shows the property is valued at $251 per square foot. An $80 per foot increase would amount to a 28 percent increase in value. That would not only increase city tax rolls, but also rents because of the improved desirability of the property. It would bring them more in line with those collected across Preston Road at The Plaza at Preston Center.

Time

Most things in life are a combination of time and money. Walker Consultants estimate 29 months from first shovel to ribbon cutting. That’s a long time to interfere with the functioning of a shopping center. I suspect it’s at the top of the list of why area landowners are against this plan. And I get it. Rents will temporarily go down (before recovering and quickly increasing).

My question. Would area landowners support this plan if instead of the single shift of work outlined here, work was around the clock? If 29 months were halved to 15 months.

Speeding up construction will add to costs, but we’d already need to save to afford this anyway, and it is absolutely the right answer for Dallas, and ultimately the landowners (even if they refuse to see it today).

Landowners’ plan: Cover the lot.

Speaking of The Landowners

Double dip, triple dip, stuff your whole head in the trough — the landowners came up with their own plan. In a nutshell, cover the entire acreage in a combination parking lot and 300-unit apartment building (or as I call it a larder of new customers). In exchange for providing the parking for their own businesses, they want the city to give them the 3.15 acre site … and the $20 million … and more. To be sure, there would be other monies needed, but the plan calls for the city to be bled dry first.

Oh, oh, oh, it doesn’t end there, my friends. Since the landowners require unanimous approval, their chosen developer? Robert Dozier, who purchased Harlan Crow’s Preston Center holdings (after the skybridge debacle) and is now one of the larger landowners. One of their own.

Dozier’s response to the city’s plan was more famine, plague, and pestilence than a Sunday red state revival tent. We were told that even after completion the park would scare away customers, businesses would close, and the caliber of business would decline (which wouldn’t happen with their plan, why?). This, said with a straight face, 10 minutes after Walker Consultants said there’d be a 28 percent jump in values. It was eye-rollingly laughable. I mean, surrounding the garage we already have Target, DSW Shoe Warehouse, Office Depot, and Tuesday Morning – nothing in danger of being poached by Highland Park Village. The only way to go is up.

Dozier went on to say that their plan would be the catalyst for surrounding landowners to improve and redevelop their own properties. If the landowners wanted the increased rents generated by – oh, I don’t know – the better buildings across the street at The Plaza at Preston Center, they’d have made improvements decades ago. The more likely reality is that their plan would be a silk purse surrounded by a sow’s ear.

The city’s plan is all about green space and an interactive park to bring vibrancy to the area. Less so the Preston Center landowners’ plan. See the pair of “earmuff” parks on the upper corners? That’s it at ground level – and that pittance was apparently an 11^th-hour addition (nawww, really?) to original plans whose green space was only visible when someone dropped a salad.

The real green space is on top of the three-story, above-ground parking garage – the part not taken up by the 300-unit apartment tower. Who in the devil’s underpants is going to take an elevator to a raised park more than once? No one. It’ll essentially be an amenity deck for the apartment building. In a bone-toss to usefulness, their plan calls for a small restaurant on the roof to attract folks to the elevator.

Fans of Where’s Waldo will be thrilled way-finding the restaurant. I foresee either really, really cheap rent or a never-ending cavalcade of hopeful eateries going bust. Does “out of sight, out of mind” ring a bell here?

Earmuff park from above

The Peanut Gallery

When the floor was opened for questions, nearly all were directed at the landowners’ plan – most seeing it for what it brazenly is. My favorite was in response to the landowners’ dire predictions. An audience member noted that The Plaza at Preston Center’s underground parking garage (literally across the street) certainly didn’t crater their operation, so why would it harm theirs? You could have driven a truck through the silence.

Former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller asked several questions of the landowners’ plan. Each could be tied back to the landowners’ plan’s complete ignoring of the letter and spirit of the Preston Road Area Plan. And she’s right. The landowners used the area plan as so much toilet paper in their haste to print themselves a greedy sweetheart deal crushing any ability to realize the higher monetary and aesthetic potential of Preston Center.

Another audience member surfaced the oddest extrapolation of the city’s park plan. Namely the concern that a well-run park would increase area traffic, so an essentially static, un-programmed park with no activities would be best. It’s like telling someone mediocre results are the goal of expensive plastic surgery. Huh?

Pivotal Moment

Replacing the garage will change Preston Center for a century. Do we want to be remembered for doing the right thing? Or do we want to be remembered for giving in to self-serving greed? The right thing is usually harder and in this case deliciously more expensive, but it’s right, and worth moving mountains to find the money.

If the landowners’ ode to self-interest is what’s built, a plaque needs to go up reminding people of our incompetence.

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Redevelopment Necessary

Wed, 16 Jan 2019 16:07:07 GMT

by Jon Anderson
PrestonHollowPeople

Redevelopment Necessary

January 16, 2019 Jon Anderson

We have a visceral reaction to traffic and parking issues, but our gut isn’t always right.

Multiple studies dating back decades show that traffic around Preston Road and Northwest Highway has actually diminished. New traffic signal patterns are moving traffic quicker. During the 2016 Preston Road and Northwest Highway Area Plan process, parking studies were conducted proving that, outside weekday lunch hour, parking isn’t an issue either. Therefore, residents shouldn’t overly sweat issues proven to be lessening or simply a nonissue in considering redevelopment.

Currently, there are three development levers being pulled. The Preston Center garage reconstruction, Saint Michael and All Angels redevelopment of Frederick Square, and the Pink Wall portion known as Planned Development District 15 (PD-15). The garage is only just holding its second public meeting Jan. 31. The other two are further along.

Saint Michael and All Angels
Saint Michael’s owns the block north of the church from Douglas Avenue to the Tollway. The western end has significant development rights while the eastern end is zoned for three-story residential. The church proposes extending the height granted on the western end to the whole block. The plan calls for two high-rises – one residential, one office – whose total square footage is less than what’s already zoned on the combined block. Building placement preserves downtown views for neighboring high-rises.

I’m not a full-fledged fan of the project for other reasons, but if the plan results in less than zoned square footage, there will be less than zoned traffic, too. The project provides housing, community green space, and the walkability called for by the Preston Road and Northwest Highway Area Plan co-authored by Laura Miller. Miller opposes the plan, an opposition shared by just one fellow Area Plan committee member. Plan co-author Peter Kline supports the church. Council Member Jennifer Gates is still evaluating the project.

PD-15 and the Pink Wall
On the northeast corner of Northwest Highway and Preston Road is the Pink Wall development dating from the 1950s. Most are two-story garden-style apartments-turned-condos, but between Preston Tower and Athena towers sits PD-15. Developer Hal Anderson’s original plans were for a 40-story Athena and a second Preston Tower. In March 2017, PD-15 complex Preston Place burned leaving residents without a viable redevelopment option due to arcane 1960s PD-15 rules.

The 2016 Area Plan did not research the financial viability of rebuilding, instead offering four-story construction that two recent studies say isn’t viable.

Council Member Gates has formed two neighborhood committees to reach an agreement enabling redevelopment. Both reached impasse by the towers’ refusal to negotiate. Laura Miller worked with the towers to oppose any compromise. After 18 months, Gates was forced to ask city staff to design a reasonable plan (presented in January). The draft plan isn’t fully-baked, but it’s on paper, a step neither committee managed.

Looking back over the past four years of Preston Center-area redevelopment, one name comes up as opposing everything: Laura Miller. Whether it was Luke Crosland’s residential high-rise, Harlan Crow’s sky bridge, Transwestern’s Laurel, or the current crop, she was a non-negotiable “no” to it all – stopping all but one. The irony is that each project is precisely what the Area Plan’s independent consultants said was needed to revitalize the area.

As a PD-15 resident, I don’t blindly support either initiative, but I attend meetings and talk with stakeholders to influence. Because even though Miller claims to have massive support for the opposition, there has been no poll to gauge actual sentiment. Instead, HOA representatives vote their personal will for ill-informed residents. That’s monarchy, not democracy.

Jon Anderson is a PD-15 resident and award-winning writer reporting on the Preston Center Area for CandysDirt.com and D Magazine.

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Assessing the Paths Ahead for Preston Center

Mon, 07 Jan 2019 17:04:11 GMT

By Jon Anderson
Dmagazine.com

We last explored the area's complicated history, involving a tiff between former Mayor Laura Miller and Council member Jennifer Staubach Gates. Let's turn our gaze forward.

Last time, we explored how former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller has led the charge to stall redevelopment in Preston Center. We also saw how Miller’s battles with Councilwoman Jennifer Gates have spilled into a tit-for-tat battle on Twitter. Today, we take a look at Gates’ efforts.

As noted, within three months of the city adopting the Northwest Highway and Preston Road Area Plan (which is not legally binding) the Preston Place condos burned down. That plan called for minor changes to both Preston Center and the Pink Wall’s existing zoning while leaving Preston Hollow’s single-family areas untouched. Once the fire was out, the residents decided that rebuilding would be financially impossible and looked at their options. They uncovered Planned Development District 15. PD-15 dates back to 1947, when the entire Pink Wall area at the northeast corner of Northwest Highway and Preston Road was owned by the Prather family—who also developed Highland Park Village. At the time, it was zoned for commercial construction.

In the 1960s, when the city was formalizing its zoning and initiating planned development districts for exception zoning, much of the Pink Wall had been developed into two-story apartment buildings. Those were categorized as MF-1, allowing a maximum of three stories. Undeveloped at the time was the northeast corner of Northwest Highway and Preston Road, specifically the area between Preston Tower and Athena high-rises. This is likely the reason they escaped the deed restrictions placed on the rest of the Pink Wall.

As PDs go, PD-15 is old and odd. It’s the 15^th one the city ever designated, and the specifications are a scant four pages with a couple of surveys. A PD today might be 10 times as long, providing a lot more detail and intent. PD-15’s brevity leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

Preston Place discovered that their only option would be to rebuild exactly what was there, even the exterior. That’s a project that, 40 years later, isn’t economically viable. But any change would require the PD to be reopened. The issue PD-15 has that most others don’t is that it caps residential dwelling units for the district. While other PDs can seek augmentation via a zoning case, this one can’t because changing the cap requires opening the PD and changing the limit. In over 50 years, it’s happened only once, after a high-rise was proposed in the 1970s for Preston Place.

Today, the options are:

Get unanimous approval from the six buildings in the PD to increase or abolish the cap. This would also be an opportunity to change or add any other outdated requirements. The owners could have also met with the known developers and nailed down exactly what new construction they would allow. It’s a level of control most neighborhoods would kill for.

In July 2017, Gates held a neighborhood meeting at Christ the King church. It attracted between 150 and 200 residents. Representations from multiple city departments were on hand to answer questions. At the end when a “show of hands” vote was taken, easily 90 percent of attendees wanted the PD reopened and accommodations made for the passage of time.

Shortly thereafter, Gates formed a committee with representatives from each of the six buildings within PD-15 plus a few folks from the surrounding neighborhood. (Full disclosure, as a PD-15 resident, I was an early member of the committee.) It became quickly apparent that the towers didn’t want any increase beyond the four-stories contained in the Northwest Highway and Preston Road Area Plan, which was largely authored by Laura Miller. Note: Even were four-story construction agreed upon, the PD would still have to be opened to accommodate it.

Feeling their obstinance wasn’t being respected, representatives from Preston Tower reached out to Miller to pull her into the process. In November 2017, I resigned from the committee because I was expected to sign a letter written by the then Athena HOA president and Laura Miller. It demanded Gates reaffirm Miller’s area plan, withdraw PD-15 from the authorized hearing queue, and demanded the towers get outsized representation.

The towers’ inflexibility meant the required unanimous approval wouldn’t happen. The meetings abruptly stopped. Another reason for stopping was that because of the Preston Place hardship, the authorized hearing would begin in months rather than a year; that city-run process didn’t require unanimity.

Hold an authorized hearing where the city manages a process to seek agreement on revamping the PD, including the dwelling cap.

On April 26, 2018 Gates kicked off the authorized hearing process to try and broker a deal between the neighbors to provide PD-15 with an economically viable way to redevelop and fulfill the overwhelming desires of the initial 2017 meeting.

The month before the initial meeting, the towers held their own meeting to scare residents and incite opposition. The graphic above was pilfered from a “what if” session conducted during the first committee; many thought it was an actual proposal.

The April kick-off was attended by supporters and opposition (more opposition than the initial July 2017 meeting). Non-resident Laura Miller literally waved a rejected low-ball offer from her friend Leland Burk for Preston Place. Miller said Burk’s deal would not require any increase in density or height and that Preston Place residents were just greedy for not taking it. However, Burk told more than one city staffer that while his (1/3 lower) offer wasn’t predicated on a zoning change, he wasn’t interested in rebuilding what was originally there either.

As a resident, I too spoke, saying simply, “To all those championing four-story construction on one hand while hating the newly-built Laurel with the other – remember, the Laurel is four-story construction.”

Gates asked residents wanting to serve on the new committee to contact her office. Her only caveats were that those from the original committee would not be reselected (because they’d already proven they couldn’t compromise) and those wanting to kill the process would not be selected. Made perfect sense to me.

Over the ensuing months the new committee met roughly twice a month. The first sessions were spent educating lay people on PD-15 and the intricacies and considerations of zoning. After all, you have to know the current conditions and what’s possible to change. It’s important to know that while Miller never showed up at any committee meetings, she was busy trying to kill it from behind the scenes.

Figure 2: PD-15 specifically cut out of the Preston Road Area Plan scenarios

The “no” campaign met with committee members whenever they were allowed and sent incendiary “doom and gloom” emails rife with inaccuracies to committee members and city staff seeking to stop the proceeding – which would essentially leave Preston Place owners paying mortgages on cinders. They also met with Gates on more than one occasion. Their default “setting” was adherence to the Northwest Highway and Preston Road Area Plan.

Ever since the Preston Place fire, Gates has sought to create a forum where neighbors could reach an agreement on how to proceed. Realizing some thought she was pushing an agenda, she largely stayed away letting city staff run them. Unfortunately, this second committee also devolved into the towers versus the low-rises.

In early November, Gates halted the stalled committee again, sending them home until January. In the meantime, city staff will be evaluating the PD and crafting their own recommendation.

Turns out there’s nothing like adult oversight to get the kiddies in line. During the hiatus, the committee members, fearful of the city’s recommendations, have been meeting furiously to craft their own compromise.

Gates is doing her best to protect needful constituents from the unthinking masses. On January 7 we’ll see what both the adults and the children have done at the Walnut Hill Recreation Center beginning at 5:30 p.m. Public invited. The recap will be posted at CandysDirt.com the following day.

Preston Center Parking Garage

At the center of Preston Center sits a disheveled 2-story parking garage. The Northwest Highway and Preston Road Task Force identified it as a major impediment to revitalizing Preston Center. Through a convoluted series of events, the city of Dallas owns the land and must provide parking for Preston Center. But what gets built rests with the landowners surrounding the garage – known as the Preston Center West Corporation.

A goodly proportion of Preston Center landowners have inherited property purchased two or three generations ago. Rent checks are the trust fund to operate their lives. Currently, the checks are enough. They’re not looking to interrupt the gravy train even if it meant doubling the rent their property generates (in line with Preston Center East rents). That’s a problem.

Redeveloping the garage will interrupt Preston Center; that’s what all large construction projects do. That explains why at Gates’ first garage committee meeting in September, the best option, burying the garage with a park on top, received “low” support by the Preston Center landowners. It also explains the “high” support for a new all above ground garage and a possible partial park with a partially above ground garage; above-ground is faster to build.

Not prepared to perpetuate the horribleness of another above-ground garage, Gates is working all the angles that don’t have strings attached.

Like PD-15, Gates has assembled a stakeholder working group consisting of four members of the Preston Center West Corporation and four from the community including Betsy del Monte – who opposes St. Michael’s and All Angels’ proposed development blocks away, which would put two high-rises, one office and one apartment, on the Frederick Square block north of the church.

In addition to PD-15 and the garage, Gates is working a number of transportation issues including the exploration of new Tollway ramps at Walnut Hill, storm water mitigation, a Texas U-turn at Northwest Highway and the Tollway (which I personally think is unworkable).

The next public meeting for the Preston Center Garage Study and traffic mitigation will be on January 31 at the Walnut Hill Recreation Center from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. [Editor’s Note: We originally had the date wrong here. It’s the 31, not the 30.]

St. Michael’s and All Angels

Unlike PD-15, the Preston Center development district doesn’t have a cap on any type of units. Therefore, when St. Michael’s is ready, they will file a zoning case with the city that will have to pass the City Plan Commission and City Council.

At both CPC and Council, the community will have a chance to voice support or opposition to the project as well as squeeze in pre-session lobbying.

At this point Gates does not support or oppose the project. She wants to research what they’re asking for and hear from constituents.

To me, if St. Michael’s is building the square footage that’s allowed by zoning (just spread over their block), then any protests about traffic (the biggest complaint) will likely fall on deaf ears. Whether allowed density is 200 feet east or west will have no impact on overall traffic patterns. I’ve captured my thoughts already. If significant changes are made, I will review them.

Gates Isn’t Perfect

Having watched Gates with incredulity since the Northwest Highway and Preston Road Plan debacle, I can say that I see a representative trying to engage her constituents. I see her sometimes exasperated by an uninformed (or bamboozled) opposition, usually without any workable suggestions of their own. For Gates, it surely doesn’t help when the former mayor of Dallas undermines you at every turn.

I will say that seeing the make-up of various committees under Gates’ leadership, she sure doesn’t stack the deck with “yes wo/men,” as some who disagree with her accuse. She also posts all documents online for everyone to see.

Let her do her work and then judge.

View article online

The Complicated Case of Progress at Preston Center

Mon, 17 Dec 2018 15:22:02 GMT

By Jon Anderson
Published in FrontBurner
Dmagazine

Preston Center is a major asset that lies empty beyond office hours. Former Mayor Laura Miller is at the center of it.

On November 30, the Dallas Morning News published an editorial titled, “Don’t let Preston Center become an anchor holding Dallas back.” The piece narrowly focused on the decrepit central garage in Preston Center—a big problem and equally big opportunity—while ignoring the greater Preston Center area, and the actual anchor holding it back: former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller.

Instead, on December 8, the News published a guest editorial by Miller that Councilwoman Jennifer Staubach Gates called out in a tweet: “@DMNOpinion published a column by Laura Miller today that is filled with inaccuracies and misinformation regarding Preston Center…”

Who’s right here?

Let’s Review Miller’s Preston Center History

Preston Center is today much the same as it was 50 years ago—minus the anchor department stores that have vanished, taking foot traffic right along with them. It’s an aging shopping center dominated by a central garage where most people, typically from surrounding office buildings, go for lunch and little else. This is something Gates is trying to change. Given the complex ownership structure of its buildings, this is difficult to achieve.

There are ongoing attempts to bury the decaying garage and bring a Klyde Warren-esque feel atop it. Projects proposed in recent years attempted to increase the residential component of the center, which would likely bring more people to the area at more times in the day and night. These proposed developments offered better sidewalks, improved streetscapes, and more quality retail. The consultants employed two years ago as part of an area plan for Preston Center made the same recommendations to revitalize it. And Miller has fought nearly every one of them.

I’ve spent several years covering development surrounding Preston Center. I remain unable to explain Miller’s continued opposition, and she has not spoken publicly about the source of her concern. As I’ve written about Preston Center and spoken with other stakeholders, they too remain confused by her actions. In an absence of explanation, all I can do is report on visible actions.

Let’s start in 2014. Developer Luke Crosland wanted to build a residential high-rise in Preston Center called Highland House, which largely targeted wealthy empty nesters. Almost immediately, Laura Miller mounted a campaign to kill it. It worked. Crosland sold the property to Miller’s pal Leland Burk (to whom I heard Miller whisper “Don’t worry, you’ll get your high-rise” concerning the same property at a task force meeting. And, in April 2018, Miller waved around Burk’s lowball offer for Preston Place, shaming owners for not taking it). The Dallas Observer published a very good feature back then about this mess, which provides plenty of detail about how it all came about.

Also in 2014, Transwestern began the long process of constructing an apartment building at the northeast corner or Northwest Highway and Preston Road. Again, Miller became a central opposition figure on the protracted battle, which at one point had been reported dead by Laura Miller’s hand. It ultimately succeeded in passing Plan Commission and City Council and has been built.

Transwestern’s Laurel apartments. Four stories and still opposed by Laura Miller. (Photo courtesy Transwestern.)

In 2015, Harlan Crow wanted to construct a pedestrian bridge from the Preston Center central garage to his property’s second floor to safely transport shoppers to a new Tom Thumb grocery store. Crow had volunteered to tear the bridge down at his own expense should the city ever decide to fix the parking garage. (The city owns it, but can only make parking changes with the unanimous approval of the buildings surrounding it. Just another complexity holding Preston Center back.) Again, Miller led the opposition (here, here).

Harlan Crow’s Skybridge would have brought a grocery store to Preston Center. (Photo courtesy Crow Holdings)

When the Crosland deal came about, Councilwoman Gates formed a neighborhood group to study the existing conditions and devise a plan for the Preston Center area’s future. Some reported this was at Miller’s request. Meeting for the first time in March of 2015, the task force included Miller and resulted in the Preston Road and Northwest Highway Area Plan that was adopted by the city in December 2016.

There were almost two years worth of monthly meetings. About $350,000 was spent on consultants. By July 2016, Gates’ task force had effectively been steamrolled by Miller. It was Miller who brought together the rest of the task force members to meet in secret, out of public view, and devise their own plan, according to two members of the task force. The exhaustive (though confusing) research paid for by the task force was dumped or placed in an appendix. The task force wrote its own plan that met members’ own personal agendas and/or business goals.

Writing for CandysDirt.com, I shredded Gates and the task force. (April 2015, July 2015, October 2015 (1), October 2015 (2), October 2015 (3), January 2016 (1), January 2016 (2), January 2016 (3), January 2016 (4), February 2016, March 2016 (1), March 2016 (2), May 2016, June 2016, July 2016 (1), July 2016 (2), July 2016 (3), November 2016 (1), and November 2016 (2).

At the time, I was concerned about the research being conducted by Kimley-Horn and how it was presented. The data wasn’t user-friendly, which resulted in a complex delivery that confused everyone in the room. Repeated, detailed requests for simplification fell on deaf ears.

I could, however, agree on the essence of their recommendations for Preston Center. These included increasing residential occupancy, which would increase foot traffic and vibrancy. It shared a goal of decreasing the percentage of office space in order to mitigate traffic and change Preston Center’s appearance as a ghost town in the evenings and weekends. Think more West Village and less today’s office park/food court.

Once authorship was taken over in July of 2016, critics argued that the resulting plan was light on facts while stuffed with personal agendas. According to task force member Peter Kline, he and Miller co-authored the final version and he doesn’t classify it as a plan. “To call it a plan is an overstatement,” he said in an interview. “It was a series of compromises where everyone in the task force would sign off on the broad picture.”

I called out the plan’s recommendations for Zone One (which encompassed Preston Center) and Four (which ran from Preston Road to Hillcrest between Northwest Highway and Bandera, including the Pink Wall). The remaining zones were unchanged single-family areas.

Within the plan that was passed, Preston Center’s Zone One essentially reads like the status quo. Its landowner task force representatives didn’t want any changes. Zoning within Preston Center allows for significant untapped density and little oversight on what can be built—office, residential, whatever. Maximum heights there reach up to 17 stories.

Post card showing Pink Wall before the wall and before Preston Tower.

The Pink Wall’s Zone Four was a similar do-nothing outcome. The plan offered to increase the existing three-story cap to four stories, but shrunk the amount of land that developers could build on. That one additional story is crumbs compared to the untapped potential for density in Preston Center. And like the rest of Miller’s Area Plan, the task force never studied whether four-story construction with smaller footprints was economically viable to build. It’s not. The recommended changes would effectively be a wash for developers—there wouldn’t be enough money in the new builds to warrant them changing what was already there.

Or to put another way, the only way to build four stories would be to cheapen the land and the resulting buildings so much so that the neighborhood would suffer depreciation. Cheapening the land to that extent would equate to a price below the cost to buy an existing condo on the open market. If the only ability to redevelop involves losing money, there will be no redevelopment until the properties have deteriorated enough to make the money work.

Backing that up, two financial studies have been provided by one developer (here, here). One was authored by Joseph Cahoon an adjunct professor and director for the Folsom Institute for Real Estate at SMU’s Cox School of Business. Hardly the sort of person who risks their professional reputation for a few bucks to placate a developer.

Kline echoed my feelings on the Pink Wall and the six parcel planned development district (PD-15, in city parlance, which includes the area between Preston Tower and Athena high-rises). Zoning in PD-15 is limited by the total number of residential units, with height being somewhat secondary. The odd density limitation is part of the ongoing neighborhood battle to redevelop the burned Preston Place and other complexes within the district.

“It was not studied in great detail,” the task force member said. “We never discussed the (planned development district) in the task force specifically. We did what the representatives said their residents wanted.”

In July 2016 I wrote, “There are decrepit complexes that can’t afford repairs whose only economically viable option is to be torn down. But within current zoning, redevelopment isn’t financially viable … the pipe dream sees a developer making a dime with less lot coverage in exchange for a piddly single additional story?”

But Gates Made a Mistake

Gates’ key mistake was likely believing Miller’s report wouldn’t matter. That, like its 1980s counterparts, it would sit on a shelf collecting dust. It may have been why Gates allowed Miller to ride roughshod over her task force and craft the self-serving plan. It was a grave miscalculation that revealed itself all too quickly.

In December 2016, three months after the city adopted the task force’s plan, calamity hit the Pink Wall. Preston Place burned down. Six months later, a developer came forward for the neighboring Diplomat condos. In September 2018, St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church unveiled their second set of plans for their Frederick Square block— a project Miller has also been fighting since 2016 and continues to oppose.

A flawed Preston Road and Northwest Highway Area Plan that was expected to die on a shelf was suddenly pressed into service and seized upon by Miller as (selective) holy writ.

Second iteration of St. Michael’s proposed development. (Photo Courtesy St. Michael’s)

Remember the consultants’ recommendations for Preston Center? Increased residential, lessening office, more vibrancy? Compare that list to Miller’s protests: Highland House residential high-rise, Transwestern’s Laurel apartment building, and the skybridge to Tom Thumb. At every turn, Miller was protesting the very projects Preston Center was judged to need in order to revitalize itself.

Miller is currently fighting St. Michael’s latest combination of residential and office project with community open space. In truth, I’m not a fan of the project either, but not because of the components—I just don’t care for the buildings’ placement and the large above-ground parking garage.

The church owns the whole block, but only the western end near the Tollway is within the zoning district that allows for significant height and density. The eastern Douglas Avenue end of the block is zoned for three-story residential. The church wants to spread those high-density rights across the block—no increase in total square footage, but height would be extended to the whole lot. And what could be 100 percent office space built by-right contains two buildings: one for office and one for high-rise apartments. There would be a significant green setback from Douglas and space for community events and a farmer’s market.

When the plan was announced, the press release contained eight—eight!—mentions of the Preston Center and Northwest Highway Area Plan. And yet Miller is opposed.

Kline said he was for the project.

“St. Michael’s bent over backwards,” he said, adding that he hoped it would be an example to other developments. His only wish is that the project “was in the middle of Preston Center rather than the periphery.” Continuing, Kline said Miller had tried to get the former area plan task force members to all come out against St. Michael’s but only two – Betsy del Monte and herself – wound up opposing the plan.

Rendering showing A.G. Spanos’ new Diplomat in situ. (Photo courtesy A.G. Spanos)

Miller’s Tactics

Being a former politician, Miller knows how to craft a cult of personality including other former politicians. Easily impressed community residents grab their smelling salts because the former mayor of Dallas is speaking with them. She also knows that people who want to believe something will believe anything that reinforces that belief without question.

Her editorial in the News trades on the same tropes she’s honed in recent years to oppose every development around Preston Center.

She opens with citing “traffic gridlock, zero pedestrian amenities, a shortage of parking.” We all want to believe this is true, but it’s not.

Kimley-Horn reported to the Preston Road and Northwest Highway Task Force that multiple traffic studies going back nearly 20 years showed that traffic on both Northwest Highway and Preston Road has been decreasing overall (yes, it vacillates year to year but the overall trend is down). In a meeting with the a Pink Wall zoning committee earlier this year, the Texas Department of Transportation reported that traffic continues to decrease at Preston Road and Northwest Highway.

Preston Center parking was similarly shown by Kimley-Horn to only be an issue between noon and 1 p.m. on weekdays. They employed car counters to track patterns throughout multiple days. And even at lunch, parking was only 85 percent full. At evenings and weekends, it’s a concrete desert.

Pedestrian amenities were never built and little space exists for them. Preston Center goes from road to sidewalk to building with little break. If pedestrian amenities are such a hot button, why isn’t St. Michael’s being praised for their efforts to bring green space to an area that desperately needs it? One of Miller’s thoughts is to shrink Northwest Highway and build a multi-billion dollar underground tunnel connecting the Tollway and Central. What are the chances of that?

A.G. Spanos’ latest 7-story rendering for Diplomat parcel. (Photo courtesy Spanos)

Within the Pink Wall zoning district, Miller claims that developers want to “demolish four low-rise condo complexes and replace them with rental-apartment towers as high as 25 stories.” I’ve been in a hell of a lot more meetings than Miller and can confidently say no plans exist to demolish the four low-rises and replace them with towers. One isn’t for sale, another doesn’t appear to be under contract, another is asking for seven stories, and the fourth, the burned Preston Place, has only shown an amorphous blob eerily similar to the Centrum in Oak Lawn that wants to go tall on a portion of its site (much smaller than shown, in my opinion).

Miller continues, “Hal Anderson, who designed and developed the iconic Pink Wall community 60 years ago — one of the last fully owner-occupied, tree-lined, condo communities in Dallas — would be heartbroken.”

Ludicrous. Hal Anderson’s original plan for Preston Tower was to build a second 29-story tower sideways on the Preston Place lot. His plans for the 21-story Athena originally called for 40 stories. The only thing Hal Anderson would be heartbroken about is that it took so long to reach the potential he foresaw, but that the economics of his time wouldn’t allow.

Miller wants us to further believe she has 78 percent support from Pink Wall residents. She doesn’t. First, no vote has been taken to understand what residents feel. Secondly, her 78 percent is tied to Preston Tower and the Athena, which have similarly not asked their residents’ opinions. Instead, their HOA rules allow their board to cast a single vote for everyone without consultation.

The only link to understanding area sympathies are the responses the city received to Transwestern’s Laurel two blocks away, “242 surveys sent, 165 were returned and of those 96-percent were in favor of the development with just seven dissents.” Vastly different than Miller’s unquantified claim of 78 percent dissent.

I could go on and on, point by point, but I think the picture is clear.

Miller ends her editorial by saying, “We all want Preston Center to be redeveloped.” Given her history of unending opposition to every project in recent memory, that statement is worth questioning.

Investigation Into String of Dallas Armed Robberies Ongoing, 2 More Arrested

Wed, 12 Dec 2018 18:06:53 GMT

Juvenile detained with robbery suspect arrested on unrelated charges, police say

By Maria Guerrero and Frank Heinz

NBC 5
Published Dec 10, 2018 at 6:56 PM | Updated at 7:13 PM CST on Dec 11, 2018

Dallas police say a ninth armed robbery is believed to be linked to a recent crime spree involving the same suspects. In some cases, the victims have been forced back into their homes and robbed of their property and vehicles. (Published Monday, Dec. 10, 2018)

Dallas police confirmed Tuesday morning two people are facing charges related to a recent string of aggravated robberies in the Dallas area. A third person arrested, a juvenile, was arrested on unrelated charges. Tuesday afternoon two more individuals were detained and questioned in regards to the robberies.

Deputy Chief Thomas Castro said Tuesday morning investigators had a good idea who one of the suspects in the string of robberies might be and that in following up on that, three people were detained and interviewed at 4:23 a.m. Tuesday. One of those people detained now faces two charges of aggravated robbery and could be implicated in other offenses.

Castro said a second arrested person is being charged with unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, for driving a car stolen in a recent robbery, but that he has not yet been tied to the actual armed robberies.

The names and photos of those arrested are being withheld due to the ongoing investigation and more arrests are expected. Police said four vehicles were stolen in the nine robberies, all of which have been recovered and are being searched for evidence.

Map of robberies

The arrests came the day after a ninth armed robbery, on Dec. 6 along Hobson Street, was determined to be linked to crimes reported in southern Dallas, Downtown, Old East Dallas and Lower Greenville, all believed to have been committed by the same group of people.

In some cases, the victims have been forced back into their homes and robbed of their property and vehicles.

In a similar case in Carrollton, terrifying moments were captured on home surveillance video Sunday where a man walking to his front door in the Indian Springs area is confronted by an armed man who demanded his bag, debit card PIN and items in his hand.

The video then showed a second robber running up to the victim and demanding that he get on the ground. The men stole the victim’s vehicle, according to the victim’s son.

The victim was too shaken to speak on camera but the family released the door camera video to NBC 5 hoping to make others aware.

Carrollton police said Tuesday morning that they have no reason to believe the robbery in the Indian Springs neighborhood is related to the Dallas robberies other than the method of operation. Carrollton police said the two men "in the one Carrollton robbery are definitely black" and were "definitely last seen driving a blue Toyota Camry and a black Lincoln Continental." Carrollton police added the black Lincoln Continental was pursued and recovered.

In Dallas, there is only a vague description of the suspects, believed to be Latino between 17 and 20-years-old. The suspects were seen driving around in two vehicles including a black Cadillac 4-door sedan and a gold pickup truck.

Though the suspect descriptions are different, Castro said Monday investigators in Dallas were looking into the Carrollton robbery to see if it was connected.

“Some detectives are aware of that and are reaching out to Carrollton and they have discussions with those detectives to see if there are similarities,” Castro said.

Dallas police would not say whether they believe the robberies are becoming more violent in nature, however in the latest robbery, on Dec. 7 in the 5900 of Llano Avenue, police confirmed a robbery victim did sustain injuries during the incident.

NBC 5's Courtney Gilmore contributed to this report.

View article and news story online

Don’t let Preston Center become an anchor holding Dallas back

Fri, 30 Nov 2018 19:39:27 GMT

Editorial
Dallas Morning News

To understand the oddity that Dallas can be, we need look no further than Preston Center — that time-warp that anchors, in every sense, one of the city’s greatest areas of potential.

Dallas has a well-earned reputation for ripping down whatever stands in the way of what’s next, with a habit of substituting plaques for the meaningful places of our past.

But at Preston Center we are faced with a backward circumstance where so much energy and effort has gone into the permanent sustenance of ... a parking garage.

And not just any parking garage, but a parking garage that, in itself, symbolizes a suburban past that the corner of Northwest Highway and Preston Road should have left behind long ago.

Instead, because of a strange arrangement between the city and myriad stakeholders/investors/owners who control Preston Center, we have had stagnation that has stymied the potential to transform not just Preston Center but the larger Northwest Highway corridor into a truly urban part of Dallas, with all of the benefits that suggests: increased residential density, walkability, true transportation options and a boost to the tax base that could benefit all of us.

The issue is germane today because there are, at long last, signals that some compromise is brewing between the city — which owns the parking garage and is required to provide parking for the center — and the aforementioned stakeholders who have wielded veto power over anything other than just another parking garage.

City Hall has pushed, sensibly, against an effort to simply park another parking garage where the current version — aging and misdesigned — sits now. Instead, a proposal to use city funds to bury a new garage and place a useful public park atop it was floated to a less-than-enthusiastic cadre of stakeholders at Preston Center.

Unfortunately, that appears unlikely to be what the public will get. Instead, a hybrid plan that would see some sort of public space capped atop an above-ground garage appears to be gaining traction.

Should that come to pass, it would mark a missed opportunity to truly move forward with Preston Center. But it may be the only way to move any direction at all, so with grudging consideration, we would gingerly support a plan that provided a true public space. Design is critical, insofar as it incorporates this land as a usable public space that will enhance the Northwest Highway corridor and be a building block for a more urban future.

Which brings us to a couple of other concerns, one specific, one general.

The specific concern was raised in a recent column on these pages by Michael Morris, transportation director of the North Central Texas Council of Governments.

The NCTCOG was tasked with studying Preston Center and offering ways forward. Sensible ideas emerged that Morris has rightly promoted — including adding a Texas U-Turn on the Dallas North Tollway at Northwest Highway, better timing traffic lights to prevent backups and installing desperately needed pedestrian infrastructure.

But Morris also posited the following question: “Why not review Dallas North Tollway ramps that have been missing for generations to determine the appropriate balance of travel to and from the tollway on city thoroughfare streets?”

Inside the vagary here is the suggestion that Dallas should accept additional toll road ramps at Walnut Hill Road, just north of Northwest Highway and Preston.

This is exactly the opposite message that Dallas residents have been trying to send Morris for years. Dallas does not want its future to look like its past — with expanded highways pumping more traffic onto arterial streets. The sound rejection of the Trinity River toll road should have been lesson enough to Morris, the NTTA and anyone else who thinks the city should pave its way to the future with on/off ramps.

Which brings us to the bigger problem that Preston Center represents — the persistent opposition to change in an area where the market is calling for it. A master plan for the area completed two years ago with the input of a committee of residents reads more like a recipe for continued paralysis than a genuine vision for moving forward. Its concludes that traffic must be addressed before redevelopment can commence.

That’s the wrong way to approach this area.

The intersection of Northwest Highway and Preston Road is an opportunity for Dallas to embrace the sort of urban and urbane future that is probably inevitable anyway, but that is stymied and thwarted by a handful of opponents who would have us wait until circumstances are perfect to move forward. That’s great for those who prefer things just as they are — even when it is increasingly evident that things as they are aren’t working as they should.

The area’s future is in increased residential and commercial density that will increase values and create a neighborhood where above-ground parking garages are a poor value for the land they occupy and where people can get where they are going without a car.

The sooner that Preston Center’s stakeholders, as well as landowners up and down Northwest Highway, recognize that, the sooner Dallas will be able to build toward a better future.

View article online

PD-15 Papers: Laura Miller’s Army Of Former Reps Fall in Lockstep

Wed, 28 Nov 2018 00:39:15 GMT

Candy's Dirt
by Jon Anderson

As promised, It’s time to see what’s been going on outside of view – a gift just in time for the holiday season. There was a meeting on November 1 at City Hall with Council Member Jennifer Gates, Plan Commissioner Margot Murphy, and a bevy of opposition to the Authorized Hearing within PD-15 behind the Pink Wall.

The opposition was a combination of the usual suspects and a few oddities:

Group One:

Former Mayor Laura Miller
Former State Representative Steve Wolens (Miller’s husband)
Former Texas Senator John Carona
Former State Representative Will Hartnett
Former District 13 Council Member Sid Stahl
Former District 13 Council Member Donna Blumer
Former District 13 Council Member Mitchell Rasansky

Group Two:

Preston Tower authorized hearing committee members: Tatiana Frierson and Bob Bowling
Athena authorized hearing committee members: Barbara Dewberry and Margaret Darden.
Roger Albright: Athena and Preston Tower legal council
John Pritchett: President of the Preston Hollow South Neighborhood Association and Preston Tower resident and representative on ill-fated first PD-15 task force
Steve Dawson: Northwest Highway and Preston Road Area Plan Zone 4 representative and neighborhood representative for ill-fated first PD-15 task force. Dawson’s family own a small apartment building inside the Pink Wall while he lives in Park Cities.

Looking at the first group, you begin to wonder why these people are even concerned with this issue. I don’t recall any of them attending a single Authorized Hearing committee meeting – certainly ante to the game for forming an opinion so strong you’re signing letters and demanding meetings with the council member?

There certainly isn’t much personal skin in the game either. Miller and Wolens live in a magazine-worthy, multi million-dollar home on the other side of the Tollway (renting Wolens’ mother’s former Athena unit). John Carona has two homes in DCAD, each about two miles from the Pink Wall. Donna Blumer is over six miles away. Will Hartnett is about three miles away, while Mitchell Rasansky lives three and a half miles away. Octogenarian Sid Stahl is a leasing tenant of the Athena (so if there ever is a vote, he has none).

It’s safe to say that this group, with the possible exception of Sid Stahl, will suffer no ill consequences of any increased density within PD-15. Any potential financial hit to Miller/Wolen’s Athena values are unlikely to land them in the poor house either (and many would argue their stance, if successful, would damage their condo’s value). So this group has almost no personal financial or aesthetic consequences in development within the Pink Wall nor is there much of a real-world concern for traffic within its boundaries. Aside from being personal friends of the Miller/Wolens, why are they involved?

Yes, Stahl, Blumer, and Rasansky are three of the four prior District 13 City Council Members. But isn’t it the height of political tackiness for them to take an uninformed stance to criticize the current District 13 representative? It would be one thing if current Council Member Gates asked for their input, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. One wonders when they had the chair how they would have reacted to being told their job by predecessors who left office decades ago?

Also, while they paint themselves as concerned citizens, they have no clue what the area residents really want (no one does) and yet hold themselves up as stalwarts of the oppressed. Those with good memories will recall much of this group lined up behind Miller fighting Transwestern’s The Laurel, protesting Highland House (the kind of development Miller’s Preston Center Plan begged for) and the Preston Center Sky Bridge. Her current hobbies include opposing anything being done in PD-15 and the St. Michael’s redevelopment. For any development project in recent years near Preston Center, Miller has been the “no to gal.”

The remainder are towers representatives and local development agitators (although Dawson could be in both categories given he, too, doesn’t live in the area).

It’s funny. These groups claim to represent 78 percent of the residents of PD-15. But they don’t really. In zoning cases, the city doesn’t allow individual owner voting within multi-family housing unless HOA rules allow it. Regardless if we’re talking about a handful of townhouses or a complex of 1,000, the city boils it down to a single vote of everyone. A complex can escape this dictatorial voting by inserting language into their HOA documents that enables individual owner voting. Neither Preston Tower nor Athena have such language.

Many HOA documents are so unanticipatory on issues like this, often the HOA boards don’t even have to poll their co-owners for guidance. An HOA board can simply vote their personal desire. And so, it’s on the strength of two HOA boards alone that the claim of 78 percent representation is made. No developer has presented to residents, no debate has occurred, no vote taken. The original task force meetings and current authorized hearing meetings are sparsely attended by towers residents enabling this asleep-at-the-wheel hijacking.

When towers representatives say they’re doing what residents want, it boils down to who they talk to in their everyday lives and who they run into in the elevator. Hardly representative. When Laura Miller says she speaks for 78 percent of residents, she’s talking only to the HOA boards – because the rest of the residents don’t matter for the purpose of inflating the support for her position.

The Meeting

According to emails obtained through an open records request (here and here), we can see Miller trying to setup a meeting between her “group one” and Gates. The topic was a letter Miller wrote and they signed nearly six months prior in May – before the Authorized Hearing committee members had been announced. In an old-school power play move, they wanted Gates on their turf – Carona’s Associa offices (Associa is a nationwide HOA property management company).

The question I ask myself is, “What happened in October that caused Miller to resurrect her months’ old letter as entre to a meeting with Gates”?

Gates agrees and a date is set, but at City Hall. Then Miller adds in “group two” from the towers. Gates is unhappy with the large group and wants to meet with them separately. She later tells John Carona, “I have been ambushed and treated disrespectfully in the past by Laura [Miller] and I will not have that happen again.” A city staffer passing outside the meeting tells me that Miller’s voice was heard to loudly scream at one point “This is your fault!”. That tidbit certainly strengthens Gates’ wariness of Miller.

In my opinion, it would have also be interesting for Gates to see how the puppets act without the master. Ultimately, Miller got her way and all 15 are invited. It seems Blumer, Rasansky, and Carona beg off citing confusion and double-booking.

Rasansky begs off telling Gates “I know zoning. The developers should file their own zoning cases, as is the norm.” Had Rasansky been keeping up with this process, he would have known that unlike other zoning cases, PD-15 has a cap on the total number of units in the PD. This makes it impossible for developers to file a zoning case except for the surplus 65-ish units that are a shared resource between six parcels spread across 13-ish acres. As Gates said last week, such a case would be DOA at City Hall. At a bare minimum, the dwelling unit cap must be lifted for cases to proceed.

Donna Blumer’s regrets say in part that, “However, please be assured that I remain in full support of the others who signed the letter addressing the neighborhood’s concerns.” That support is for a letter signed by a handful of HOA representatives without the input or support of their residents.

While Carona says he’d be “Glad to meet with the residents of the low rises …,” “he later says, “At the moment, the only people I’m personally interested in meeting with are those that have requested to be in Thursday’s proposed meeting,” although later stating “Candidly, I have no desire to interfere.” (Then why are you?)

In a nutshell, these three former local and state lawmakers were willing to jump into an issue they know little about without first trying to get a balanced perspective. Uninformed and listening to one side isn’t the best way to make a decision – especially troubling from former lawmakers.

Sources say Carona has made no overtures seeking to understand the low-rises’ side.

The Recap

Laura Miller enlisted a group of former politicians and personal friends to stump for a cause that many, if not all, had little personal stake in and who are highly unlikely to fully understand the issue outside what Miller has told them.

After the meeting, Miller sends a “thank you, but…” letter to Gates. In it she twists again noting that “the two developers who are driving this process”. Funny, but for months, the trope was that developers would bypass the neighborhood. Once they presented their plans, suddenly they’re driving this process. It’s a “have you stopped sleeping with hookers?” no-win argument.

She later notes, “The traffic levels in and around Preston Center are completely unacceptable.” Funny how the Preston Center task force Miller drove reported that traffic has been decreasing for nearly two decades along both roads. It would be more accurate to say that traffic around Preston Center is becoming less unacceptable every day.

Even though city staff reiterated this external research in the past few months, Miller quotes Elizabeth Mow, Assistant Executive Director for NTTA as saying, “It’s gridlock all the time.” As a local resident, I can tell you that outside rush hours, it’s not gridlock even most of the time. If Mow was referring to the Tollway (which seems more likely given her job), there’s not a lot to do, nor will PD-15 development have a noticeable effect.

There is also talk of the Texas U-Turn on Northwest Highway and the Tollway. As I pointed out nearly three years ago, there isn’t the physical space to put one that would help with Lomo Alto/Tollway turn-around traffic.

Post Recap

On Nov. 8, Miller distributed an alarming email and petition encouraging residents to protest both PD-15 development and the St. Michael’s project. Not surprisingly, Miller used her typical charged and unproven language about her representation of 78 percent of PD-15 residents and traffic while inserting the baseless claim that developers want to build 25-story high-rises all around Athena and Preston Tower – no plans for four high-rises have been presented or asked for except in Miller’s (and coincidentally) the towers’ representatives’ dreams.

Miller’s stance on St. Michael’s cracks me up. The press release about the proposed development calls out how the development adheres to her Preston Center plan eight times in slightly more than a single page – and yet Miller is opposed. Would nine or 10 genuflections have changed her mind? (Ironically, one of her chief gripes about PD-15 is that development goes against her Preston Center Plan.)

I still have no idea why Former Mayor Miller has inserted herself into all things Preston Center. It all reminds me of the seven-time Academy Award winner who winds down their career as a game show host breathlessly trying to hang on to the spotlight – in this case, the kiddie pool of neighborhood development.

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Dallas' high-rise apartment boom still has thousands of units on the way

Fri, 09 Nov 2018 16:06:52 GMT

Dallas News
Steve Brown, Real Estate Editor

The newest apartment tower on the way in Dallas' Victory Park project won't open until 2021.

That's probably a good thing.

The Dallas area has seen a flood of new high-rise, high-priced rental projects in the last few years and more are on the way. Developer Hines' 39-story Victor tower in Victory Park will be one of the biggest.

The builders are betting that with a 32-month construction schedule, most of their competitors will be out of the market by the time The Victor opens.

"We are well aware of the supply Dallas has built unlike anywhere else in the country other than New York," said Hines' Corbin Eckel. "Luxury residential has seen a large influx of new units at the same price point."

Dallas leads the country in apartment building with almost 35,000 units in the construction pipeline. So far, the local market has gobbled up almost everything developers can throw at it, fueled by several years of more than 100,000 jobs being created every year in the area.

But a flood of high-rise projects coming to the market in the next couple of years will be the real test.

In the last year and a half, more than a dozen high-rise apartments with about 3,000 luxury units have opened their doors in the Dallas area. And another 15 luxury tower rentals are under construction or about to start with a staggering 4,500 units.

"There's still quite a bit of high-rise product on the way," said Greg Willett, top economist with Richardson-based RealPage.

Most of the new tower apartments are headed for Dallas' Uptown and downtown markets. But there are high-rise residential buildings in the works up in Plano and Frisco, too. The average monthly rent for these projects is just under $2,000 a month — nearly twice the overall monthly apartment cost in North Texas.

The most expensive penthouse apartments can run well over 10 grand a month.

"That pool of resident prospects for high-rise product looks comparatively shallow," Willett said. "Thus, we can only handle a limited block of completions in that niche at one time."

So far, occupancy levels in the apartment towers are more than 93 percent — slightly less than the overall market.

"Even more telling, rents are being cut 0.8 percent on an annual basis in the high-rise segment," Willett said.

With so many more new super-luxury, super-price apartments on the way, don't be surprised if there are more bargains offered for renters. A month of free rent is already common in the market.

High-rise rental developers are betting that local job growth and moves to the area will keep filling up their new units. And lenders are keeping a close eye on the development pipeline.

"You are going to see capital markets limit new project developments," said Hines' Eckel. "The banks are aware of the supply in Dallas."

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CM Gates Liberates PD-15 Planning From Standstill; Children Sent Home For Holidays

Thu, 08 Nov 2018 16:20:20 GMT

Candy's Dirt
by Jon Anderson

The run-up to Wednesday’s tenth PD-15 meeting should’ve filled area residents with anger. The self-centered towers were at it again. On Monday, Athena management company ICI Real Estate sent residents an “URGENT!!!” call for Athena residents to attend last night’s meeting (Preston Tower did the same).

It said Bob Bowling from Preston Tower was going to make a motion to dissolve the authorized hearing and send developers directly to City Plan Commission. Athena representative Margaret Darden was scheduled to second the motion after which residents in the audience were encouraged to stand and applaud. It was so kindergarten, I’m surprised there wasn’t a warning about not eating paste.

Their argument consists of the same tired, disproven tropes as always – four high-rises, unprecedented traffic and 10 years of non-stop construction. Blah, blah, blah. If you want to sing that song, read this or this.

NOTE: ICI seriously overstepped their bounds by sending such a loaded, propaganda-filled email to residents under their own account. Darden and Dewberry should have sent their ~~drivel~~ opinions and plans from their own accounts. (Full disclosure: I send email wrap-ups and links to PD-15 stories to residents within the building under my personal account. I have never asked or even thought to involve the management company.)

You may recall back in July, I reported on an email Preston Hollow South Neighborhood Association (PHSNA) president John Pritchett sent to committee members where he said they’re “not the A-Team in terms of zoning matters.” Apparently, Towers representatives Bob Bowling, Tatiana Frierson, Margaret Darden and Barbara Dewberry agree with the assessment, so hot are they to disband the committee. It’s almost comical, too. The Laurel apartments on Preston Road and Northwest Highway are pretty universally disliked and yet these representatives are in the same camp as Pritchett, who —to hear him tell it — single-handily led the negotiations for the neighborhood with developer Transwestern.

NOTE: If any member of any committee feels too stupid to do the job, resign and stop trying to crater a process everyone else is working in good faith to complete.

Storming the Gates

This is all on the heels of a meeting last Thursday between Council Member Gates, Plan Commissioner Margot Murphy and a city attorney, and an opposition consisting of the usual suspects – former Mayor Laura Miller, husband Steve Wolens, John Pritchett, Athena reps Margaret Darden, Barbara Dewberry, Preston Tower reps Tatiana Frierson, Bob Bowling, and Roger Albright (Towers attorney). Also part of the parking pass request was a Who’s Who “Who Was” of Dallas politics (in addition to Miller and Wolens).

Based on email exchanges obtained from an open records request, the purpose of the meeting seemed to essentially be to harangue Council Member Gates and Commissioner Murphy into disbanding the authorized hearing. Once I’ve parsed the documents, look for a column next week – let’s call them the PD-Papers. The only shame is that Councilmember Gates’ office isn’t wired for recording.

And then this morning I read in the Chicago Tribune that a city project to improve O’Hare airport had whittled 12 submissions down to five. The remaining five would create models of their proposal that would circulate through the city for public comment. It reminded me that on a smaller scale, this is what the authorized hearing committee should have been but for the pettiness of the towers.

It’s on the heels of these backstage machinations that I entered PD-15’s meeting number 10.

… and I loved it.

Councilmember Gates was the lead speaker with a backup band from city government. A cop even whisked through to see if there was going to be trouble (waving canes can hurt). But no police were needed. No city hall backup band was needed beyond the odd clarification during the Q&A.

With smoothness hinting at practice, Gates simply closed the doors to Crazytown – without the finger-pointing I personally couldn’t resist. She outlined and reiterated what has been said and reported for over a year. Simply:

Developers can file for a building permit only if they want to rebuild exactly what exists/existed.
Developers can file a zoning case for the 65-ish surplus units that remain unbuilt in PD-15. But the case would be “DOA” at Plan Commission and City Council because assigning those surplus units to one property would enrich them at the expense of the other property owners in PD-15. Translation: Not gonna happen.
The representatives from the six properties within PD-15 could unanimously agree to changes to the PD and present those to Plan Commission and Council. That process failed a year ago almost entirely because of Preston Tower and the Athena.
The current Authorized Hearing process is the only way to increase the limitations within the PD and move forward.

So the plan for Preston Tower’s Bob Bowling to call for a dissolution of the Authorized Hearing to force developers to file zoning cases directly with Plan Commission was always a fool’s errand. It was comical to listen to towers representatives surprised to (again) re-learn the truth behind this process. Athena representative Barbara Dewberry even commented that the towers had been told something different by their attorney Roger Albright. Gates answered with number two above – yes developers could file, but it would be DOA. Even with all this (and what you’ll see below) near the end, Bob Bowling spoke about what he’d planned to do earlier. He ended by saying that if January doesn’t go well, he’ll bring his motion again to dissolve the Authorized Hearing and let developers file their own zoning cases – you know, that thing that can’t work (insert eye roll).

Gates went into further detail, that too had been covered in prior meetings. The city would not issue a building permit for a project that would exceed the capacity of sanitary sewers. It’s unlikely stormwater flooding would be made worse by development because the lots are pretty much covered in concrete already which is the driver of runoff (nowhere for the water to go). Chief Planner David Cossum made these points months ago, but much like the concrete-covered land, some ears were similarly covered.

Gates did suggest that between a small office budget she controls and the developers at the table on Preston Place and Diplomat, a traffic optimization study should be completed. Of course, the few thousand dollars such a study would entail could have been paid for (perhaps multiple times) by the towers’ $400/hour attorney engaged to fight the process.

Go Play While Mommy and Daddy Work

The next step is that public committee meetings have been suspended until January. The realization that the children were unable to share their toys forced Gates to engage city staff to craft their own recommendation. That plan will be presented to the committee in January for discussion with the hopes of reaching enough consensus that it could proceed to a full-on public outreach meeting before heading off to Plan Commission and Council.

It’s hugely sad that these people (mostly the towers) in their unending attempt to hold everything back (based on erroneous information from multiple sources), have squandered a once in a lifetime opportunity to shape their neighborhood. Put in perspective, imagine …

A child grocery shopping with a parent. The parent tells the child to get some broccoli for dinner. The child throws a tantrum wailing they weren’t eating broccoli ever, ever, ever. You and I know that child is getting broccoli. But what if the child had asked for peas instead? They’d be eating peas that night because it was a win-win. The towers (ironically, housing an inordinate number of grandparents) have spent over a year bitching about broccoli rather than negotiating for peas.

Finally, realizing some collaboration was needed for consensus, Gates encouraged the committee to continue to meet privately to see if their impasse could be breached. The Preston Place (Provident) and Diplomat (A.G. Spanos) developers were similarly encouraged to work together on a solution. All parties were encouraged to share with city staff and ask questions as needed between now and the January meeting.

Committee member Jim Panipinto suggested that the developers work with city staff to craft the recommendations – hell no. Those directly enriched by a process shouldn’t be crafting the parameters of the process. It’s more than a little “finger-on-scale” for my tastes.

Given this new timeline, there could be a sick satisfaction in this being mostly wrapped up in March, the second anniversary of the Preston Place fire. Amongst the petty bickering and power plays, something that seems to have been discarded from memory.

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Dallas-Fort Worth leads the country in share of new high-end apartments

Fri, 26 Oct 2018 15:07:44 GMT

Dallas News
Steve Brown, Real Estate Editor

Last year, almost 100 percent of the apartments built in Dallas-Fort Worth had something in common: They were all high-end rental units.

With developers in the biggest apartment-building market in the country aiming for the same slice of the rental pie, North Texas now ranks high among markets with the largest share of pricey, luxury apartment building.

D-FW has more high-end apartment buildings than any other metro area in the country, according to a study by Yardi Systems, just as in 2017. Nationwide, 8 out of 10 apartment communities that opened last year targeted high-end renters.

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"Encumbered by high construction costs and encouraged by a surge in demand for rentals, developers have bet big on high-end apartments," Yardi analysts say. "Back in 2012, high-end properties represented about half of all new completed construction, but now these projects occupy the lion's share of the multifamily industry.

"Nationally, about 87 percent of all large-scale apartment buildings completed in the first half of 2018 are high-end."

The surge in construction of deluxe rental units comes at a time when demand for affordable apartments in major U.S. markets is at an all-time high.

"Almost all of the new dwelling units being delivered are Class A — they are higher-end product," said John Sebree, national director with commercial property firm Marcus & Millichap. "The number of new high-end households being created is a much smaller percentage.

"A large percentage of those new households are B and C apartment tenants, and we are not creating any more B and C product."

What's worse, thousands of older B and C apartments around North Texas are being knocked down for pricier rental communities.

(The share of high-end apartments being built nationwide has almost doubled./Yardi Systems)

Because of the shrinking pool of older apartments, rents in those units are rising at a higher percentage than new luxury apartments that are flooding some markets.

High-end apartment rents are up less than 1 percent this year in D-FW, and neighborhoods with older units are seeing rents rise more than 3 percent.

"The strongest rent growth has been in the neighborhoods where we are not building much in this cycle," said Greg Willett, chief economist with Richardson-based RealPage. "We have really filled up the neighborhoods where you see Class C units.

"Historically, you have had chronic vacancies there. Those areas are now jam-packed full."

While D-FW's employment base and population are growing, incomes are not rising fast enough to keep up with apartment rents, which have grown almost 40 percent in North Texas since the recession.

"A bigger share of the population can only afford those Class C units," Willett said. "They have been priced out of the middle market and upper-tier properties."

Developers say rising land, construction and financing costs make it almost impossible to build workforce apartments in many urban areas.

"We have chosen to play in the upper end," said Tom Bakewell, one of the founders of Dallas-based apartment builder StreetLights Residential. "We are going to go even higher-end."

StreetLight's newest Dallas rental high-rise on the edge of Highland Park has average rents of $5,000 — almost five times the D-FW average. Tenants' average age in the McKenzie building is in the 50s, and they lease units for as long as two years.

"We are going to try and roll these out in more cities," Bakewell said. "We will only do a few of them in most markets."

Dallas and Fort Worth have one of the country's largest shares of new high-end apartments. (Yardi Systems)

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National Night Out

Fri, 19 Oct 2018 16:02:27 GMT

Preston Hollow People
October 19, 2018 Staff Report

National Night Out attracted throngs of residents Oct. 2 at Preston Hollow Park where members of the Dallas Police Department, Preston Hollow Homeowners Association, and the Center for Transportation Safety spoke on neighborhood safety.

Juli Black, president of the Homeowners Association, emphasized neighbor awareness, and Neal Johnson of CTS spoke about bicycle safety. In Briarwood, 13 restaurants participated in a Taste of Lovers-themed event along with the Briarwood Crime Watch Association.

(Photos: Chris McGathey and William Legrone)

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PD-15 Meeting 8: The Cats Are Beginning To Herd, But Not Without Angst

Thu, 11 Oct 2018 19:18:59 GMT

by Jon Anderson
Candy's Dirt

Tower Spacing: Through Thick and Thin, Thick Matters

There’s a bit of a special language being formulated between the Authorized Hearing committee members. For example, when the city facilitator recaps a prior discussion by saying, “We agreed on X,” a committee member or two will pipe up “We didn’t agree on that.” What they really mean is they didn’t. And since they didn’t agree, there could be no agreement. Everyone believing they’re getting 100 percent out of this is a recipe for nothing ever being decided. Ancient children not wanting to share their toys.

Parking

The session revolved around a review of responses to last meeting’s homework on a variety of topics, and trying to get some consensus. The first of those topics was a discussion of parking requirements. In many regards it was a pointless discussion. The committee members are not parking experts so to ask their opinion on whether it should be one space per bedroom, 1.5 spaces per unit or two spaces is all so much guesswork. Woven into this was the fear that developers would build too much parking and be left with a surplus once Uber took over the world.

Here’s the thing, there’s never unused parking in multifamily developments. If there was a global automobile rapture tomorrow, parking spaces would be repurposed for storage (much to the chagrin of the storage industry), or amenity space, or even built out for additional living space (above-ground, flat garages). It’s not like it would go to waste. So don’t worry about too much, only too little.

There was light discussion on street parking with a few wanting to eliminate it. But you can’t really. Each building will likely maintain a handful of outside spaces for drop-offs, quick visits and the like, where going into a garage is a little silly.

Beyond numbers, most seemed OK with at least some above-ground parking so long as it was camouflaged in some way (wrapped in apartments or attractively screened). I did smile at one response that thought underground parking should be required for Athena and Preston Tower as though they should dig a hole 50 years post-construction.

Height Limits Using RPS. (Boo-boo: Preston Tower is 8-stories taller than Athena but only 17′ taller?)

Residential Proximity Slope (RPS)

You recall, RPS is not required for PD-15 but many want to see how using RPS would play out. RPS is a slope that runs from single-family neighborhoods towards areas with higher allowable buildings. It’s designed to curtail tall buildings from looming over homes by pulling them back and away. Think about the stair-step buildings you see at Preston Center along the tollway that pull away from Devonshire.

RPS caused a lot of heebie-jeebies. Diamond Head Condos’ representative was particularly vocal about not wanting to be subjected to the measure because it would limit their redevelopment from infinite height.

But the funniest head-snapping happened when someone said RPS should be used, and that the Athena and Preston Tower should be subjected to it should they ever redevelop voluntarily or as a result of an act of nature (shrinking their allowed heights). You never saw two grandmothers stammer “grandfather” so fast. You see, they’re OK dictating to everyone else and giving no purchase, but limiting their properties sent a few volts through.

And you know what? As negative and stingy as the towers have been, were I a low-rise representative, I’d make it my life’s work to tie the Athena and Preston Tower to the RPS.

Sorta in the same ballpark as RPS is Tower Spacing – step-backs when two tall buildings are too close. Athena said “yes” and Diamond Head said “no.” I say “yes” and here’s why:

Everyone points to Preston Tower’s garden building, saying it’s not on top of Preston Tower, but here’s the thing: The garden building is two units deep. Diplomat and Diamond Head are two buildings deep with a slight separation. This makes their buildings twice as thick as the garden building and therefore twice as close to their neighbors. As it stands, there is a wider separation between Diplomat and Royal Orleans already, but Athena and Diamond Head get REALLY cramped at height. If Diamond Head Condos is going to extend into the residential floor plane of Athena there needs to be a step back. I would daresay that the complexes on Diamond Head’s northern boundary would want a step back, too.

Oh, and by the way, it doesn’t matter what I, Athena, or Diamond Head think. PD-15 states that if some parameter is silent in the PD-15 documents, it defaults to MF-(3) within Chapter 51. Tower Spacing is denoted in Chapter 51. While the committee may be empowered to waive it, unlike RPS, they’re already governed by it. City staff seemed to position it as an option. Not really. It’s there.

One protectionist thing the towers representative said I did agree with: Diamond Head lamented having to look out her window at the tall face of Athena. The response to Diamond Head was, “you knew what you were buying” – and they’re right. It’s a corollary to moving next to an airport and complaining about the noise. I have no sympathy for that argument.

Diamond Head Condos

This is as good a place as any to say that Diamond Head annoyed me last night. I’m not telling tales out of class here as I spoke to their representative after the meeting. Their goal last night for any dimension was the tallest, widest, densest structure possible – more than a little greed. She said later that she figured the city would probably not approve such a building, but they wanted an enormous envelope so a developer could then fight it out at City Hall.

The first thing I said was that her unrealistic excessiveness was scaring people and causing some to dig their heels in (counterproductive in a negotiation). The second thing is that a huge envelope that you then leave the city to decipher misses a trick. The wonderful thing about this often-confusing and frustrating process is that it places a level of control in the neighborhood BEFORE projects go to Plan Commission and City Council. Why would you want two sets of eyes on something instead of three? Especially when one of the sets is the very local neighborhood that can add some specific tweaking that might not matter to the city, but would matter a great deal to the neighborhood?

What I didn’t say, only because it occurred to me later, was that even if a virtually unlimited buildable envelope was given, the city would knock it down to something realistic when a developer tried to fill it. Developers don’t pay on “maybe,” they pay on “permits.” So whatever a developer agreed to pay (on contingent) for a seemingly unlimited envelope would be discounted right back to what they got permitted. So there is no point in getting a bazillion dollar buildable envelope when the city will only ultimately approve a quarter of a bazillion dollar project. The ultimate money paid to the landowner is the same. But the process is stretched out unnecessarily due to the battles that would be fought and it needlessly scares the behoozis out if the neighborhood. Ultimately it serves everyone if you work towards an 80-90 percent nailed down envelope so a developer only needs minor tweaks.

Setback relief could eat into the frontage road??

Setbacks

More comedy ensued on setbacks. I’m going out on a limb and say this homework question wasn’t explained very well. There is an existing 100-foot setback from Northwest Highway north to Preston Tower, Preston Place, Royal Orleans, and Athena. As far as I’ve determined, it’s in each of the building’s deeds. But the question asked what an appropriate setback should be.

Before getting to the responses, it’s important to know that the actual Pink Wall from Northwest Highway to the first curb is about five feet. Then there’s a parallel parking lane across most of the stretch (call it 10 feet). Then there’s a generous two lane road. After that there’s differing land uses before hitting a building. All totaled, 100 feet.

Three committee members were OK with a 30-foot setback from the “property line” which is Northwest Highway. That would result in a building almost in the middle of the frontage road. At 40 feet, it would only be a handful of feet north of the roadway before a sheer face of building would be possible.

Maybe you want to rethink that. Not only would it pull the buildings out of alignment, but it would be fairly ugly (you don’t see single-family homes next to the sidewalk either).

There is really only one reason to even consider this – Royal Orleans. While Preston Place has all the land it needs at about two acres, Royal Orleans sits on a lot made tiny by required setbacks on all four sides. If they could build significantly into the 100 foot Northwest Highway setback, it would make their property more valuable. But at what cost to the neighborhood aesthetic? The building already encroaches onto the 100-foot setback with a yard and pool that pinches the frontage road.

Their representative seemed to be advocating for zero setback outside the frontage road. This would add about 65 feet to their buildable lot and pull one building significantly out of alignment. Coupled with their desire for the “front” of their building to face Diamond Head Circle leaving the frontage road framed by a tall, sheer block jutting out of alignment and into the view plane.

No. I’m sorry, that’s too much ugly to swallow. I didn’t design PD-15 and the current owners of Royal Orleans likely didn’t purchase with the hope of cashing out to a developer (and if they did, they shouldn’t have bought the smallest plot in the area). Sure, it’s frustrating and feels unfair when neighboring buildings are able to redevelop into more salable projects, but life ain’t fair. While some accommodations may be made, Royal Orleans’ dirt simply isn’t worth as much because there isn’t enough of it.

Also, Royal Orleans has been in talks with Preston Place’s buyer, Provident. If Provident connects the two parcels, no setback relief is needed, period. And the neighborhood certainly doesn’t need both buildings to be pulled forward.

Side And Alley Setbacks

Who’d a thunk there could be so much hoo-ha about alley setbacks. They’re currently 20 feet which essentially equates to the carports lining the alley. For some reason city staff kept harping on wanting sidewalks in the alley. Why? Leisurely strolls by mechanicals, HVAC chillers, and whiffy dumpsters all while gazing poetically up at power lines?

Side lot setbacks range from 10-to-40 feet with a patchwork of sidewalks. I urge ALL committee members to carpool around Uptown, Oak Lawn, and Knox and look at new apartment buildings and their setbacks. Most are 10-ish feet plus a sidewalk – pretty dang close to the street. Put in perspective, my sofa is 10 feet long, and as a setback not too impressive. As for sidewalk width, let’s call it a two-scooter passing width.

Height And Density

The question of height returned silly answers. Responses were cast for all the low-rises between 25 and 330 feet tall. Density-wise, responses ranged from existing units per acre to 160 per acre (35 units per acre MORE than A.G. Spanos is asking for seems excessive). Helpful, no?

The Athena and Preston Tower were pegged at their existing heights with other replies including RPS (205′-285′ – or 125′ for garden building), 250′, and 330 feet tall. Ditto on density here too – existing to 160 per acre. Again, not too helpful.

One committee member’s math skills proved shy of the mark. It was posited that $700,000 townhouses would be just as profitable for everyone. Nope. Here’s the deal: assuming the average footprint of a townhouse and cramming 15 on an acre (pretty crammed), that’s a project value of $10.5 million. I believe A.G Spanos proposed Diplomat project (about an acre) will have a done-done value of $50 million give or take. If we believe the rumor of an $18.5 million price on Preston Place’s two acres, Provident would only have $2.5 million left for a full build out. Certainly to err is human.

Leading The Kitties To Water

This meeting city staff were more noticeable in their opinion on the path forward. Some found this off-putting, but I was thrilled. Without someone to help guide this process and capture decisions when made, this process would stumble on longer than a Law & Order franchise. As long as staff isn’t putting words in the committee’s mouths, I’m good with a little cat herding.

Remember: High-rises, HOAs and renovation are my beat. But I also appreciate modern and historical architecture balanced against the YIMBY movement. In 2016, 2017 and 2018, the National Association of Real Estate Editors recognized my writing with three Bronze (2016, 2017, 2018) and two Silver (2016, 2017) awards. Have a story to tell or a marriage proposal to make? Shoot me an email sharewithjon@candysdirt.com. Be sure to look for me on Facebook and Twitter. You won’t find me, but you’re welcome to look.

Best U.S. property market in 2019? All bets are on Dallas-Fort Worth

Thu, 11 Oct 2018 12:26:19 GMT

Steve Brown, Real Estate Editor
Dallas News

Dallas-Fort Worth tops the list of U.S. cities that real estate industry execs say will be the best for their business in 2019.

D-FW has been rated the highest for property investment and construction in a closely watched real estate beauty contest — the annual Emerging Trends in Real Estate report, which polled industry leaders on their outlook for 79 U.S. cities. The last time D-FW topped the list was in 2015, in the report looking ahead to 2016.

"I'm thrilled to see Dallas at the top of the list again," said Byron Carlock, national real estate leader with PriceWaterhouseCoopers, which, with the Urban Land Institute, sponsors the annual survey. "Dallas is doing a lot of things right.

"Dallas is one of the bright spots in our country," Carlock said. "We are watching Dallas lead the way among major cities pivoting to the new economy."

The recent strongest U.S. market for both job growth and population gains, D-FW is the top home and apartment building center in the country and a leader in demand for all kinds of commercial real estate. In just the first half of 2018, more than $11 billion in construction projects were started in North Texas. Only New York City had more total building.

Austin and San Antonio also placed among the Emerging Trends report's 20 favorite cities for investment and development in 2019.

Seventeen of the 20 cities are considered "secondary" markets — as opposed to the big "gateway" locations such as New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., that are usually favored by investors.

Along with D-FW, the cities investors like most for next year include Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; Orlando, Fla.; Nashville; and Charlotte, N.C.

"More job growth is happening in those markets," said Urban Land Institute's global CEO, Ed Walter. "And the amount of investment [capital] that has flowed into the gateway markets has in a lot of cases created some imbalances."

Some of the biggest issues in the real estate industry for next year.

Walter said Dallas-Fort Worth is a prime example of one of fast-growth, non-coastal metro areas.

"The five-year growth rate of Dallas for employment is more than double the national average," he said. "When you add up all the different ingredients, Dallas ends up ranking as the best market over the near term."

More than 2,300 property owners, lenders, brokers, investors, builders and other property professionals were polled for their outlook on the U.S. real estate market.

This is the 40th year that the Emerging Trends report has been published. Real estate execs were asked to rank their favorite property types for next year — industrial buildings, garden apartments and shopping center redevelopments. Chief industry worries for the coming year were also highlighted.

The top concerns for 2019 include:

*Rising interest rates, which are at the highest level in more than five years.
*Higher property insurance costs, because of climate change and expensive storms and fires, which are raising policy premiums.
*Immigration restrictions, which could cause "negative economic consequences and long-term weakening of our national growth potential" and lead to further labor shortages.
*The long real estate cycle, which means a future downturn is more likely. "The decline in real estate transaction volume seems to say that investors as a group are pulling back in the face of such concerns."

So far, there's no sign of oversupply in most of the country's cities, Walter said. "What's been different about this cycle compared to the others is that supply growth has generally been constrained."

PwC's Carlock said only a tiny percentage of the property professionals surveyed were negative about 2019.

"As you look at supply-demand characteristics and the disciplined approach to the market and the amount of equity going into deals, we have a fairly healthy industry," he said.

D-FW heads the list of the U.S. cities with the best property market prospects for next year, according to the Emerging Trends in Real Estate report.

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Dallas residents are getting less of a bite from rising apartment rents

Wed, 26 Sep 2018 12:19:42 GMT

Steve Brown, Real Estate Editor
Dallas News

Homebuyers aren't the only ones who have been slammed with soaring prices in the last few years.

Dallas-area apartment residents have also endured several years of significant price increases.

But just as home-price growth in North Texas is slowing, increases in apartment rents are also starting to wane.

During the third quarter, the Dallas area's average apartment rents rose at only 1.3 percent from a year earlier, according to new data from Richardson-based RealPage. That's less than half the annual rent growth among the major U.S. cities surveyed by RealPage.

The slowdown in Dallas apartment rent increases isn't a surprise. With almost 28,000 new apartment units hitting the North Texas market this year, analysts are tracking a steady decline in percentage rent hikes.

"We are about to move into the period of seasonally slow apartment leasing that comes with the cold weather months," RealPage chief economist Greg Willett said in the report. "Demand will trail completions just ahead, making it tough for the rent-growth pace to gain additional traction."

Dallas was on RealPage lists of the major U.S. rental markets that saw the weakest apartment-rent growth in the third quarter.

The fastest growing apartment rents were in Las Vegas (up 6.6 percent year-over-year) and Orlando, Fla. (up 6.5 percent). Houston-area rents were 3.7 percent higher than in third quarter 2017, according to RealPage.

Overall, North Texas apartment rents are still up by more than a third since 2010.

The average Dallas-Fort Worth-area apartment rent is at a record of more than $1,100 a month.

Still, the rate of rent increases in the area is just a fraction of what it was a couple of years ago, when landlords were bumping up their prices by more than 5 percent a year.

With more than 35,000 units still under construction, D-FW is one of the country's top apartment-building markets. And only less than 5 percent of the local apartment market is vacant.

Net apartment leasing in the D-FW area totaled more than 8,500 units in the third quarter — the best quarterly performance in more than a year.

"There was a little bit of an upward shift in momentum than we have been seeing," Willett said. "We still have a whole lot under construction.

"If we hit a bump in the road in the economy, that makes it a challenging environment."

Even with lower rent increases, there's no sign developers are cutting back on apartment building in North Texas.

"You look at the building permit numbers and start the numbers and there is still no indication of that," Willett said.

Apartment rent increases nationwide are slowing.

Annual rent appreciation was unchanged in August for the first time in 12 years, according to a recent report by Zillow.

Zillow estimated that Dallas-area rents were actually down 0.3 percent in August from a year earlier.

"Slower rent growth means that renters may feel less urgency to buy," said Zillow Senior Economist Aaron Terrazas.

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Census Data Show That Dallas Really Is Becoming More Urban

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 12:08:21 GMT

Urban infill is attracting a lot of new people.

By Matt Goodman Published in FrontBurner September 25, 2018 12:13 pm

Back in May, the U.S. Census published new population data that highlighted a march back to the cities. Dallas and Fort Worth were beneficiaries of this trend, adding more residents than all but two other cities in the country. But the northern suburbs—namely Frisco and McKinney—were still growing at a quicker rate relative to their population.

This week, the Census released more nuanced data as part of its annual American Community Survey. You can explore all sorts of fun data right here. So you see the population jumps (which were actually higher than the Census previously reported), but we can also see things like education level, median household income, median home value, total housing units, vacancy rates, and so on and so forth.

Before we go further, these are one-year estimates, which carry the highest margin of error of all Census data. But it does paint a general picture. Dallas added 24,000 people between 2016 and 2017. That’s more than triple what we added between 2000 and 2010, and brings us to more than 150,000 new residents since 2010, when the last Census was taken. Median income jumped by almost $4,000, landing at $50,627. The median home value rose by more than $30,000, which now sits at $190,600. This spike occurred despite the fact that there are more housing units in 2017 as well as more vacancies than in 2016. So much for supply and demand.

“If you look at those things by themselves, when there is more supply than demand, costs should be going down. But that’s not what’s going on,” says urban planner Patrick Kennedy, who also is a DART board member and sometime D contributor. “Incomes are going up, education is going up, some inflation is happening in the housing market nationwide, and the international capital flows going to cities for housing investment … all of that happening is inflating urban housing prices all over the place.”

Plano actually lost about 1,000 people, while McKinney and Frisco both added another 9,000 and 14,000, respectively. Kennedy thinks that’s a clear result of land availability. Collin County is stretching farther north, and Plano doesn’t have the land to grow that its northern neighbors do. Instead, Plano has begun exploring infill projects like Legacy and building up its downtown

Dallas has about 43,000 fewer people in poverty than it had in 2015, enough to drop our total percentage four points, to 18.5 percent. That’s still well above the statewide rate of 14.7 percent, however. Median rent jumped to $1,024 in Dallas, up from $961.

“Those areas are pretty built out,” Kennedy says, referring to what have become the middle suburbs like Plano. “There are two moves happening. One is to urban places, back to the city. When people relocate from other places, usually they’re not expecting Plano to have some urbanism elements, which it does in downtown and Legacy, but I don’t think people generally expect that. When I first moved here, I wanted to get as close to downtown as possible. That’s what people think when they move to a place, or they move to Frisco or McKinney where their jobs are.”

About that infill: Kennedy pulled numbers from the Census’ Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMA for short), which is super Census jargon for geographically bounded regions that it chooses to analyze. It’s the smallest, and therefore most targeted, of all the geographies that the Census digs into. One of those includes downtown, Uptown, and a stretch of East Dallas that ends at Abrams. He found that 28 percent of the city’s population growth occurred on 4.5 percent of its land. Rent here is at $1,358, up from $1,222 in 2016.

These residents are also driving less, taking more public transit, and biking and walking more often. Public transit use jumped by 1,247 people within the PUMA, good enough for a 1.3 percent boost to 5.8 percent. Biking jumped from .47 percent to 1.29 percent, up 698 people. About 1,688 people are walking more, a jump from 3.76 percent to 5.61 percent. Kennedy says the numbers should encourage the city to reinvest in enhancing walkability and public transit.

“That’s the result we want out of urban infill, not having to use a car for every trip, and that’s really the only way to reduce vehicular use,” he says. “I think this is an impetus for us to be reinvesting and making more places where active transportation is useful and safe because demand is there.”

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Episcopal Church Plans Mixed-Use Luxury Project at Preston Center

Sun, 23 Sep 2018 16:06:59 GMT

Preston Hollow People

September 23, 2018 Bianca R. Montes

Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church has announced plans for a mixed-use development on its property along Douglas Avenue in the southwest part of Preston Center.

The plans include a mid-rise office building on Douglas Avenue and a residential building on the western side of the site. The project will feature a full-service restaurant with a patio and other ground-floor retail that open onto public green space along Douglas Avenue.

Parking for the project will be a mix of self-parking and valet.

A key component of this project is expanded off-street parking for the church, said the Rev. Chris Girata, rector of Saint Michael and All Angels.

“By reducing our surface parking and investing heavily in underground parking, we not only solve our long-term parking needs, but we can create a more inviting campus with expanded green and open spaces and improve traffic flows for the benefit of the neighborhood and the church,” Girata said.

The new plan, he said starts to bring to life the vision his congregation has had for what their campus can be.

Saint Michael and development partner Lincoln Property Company considered a project on the same piece of land in 2015 but put plans on hold pending recommendations of the Northwest Highway and Preston Road Area Task Force led by Dallas city council member Jennifer Gates.

“Just like the task force, our parishioners want wide sidewalks, plazas, and green spaces,” Girata said. “Not only was it the right thing to do to wait on the task force recommendations, but we believe that we now have a far better plan than we had in 2015 – better for us and better for the neighbors.”

John Walter, executive vice president with Lincoln Property Company, said the goal is to build a development designed to meet both the guidelines of the Preston Center Task Force and needs of the church and its surrounding neighborhood.

“It has taken a significant commitment of time and money to accommodate the task force recommendations, but we believe the new result will be worth it,” he said.

Peter Kline, a leader of the Northwest Highway and Preston Road Area Taskforce, agreed.

“Based on my review of the preliminary plans for the proposed Saint Michael mixed-use development, I believe this project could be a role model for future developments in the Preston Center area,” he said. “They have gone to great lengths to address the concerns and the priorities of the area plan.”

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PD-15 Meeting #6: Discussion Leads to Deeper Understanding

Sat, 15 Sep 2018 01:31:35 GMT

by Jon Anderson
Candy's Dirt

The latest PD-15 meeting was interesting and odd. Unlike in prior meetings, this session was more of a conversation between committee members and city staffers Andrew Ruegg, Neva Dean and City Plan Commissioner Margot Murphy. It was a chance to ask questions of staff and each other to explore the next steps and possibilities moving forward.

It was also a time to debunk some misinformation. Personally, I think the more free-flowing conversation was needed. The committee had absorbed plenty of information from the city and the neighborhood, and needed to make some sense of it to begin piecing it together.

100-FOOT SETBACKS ON NORTHWEST HIGHWAY

One topic of discussion, the existing requirement for 100 foot setbacks along Northwest Highway, highlights my feeling of oddity. The answer from the city, that the committee could change the existing setbacks within PD-15 was half-true. Yes, the committee can, but the 100-foot setbacks are contained within the individual parcels’ deeds and therefore would require city action to change, which is outside the power of the committee. I whispered this to city staff and was told I was correct, but no one clarified this for the committee.

The reason for the setback chat was Royal Orleans, whose swimming pool and garage entrance encroach on the frontage road (not visible on map above). In a scenario where new development would increase traffic, a non-compliant, pinched road isn’t ideal.

JUST FILE A ZONING CASE

Thankfully on another question, Margot Murphy jumped in with an expanded clarification. The question concerned the misinformation floating around the neighborhood, propagated by those against this process – namely whether a developer could just file a zoning case and bypass the authorized hearing.

As I’ve said, yes, a developer can, but they can only file a case for the 60-ish surplus units available. Commissioner Murphy expanded that to say the 60-ish units are a shared resource within PD-15. The other buildings in the PD would view one parcel trying to take those units as diminishing their own value and would fight it. Because of this, passage through Plan Commission and City Council would be very unlikely.

COOKING THE COMMITTEE’S BOOKS

Another piece of gossip is that the city already knows what they want to do with PD-15 and will just run over whatever the committee says. The fuller answer came back that whatever the committee decides will be captured and legalized by city staff, after which the committee will see/vet the final language.

As it comes to Plan Commission, city staff and Plan Commission may add differing recommendations which are called out in separate boxes. It’s then up to CPC and City Council to work with the community before and during those approval steps to accept or deny any suggested modifications.

At this point it’s is just like a regular zoning case where a developer typically says they want “X” and city staff either agree or amend before sending it on. The public gets to weigh in on those changes before they’re voted on. The public and committee aren’t shut out of these decisions until the final City Council approval is done.

TRAFFIC STUDIES

Traffic studies are a catch-22. The city has no money to fund one and won’t require one until a zoning case is filed by a developer, so how does the committee understand the traffic implications on their recommendations (that developers will use to guide their plans) without a traffic study?

After much back-and-forth, the city said they could provide a traffic planner to speak with the group. During this exchange, I had another thought and texted a land-use professional in the room asking how much a study would cost. The answer was “thousands, not tens of thousands” of dollars.

There are six buildings within PD-15, each building should kick in the $1,000-ish and get a study done where they design the parameters and there’s no whiff of developer or city steering the outcome.

ECONOMIC VIABILITY

The city reiterated they have no interest in the financial viability of any development project. Unfortunately, this translates into the city providing no guidance on what would be profitable to build while protecting the neighborhood’s interests.

It was noted that A.G. Spanos, contract holder on the Diplomat parcel, funded two studies on the economic viability of various construction projects within the PD. As part of the developers’ plans, author of the most recent and detailed study, Joseph Cahoon was available to answer questions that the committee didn’t ask.

In tonight’s meeting, city staff poo-pooed the idea of inviting Cahoon to a session to explain his work. Thinking this a mistake, I texted A.G. Spanos’ representatives asking them to invite the committee to a separate session. Alternatively, committee members can also contact Diplomat’s committee representative and pass along any desire to meet.

ALTERNATIVE USE BEYOND MULTI-FAMILY RESIDENTIAL

Thinking they were beyond contemplating uses beyond straight multi-family, one committee member was reluctant to completely abandon the concept of a neighborhood coffee shop and social venue (or even a dry cleaners) within PD-15.

Preston Tower representatives were quick to point out that in the past there was a restaurant, various convenience stores, sandwich shops, and a coming wine bar. They said all those uses failed to attract enough customers to remain open and they gave the wine bar a year before it too closed. Without the ability to advertise and the extremely limited parking, these uses would continue to fail from lack of patronage.

Dry cleaners are a chemical nightmare for any site and are on par with gas stations for chemical contamination. Getting approval for one might be challenging and would likely wind up being a kiosk where clothes are cropped off and picked-up translating to a bevy of delivery vehicles in the neighborhood providing there was enough business to keep it going.

REMOVE THE DENSITY CAP

Another oddity. If the committee so chose, they could simply raise the overall unit density number and walk away. The density cap is the lynchpin to the PD’s control of development. Were that removed, traditional zoning cases could be filed with developers asking city hall to approve increases in height, lot coverage, setbacks, sidewalks, greenspace, etc. so long as they stayed under the density cap (just like today where someone could apply for the surplus 60-ish units).

I’m glad the committee saw this as the cheat it is. Diplomat representative Maggie Sherod said is best when she said that this process of thoughtfully expanding development rights is complicated, time-consuming and a bit frustrating. However, it would net the neighborhood a better, more controlled result than just abdicating responsibility and hoping, (fingers-crossed) the city would get it right.

Sherod’s words were particularly poignant because those selling (like Diplomat) are portrayed as just trying to grab as much gusto to line their pockets before they run away and leave the neighborhood in ruins. Were that true, she’d only be pushing for the cap to be raised so she could run faster.

CLIQUES AND MORE CLIQUES

I’ll leave you with a little high school reminder. Note that no entity has polled the residents within PD-15 or the Pink Wall in general to get their opinions on what’s going or thoughts on development. Everyone who speaks, speaks for the few handfuls of people they’ve personally spoken to. Those who are against everything hang in their clique while those who are more open to the potential hang in another. Except when being harangued by someone from the opposing clique, folks stay in their clique. It’s warm, fuzzy and non-confrontational.

So when anyone says, “everyone I talk to…”, remember “everyone” is a small number and their own opinion makes it highly unlikely they’ll hear from the other side. It’s the echo chamber of the clique.

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PD-15: The Public Speaks Their Mind On What’s Been Going On So Far

Fri, 31 Aug 2018 16:06:06 GMT

by Jon Anderson
Candy's Dirt

I’ll cut to the chase (shocking, right?). Of the speakers last night that held opinions about the prospect of development, I counted 10 that were making positive comments and five were negative. There were a couple whose position I wasn’t sure of because their comments were more “don’t forget about X, Y or Z” – perhaps they’re the “undecided” voters?

Not too shabby. The same cast were in each camp with the area low-rises being positive to the process while residents from Preston Tower and the complexes on Bandera being negative. Like politics these days, actual facts don’t shift the world views of people who “just know they’re right.”

Those seeking positive change had many of the same messages on quality, permanence, uplifting the neighborhood, and equity, punctuated by admissions that the low-rise buildings, at 50-plus years old, were simply pooped out. Of course they pointed out that the economics of the situation make increasing density a necessity (unless impoverishing the whole area is a goal).

But beyond economics, increased density done right can make the neighborhood more vibrant, benefiting all. D Magazine recently dedicated a special issue to “Dallas and the New Urbanism” and I read every word. In fact, the city should send one to every home and force citizens to pass a test. It’s that good.

A pair of speakers from the Diamond Head Condos said the word that must not be said. They said that whatever density and height everyone else gets (including a high-rise), they should get too. The word they shouldn’t have said? Height. While I believe there will be equity in density, there isn’t a snowball’s chance of a high-rise going up across the street from Athena, nor do I think the city would approve one. It would be mutually assured destruction. Spanos isn’t getting a high-rise (and isn’t asking for one) and I’d bet Provident won’t get height on their northern section either. Height isn’t winnable, density is.

The Two Faces of Laurel

The Laurel continues to do double duty being almost unanimously disliked in one breath while being held up as the paragon of future development in PD-15. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t demand setbacks, underground parking, green space, and walkability and hold up the Laurel that gives the neighborhood precious little except underground parking (that one speaker was already complaining about moments later). The neighborhood squeezed every penny out of the deal in exchange for lower height.

John Pritchett, president of the Preston Hollow South Neighborhood Association continues to point out that if the Laurel could be built at four stories, so can Preston Place and the Diplomat. Here’s the thing. Two financial analyses say it can’t. Also, the Laurel’s land price was last negotiated in 2016. My PD-15 building has seen a dramatic increase in average unit selling prices per square foot since 2016. These last two-ish years are the only time the building has been in the black in pure dollars in the past 15 years. I’m assuming other neighboring buildings have also seen prices rise quickly in recent years (our tax bills sure have). So no, the Laurel doesn’t prove four-story construction is economically viable today.

IBM a better investment than Pink Wall real estate?

That 15 year study on my building’s selling prices? Adjusted for inflation, average selling prices are almost identical in 2002 and 2018. Put in perspective, had that buyer invested the same money in IBM, they’d be sitting on an inflation adjusted $56 per share, instead of a Pink Wall goose egg. Smart development will bring real property appreciation to the neighborhood.

Pritchett said that it was false that former Dallas mayor Laura Miller hijacked the Preston Center Area Plan. I’ll say this: People who were in the room when her private meetings were held told me I was absolutely right. City staff and the consultants have told me they were not invited to the closed door sessions. Oh, and I was at the public meeting, sitting in back of Miller, when she announced she and the committee would rewrite the consultants’ report and deliver it back to Council Member Gates. If not a hijack, then what?

He spoke about the monies spent, consultant-created reports created and such. Well, none of it made it into the main part of the report, whatever scant information the consultants provided can only been seen in the appendix. None of the major recommendations on density, increasing residential in Preston Center or the Pink Wall made it into the main report.

Lastly, let’s talk money. If it’s to be believed that the Provident contract was for $18 million and that it intended 220 units (versus the bloated vision they showed), that’s $81,818 in land costs per constructed unit. Extrapolating that down to the 60 units Preston Place could build by right, that equates to $2.45 million per acre. Not only does that impoverish Preston Place owners, but the resulting building would impact area-wide values.

One speaker noted that were either Athena or Preston Tower destroyed, they’d not adhere to the Preston Center Area Plan either. She’s right. At $2.5 million per acre, each Athena unit would be valued at approximately $35,000 while Preston Tower residents and business owners would reap a pitiful $27,700 on average. They’d be whining bloody murder, and yet it’s fine for everyone else to adhere to the plan they pray to.

On The Upside

After the meeting, one high-rise resident commented that seeing Spanos’ proposed project during the prior meeting had alleviated a lot of fears (while Provident’s proposal heightened many). What that person didn’t seem to know is that last year Spanos presented their project in a closed door session with the Athena and Preston Tower representatives and volunteered to present to the towers’ residents. Both towers refused their request.

A few seemingly innocent comments focused on items, like traffic planning, the committee simply hadn’t addressed yet. There was continued scoffing at studies showing that traffic on Preston Road and Northwest Highway has been decreasing for years. During the Preston Center Area Plan meetings, I wrote about the data presented …

Preston Road and Northwest Highway Traffic DECREASING?

The imagined current state of traffic on side streets wasn’t the only figment. Turns out much to everyone’s surprise (certainly mine), actual traffic on Preston Road and Northwest Highway has been decreasing … since 2001! There was a big dip during the recession, but it’s pretty much returned to pre-recession levels which are lower than 2001. In fact, according to Patrick Kennedy, a partner at the urban design and planning firm Space.Between.Design.Studio, when comparing traffic on Northwest Highway just west of the Tollway from 2004 to 2013 traffic decreased by 17 percent! Using another metric, Northwest Highway traffic at Preston Center has vacillated between 52-57,000 cars per day for eighteen years … in spite of the fact that the City of Dallas’ population has grown by hundreds of thousands of residents during this time (over 151,000, or 6.4 percent growth in Dallas County since 2010 alone).

Who’d a thunk?

Turns out that this mythology that traffic must be getting worse over time, is just that, mythology.

Finally, one Preston Tower resident blamed Council Member Jennifer Gates for giving away money earmarked for fixing area flooding. Memory is a bitch, but Gates wasn’t in office during that bond program. Her predecessor secured the funds but didn’t spend them at the Pink Wall because that plan required University Park to help and they refused.

Finally (really), in between meetings, a PowerPoint presentation was distributed calling on the committee to adhere to the Preston Center plan while also wanting underground parking, large setbacks, and the usual green space. For the last time (probably not), an expensive wish list doesn’t get done with no money in the deal.

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What Petty Nextdoor Posts Reveal About America

Mon, 20 Aug 2018 19:24:43 GMT

The hyperlocal social-media platform highlights small grievances—and proves that neighbors have more in common than they think.

Ian Bogost July/August 2018 Issue
The Atlantic

Here are some of the things I heard about in my neighborhood over the past year: A thunderstorm downed a tree, blocking a central road; a shadowy agent called “the night clipper” arose, surreptitiously cutting overhanging bushes while unsuspecting property owners slept; several dogs and cats were lost, found, or “on the loose,” whatever that means for a cat; a federal-grand-jury-summons telephone scam struck; someone sought belly-dancing classes, an apparent alternative to Pilates; and, innumerable times, people deposited bags of dog poop into lawn-clipping and recycling canisters at the curb. All of this news came courtesy of the social-media service Nextdoor. On its website and app, people can post recommendations, updates, and warnings about their building, block, or neighborhood.

Anyone who has subscribed to a neighborhood email listserv—or used the internet—can guess what might go wrong. Social networks connect people, but many of those connections degrade into vitriol. If Twitter is where you fight with strangers, and Facebook is where you vie with friends, then Nextdoor is where you get annoyed with neighbors—for sending “urgent alerts,” pushed late at night to mobile phones, about questionable emergencies; for trying to sell a tattered massage table or used carpet shampooer at near-retail price; for issuing nasty reprisals on matters large and small. But it can also foster connections among neighbors and help counter the social isolation brought about by technology.

Nextdoor works a lot like Facebook, but instead of a “Like” button, it offers a “Thank” button, encouraging a kind of neighborly grace. More important, in order to join, you have to prove that you live where you say you do (by entering a code mailed to your home address, for example). Which means the community you enter is not imagined or diasporic, comprising people from the same school, profession, or interest group—it’s physical. You can “mute” neighbors on Nextdoor to hide their posts, but you can’t make them move away. Like it or not, these are the people in your neighborhood—the people that you meet each day, as the old Sesame Street song goes. Not just the postman and the barber, but also the aspiring belly dancer, the night clipper, the cat looser, and all the rest.

Thanks to its popularity, the service offers a unique window into daily life around the country. Nextdoor’s virtual communities—which cover more than 180,000 U.S. neighborhoods, including more than 90 percent of those in the 25 largest cities—are becoming representative of the country’s actual populations.

What do Nextdoor users talk about? On April 18, 2018, to pick a random day, the nation mourned former First Lady Barbara Bush, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Donald Trump to discuss North Korea, and the world reacted to a deadly accident aboard a Southwest Airlines flight. But on Nextdoor, the overwhelming majority of Americans were focused on the impacts of late-season snowstorms: stuck cars, downed power lines, and especially snowplows. Grout and kittens were on mountain-time minds, and Oregonians seemed to be enduring a spate of lost wallets and duck encounters. In Florida and Colorado, problems with telecom services dominated the conversation.

This is pretty normal. Steve Wymer, Nextdoor’s vice president of policy, told me that the same topics arise again and again, modulated by region and neighborhood type. Service requests and recommendations constitute 30 percent of chatter, and discussions of real estate make up another 20 percent. About 10 percent of Nextdoor conversations relate to crime and safety, Wymer said. (Suspicious persons come up a lot, often amounting to sightings of people of color in predominantly white areas. Nextdoor has attempted to discourage posts that use appearance as a proxy for criminality by prompting users to add more detail and blocking some posts that mention race.) Public agencies such as police and emergency-management departments also post updates to their constituencies. Noise complaints are another popular subject, according to Wymer—fireworks seem to raise particular ire—as are classifieds, missing pets, and gardening tips.

Judging by the conversations on Nextdoor, it would seem that Americans are concerned first about the safety and security of their property, family, and pets, and then with their property’s, family’s, and pets’ upkeep and improvement. Though the platform breeds its share of conflict, it is notable—in contrast to other social networks—for the commonality it reveals, even in these times of unprecedented political division. No one, Democrat or Republican, wants a neighborhood strewed with dog poop.

Jenn Takahashi operates a Twitter account and Facebook page called Best of Nextdoor. Because Nextdoor posts are private to local communities, Takahashi relies on users to submit funny or weird things they see in neighborhood groups across the country. (When her Twitter following recently surpassed that of Nextdoor’s corporate account, the company’s head of community congratulated her, while also gently wondering whether she would blur the neighborhood names in her posted screenshots.) Less than a year after launching the accounts as a loving gag, Takahashi has built what might amount to the most complete contemporary picture of day-to-day American behavior, a kind of crowdsourced Kinsey report on municipal perversity.

Takahashi echoes Wymer on noise complaints—talk of fireworks or gunshots (they are rarely actual gunshots) is common, she says. Sometimes these complaints have dramatic consequences. In Seattle, a post about a dog’s bad reaction to some kind of cannon that was sounded during Seahawks football games led to an online dispute, and a neighborhood meeting at a library to talk it out erupted into a brawl. “Seattle is like the Florida of Nextdoor,” Takahashi told me, referring to the Sunshine State’s tendency to surface all manner of improbable events. Los Angeles is another source of good material: She’s received a handful of submissions about unrest in parts of the city where YouTube stars live, as fans mob the streets trying to catch a glimpse.

Best of Nextdoor reveals a charming cluelessness that pervades America’s communities. People in cities can’t seem to tell the difference between a possum and a house cat, for example. In Alabama, someone tried to sell an unopened box of Hot Pockets. Near St. Louis, one resident asked why the neighborhood of WingHaven is called “Swinghaven.” In a suburb of San Diego, someone posted an image of a found sex toy and—not comprehending the purpose of the device—worried that it “looks valuable.” But most of Takahashi’s collection catalogs more-mundane patterns, like the poop-in-the-trash-bin crisis that seems to plague all Americans. Takahashi has amassed countless specimens, as it were, from run-of-the-mill lamentations to complex home-surveillance-camera-facilitated stakeouts conducted to find and shame the offending dog walker.

In our conversation, Steve Wymer brought up Robert Putnam’s 2000 book, Bowling Alone, about the decline of in-person social discourse in America and its consequences for civic life. Putnam criticized the technological individualism encouraged by television and the internet, which had already shown a capacity to promote selfishness. Wymer argued that Nextdoor cuts against that trend: The company boasts dramatic examples of new collaborations the service helped enable—the neighbor who donated an organ to someone 10 doors down, whom she wouldn’t have known were it not for Nextdoor, and the person stranded on a roof by Hurricane Harvey who was able to summon a rescue boat via the service.

But usually life is less dramatic than that. In the most-common Best of Nextdoor submissions, neighbors worry about a weird truck driving by slowly, early in the morning. Ever vigilant, other users respond that they have already reported the suspicious vehicle to police, as law-enforcement representatives on the service encourage. Typically, the offending vehicle turns out to be the newspaper-delivery person, plodding through the suburbs to bring print news to the residents who still read it that way. Eventually, someone explains how newspaper delivery works, and order is restored.

I’ve seen a version of this post in my own neighborhood. Someone writes: “Concerns about white man with turban on bicycle.” Almost instantly, responses arrive: “Oh, that’s Floyd, he’s harmless,” and “Yeah, he’s been around forever.” Some neighbors theorize that he might be a wizard. It’s a small thing, and maybe not one to be proud of—but the neighbors’ concerns get assuaged, and Floyd escapes torment. That’s a post worth clicking “Thank” on.

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Numberless Preston Center Area Plan Remains Worthless Waste of Time and Money

Fri, 27 Jul 2018 15:54:18 GMT

by Jon Anderson
Candy's Dirt

Example of seven-story building construction and density options

A.G. Spanos has released a second, more thorough economic analysis of the feasibility of redeveloping Pink Wall parcels within the confines of the Preston Road and Northwest Highway Area Plan (PRNHAP). Spanos has a contingent contract to redevelop the Diplomat condos within PD-15 and has financed both viability studies. While Spanos has obvious motives, any economic data supplied is certainly more than the economic nothingness contained within the $350,000 PRNHAP study. How the city adopted that Santa’s lap of a plan, containing no financial underpinnings, still astounds.

You’ll recall that in October 2017, my rough calculations exposed the then 10-month old PRNHAP as economically bogus. That was followed up in January 2018 by Spanos’ first report developed by architects Looney Ricks Kiss that backed-up my findings. Namely that the recommendations contained within the PRNHAP study’s “Zone 4” are not viable to build. This latest study offers more detailed and dire details for the PD-15 area (download here).

To be clear, “not economically viable” means that a condo unit would sell for more money as a condo than as developable land. To sell under those conditions would equate to owners taking a loss on their home. In many cases it’s good when land is worth some fraction of a structure. It helps with neighborhood stabilization, curbing gentrification, etc.

PD-15 area

However, neighborhood revitalization is hampered when the combination of land costs and development rights are less than the value of existing development. I catch flak for “secretly” wanting to bulldoze the Pink Wall and put up acres of junky apartments. I don’t. But I do realize that some Pink Wall buildings have undercharged their HOA dues, resulting in years or decades of deferred maintenance. A cursory glance tells me that Imperial House is the only building to have swapped their original inefficient windows, let alone the number of hidden plumbing, foundation and electrical issues that continue to mount. Residents of more than one Pink Wall complex have told me that while they look good on the outside, they’re rotting on the inside.

The Latest Study

Produced by internationally known real estate consulting firm HR&A, the 18-page report isn’t for the feint hearted looking for a quick read. The firm’s business ranges from High Line Park and a five-year advisor on energy efficiency in New York to analyzing Dallas’ underinvestment in its park system. Author Joseph Cahoon has extensive work experience in multi-family residential development and is an adjunct professor and Director for the Folsom Institute for Real Estate at SMU’s Cox School of Business. In a word, qualified.

For the uninitiated, the document is dense, probably requiring more than one read-through (I did). There’s jargon that won’t be immediately comprehended, so before we discuss, here’re the two biggies:

Residual Land Value: The cost of land. We typically think of land prices from a seller’s point of view. But from a developer’s viewpoint, land value is backed into by deconstructing the total cost and ultimate selling value of a building (rent, cap rate, profit margins). Therefore, residual land value is how much a developer can pay for land minus the costs of a project and expected cap rate (below).

Capitalization or “Cap” Rate: The initial yield or profit margin expected from the project (total generated rent minus construction and long- and short-term operating costs).

With that in mind, the study builds out nine scenarios (three heights, three average unit sizes). The four-story examples adhere to the PRNHAP study’s height and underground parking limitations. The seven- and 10-story scenarios are three-story steps in height, taller than the PRNHAP study allows, but do include completely underground parking.

Ignoring PD-15’s density limitations, the assumed number of units are what could be built on an acre of land with reasonable setbacks. Extrapolating these to the larger Preston Place and Diamond Head lots or Royal Orleans’ smaller buildable lot would adjust unit counts accordingly (but not linearly as larger and smaller lots offer different economies of scale).

Next is the estimation of construction costs per square foot based on unit counts, size and underground parking. Construction costs may appear high but they include all underground parking (expensive) and also factor in the tighter one-acre example lot. Smaller lots are less efficient to build on. Construction costs relating to the two-acre Preston Place costs would be lower, all things being equal.

Filtered into the numbers is the type of construction. Four-story construction would be wood “stick” construction above ground sitting on 1.5 to 2.5 levels of underground concrete parking (depending on unit size/count – fewer/larger units require less parking). Of the three this is obviously the cheapest to build and can be seen at the Laurel on Northwest Highway and Preston Road.

With seven stories, hybrid building techniques come into play. From the bottom, there would be 2.5 to four levels of underground parking. Concrete would continue for an additional two stories of apartments above ground before five stories of stick construction for the bulk of units. These are sometimes called “five over two” buildings

At 10 stories, there would be 2.5 to 4.5 levels of underground parking with a full 10 stories of concrete construction. You may be wondering why the uplift to all-concrete is less than the difference between the four and seven story examples if concrete is supposed to be so much more expensive. Two points: There isn’t a lot of difference in the number of total units between seven to 10 stories due to lot coverage differences (a 10-story building covers less lot). Essentially adding 10 units (and three stories) to the seven story model raises overall costs nearly 15 percent. Because of the small number of units added, there’s not much more underground parking required either. Lot coverage could be increased were the pool placed on the roof (which would add height and/or cannibalize a whole floor).

The 10-story example is what I call the “no man’s land” of building. The gains over a hybrid building aren’t enough to justify going all concrete (unless you go higher).

Studying the Dallas area, the report sets a 5 percent return (cap rate) as the average based on comparable buildings. By comparison, the interest rate on a no-risk 10-year Treasury note is currently around 2.85 percent. A cap rate less than the Treasury rate wouldn’t make sense for the risk involved. Risk comes from a variety of factors including future property taxes and chargeable rents.

There’s a lot of red in this table. Essentially, based on the PRNHAP study, none of the four story scenarios are cost effective to build in the current market. The higher buildings even less so.

The report concludes with the understanding that the PRNHAP study is economically unworkable if the goal is to revitalize the neighborhood as it claims. Even at its best, can you imagine the Preston Place owners paying a developer $260,000 (double lot) to build a four-story building with average units of 1,450 square feet?

The report states that in order for the math to work, there has to be give in the PRNHAP study and/or rents will have to rise well above expected rates in a market where the high-end is cooling. There’s little anyone can do about rents, but construction costs are another ball game.

Underground Parking

One of the big levers is the preference for completely underground parking. The cost differential between above- and below- ground parking is roughly two- or three-to-one. Were some of the parking allowed above ground, the economics shift for the taller buildings. But the four-story would need to trade residential space for parking, reducing unit counts (and profitability) and therefore it never reaches economic viability. Played out …

Take the mid-sized example of 950 square foot units — 80 units in total and two full underground parking levels. Bringing those two floors above ground could cut the unit count in half to 40. But 40 units wouldn’t need two floors of parking, so call it a single floor of above ground parking with three levels of 60 apartments. While you’d save the excavation costs of the parking, you’d still incur the concrete costs of the above ground garage (can’t park cars in a wood parking lot). Net-net, the reduced unit counts would reduce the profitability so you’d still be in the hole (and so no one would build it).

Looking at the seven- and 10-story examples and it appears that those projects are even more unprofitable. But there’s opportunity in their height and resulting unit counts to enable some above ground parking (wrapped inside the building and invisible outside) to make the numbers work.

Combining an ability to increase to seven stories with a mixture of above and underground parking gets you so far. Building a better quality building that generates slightly more rent is the intersection where developer, seller, and neighborhood meet.

With the ongoing trade war impacting raw material pricing and the ongoing shortage of construction workers that federal immigration policy is exacerbating, construction margins are more on a razor than a year ago when labor shortages alone had raised prices.

A little on the nose?

Some of you may be thinking that this research plays suspiciously into Spanos’ hands because their proposal is for just such a seven-story building at Diplomat. But here’s the thing, this isn’t Spanos’ first turn on the dance floor. Surely they ran their own numbers before deciding to proceed. After all, they spent a year measuring, drilling core samples, negotiating and crunching numbers before writing their contract for Diplomat. Like Goldilocks, the four-story was too little, and the 10-story wasn’t worth the aggravation for little upside, but the seven-story was just right.

And sure, there are ways to push and pull the metrics that the PD-15 authorized hearing can explore to further fine tune things for the neighborhood. Just remember that higher margins enable a developer to give back more to the neighborhood. Higher density also allows for the costs of givebacks to be spread out. Balance is key.

At any rate, this new report gives committee members (and the neighborhood at large) some idea of the financial aspects in redevelopment.

Finally, to those praying at the altar of the Preston Road and Northwest Highway Area Plan, where are your numbers? We know none of the $350,000 spent was for economic modeling to back up its desires, but how about now?

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You Should Be Able to Safely Walk in Dallas-Fort Worth

Mon, 16 Jul 2018 17:58:11 GMT

Other regions have discovered huge value in walkable urban places while North Texas lags. But that is changing—fast.

BY CHRISTOPHER B. LEINBERGER AND TRACY LOH PUBLISHED IN D MAGAZINE DALLAS AND THE NEW URBANISM 2018

This piece is a feature from our special edition, Dallas and The New Urbanism. The magazine examines the successes and pitfalls of the urbanist movement in a region well known for its dependence on the automobile.

At this moment, before our very eyes, the entire nation is undergoing a structural shift that is generational, deep, and pervasive. It is more important and will be more lasting than the usual real estate cycles that Dallas and Fort Worth know so well. This structural shift is forcing sweeping change in how cities create their built environments, including housing, workplaces, cultural facilities, and even sports facilities. Cities that respond well will flourish; those that don’t will fall behind in capturing the huge opportunities in value creation this shift represents.

Dallas-Fort Worth is predicted to grow substantially. How it grows will determine its future wealth and its place among the world’s great metro areas.

The size of the built environment may surprise you: it represents 35 percent of the assets of the economy—by far the largest asset class. This is where our wealth is. A structural shift in how this wealth is invested and what it returns has tremendous implications. The structural shift currently underway is not the first; we can understand and anticipate where the market is going by revisiting the past.

Forms of the Built Environment

Fountain of Youth: Southlake Town Square offers shops and retail around a communal gathering space.

First, it is important to understand that the built environment takes two basic forms: walkable urban and drivable sub-urban. There are many variations, but broadly speaking there are just these two.

It is important to note that walkable urban development can occur in both central cities and a region’s suburbs. Likewise, drivable sub-urban development can occur in both central cities and the suburbs. There are many drivable sub-urban parts of the central cities of Dallas and Fort Worth, just as walkable urban places are in the suburbs, such as Legacy in Plano, Southlake Town Square, and Grapevine Main Street, and many other places.

Walkable urban is the oldest form employed in building cities and metropolitan areas. This type of development is the basis of how we have built our cities since Çatalhöyük (in present-day Turkey) around 9,500 years ago—the oldest city known. Walking has been the primary means of getting to and getting around these kinds of places. The distance that most people feel comfortable walking is about 1,500 to 3,000 feet, which limits the geographic size of a walkable urban place. Our research has shown that the average walkable urban place in metropolitan Washington, D.C., is 306 acres, about the size of three regional malls, including their parking lots.

ABOUT THIS STORY

The George Washington University Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis, working with the Urban Land Institute, the North Central Texas Council of Governments, and D Magazine, are in the process of completing the WalkUP Wake-Up Call for the DFW metro area. This never-before-completed analysis will be a nearly 100 percent census of all real estate product in the region, including owner-user and publicly owned space.

It will define where the potential, emerging, and established walkable urban places are and how they compare to the drivable sub-urban locations in Dallas-Fort Worth with regard to place-based economic and social equity performance. This article is based on preliminary results of the WalkUP analysis. The complete analysis will be published in October 2018. Our appreciation to Shea Byers of PM Realty Group for leading this effort locally, Scott Polikov of Gateway Planning, Brandon Palanker of 3BL Strategies, and DFW donors to the George Washington University for their support.

Beyond that distance, most people will use another easily available means of transport. Historically that has meant a horse, wagon, bike, public transit (rail or bus), or a car. Within that defined walkable urban place, walking provides access to many if not all everyday needs—shopping, social life, education, civic life, and maybe even work. This mixed-use character means the walkable urban place has a relatively high density, generally between the density of places like downtown Grapevine or Watters Creek in Allen at the lower end of density, to places like Main Street in Dallas or Sundance Square in Fort Worth in higher-density places.

The second form of built environment is drivable sub-urban, using a term that intentionally employs a hyphen to indicate that it is fundamentally different from and less dense than an urban place. Drivable sub-urban development segregates the various needs of everyday life from the other: retail is in a shopping center, work is in a business park, housing is in a subdivision, and the only way to connect these is by car. Walking is generally not a safe or viable option, nor is generally any other form of transportation, such as public transport or a bike. The early 20th-century introduction of cars as a means of transportation was the obvious prerequisite for the drivable sub-urban form of development, enabling a never-before-known-in-human-history form of building and living.

Dallas-Fort Worth will grow substantially. How it grows will determine its future wealth and its place among the world’s great metro areas.

And once this new form was introduced after World War II, this first structural shift in how we build feverishly took hold, especially in Dallas.

Today’s homebuyers, real estate developers and investors, government regulators, and financiers have come to understand the drivable sub-urban model extremely well, turning it into a successful set of development formulas. This means that real estate has been commoditized, just like agricultural products or stock of a publicly traded company, into standard real estate product types. This is why the country has come to look alike no matter where you go; a strip mall in Arlington looks like a strip mall in Paramus, New Jersey, or Palo Alto, California.

Drivable sub-urban development was a major economic driver for the mid- and late 20th century, especially in a state like Texas, which made its living literally providing the fuel for this way of building and living. As we were inspired to “See the USA in your Chevrolet,” the 1950s GM sales jingle, we were making those who built and were allowed to buy into the suburbs wealthier. Drivable sub-urban development put a foundation under the economy and galvanized the dominant industry of the industrial era—the building of automobiles and trucks, including the support industries of road-building, finance, insurance, and oil. Drivable sub-urban development was essential to American economic growth in the mid- to late 20th century.

Economic Functions of the Built Environment

Within a region, places play one of two economic functions, either regionally significant or local serving. Regionally significant locations, sometimes referred to as “sub-markets” by commercial real estate brokers, may have:

Concentrations of jobs
Civic centers
Institutions of higher education
Major medical centers
Regional retail
One-of-a-kind cultural, entertainment, and sports facilities

Regionally significant land, combining walkable urban and drivable sub-urban forms, constitutes less than 5 percent of all metropolitan land mass, according to our research. Regionally significant land use is where the vast majority of the DFW region’s wealth is created. In fact, it is why the region exists.

Walkable Urbanism Rankings for the 30 Largest U.S. Metros, 2016

(based on percentage of office, retail, and multifamily buildings)

Pent-up Demand for Walkable Urbanism

The structural shift underway today in how we build is actually a return to the original way of making cities: walkable urbanism. We looked at the top 30 U.S. metropolitan areas by population in 2016 and conducted a real estate census of each region’s walkable urban places. In all 30 metros, we found that WalkUPs (for “walkable urban places”) command rent premiums across real estate product types and that in the current national real estate cycle (since 2010), WalkUPs are gaining market share in every metro region. In other words, in every major U.S. city, people pay more to be in a WalkUP, and market share growth is going to WalkUPs, while drivable sub-urban is losing market share. We ranked the top 30 metros by the share of their overall real estate inventory that we found located in WalkUPs.

This nascent shift is being driven by our changing economy. Today, participants in the knowledge economy, both companies and their employees, have moved to and are demanding walkable urban places. Many downtown turnarounds have been led by knowledge-based companies, such as Spotify, Twitter, Google, WeWork, Yelp, Dropbox, Compuware, Quicken, and Square, among many others. They are locating south of Market Street in San Francisco, in New York’s Meatpacking District, and even in downtown Detroit.

The knowledge economy is relocating to walkable urban places because WalkUPs attract knowledge talent and stimulate productivity.

The same trend is occurring in the urbanizing suburbs, such as Cambridge in metro Boston, Bellevue in metro Seattle, and Perimeter Center in Atlanta. Even the Research Triangle of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is attempting to urbanize what has been the quintessential drivable sub-urban business park.

The knowledge economy is relocating to walkable urban places because WalkUPs attract knowledge talent and stimulate productivity. Our research shows a significant correlation between the most walkable urban metros and both higher education (measured by the percentage of the population over 25 years of age with a college degree) and metropolitan GDP per capita. In 2013 the Milken Institute released a study of the GDP performance of 261 U.S. metros that concluded: “The overall explanatory power of the relationship [between higher education and GDP per capita] is strong and robust. More than 70 percent of the variation in real GDP per capita across the 261 metros from 1990 to 2010 is explained [by higher educational attainment].”

The six highest-ranked walkable urban metropolitan areas of the largest 30 U.S. metros are New York City; Washington, D.C.; Boston; Chicago; San Francisco; and Seattle. These six metros have 40 percent of their workforce holding college degrees, compared to 30 percent or less in the seven least walkable urban metros. This translates into the most walkable urban metros having an average GDP per capita of $74,241. The seven lowest-ranked metros have an average GDP per capita of $49,061. The most walkable urban metros have a whopping 49 percent premium in GDP per capita over the lowest ranked. This is the same premium per capita that first-world Germany has over second-world Croatia.

Dallas-Fort Worth’s Walkable Urban Ranking

Rocky Mountain High: Belmar in Lakewood, Colorado, is a prime example of drivable sub-urban transforming into walkable urban.

Dallas-Fort Worth ranks among the least walkable urban of the nation’s largest 30 metropolitan areas, along with the likes of Tampa and Orlando, Florida, and Phoenix. Even Houston was ranked higher than Dallas-Fort Worth. While no surprise to most residents who spend a good percentage of their life in a car, it is a rare low ranking for a region with so many remarkable achievements and economic successes.

Having said this, it is important to point out that the region does stand out in GDP per capita from the other predominantly drivable sub-urban metros. Your 2016 GDP per capita was $65,154, which is close to the six most walkable urban metros. There are two possible conclusions to draw from this anomaly. First, you do not need to change from the drivable sub-urban development patterns, since it seems to be working for you. The second conclusion is that you have hung on to a mid-20th-century development pattern for too long and eventually the price you pay will be heavy in terms of talent attraction, corporate relocations, and poor investment returns in comparison to other cities. Our guess is that the demand for walkability is too strong to ignore. Sub-urban development will continue, but it will pale by comparison to the investment returns and low governmental costs of walkability.

Metropolitan Dallas-Fort Worth Established Walkable Urban Places or WalkUPs

Urbanizing in and Around Downtowns

We found 35 established WalkUPs in DFW in our 2018 in-depth analysis, up from the 18 we found in the 2016 general analysis referenced earlier. We have ranked them by a “composite premium” measure, which combines the weighted average rental premium across products that the place commands, discounted for vacancy. A premium above 1 means the place outperforms the DFW regional average. A premium below 1 means it underperforms and has high potential for investment.

Most people think that walkable urban places tend to be in and near downtown, which is partially true. Downtown Dallas and downtown Fort Worth have redeveloped in remarkable ways over the past 20 years, such as Sundance Square, Dallas Main Street, Bass Performance Hall, Klyde Warren Park, etc. While downtown Fort Worth is slightly higher ranked than downtown Dallas, both are low to middle of the rankings. This represents a significant investment opportunity as both downtowns come up to the level of downtown Seattle or Washington, D.C., both of which were very much like Dallas and Fort Worth only a decade ago.

Today, the downtown-adjacent WalkUPs of both Dallas and Fort Worth outperform their downtowns in walkable urbanity. Surrounding downtown Dallas is Deep Ellum, Victory Park, and, most impressive, Uptown. Surrounding downtown Fort Worth is the Near Southside and the city’s Cultural District.

It is surprising that downtown-adjacent Dallas WalkUPs are outperforming downtown Dallas. These surrounding neighborhoods have been redeveloping first, followed by the somewhat lagging downtown. This is just the opposite of how other center cities throughout the country have redeveloped, where the downtown redeveloped first, followed by the downtown-adjacent WalkUPs.

Urbanizing the Suburbs

Not all market demand can be satisfied in city centers. A market exists for walkable urban places that are not as gritty as most center cities. The large number of people who opt for center cities enjoy their variety of people, diversity of uses, mixture of old and new, and the excitement of crowds. But not everyone wants to share heavily used sidewalks or look up at tall buildings. Suburban walkable urbanism tends to be nearly Disney-esque in its cleanliness and newness. WalkUPs like Reston Town Center in Virginia, Avalon north of Atlanta, and Sugar Land in metro Houston all represent examples of “just-add-water instant urbanity” that has significant appeal to certain market segments.

Another major factor in suburban urbanization is the quality of schools. While many center city school districts are slowly turning themselves around, many young couples are not willing to wait or work hard to effect change in their city schools. They bolt to suburban systems as soon as they have children. Many choose walkable urban suburbs with outstanding schools in order to have the best of two worlds: good schools and walkable urbanism. Suburban WalkUPs like Santa Monica and Palo Alto in California; Bellevue, Washington; Evanston, Illinois; Bethesda, Maryland; and Arlington, Virginia, offer both good schools and walkable urbanism.

A lesson can be learned from Arlington, Virginia, one of the best urbanizing suburban models in the country. Most new development in the past 20 years has been in multifamily residential, both for rent and for sale. The typical attitude of suburban towns toward multifamily development is to ban it. The fear is those units will contain families with children, and educating those children would impose prohibitive costs on the school district. However, Arlington has found that the school-generation rate for residents of multifamily developments in its seven WalkUPs is one-eighth the rate found in its for-sale single-family neighborhoods. The new multifamily households are paying school taxes but sending hardly any kids to the schools—a huge benefit to a school district.

Urbanism in the suburbs improves quality of life and home values in the adjacent single-family neighborhoods.

There is another reason urbanization benefits the suburbs: it improves the quality of life of the single-family neighborhoods immediately adjacent to growing WalkUPs. This is counterintuitive. Generally these dense, walkable urban places have faced vigorous NIMBY opposition, particularly from the immediate neighborhood. However, our experience and research show great walkable urbanism, particularly with the thoughtful management of noise, overflow parking, and cut-through traffic, improves quality of life for the immediate neighborhoods. This is achieved by providing households with the best of two worlds: suburban living within walking distance of restaurants, shopping, transit, and maybe work. Our research shows 40 to 100 percent per square foot valuation premiums for nearby for-sale housing in comparison to similar housing in the same school district but not within walking distance of a WalkUP. As a result, suburban Washington, D.C., and parts of Long Island, New York, have begun to see NIMBYs turn into YIMBYs (Yes in My Back Yard), advocating for increased density and walkable urban place development.

Neither research nor our experience has delivered a final verdict, but it appears likely that at least 50 percent of the demand for walkable urbanism will be satisfied in the suburbs, as it is in metro Washington, D.C., the leading urbanizing suburban metro. It may be even higher. Yet it is important to note that the demand for walkable urbanism, both in the center city and in suburbs, will be concentrated in only 3 to 5 percent of the land mass. The rest of the drivable sub-urban locations in the suburbs will stay the same as long as the car remains a viable means of transportation.

One of the best examples of a drivable sub-urban suburb transforming into a walkable urban place is Belmar in Lakewood, Colorado, a first-ring suburb of Denver. The first regional mall in the metro area, Villa Italia, occupied the Belmar site beginning in the early 1960s and provided the tax base for the jurisdiction and a shopping destination for two generations of Denver metropolitan residents. However, by the late 1990s, the mall was dark, shrinking the town’s tax base dramatically. A developer, in joint venture with the town, bulldozed the bulk of the mall, built a grid of walkable streets, and focused on urban entertainment (restaurants, a 14-screen movie theater, specialty shopping), high-density housing, and some offices in the first phases. It became a stunning success for the city and for the developer as a new WalkUP emerged from the dust of the bulldozed mall. Many more regional mall transformations are underway in suburban Denver as a direct result.

Walkable Urban Absorption Metro DFW, Atlanta, and Washington

(office and multifamily rental)

What Can Dallas-Fort Worth Learn From Comparable Metros?

There are two metropolitan areas that have been as infamous for their sprawl as Dallas-Fort Worth over the past 60 years: metropolitan Atlanta and Washington, D.C. All three metros are more similar than you may think, including:

They grew from modest Southern metro areas of about 1 million in population in 1950 (metro Dallas at 1 million people, metro Atlanta also at 1 million, and Washington, D.C., at 1.5 million) to approximately 6 million by 2016.
The huge mid- and late 20th-century economic booms in these three metro areas, while driven by different industries, took the form of being almost entirely drivable sub-urban. Residents abandoned their center cities, sprawling to the hinterlands that had no topographical barriers.
All three created some of the iconic drivable sub-urban edge cities: Galleria in metro Dallas, Perimeter Center in metro Atlanta, and Tysons Corner Center in metro Washington, D.C.
The growth patterns of all three metros focused on the “favored quarter” where economic growth primarily went, due to racial housing patterns. The favored quarter of Dallas was to the north, Fort Worth was to the southwest, Atlanta was to the north, and Washington, D.C., was to the northwest.

There is one major difference between how these three metros grew that has proven to be significant in satisfying the walkable urban market: rail transit infrastructure. Washington, D.C., and Atlanta got two of the three 1970s federally funded subway systems (the third was San Francisco). The Metro system in Washington, D.C., and MARTA system in Atlanta have built an armature around which walkable urban development has and is forming. The rail system in Dallas came after the great drivable sub-urban sprawl of the late 20th century, which means the length of the system and therefore commuting times to get between walkable urban concentrations are exceedingly long. In Atlanta and Washington, D.C., the vast majority of walkable urban development has been built in relatively concentrated, close-in places served by rail transit. Meanwhile, DART has been chasing low-density sprawl.

In the Dallas market, walkable urban office space is today 20 to 30 percent more valuable and apartments are 40 to 50 percent more valuable than sub-urban.

Our research shows that there are laggards and leaders in the structural shift by metropolitan areas toward walkable urban development. Metro Washington, D.C., is the leader of these three comparable metropolitan areas, metro Atlanta is following as fast as it can, while Dallas-Fort Worth lags but is still moving toward more walkable urbanism. Metro Washington, D.C., had 33 percent of its total 2010 inventory, built over the past 200 years, of office and apartments in walkable urban places, yet 91 percent of the new absorption between 2010 and 2015 has been walkable urban. Metro Atlanta had 16 percent of its total inventory in 2010 in walkable urban places but 49 percent of absorption from 2010 to 2015 has been in walkable urban. Dallas-Fort Worth had only 9 percent of its 2010 inventory in walkable urban places, but—in a sudden spurt—21 percent of its absorption between 2010 and 2017 went to walkable urban.

In all three metros, walkable urban has increased in market share absorption by two to three times sub-urban development. (In Dallas-Fort Worth it is 2.3 times faster.) The shift is moving all three metros in the same walkable urban direction. They started at different bases but today are responding to the same demand. The last time these three metros saw market shifts of this magnitude was in the 1980s—but going the opposite direction as white flight and newly constructed highways created the drivable sub-urban boom.

These market share shifts are impressive. But the premiums for walkability are even more impressive. In the Dallas market, walkable urban office space is today 20 to 30 percent more valuable and apartments are 40 to 50 percent more valuable than sub-urban. Dallas-Fort Worth walkable urban product is absorbing more than two times faster than sub-urban, with a 20 to 50 percent valuation premium.

There is only one explanation for such a phenomenon: pent-up demand. If Dallas-Fort Worth is anything like other metro areas we have studied, it will take 20 to 40 years to catch up with that demand, since we add only 2 percent to the built environment inventory in a good year.

There are a number of benefits in being a follower, one being that you can learn from other metro areas. Walkable urban places require entirely different skill sets than drivable sub-urban development. This includes fundamentally different ways to acquire land, plan, design, finance, develop, market, manage, own over time, and, most important, engage in what is known as “place management.” Engaging in place management, whether through a nonprofit like Downtown Fort Worth Inc. or Downtown Dallas Inc., or through private place management like in Legacy West or Watters Creek, is essential for success. We think place management is a new level of societal governance, joining the three levels of government we have today (federal, state, and local). Note we refer to this as “governance,” not “government,” and it generally arises out of the private sector.

Meeting the pent-up demand for walkable urbanism will put a strong foundation under the region’s economy and local government finances. Developing walkable urban in Dallas is in 2018 comparable to the building of the drivable sub-urban in, say, the 1970s. There are decades of demand to be satisfied that will put a foundation of 1 to 2 percent of GDP growth per year under the regional economy.

That walkable urban growth can also be supported by infrastructure that, counterintuitively, is much cheaper to build than the spread-out roads, sewer and water lines, electric, communications, and other infrastructure required by sub-urban development. As previously mentioned, it is concentrated in 3 to 5 percent of the land mass. Walkable urban infrastructure is one-tenth the cost for each supportable square foot cost of development, even accounting for rail transit. Drivable sub-urban infrastructure is unbelievably costly and inefficient. This is because infrastructure cost is determined by the distance that is required and the intensity of use. For example, a mile of sewer line costs about the same whether it is used for one-house-to-the-acre housing or 40 housing units to the acre; the difference is that those fixed costs are one-fortieth per walkable urban housing unit.

Dallas-Fort Worth is proceeding down a fundamentally different path of development than it has experienced over the past 60 years. It is more complex and has a different risk profile. With leadership, it will create a new economic base under the regional economy and give investors a substantial return on investment while meeting this different structural demand. Properly incentivized and managed, it can also recapture value and expand opportunity for areas long left behind. Dallas-Fort Worth has only started capturing the environmental, social, and economic benefits of walkable urbanism.

Eight Types of WalkUPs in Dallas-Fort Worth

GWSB research shows there are eight types of regionally significant walkable urban places in Dallas-Fort Worth. A ninth type, called an Innovation District, described by the Brookings Institution as an area “where leading-edge anchor institutions and companies cluster and connect with startups, business incubators, and accelerators” does not appear in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Downtown
The traditional center of the metro’s central city. Dallas-Fort Worth is one of the rare “binary” metropolitan areas, like Minneapolis-St. Paul, so it has two center city downtowns.

Downtown Adjacent
Neighborhoods surrounding the downtown in a 360-degree fashion, such as Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C.; Capitol Hill in Seattle; Uptown in Dallas; and the Near Southside in Fort Worth.

Urban Commercial
Local-serving commercial districts in the early 20th century that went into decline in the late 20th century but have experienced a recent revival as regionally significant WalkUPs, such as Fourth Avenue NE in Washington, D.C.; West Hollywood in Los Angeles; and Knox-Henderson in Dallas.

Urban University
Institutions of higher learning that have embraced their community, such as UCLA, Penn and Drexel in West Philadelphia, and Georgia Tech in Atlanta. SMU, the University of Texas at Arlington, and the University of North Texas at Dallas aspire to a similar role.

Major Town Center
Eighteenth- and 19th-century towns that the metro area grew to include and that have enjoyed a recent revival, such as Evanston in metro Chicago, Bellevue in metro Seattle, Decatur in metro Atlanta, and Grapevine in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Small Town Center
Eighteenth- and 19th-century farm towns that the metro area grew to include and have enjoyed a recent revival, such as Roswell in metro Atlanta; Leesburg in metro Washington, D.C.; and Roanoke in
Dallas-Fort Worth.

Redeveloped Drivable Sub-urban
Strip and regional malls that have urbanized, such as Belmar in metro Denver; Tysons Corner in metro Washington, D.C.; Perimeter Center in metro Atlanta; and Addison Circle and Cityplace in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Greenfield/Brownfield Development
A complete WalkUP built from scratch, such as Reston Town Center in metro Washington, D.C.; Atlantic Station in metro Atlanta; Easton Town Center in metro Columbus, Ohio; and Legacy (greenfield) and Victory Park (brownfield) in Dallas-Fort Worth.

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Christopher B. Leinberger is the Charles Bendit Distinguished Scholar and Research Professor of Urban Real Estate at the George Washington University School of Business and Chair of the Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis. Dr. Tracy Loh is a senior data scientist at the Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis.

How Cities Win Big Against Suburbs

Fri, 13 Jul 2018 16:30:10 GMT

What Dallas can learn from Charlotte, Seattle, and Ann Arbor, all smaller cities embracing the opportunities of new urbanism.

BY KATHY WISE PUBLISHED IN D MAGAZINE DALLAS AND THE NEW URBANISM 2018

Dallas is not New York City or San Francisco—and never will be. But neither is anywhere else. We selected six cities smaller than Dallas with less robust regional economies that are speeding ahead in the generational change to urbanism, with tax windfalls to match.

Charlotte, North Carolina

Charlotte Center City

1.25

Regional Real Estate Premium

Charlotte has created a vision for its city center to be “viable, livable, memorable, and sustainable.” Within 15 minutes of Charlotte Douglas International Airport, the city core is currently home to more than 1,200 companies and expected to be home to 40,000 residents by the end of the decade. By combining high-rise housing with restaurants, bars, shops, museums, hotels, and the 7th Street Public Market—all situated along a light rail line—Charlotte has become the second-fastest growing city in the nation.

San Diego, California

Little Italy

Under the Tuscan Sun: It’s hard to imagine a derelict corner of San Diego, but this waterfront property fell into disrepair when the tuna canneries left. Now it is an Italian-inspired oasis.

1.45

Regional Real Estate Premium

At one time, more than 6,000 Italian families lived in this neighborhood, working in the fishing industry and turning San Diego into the Tuna Capital of the World. But after World War II, many of the canneries closed, and the construction of the I-5 freeway helped cement the area’s decline. With the urging of Marco Li Mandri, chief executive administrator of The Italy Association of San Diego, the neighborhood has been revived and now includes restaurants, retail, residential, and the Piazza della Famiglia, a 10,000-square-foot, European-inspired gathering space for the community.

Washington, D.C.

U Street and 14th street

1.74

Regional Real Estate Premium

The greater U Street Historic District in Washington, D.C., became a cultural center for the African-American community in the early 1900s, but, after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, in 1968, much of it was burned down in the resulting riots. Now the birthplace of Duke Ellington is once again alive with jazz clubs and restaurants like Le Diplomate, which turned a former dry cleaning shop into a nightlife destination.

Somerville, Massachusetts

Assembly Square

1.38

Regional Real Estate Premium

The relatively small city of Somerville—only 4 square miles—is the most densely populated city in New England. Yet a 143-acre brownfield site, named Assembly Square for the former Ford Motor Company plant that operated there until 1958, had been sitting vacant and unused. Federal Realty Investment Trust partnered with the city to turn the area into a vibrant mixed-use neighborhood, investing $1.58 billion in private funding, contributing more than $30 million in city taxes, and coordinating fundraising for the Orange Line, the first new MBTA subway station to be built since 1987.

Seattle, Washington

South Lake Union

1.20

Regional Real Estate Premium

Lake Union was once primarily used to float logs to the sawmills along its banks. Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen saw the south shore’s potential for much more, but when his vision for a massive park failed to get approval, he changed his focus to developing the land for mixed use. The Brookings Institution has since named South Lake Union, home to Amazon’s HQ1, one of the country’s seven “innovation districts” for successfully prioritizing the best qualities of successful cities: density, proximity, authenticity, and vibrancy.

Ann Arbor, Michigan

Downtown

2.55

Regional Real Estate Premium

Ann Arbor’s downtown encompasses 67 city blocks, which include a historic district, University of Michigan properties, and public use areas. The region had fallen into disrepair, but it now provides a spectrum of services to meet the needs of full-time residents, students, and visitors, from new high-end housing developments to the historic Michigan Theater.

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A City of Sprawl Goes Urban

Fri, 13 Jul 2018 16:15:38 GMT

From the publisher: It's time to decide the future of Dallas.

BY WICK ALLISON PUBLISHED IN D MAGAZINE DALLAS AND THE NEW URBANISM 2018

The Dallas region is playing a fast game of catch-up. A generational sea change back to the city is in full tide. Right now, we’re behind comparable regions such as Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; and (cough) Houston. But we’ve got all the ingredients to fuel a jump-start: solid population growth, a diverse economy, a strong civic culture, comparatively lower costs, and a world-renowned development community.

Since 2010, Texas has experienced the largest average growth rate of any state. Demographers say Dallas-Fort Worth will grow by 4.5 million more people in the next 20 years. Collin County is expected to double in population in the next 20. The Dallas urban area is expected to more than double—and it could grow faster if we are able to transition our infrastructure to be more resident-friendly.

Population growth is the tsunami coming right at us. Last year we were the fastest-growing region in the nation, a designation that can be for good or ill. Either we direct this growth to more efficient land use or we let inefficient sprawl exhaust our resources and burden our future. We either ride the wave or we will be engulfed by it.

I’ve visited with business and civic leaders all over the region. They still exude typical Texas optimism, but no longer with the bravado that Texas is famous for. Instead, they realize that the past is no guide to the future. Sprawl is not infinite. Even in the farthest suburbs, the most successful projects are mixed use and offer walkability. Taken together, population growth and generational change require that we thoughtfully transition from a car-dependent culture to a future of transit options that allow people to live, work, and play where they are. In short, towns that became sprawling suburbs are being forced to become towns again—a lot bigger and more diverse but towns just the same.

In the core of Dallas, a city designed for commuters must be overhauled for residents. The central business district concept is a relic of the past. Millennials and baby boomers—the two largest generations in American history—demand walkability. The downtown Dallas area will be the largest of many urban mixed-use centers in the region. Its success will have a spillover effect on the poorer neighborhoods to its east, west, and south. If managed thoughtfully, it will channel the tide to lift all boats.

The facts are in. Anyone who wants to argue with the future doesn’t have one.

Dallas has a very bright future, but we have to move very fast to seize it.

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Second Rebooted Pink Wall PD-15 Meeting: Post-its And Painter’s Tape

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 16:22:28 GMT

by Jon Anderson
Candy's Dirt

At the end of the meeting, Plan Commissioner Margot Murphy thanked the committee members and audience for sticking with what may be viewed as a tedious process. She said it was like painting where 80 percent was preparation with the 20 percent at the end being when the magic happens.

Murphy was observer and host. The heavy lifting was handled by city staff from the Planning office.

The meeting kicked off with committee members being given an interesting task. They were shown four buildings of varying height and quality and asked to silently write down their gut thoughts on Post-It Notes and affix them to the wall. They were then asked to arrange them all by similar sentiment.

I’ll admit I was steeling myself for much more confrontational messages. Instead the responses were more considered. Albeit a pinch naive.

Negative reaction to all but the high-rise (“Maybe one”).

All the right words were there … walkability, sidewalks, neighborhood feel, setbacks and quality construction. All the right “wrong” ones too – ugly, cheap, institutional, yuk, and tacky. What was interesting was that example “A,” the high-rise, received no ugly, vanilla, or institutional type comments. Those epithets were reserved for the lower buildings.

Four building types committee members were asked to react to

In the category eventually named, “Fits the Neighborhood,” half were for the high-rise example while the other half were for mid-rise. None responded that the low-rise “fit the neighborhood.”

Within “Infrastructure” grouping, drainage and flooding were front and center while “Parking” was unanimous in underground parking.

There were 23 notes under “density,” by far the largest. Fifteen of the notes affirmed the desirability of a high-rise, most wanting it located along Northwest Highway. The reasons given were quality, longevity and steel construction.

All wonderful messages. The naivety comes in under the initial “Quality Livability” heading. Again, all the right messages of trees, greenspace, landscaping, walkability and underground parking. But here’s the thing. In order for those items to be feasible for a developer to create for the neighborhood, there has to be some give on what is developed. The only reason Santa didn’t bring you a pony was because Buttercup wasn’t in the budget.

Let me explain …

Yesterday, the Oak Lawn Committee saw a proposal for a high-rise office building. Its seven stories of underground parking will cost $59 million … for parking. However, doing so gave back an acre of public green space from their parcel. To offset the underground garage’s cost and resulting green space required nearly doubling the height of the building. The unsaid question that project asked was “how much do you want the green space?”

The same is true in PD-15. Again, I’m in complete agreement with all the asks. Green, walkability, underground parking, etc., etc. etc. But it must be financially viable for a developer to deliver along with a profitable project.

It was mentioned that Diplomat contract holder A.G. Spanos had commissioned a second, more thorough, feasibility study with HR&A Advisors who have ties to SMU (first one here). I will write about the report in detail next week (after I read it). A sneak peek chat with Spanos after the meeting told me it was actually worse than the February one. I’ll be curious if it factors in the escalating trade war that’s increasing raw material prices for builders.

All in all, very interesting. I think once the developers put on their show ‘n’ tell and the Q&A begins, some of this will be explored in more detail. After all, committee members aren’t construction pros. A raucous session with a developer or two will help crystallize what’s really important from the wish list.

More rules, regulations and interpretations

After the “fun” of the exercise, city staff walked through more zoning information and definitions for the group. Tedious to be sure, but necessary.

City staff made a point of saying that for those enamored with the Preston Center plan’s guidelines, while the city adopted the plan, they’re not zoned. The (Athena and Preston Tower) camp wanting to limit height to four stories would still have to go through the same Authorized Hearing process the committee is working now. This is contrary to the “fake news” being trotted out in the form of a neighborhood petition, trying to stop the process and use the Preston center plan guidelines.

And I know that city staff are overworked but …

When presenting concepts, the common question always came, “how does X specifically affect PD-15?” The unfortunate answer tended to be that they’d have to check and return with answers. A little more anticipation of these obvious questions would be appreciated and give the presenters more credibility.

Royal Orleans representative Ken Newberry pointed out that the city continues to change and evolve their interpretation of PD-15’s documentation. Specifically, he meant May’s sudden interpretation that since existing building heights were listed on the PD development plan, that was now the height limit. And I agree, the ship has to stop moving, the footing must, at some point, be secure.

This second meeting was perhaps not the rollercoasters and popcorn you may have been hoping for, but to return to Plan Commissioner Murphy’s thoughts … we know we’re going to paint, but we need to stick the painter’s tape first or we’re going to wind up with a mess.

Next Meeting: July 26 at 6 p.m. at the Walnut Hill Recreation Center (Walnut Hill & Midway)

Remember: High-rises, HOAs and renovation are my beat. But I also appreciate modern and historical architecture balanced against the YIMBY movement. In 2016, 2017 and 2018, the National Association of Real Estate Editors recognized my writing with three Bronze (2016, 2017, 2018) and two Silver (2016, 2017) awards. Have a story to tell or a marriage proposal to make? Shoot me an email sharewithjon@candysdirt.com. Be sure to look for me on Facebook and Twitter. You won’t find me, but you’re welcome to look.

PD-15 Authorized Hearing Committee Kicks Off – Again

Fri, 29 Jun 2018 19:07:49 GMT

by Jon Anderson
Candysdirt.com

No, it’s not a time warp, PD-15 is meeting again. After devolving into immovable factions last autumn, the neighborhood is back at the table … with a difference. First, the city is guiding the process to ensure information is accurate and decorum is kept. The second difference is that this new group doesn’t contain any of the rabble-rousers from the last time. The hope is for a more balanced conversation and outcome for the neighborhood.

This first meeting was no barn-burner. Planners from the city’s Sustainable Development office led the discussion reviewing the current conditions of the PD-15 area and how things evolved over the years to get there. Council member Jennifer Gates was also on hand to advise the group on city processes and share her experience with some of the concepts discussed.

I think the air was definitely let out of the anti-authorized hearing camp who had spread propaganda claiming the city would show up with a jumbo development plan to whip the committee into approving.

Instead, senior planner Andrew Ruegg walked the committee through the PD-15 documents and the city’s interpretation of their contents (the scant four pages of text and two diagrams). The reason the city is interpreting at all is because PD-15 is a quite imprecise compared to today’s PD documentation requirements. It shouldn’t be a shock that the 15^th of anything is less good than the 1,000^th … and today the city has close to 1,000 PDs.

The questions were about the level you’d expect and certainly indicative of a group that’s taking their task seriously. For example, the difference between a major and minor amendment to the PD. The most recent minor amendment was in 2010 when Preston Tower removed their second tennis court and used the space for additional parking. Minor amendments don’t require Plan Commission and city council approval. Major amendments – changing building footprint, height, etc. – do require full city approval and the reason they’re at the table.

Another asked whether the Pink Wall itself was changeable. Before the gnashing of teeth, I walk on the outside of the Pink Wall on occasion and its foundations are higher than the road bed and exposed. Changing the wall may be needed to level and improve its stability in the future.

The city didn’t immediately have an answer. However, I recall from my investigations that the Pink Wall west of Pickwick Lane to The Laurel is protected by the deed restrictions covering those parcels (As I recall, The Laurel was able to remove their section because their lots weren’t covered by the deed restrictions). The section running from Preston Tower to the Athena isn’t protected separately as it’s on land owned by the buildings fronting Northwest Highway (whose lots extend to Northwest Highway).

At one point the question came about permissible uses. It was noted that the PD included specific uses for the commercial condos on the first two floors of Preston Tower. This started a discussion of whether mixed-uses should be allowed on a ground floor of a residential building. Few warmed to the idea and the Preston Tower representative pointed out that the type of business suggested (a café or coffee shop) had been tried in the past and that there wasn’t enough foot or car traffic to sustain it.

In fact, waaay back there was a grocery store, pharmacy and even a supper club called Chez Arthur on the eastern end of Preston Tower and a 7 Eleven on the western end. I agree that a lone café within a residential district is unlikely to succeed.

For those reading who didn’t attend, the committee will meet as needed (five scheduled, but may require more) before presenting their recommendations to the neighborhood at a separate meeting. If there’s enough peachiness, it goes into City Hall to be heard and approved (or denied) by the plan commission and city council. Council member Gates indicated that the process from start to final approval could take six months or so.

Also, the sessions are recorded and will be posted online along with a summary of the meeting. You can find them, and all other materials used, at both the Sustainable Development and Council member Gates’ websites listed below.

For those wanting to keep abreast of the situation, here are a few links:

CandysDirt.com articles on PD-15: https://candysdirt.com/tag/pd-15/
Council member Gates website: http://dallascityhall.com/government/citycouncil/district13/Pages/PD-15-Zoning.aspx
Sustainable Development PD-15 website: http://dallascityhall.com/departments/sustainabledevelopment/planning/Pages/pdd15.aspx

Nest meeting: July 11^th at 6pm at the Walnut Hill Recreation Center (map). See you there.

Institute Aims to Make Dallas More Walkable

Fri, 22 Jun 2018 16:54:08 GMT

ParkCitiesPeople
by Timothy Glaze · June 20, 2018

The Urban Land Institute has increased its presence in Dallas for the last month, as the nonprofit organization focuses on ways to make the city and its suburbs more walkable.

Officials estimate that nearly 98 percent of Dallas and Fort Worth’s incorporated land requires everyday car use to get from place to place. But by digging a little deeper, it’s possible to find pockets of land within the area that could be walkable urban places, said ULI volunteer Scott Polikov, who also works for Gateway Planning.

The use of public transportation in Dallas has skyrocketed in the past five years, leading more people to leave their cars at home and opt for trains – especially DART, which has several lines running through the city and its suburbs. That in turn is encouraging citizens to seek out walkable places, Polikov said.

“[Public transportation] is something that’s so great for this area, and the more people use it, the more of an impact we’ll start to see on our urban areas,” he said.

“There’s a real chance to have, in a way, a village-like feel depending on what we do.” -Scott Polikov”

In April and May, ULI gave presentations in Dallas on creating value in real estate development, the future of transit-oriented development, and a signature event focused on wellness, hotel development, multifamily use, and transportation. Presentations regarding the addition of more buildings all included use of greenspace.

One such area, the Statler Hotel at the intersection of Commerce and Harwood, was recently awarded the ULI’s Next Big Idea honor. The renovations will include a more environmentally-friendly building worth more than $200 million, and represents an effort by local architects to continue developing in Dallas while also maintaining environmental health.

Polikov pointed to the success some areas have enjoyed in terms of walkability – specifically, the Preston Hollow area and the Park Cities. Highland Park, for example, is a town catered to walking with its’ tight-knit neighborhoods, multiple parks, schools close to homes, and a centrally-located shopping center.

The town maintains its walkable attributes despite being in between two major highways and a just a short drive north from downtown.

“Dallas has the potential to be a strong walking city,” Polikov said. “There’s a real chance to have, in a way, a village-like feel depending on what we do in terms of greenspace. ULI works all over the country, and Dallas has as much potential as any other city.”

In the meantime, walkable developments are springing up all over North Texas, including Uptown, Plano, Richardson, and McKinney. It’s an attractive feature to current and prospective residents, Polikov said.

“The overall landscape of [Dallas and the surrounding areas] really allows for more walkable opportunities,” he said.

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PD-15 Authorized Hearing Committee Members Announced and Minor Bombshell Drops

Thu, 24 May 2018 15:43:54 GMT

by Jon Anderson
Candysdirt.com

by Jon Anderson

Yesterday afternoon, the people selected to be part of the PD-15 authorized hearing committee were posted. Kudos to council member Jennifer Gates for keeping her promise to exclude those opposed to the authorized hearing process, who would likely seek to sabotage the proceedings from within.

You will note that the towers have two representatives on the committee. This was done in recognition of the land mass of PD-15. Roughly the towers and the four low-rises each sit on six acres and and so there are four representatives for each camp. This makes for an interesting group. Within the PD, neither side can outvote the other, so collaboration will be required. Also, the three “wild card” members from Preston Hollow East Homeowners Association and two neighboring buildings are just that, wild cards. How will they feel about the various development plans and options? I think the pulse of the group will be taken in the first few meetings.

City Planning and Zoning

City staff has also been busy updating and adding a couple of documents to their collection (posted here). To quell questions about the authorized hearing process, a flow chart was posted outlining the steps the authorized hearing will take. Please don’t assume that the numbers somehow equate to a timeline.

Right-click, “view image” for full size image or use link below to download a copy.

There’s nothing new in this document, it’s just a cheat sheet for those wanting to better understand the process. It goes into detail of what each step entails as the committee navigates the process. Feel free to download your personal copy suitable for purse or billfold.

City Staff Drops a (Minor) Zoning Bombshell

The image above is a close-up of the current PD-15 development plan. In the past we’d been told that because of the limitation on dwelling units per acre that buildings could only replace what they had (unless they got unanimous permission to utilize the 60-ish surplus units OR updated PD-15).

Unlike the rest of PD-15, tract 2 (Diplomat) has no specified height limit

But what city staff are now saying in their FAQ document is that building height is also capped because the development plan lists the heights of the buildings in PD-15 … except one. While Preston Place lists three stories and both Royal Orleans and Diamond Head Condos list two stories, the Diplomat, sitting on tract 3 doesn’t list a height. City staff interprets this as meaning that only Diplomat has the ability to go above its existing two-story construction.

I called this a minor bombshell because ultimately it’s meaningless as even with unlimited height, Diplomat is still limited by the dwelling unit cap and floor-area-ratio (4:1).

Getting Your Say

Regardless of whatever is decided by the (open to the public) committee, it still requires any changes to go through the typical zoning process. Property owners within 200 feet of PD-15 will be notified of the changes and receive a form to mail back to the city to “support” or “oppose.” Should there be more than 20 percent opposition, any action by city council would require a super-majority of 75 percent of council members to vote “yes” (12 votes). That’s a pretty high bar.

For Pink Wall, and especially PD-15 residents, it’s imperative that your HOA insert language into your HOA documents that enables individual units to vote. Otherwise, it’s your HOA board that makes the decision for everyone — they don’t even have to ask their owners. Not very democratic, but there you are. An attorney could draw up the appropriate language in an hour I’d guess. If your HOA balks at doing this, you know their decision has been made and you’re likely in trouble.

Doom And Gloom

If the committee’s proposal goes down in flames, everything stays as-is. This means that the four low-rises would have to come to an accommodation to divvy the 60-ish surplus units. Before you get giddy at the prospect, understand that if Preston Place’s current offer is for $18 million based on the ability to build 220 units (the prevailing rumor), at 80 units (current 60 + their land-based allotment of the surplus), the cost of their land drops to $6.5 million. Instead of their homes being valued at roughly $300,000 each, they’d be worth $109,000.

Diplomat’s one-acre parcel that A.G. Spanos wants to build 120 units on would essentially drop 80 percent in value on an allotment of 25 units (existing 15 + 10 allotment of surplus units).

This would have a negative impact on PD-15 and the rest of the Pink Wall. No developer is going to buy the impaired land and construct million-dollar townhomes. One only has to look at the failure of the Park Hollow development to see no one is making that mistake anytime soon.

The quality of the resulting projects would not add to the value of remaining complexes. Developers wouldn’t give a penny to neighborhood enhancements. The resulting minimal construction wouldn’t attract city attention to existing problems. Sure, there’d be less density, but at what overall cost?

Ray of Light

On the upside, this doomsday doesn’t have to happen. What’s great about the timing here is that the PD-15 committee are very unlikely to be feeling their way in the dark. It behooves developers to have their plans nailed down and present their best to the committee for specific approvals. Otherwise, a future developer is stuck with whatever the committee decides. It’s a cinch this process isn’t going to be reopened anytime soon after this process is complete.

I, for one, look forward to seeing what will be proposed and what solutions (and money) the developers and the city can come to the table with to help solve some of the area’s problems. If they’re awful, I’ll vote “no,” but if they’re great, wouldn’t that be great?

Note to developers: Bring your “A+” game.

View article at Candysdirt.com

It's time Dallas requires developers to chip in to pay for land for Dallas parks

Tue, 15 May 2018 12:53:04 GMT

Dallas Morning News Editorial
View article online

The old joke was that the official bird of Texas must be the crane, because of all of the construction underway. There may be some truth to that, but one essential component of urban development in Dallas that is too often neglected is the construction of new parks for all city residents to enjoy.

So it is encouraging that the City Council will be presented with a plan Wednesday to create a new and long-term source of support for building parks in Dallas. We hope the council supports the plan.

In brief, the plan would require Dallas developers to offset new hotels and housing developments by paying into a new parks fund or setting land aside.

Why is this good for Dallas? The reason is simple. Dallas is growing in terms of development and population, but it isn't keeping pace in terms of adding parks, trails and green space. Among the 10 largest cities in America, only Houston, San Antonio and Phoenix score worse on the annual list put out by the Trust for Public Land. Among the largest 100 cities, we rank 50th.

And as we grow, it will only get harder to create parks unless we take steps now to set aside funds and land. In the parlance of the trade, it's hard to build a new park in an already "built" environment.

In this case, the proposal being offered to the council has been kicking around for a long time. It has been approved unanimously by the Dallas Park and Recreation Board. Developers and other stakeholders have been hashing out compromises for months. And the city's quality-of-life committee has been briefed on the idea five times since 2017.

The proposal would require developers to pay a fee depending on the size of a project or to pay a smaller fee and set aside some land for parks.

Those funds would be pooled and spent on parks near the developments that generated the fee. Fees generated in the downtown zone could be spent citywide on the trails that stitch Dallas together.

Dallas has made do without these fees for decades longer than many other cities in Texas, including Plano and other neighboring communities. And we are typically skeptical of mandatory fees, but in this case we believe Dallas needs to pull private developers into the process if it is to have the park land needed to ensure it is a city of the first order for generations to come.

The risk is that opponents effectively derail this plan through needless delay. We hope the council hears out all objections. But we also hope it moves forward before its July break to support a plan that ensures Dallas can build the parks it will need in the decades ahead.

What's in the plan?

* Divides Dallas into seven zones. Park fees paid by developers will be used within the same zone.

* Exception would be in the zone including downtown, Uptown, the Design District and the Cedars neighborhood. Those funds could be spent developing Dallas' citywide trails network.

* Fees would depend on the number and type of unit developed. For example, for single-family developments, the fee would be $1,165 per house; for multifamily, $457 per one-bedroom unit.

* Developers could opt to donate land instead or to develop private park lands within the project, as long as it was accessible to the public.

What's your view?

Got an opinion about this issue? Send a letter to the editor, and you just might get published.

View article online

2 gunmen at large after robbing bank in northwest Dallas

Thu, 10 May 2018 19:08:28 GMT

Loyd Brumfield, Breaking News producer
Dallas News

Two armed men are at large after robbing a Capital One bank Wednesday in northwest Dallas.

The robbery happened about 10:15 a.m. at the bank in the 5300 block of Forest Lane, police said. One of the gunmen jumped over the teller's counter and demanded money.

The second man forced employees seated in the lobby to walk over to the teller's counter, and then both robbers fled on foot with an undisclosed amount of money.

One man is described as black, about 5 feet 8 and wearing all black, including a black ski mask.

The second man is described as black, in his mid-20s, about 6 feet tall and about 200 pounds. He was wearing a purple long-sleeve hoodie, gray cap and white sweatpants, police said.

Anyone with information should contact the FBI at 972-559-5000 or Dallas police at 214-797-0296.

This Is the New Chief of Police

Tue, 01 May 2018 18:07:23 GMT

By Jamie Thompson
Published in D Magazine May 2018
Photography by Elizabeth Lavin

Reneé Hall is the first woman to run the department. She’s not so sure Dallas is ready for that.

On paper she wasn’t a front-runner, but last summer U. Reneé Hall came to Dallas and charmed the city manager and council members by being approachable and funny and smart and, yes, though we’re not supposed to mention it, attractive, too. A fit 140 pounds at 47 years old, she can hold three-minute planks and outshoot many beat cops on the firing range. She collects handguns and vintage gowns and Louis Vuitton bags. She loves being a cop, and she loves being a woman. It’s the feminine stuff, she thinks, that has dogged her as Dallas’ first female police chief. That and the color of her skin. But more on that later.

Start with the “pedicure shoes incident.” Here’s how Hall tells the story: it was a Saturday in November. She’d been working 17-hour days. She’d gone to a roll call that morning at 8, and now she was off-duty. She wanted to get a manicure and pedicure and relax. She’d just dipped her feet into a tub of water when a member of her security detail ran into the salon and told her a SWAT officer had shot himself in the leg during a raid. Hall took her feet out of the water, and the nail technician gave her plastic slippers. She climbed into the back of an unmarked black SUV and raced to Parkland Hospital.

In the officer’s room, Hall hugged family members around the bed. “Chief, I’m so sorry,” the injured officer told her, embarrassed about his misfire.

“Hey, you’ve got nothing to apologize for,” she told him. “Those rumors about me making SWAT a part-time team? That’s out the window. You guys clearly need training.” Everyone laughed. Then Hall got serious. “Are you good?” she asked the officer.

“Yeah, Chief, I’m good.”

Someone noticed the slippers Hall was still wearing and said, “Don’t step on the chief’s toes. They’re not finished yet.” More laughter.

Hall didn’t think anything of it. She went back to the salon and finished her pedicure. But days later, she heard that stories were circulating around the department: Chief showed up at the hospital in pedicure slippers!

“It was like I’d flown down on a unicorn or something,” Hall told me recently. To her mind, the conversation should have been about how great it was that the chief had stopped what she was doing on a Saturday and had gone straight to the hospital. Don’t male cops get haircuts on their days off? Trim their beards? “They’ve never seen a woman in this role. It’s always been a man. So they’re not processing the pedicure shoes. That’s what women do. We get pedicures. I’m a girl. There’s hair, makeup, nails and toes.”

Hall has talked about the pedicure incident at substations across the city, where she attends roll calls to meet the officers under her command. Not long ago, a cop at Southwest asked what Hall was doing to improve morale across the struggling department.

“It’s never enough,” she told him. “When I got here, you guys wanted beards. I gave you beards. You wanted outer vest carriers. I got those. You talked about never seeing the police chief in the past. I showed up at the hospital when someone was injured, and it wasn’t enough because I had on pedicure shoes.” The cops laughed. “Whatever I do, it’s never enough,” she told them. “At some point, you’ve got to stop looking at me to improve morale. And you’ve got to start looking at yourselves.”

Read Entire Article Online

Gates Kicks Off PD-15 Authorized Hearing to Tackle Pink Wall Development Issues

Fri, 27 Apr 2018 18:16:45 GMT

by Jon Anderson
candysdirt.com

Packed House at Park Cities Baptist Church

If you’ve been following along in your prayer books, you know that over a year ago the Preston Place condos burned. You may also know about the failed attempt at negotiating an area redevelopment plan. I’ll even toss in bonus points if you’re aware of the Athena and Preston Tower working with former mayor Laura Miller to stymie everything.

All caught up? Good …

Last night, Dallas City Council member Jennifer Gates assembled the neighborhood to discuss the history and next steps in the process. What was a surprise to most was that the authorized hearing, first mentioned last summer as having a two or three year waiting list, had been bumped up in the schedule and was beginning immediately. Gates made available applications for representatives on the authorized hearing committee.

But I get ahead of myself.

PD-15 with Northwest Highway to the south

Full Disclosure: I live in PD-15, and the publisher of this blog, Candy Evans, owns a unit at The Seville on Averill Way.

According to the city planning representatives, the concept of what became Planned Development District number 15 (PD-15) began in 1947 but was only called a PD when PDs were begun in the 1960s. Prior to its official PD designation, the area was zoned for commercial development, which also allows residential construction. It was during the official PD designation in the 1960s that the zoning was changed to its current MF-3 (multi-family 3) under section 51 (not today’s 51-A) zoning parameters.

Unbuilt 1970s high-rise proposed on Preston Place lot

MF-3 under section 51 allows for unlimited height, 60 percent lot coverage, various setbacks and other parameters. Overlaying that are the PD-15 documents that limit the number of dwelling units possible in PD-15. There are currently between 60-65 unbuilt units available (the leftover from a failed high-rise project on the Preston Place lot in the early 1970s).

Those 60-65 surplus units are now a shared resource among all members of PD-15 and all would have to agree to allow another parcel to utilize them. The only way a property can be redeveloped without a zoning hearing would be to rebuild the same number of units as currently exist or get the members of PD-15 to unanimously agree to change the PD’s parameters.

Last summer the PD-15 working group assembled by Gates tried to come up with just such an accommodation that the buildings would all agree to. The process bogged down into two sides equally unwilling to compromise.

Because of all this, a developer can’t just file a zoning case with the city for a specific project (as they usually do), seeking more than the existing dwelling units listed in the PD documents. In Preston Place’s case that would be 60 units on a two-acre plot and 15 units on Diplomat’s one-acre — numbers that are completely unrealistic given land values and the quality of building expected by the neighborhood.

Enter the Authorized Hearing

An authorized hearing is when the city instigates a look into the appropriate zoning for a given area. The city assembles a contingent of area residents to meet and hammer out an agreement, with the city acting as information resource and mediator. The outcome can be to leave the area untouched or to make specific accommodations in return for givebacks from developers.

And that’s where I reside. Camp Negotiate.

Once questions and comments were heard, the expected dire predictions of overcrowding and its resulting traffic were heard. Somehow, redevelopment of these few parcels was thought to have a huge impact on Northwest Highway and Preston Road traffic. That intersection sees tens of thousands of cars each rush hour. The increased traffic from those few hundreds of new apartments amount to a rounding error.

Now internal roads? Absolutely there will be impacts. But it’s up to the neighborhood representatives in the authorized hearing to negotiate solutions for new projects (if this, then that). Ditto parking, flooding, and all the other Pink Wall woes. Ultimately, not everything can or will be fixed (there’s simply not enough money in these few deals), but the area will be better off than it would be without a successful negotiation.

The most galling sentiment was that somehow the authorized hearing took away residents’ rights. Poppycock. Yes, the authorized hearing removes the requirement of unanimous PD-15 approval for changes, but given the contentious, non-negotiable attitudes of those working group members, “unanimous” was never really in the cards.

The Preston Road and Northwest Highway Area Plan Noose

Many spoke in a reverence for the Area Plan, perfectly at home in the Baptist church’s fellowship hall. Cheers were shouted anytime a speaker mentioned support for the plan and its recommendations. Area Plan task force members Steve Dawson and former mayor Laura Miller seemed to place the plan in the same pantheon as Mom’s apple pie and baseball. Neither are Pink Wall residents. Neither are towers residents (Miller’s husband inherited his mother’s Athena unit that they rent but have never lived in, see here). Neither stumped for towers’ representation on the Preston Center task force they sat on while deciding the area’s fate.

Side note: It was funny to hear Dawson wax about the preciousness of the neighborhood and then have to grudgingly answer an audience chant of “Where do you live?”

Answer: University Park.

I finally had to get up and have a say (something I rarely do). I pointed out the truth Gates was unwilling or unable to admit. Namely that there are no financial underpinnings in the Preston Center plan to support any of its conclusions (here, here). There is more math in the following few paragraphs than exists in the 95-page Preston Center Plan.

Because of this, I told those cheering for four-story construction while booing the ugliness of The Laurel apartments on the corner, that quality matters. If they want Laurel clones, by all means beat the area down to four stories, but zip-it later when you don’t like the results. After all, assuming a 20 percent profit margin, every dollar the neighborhood beats out of a project removes 80 cents in quality from the construction. Construction margins don’t decrease, construction quality does.

Miller Greed Shames Preston Place Owners

During Miller’s comment, she said that a supposed contingent-free offer to purchase Preston Place for $12 million was turned down in lieu of the current $18 million contingent offer from Provident. (It’s been known that Leland Burk, a friend of Miller and also in the audience, put in an offer to purchase Preston Place.) Miller’s point seemed to be to greed-shame Preston Place residents for not taking the lower offer.

Assuming both numbers are correct, who among us would take $12 million when $18 million is on the table? Zero. That’s the difference between $200,000 and $300,000 — a whopping one third less — per Preston Place homeowner. So why should Preston Place owners, who lost every possession to fire, some without insurance, be greed-shamed? And why should they be shamed by a woman living over a mile away (with a big dining room) in her 9,168-square-foot mansion sitting on two manicured acres in Old Preston Hollow?

Ultimately, the meeting went as expected. The towers have been ginned up against rational development and the authorized hearing process. Those sentiments were well-heard. The remainder of the participants coming from around the Pink Wall (some even from the towers) and Preston Hollow were more open to the process.

Gates did say one thing that would disqualify someone from being part of the authorized hearing. Anyone stating their opposition to the authorized hearing was out. At the very least, that leaves out non-resident landlords Laura Miller and Steve Dawson, Preston Tower residents John Pritchett and Susan Conard, and Athena residents Carla Young and Brett Fincher, along with anyone else who signed the letter last November to Gates.

But I think Gates needs go a step further. I believe anyone who served on the original PD-15 working group should also automatically be excluded. They’ve proven they don’t have what it takes to reach a compromise and are too entrenched in their positions to be of value. And, even though I resigned because of the shenanigans, this also includes me.

Don’t restart the car if there’s still sugar in the gas tank, you won’t get far.

Remember: High-rises, HOAs and renovation are my beat. But I also appreciate modern and historical architecture balanced against the YIMBY movement. In 2016 and 2017, the National Association of Real Estate Editors recognized my writing with two Bronze (2016, 2017) and two Silver (2016, 2017) awards. Have a story to tell or a marriage proposal to make? Shoot me an email sharewithjon@candysdirt.com. Be sure to look for me on Facebook and Twitter. You won’t find me, but you’re welcome to look.

Preston Hollow East Swaps Donuts and Dialogue with Council Member Jennifer Gates

Tue, 17 Apr 2018 20:35:17 GMT

by Jon Anderson
candysdirt.com

Council Member Gates enjoying a cuppa with constituents

Top Pot, a name that might evoke the hopes of an herb-aceous electorate, is alas just a coffee and “hand-forged” donut shop at the edge of Preston Hollow. Begun in Seattle, the city of coffee’s rebirth, there are three locations in Dallas. I wonder if Dallas leadership called out Top Pot for a “just like home” vibe in their Amazon HQ2 bid?

I was there at the crack of 9 a.m. on Saturday to attend a drop-in chat session hosted by the Preston Hollow East Homeowners Association (PHEHA). Council member Jennifer Gates was their special guest. Unlike more formal settings, this meeting was literally coffee and donuts, no set speech or presentation. It was an avenue for local residents to have a low-key interaction with their council person to discuss whatever was on their minds. Think of it as a cocktail party with caffeine and crullers instead of champagne and caviar. I’m sure other council members do this too, I’ve just never been invited.

Gates handled queries ranging from the city’s homeless problem to more local issues including neighborhood walkability, and, of course the PD-15 circus.

As for homelessness, I recommended that city leaders study programs that work, especially the great press coming from Finland’s efforts to eliminate the problem (here, here, here, here). I’ve written before about Housing First programs and their success elsewhere (here, here). Finland began back in 2008 and today, while the rest of Europe struggles with a growing problem, Finland provided 16,300 homes to their homeless and saved money in the process. Certainly during my visit to Helsinki, I was hard-pressed to find homeless people.

The stuff of nightmares for some Preston Hollow residents

Apparently I’m an area legend in walking. PHEHA representatives wanted to talk about the routes I take on my various outings and the existence of sidewalks and why I chose certain routes over others (sidewalks, traffic, shortcuts, etc.). PHEHA wants to begin to enable walkability to area businesses like grocery stores (and perhaps a certain hand-forged donut shop). I learned that for some “sidewalk” is a hot button word (who’d a thunk?) with those folks being less vapor-y when “walkability” is used instead. While I view a sidewalk as an amenity, apparently some prefer street walkers.

There were multiple chat pods discussing PD-15. Crickets continue to chirp for Provident to muster up a plan for the Preston Place parcel they contracted for back in February. However, Gates is done waiting, deciding to get the show back on the road. She’s called a meeting for 6 p.m. April 26 at the Park Cities Baptist Church’s Fellowship Hall (located across Northwest Highway from the Pink Wall’s existing towers). City staff will be on hand to present the facts concerning existing zoning and the authorized hearing process that’s been scheduled (and has the towers’ knickers in such a twist). It will end with a Q&A session.

It’s odd Provident hasn’t gotten its act together in the two months since Preston Place selected their offer to proceed with. I mean, who signs a contract for millions in land options for what has to be at least a $100 million project, without a skeleton of a plan ready to go? But maybe I live in a different world. I’m glad Gates has decided to restart the engine, leaving Provident to chase the train.

Also attending was Dimitri Economou from Diplomat suitor A.G. Spanos. No eyebrow raise needed, he lives in PHEHA territory and his young children don’t pass up donuts easily (or maybe that was just me?). We had our usual sparring match about good architecture and green technologies but also area flooding. As a developer he wants to help deal with flooding where he can (the area has been stiffed by the city for years … decades?). After all, it’s smart business. Spanos keeps what it builds, so the last thing they want are pricey tenants complaining about cars floating away in the rain.

This was my second encounter with PHEHA’s leadership who share my wait-and-see-before-judging stance on PD-15. Good projects help the area. Bad projects result in more Laurel clones. I overheard one conversation where a resident was lamenting the Laurel’s uninterrupted wall of apartments running so close to Preston Road.

The answer was that to mitigate that solid wall of apartments, the building needed to have been allowed to go taller. It’s like baking a cookie. While a cookie flattens in the oven, it’s still the same mass as a cold dough ball. The Laurel project was shoved into the oven by a cantankerous neighborhood, forcing a flatter and more spread-out building than might have been better negotiated. To those who wish they could turn back time on the Laurel, the opportunities within PD-15 are that time machine.

Despite the chilly Saturday, the only unfortunate aspect was the relatively low turnout. To speak to your representative in such an informal setting was an opportunity missed. Ultimately there were between 20 to 30 attendees from an area encompassing hundreds of homes. Hey, even I rolled out of bed on a Saturday morning to attend. If such gatherings are available in your neighborhood, go.

READ ARTICLE @ candysdirt.com

Athena and Preston Tower Hold “Neighborly” Meeting Without Neighbors

Sat, 17 Mar 2018 14:18:13 GMT

CandysDirt.com
by Jon Anderson

Last night, the two towers bookending PD-15 held a “Town Hall” meeting to talk about “proposed rezoning” of their low-rise neighbors. It was ironic to hear the word “neighbors” spoken so frequently by a group who, at the end, raised their hands in favor of continued “towers only” meetings. In this case, “neighbors” really means “us.”

The meeting was run by

John Pritchett, Preston Tower resident, PD-15 working group and, secretary and recent president of the Preston Hollow South Neighborhood Association
Carla Young, Athena HOA president and PD-15 working group member
Susan Conard, Preston Tower
Roger Albright, attorney hired to advise the Athena and Preston Tower in PD-15 matters

In my opinion, the meeting’s goal was to preemptively poison the well on redevelopment of Preston Place, Diplomat, Royal Orleans, and Diamond Head Condos. I say that because first, there wasn’t a whiff of “wait and see” what the developers bring. Secondly, the meeting was rife with half-truths and contradictions continuing to stick to development options from the Preston Center plan. The plan I have debunked twice as being economically unviable (here, here).

Here are some examples, judge for yourself. READ MORE...

Some Dallas Police Officers Call City ‘No Hope, Texas’

Thu, 15 Feb 2018 15:22:53 GMT

by J.D. Miles
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – It’s a new name some Dallas Police officers have given to the city that they hope will bring more attention to the need for more officers.

No Hope, Texas is what the president of the Dallas Police Association is renaming the city in a new social media post.

The DPA has been working to sort through exactly how many officers the department has and determined the latest number is 2,785. READ MORE...

New Report Exposes Preston Center Plan As Financially Bogus

Tue, 13 Feb 2018 15:28:31 GMT

CandysDirt.com
by Jon Anderson

Good news. You don’t have to go to Idaho to fish in Bogus Creek. Last October, I wrote about how the NHPRAP (Northwest Highway and Preston Road Area Plan), not even a year old, wasn’t designed to be economically viable. Essentially, my scribbles revealed that were its Zone 4 area to follow the recommendations contained in the NHPRAP task force’s final report, their individual condominiums would always be worth more than land value to a developer. Note: Zone 4 contains PD-15 (Planned Development District) within the larger Pink Wall area.

This lack of economic benefit ensures none of the redevelopment and neighborhood renewal touted by the NHPRAP plan will occur, failing to live up to its own goals.

Well, now I’m not alone. A.G. Spanos (who has an option on the Diplomat) released an independent report by architecture firm LRK.

LRK’s report essentially debunks the feasibility of redevelopment within PD-15 when constrained by both the current PD-15 limits and the NHPRAP’s report. Sure, Spanos has a dog in this hunt, but LRK’s report fills a gap in research not provided by the city or the NHPRAP. The report is making the rounds at City Hall just as development opponents are trying to shore up support for the flawed NHPRAP plan. READ MORE...

Dallas Police Department Recruitment Falling Short

Mon, 29 Jan 2018 15:33:24 GMT

NBCDFW.com
by Jack Highberger

The Dallas Police Department will likely fall short of recruitment goals for this year, Dallas City data shows.

DPD hopes to hire 250 new officers by September 30th but so far has hired only 39.

“When you get to the point that you are constantly trying to do more with less, eventually you are getting less with less,” said Dallas Police Association President Mike Mata.

NBC 5 reached out to the Dallas Police Department for comment but did not receive an answer at the time of this stories air.

In recent months officers have been moved from other departments to patrol to make up for staffing shortfalls, said Mata.

Citywide, police response times have risen across the board, with the average time for “priority 4” calls rising by 20-minutes in 2017. Current recruitment efforts are also set against the back drop of lingering questions concerning the pension fund and entry level salaries that are increasingly topped by neighboring cities.

“How do you convince that young officer that has the ability to leave or that officer that has a wife or kids, how do you get them to come to a city that is going to pay them less,” said Mata. READ MORE...

Dallas police in 'crisis situation' fueled by low morale, pension mess, veteran exodus

Thu, 06 Jul 2017 14:22:24 GMT

Dallas News
Tasha Tsiaperas | Naheed Rajwani

At 3,139 officers, the department is smaller than it was 10 years ago, when roughly 100,000 fewer people lived in Dallas.

While the department searches for a new leader amid mounting crises — a deadly ambush, a failing pension, 911 call center failures — officers have been quietly leaving...

Council member Jennifer Staubach Gates, who sits on the City Council's public safety committee, said the pension issue, suffering morale and an aging department have created "the perfect storm." READ MORE...

Dallas Police Solved Fewer Than Half of the City's Homicides in 2016

Fri, 06 Jan 2017 14:27:48 GMT

By Stephen Young
Dallas Observer

Published Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Violence marred Dallas' 2016. The city saw 163 murders through Dec. 19, up 30 percent from the 125 murders Dallas suffered by the same day last year. While the city has come a long way since Dallas' body count peaked at 500 in 1991, the murder numbers, combined with a declining murder clearance rate, will be one of the biggest challenges to whomever replaces outgoing police chief David Brown early next year.

As one looks at Dallas' 2016 murder stats, several stark patterns, both in solved and unsolved murders, present themselves.

1. A majority of all Dallas murders, and a majority of the city's unsolved murders, happen south of I-30. — In 2016, 105 of Dallas 163 murders took place south of the city's traditional dividing line between the haves and have-nots, Interstate 30. Of those 105 murders, 57 were still unsolved as of Dec. 22. The area near I-20 and U.S. 67 alone, which sits on the edge of DPD's South Central and Southwest Patrol Divisions, saw six unsolved murders in 2016. Sherman Waters, 20, was among those killed near the intersection. Waters got into an argument on July 20 with a group of men at the Brandon Mill Luxury Apartments at 8081 Marvin D. Love Freeway. He walked away, but later came back to finish what he started. When he did, the men with whom he was arguing opened fire, killing him.

2. DPD struggled across the board to solve murders in 2016. — Each of DPD's patrol divisions, North Central excepted but we'll get to that later, solved somewhere between 42 and 62 percent of its murder cases. According to the most recently available FBI data, between 2011 and 2014, DPD's clearance rate hovered around 60 percent, so dipping down below 50 percent is a pretty big deal. It should also be noted that clearances do not equal convictions. All a case being cleared means is that a suspect was arrested or otherwise identified without the possibility of arrest — like Micah Johnson, who was killed by a DPD robot.

3. The North Central Patrol Division had a strange year. — DPD's North Central Patrol Division saw the fewest murders of any section of the city in 2016 with seven. Of those seven, however, DPD only solved one, leaving the section north of Highland Park and between U.S. 75 and I-35 with a staggering 86 percent unsolved rate. Granted, it is a very small sample size, but it's a strange statistical phenomenon none the less.

4. Ira Tobolowsky's murder is getting colder. — One of the victims of those seven North Central murders was notable Dallas attorney Ira Tobolowsky, who was burned to death in his garage in May. Shortly after his death, a friend of Tobolowsky's went on Today and declared that the murder was a "hit," executed in retribution for a defamation suit Tobolowsky filed as part of a bitter, ongoing dispute over the estate of Dallas orthodontist Richard Aubrey. No arrests have been made in the case.

5. The numbers might not be an accident. — Back in April, when breathless reports from Dallas' broadcast stations began about the rising number of murders, Scott Henson, editor of the influential Grits for Breakfast criminal justice blog, told the Observer that short-term murder rates often don't mean very much.

"Murder rates matter, they do, but they are subject to that small number problem. They can only be interpreted, really, over time," he said. "There's a reason that the smallest poll anybody does is 400. If you're doing a political poll, no one really does less than 400 people because that's like 5 percent margin of error. Murder rates are a lot lower than that. It's just a statistically widely varying data point."

Still, there's been at least one change at DPD that could've had an effect on the department's clearance rate. Earlier this year, outgoing Dallas City Manager A.C. Gonzalez reassigned now former Assistant Dallas Police Chief Rob Sherwin from DPD's crime against persons division (CAPERS) to Dallas Animal Services in an attempt to stymie Dallas' loose dogs problem.

Sherwin left the department entirely in December to become Forney's chief of police, but before he did, he was the department's fixer. Dallas City Council member Philip Kingston blamed Gonzalez, in part, for moving Sherwin and hurting the department's clearance rate.

"I think you did a good job at CAPERS. My point was that CAPERS still needs you," he said in October. "We are trying desperately to hire more police and the city manager's plan for dealing with animals is to move two of our best cops into dealing with animal services. It is laughable. This is emblematic of the terrible management we are getting out of the current administration."

View full article and photos on the Dallas Observer website...

Dallas wants 549 new cops, but that may not be realistic

Thu, 25 Aug 2016 16:05:29 GMT

By Naheed Rajwani and Tasha Tsiaperas
The Dallas Morning News

Published 25 August 2016

It's an ambitious goal: Dallas wants to hire 549 police officers by next October.

But that may be impossible, some police and City Council members say. The Police Department may not be able to get enough people to apply and meet the rigorous requirements for the job.

Historically, the department has accepted only about 5 percent of applicants — the rest are typically weeded out of the pool.

The department has said it will need 3,700 applicants to hire the 549 officers. This means it would have to accept almost 15 percent of applicants.

So it will probably either have to lower its standards, have a lot more applicants, or have more qualified applicants than in the past.

That's why some say the hiring goal is unrealistic.

"It's almost utterly impossible to hire 549 police officers," said Lt. Thomas Glover, president of the Black Police Association of Greater Dallas. Glover once worked in the personnel division.

The $20 million hiring push is part of the proposed 2017 Dallas budget, which emphasizes raises for first responders and hiring more police officers to replace a larger-than-expected number of officers leaving the department in recent years.

Support for raises and a sharply expanded force has grown among City Council members since the July 7 ambush, in which a gunman killed five police officers.

The department's leaders believe higher starting salaries and more aggressive recruiting will help them meet the goal.

Recruiters plan to visit college campuses, job fairs and military bases to persuade more people to apply. They say they plan to target youth programs and promote job openings on the internet.

The department also plans to hold more on-site testings than usual. Civil service exams, which are a part of the testing, will be given every Monday instead of once a month.

View full article and photos on The Dallas Morning News website...

The Police Department recently added 12 people to the personnel division to help with recruiting.

"We'll be very selective here real soon," Police Chief David Brown told the City Council at an Aug. 17 meeting. "With the higher pay, it puts us in a strong position to hire the 549."

And officials have touted an uptick in applications since the ambush, which came at the end of a downtown protest over the killings of black men around the country by police. Brown issued a public challenge for the protesters to put in applications to become police officers.

In a little more than a month, 812 people applied.

The increase in applications is significant, but unlikely to result in a large number of hirings because most people who show interest is becoming a Dallas police officer don't end up with a job offer.

Cory Morris didn't make the cut.

Morris, 26, is a Dallas native planning to come home from the Army in six months. He took eight days off from his deployment in Hawaii to go to on-site testing for applicants at Dallas police headquarters last week.

Morris was expecting to qualify for the job because of his military background, which he says gave him strict training about when and when not to draw a weapon.

He passed the Dallas department's physical fitness test but was eliminated during the polygraph test.

"I pretty much wasted my money to go fail out," he said.

And the Police Department lost out on another potential candidate.

The big recruiting pools are whittled down in many ways.

They have to show up: About 300 people signed up for last week's testing, but only 155 people actually arrived.

They have to pass: Police said 49 people made it through the first phase, which includes a civil service exam, fitness test, polygraph and an interview. About two dozen are still in this process.

Then they have to pass the background check. It usually takes several weeks or even months.
After that, a few will fail to make it through the police academy.

The end result last year was that there were 3,824 applications, but only 208 hired.
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And there are other obstacles.

The department lags far behind other Texas cities in starting pay.

In Dallas, the starting pay is $44,659. In Mesquite, it is $57,489.

The Dallas department also hasn't been hiring officers fast enough to replace the ones who are already leaving, many of whom are going to those higher-paying law enforcement agencies.

The Mesquite Police Department has 231 sworn officers and hopes to hire 19 more this year.

"We're trying, but it's difficult to find somebody who's qualified enough to get the job, who is the same person who wants the job, and who is willing to do that job," said Lt. Brian Parrish, a Mesquite police spokesman.

He said his department has hired one former Dallas police officer so far and is willing to "steal as many Dallas officers as we can." The chief may know where to look: He is former First Assistant Dallas Police Chief Charlie Cato.
1472079109-Police-attrition.png

The Dallas department projects that 262 officers will leave by the end of the fiscal year in September. Of those, 120 officers have resigned to take jobs elsewhere, more than in past years.

Almost 350 of the 549 the department wants to hire over the next year would just replace officers who are leaving.

The last major hiring effort in Dallas brought in 394 officers in one year in 2008, a far cry from the goal of 549 this year.

"We're all competing for the same good applicant," said Deputy Chief Scott Walton, who is in charge of personnel.

The rank and file wonder if the city can ever catch up to its goal of 2.8 officers per 1,000 residents.

"Now the hole is so deep and so big, we need an extraordinary amount of cops," said Dallas Police Association vice president Michael Mata.

When police officials shared data about recruiting with City Council members during a public safety committee meeting Monday, council member Philip Kingston asked how many of the recruits would make it to the academy.

After hearing how few make the cut, he told Walton, "That sounds to me like we're not on pace to be able to hire 500. Am I being too skeptical?"

"Well, I would say yes because we really haven't talked about what our plans for recruiting are. ... We have a much more aggressive recruiting plan," Walton responded.

Kingston didn't seem convinced.

"I still have questions about whether that's attainable," he said. "In terms of priority, if I'm prioritizing from a public safety standpoint, to me pay seems to be a higher priority than headcount."

That's exactly what Dallas police associations have been telling the City Council: Spend more on raises to retain officers, and focus less on hiring a huge number of new ones.

The police associations say that if the City Council approves the current budget proposal, many more experienced officers will leave the department to work at other agencies with better pay.

The associations are meeting with city officials to negotiate a three-year pay contract. They're asking for across-the-board raises for all officers, while the city's proposed budget only gives raises to about 70 percent of the police force.
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The city is planning to spend an additional $8.9 million on raises for first responders and bonus pay for patrol officers next year alone. But Glover says the unrealistic hiring goal is "a smokescreen" designed to put millions more "in a purse" instead of funding raises for all officers.

The lack of competitive pay for experienced officers is a problem Brown brought up while asking council members to consider raises at a recent meeting.

"Our three-year, five-year salaries aren't competitive," he said.

Officers with three years of experience from Dallas can get about $10,000 more from Fort Worth police after completing an abbreviated training there.

The council votes on the final budget in September.

View full article and photos on The Dallas Morning News website...

What to Expect from HOAs

Mon, 16 May 2016 18:38:47 GMT

by Joshua Baethge · May 16, 2016
Preston Hollow People

Love them or hate them, homeowners associations are a fact of life in many communities. Understanding their roles and expectations can go a long way toward improving a neighborhood’s quality of life.

According to realtor Martha Miller, prospective buyers who are considering moving to a neighborhood with an HOA should research the specific requirements of the association before making a decision.

“They should ask questions like ‘what do they do?’ and ‘how much do you pay?’,” Miller said.

Preston Hollow has three namesake HOAs (East, North and South), as well as at least a half a dozen more that stake some claim to the area. The single-family neighborhoods in Highland Park and University Park do not have homeowners’ associations. However, practically every condominium development in the Park Cities area has its own association, no matter how small. Nearby neighborhoods like Lane Park, Caruth Hills, and Windsor Park also boast their own HOAs.

According to Juli Black, VP of marketing and communications for the Preston Hollow East Home Owners Association, her organization’s primary goals are to provide enhanced security and foster a greater sense of community.

“We are here to be a voice for them with anything they need,” Black said.

Residents should speak up and participate in the HOA. According to Black, HOAs struggle to help their communities if they don’t know what residents need or want.
Preston Hollow East utilizes off-duty Dallas police officers to help protect the neighborhood and share the latest crime information. Not all HOAs provide this level of security. However, Black said it’s a service her community has come to expect.

Preston Hollow East also organizes neighborhood-wide events such as National Night Out, a community building event promoted by law enforcement as a way to bring neighbors and police together. It has even set up member discounts with local businesses.

Unlike some associations, Preston Hollow East is a volunteer organization. Black encourages all residents to join.

“The more people who join, the more resources we have for things like security and other services,” Black said.

View article on Preston Hollow People website...

Jim Hitt, executive manager of the Glen Lakes Homeowners Association, says residents should expect their HOA to help maintain the common areas of the community, such as landscaping and park areas. His association employs an on-site staff that can quickly address damaged common area structures or safety concerns.

“Residents should be looking at the maintenance and condition of the areas that their association is responsible for,” Hitt said.

In many neighborhoods, HOA membership is a prerequisite to move to the area. According to Miller, some people enjoy the services they provide, while others immediately regret subjecting themselves to what they consider to be cumbersome bylaws. She reiterated that learning all the facts before making a decision is crucial. Hitt concurs with this advice.

“The best thing residents can do is be familiar with governing documents as they relate to what you can do on your lot,” Hitt said.

What Would Jane Jacobs Do?

Thu, 05 May 2016 17:31:42 GMT

by Janette Sadik-Khan | Seth Solomonow

CITYLAB

Why the question remains so vital today.

On a presidential campaign trail paved with discussions of border walls, Supreme Court nominees and terrorism fears, candidates have hardly mentioned cities beyond, perhaps, a remark about “New York values.” Yet a national agenda in this century must be an urban one. Two-thirds of the population now lives in the nation’s largest 100 metropolitan areas, and nearly 100 million more people are projected to live in American cities by 2050—swelled by the ambitious who move to them and those lucky enough to be born in them. Urban property values attest both to the desirability of cities and also to the scarcity of affordable housing as population growth outstrips new construction.

This week marks the centennial of the birth of Jane Jacobs, one of the world’s greatest urban visionaries, and her observations have never been more relevant or needed in our national dialog and in our cities than today, 10 years after her death. Jacobs first made her mark through her masterwork, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, published in 1961 and still in print. It is required reading for elected leaders, urban planners and ordinary citizens.

Jacobs’s view of an ideal city, famously inspired by the street scenes she witnessed beyond the window of her West Village home, was humanely designed with short and walkable blocks. Successful neighborhoods are dense with a mix of housing, retail shops, schools, offices and cultural institutions. Networks of people bring “eyes on the street,” keeping each other safe and their communities connected and driving the economies of cities. Yet most cities at Jacobs’s time were far from this ideal and many have become even less so. Built in the early-to-mid 20th century, streets in most American cities were designed to move vehicles and not to support the neighborhood life along them.

Jacobs is remembered today for her role in defeating an expressway promoted by her nemesis, New York’s master builder Robert Moses, which would have slashed across Lower Manhattan. This victory over Moses inspired similar highway revolts against proposals for new roads through American downtowns in the 1960s and 70s. Yet aside from these halted urban highways, there has been little sustained effort in Jacobs’s name to reclaim and revive the ordinary city street itself from cars until relatively recently. Instead of inspiring an urban renaissance, Death and Life was followed by decades of rapid suburbanization, urban depopulation, congestion and economic decay, from which American cities are still recovering. City streets from curb to curb remain virtually unchanged, as congested and dangerous today as they were 50 years ago in Jacobs’s era, and the effects of this neglect are visible in neighborhoods from Boston to Atlanta to Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Toronto, where Jacobs moved in 1968 and ultimately spent more than three decades of her life. The question remains today: What Would Jane Jacobs Do—WWJJD?

Many communities are effectively fighting to keep streets exactly the way that Robert Moses left them.

We should honor Jacobs’s memory today by redesigning our cities as she might have. It’s not just a matter of livability or quality of life, but a long-term strategy for a denser urban future, one that is environmentally rational and economically vital. City residents have a carbon footprint a fraction of the average American, made possible by walkable neighborhoods, accessible transit, and not needing to use a car for almost every errand. A new generation of mayors, city leaders and community organizations have started to revitalize city centers and promote residential construction in downtowns where housing stock has been reduced to parking lots. They are taking advantage of the fact that fewer young Americans are opting to get drivers licenses, the lowest level in 30 years. Meanwhile, technology is transforming every part of urban life today, and transportation platforms like Lyft, Uber and car-share companies offer alternatives to car ownership and new opportunities for city dwellers.

But the process to fulfill Jacobs’s vision may require revolutionary action instead of a merely evolutionary course. As city leaders attempt to adapt their cities for the future, they must face down passionate resistance from residents who perversely invoke Jane Jacobs and cite environmentalism, safety, local economics, and community autonomy not merely to oppose out-of-scale mega-projects, but to defeat proposals that Jacobs herself may have supported. Known as NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard), local residents at official city meetings reliably oppose dense new housing, new public space, bike lanes, or redesigned streets to combat dangerous driving. By using Jane-Jacobs-like language of neighborhood preservation as a decoy to oppose Jane-Jacobs-like projects, many communities are effectively fighting to keep streets exactly the way that Robert Moses left them.

We saw this fight first hand during Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration in New York. Guided by the mayor’s long-range PlaNYC strategies to accommodate one million more city residents by 2030, we created nearly 400 miles of bike lanes, seven rapid bus routes and set in motion more than 60 plaza projects, including closing Broadway to cars in Times Square. Alongside more affordable housing, these steps, which reclaimed some 180 acres of former road space from motor vehicles, improved safety, local economics and gave people more options for getting around, but they also ignited bitter neighborhood fights—and even lawsuits—over the idea of what and who city streets are for.

Similar attempts to change street designs routinely make headlines in cities across the nation. In San Francisco, a city facing a severe housing shortage, an environmental lawsuit halted the building of bike lanes for five years, claiming that they would slow car traffic and increase air pollution. A church in Washington, D.C., claimed that the traffic and parking impact of proposed bike lanes would infringe on the congregation’s religious liberties. Local neighbors decry attempts to redesign streets that they claim upset neighborhoods’ historical character, make streets less safe or prevent people from reaching their stores or homes.

The impact of this NIMBYism doesn’t end with a defeated apartment building or bike lane. Opposing dense, accessible neighborhoods pushes residential development into ever-expanding suburbs and shrinking greenbelts around cities. The fight to leave our streets as they are condemns our nation to a sprawling future, longer and more congested commutes, and escalating infrastructure costs that combine for a $1 trillion drag on the national economy.

The answer isn’t compulsory transit or bike-riding but rather an urban revolution to make American cities the walk-able, bike-able and bus-able centers of population and economic growth this century. There must be increased affordable housing in cities and viable, competitive options to driving available to growing city populations. Leaders and likeminded advocates and citizens must articulate these goals as part of a change-based vision that people can say yes to and not allow needed changes to founder merely because some oppose them or find them controversial.

Paradoxically, what is most needed to achieve Jane Jacobs’s vision is to deploy a Robert Moses strategy—redesigning our streets quickly and decisively for an increasingly urban age, this time committed to accommodating population growth and offering residents more options for getting around without a car. Fortunately, planners like Moses left us with abundant road space that can now be reprogrammed for new uses. But this process of adaptation will require a Jacobs-like approach, with a focus on the person on the street, and with the process designed to implement projects and not to halt them.

If we want safer, more equitable, affordable and economically vital cities, we can start by changing our streets today. It’s WJJWD.

View article online at CITYLAB

As more Dallas neighborhoods pay for extra patrols, some question fairness

Wed, 09 Mar 2016 15:14:55 GMT

by NAOMI MARTIN, Staff Writer
The Dallas Morning News
Published 25 October 2015

Sometimes, you get what you pay for.

The police officers are happy to help out vacationing families if their newspapers, or their mail, start piling up.

They stop and chat with residents. They cruise the neighborhood just like cops used to do all the time, keeping an eye out for suspicious characters. And if someone calls 911, they’re probably going to arrive very quickly.

Dallas’ wealthier neighborhoods increasingly are funding private patrols staffed by off-duty officers. In 2003, there were about 50 “Expanded Neighborhood Patrols” in Dallas. Now there are more than 80.

Where those patrols are located, to a degree, follows the money. Almost four out of every five are north of Interstate 30.

Supporters say the extra patrols reduce crime in the neighborhoods that can afford them. They ease the burden for on-duty officers. And it’s an opportunity for Dallas officers to supplement their relatively low salaries.

“It’s the single best crime deterrent,” said Michael Malouf, chair of the crime watch in the Greenland Hills neighborhood in Old East Dallas. “I credit our low crime rate to that primarily.”

But critics say the neighborhood patrol program promotes unequal policing. Richer, safer neighborhoods get better police services, they say.

And some Dallas residents complain that they pay taxes and shouldn’t have to pay dues for adequate police protection.

“It’s almost like a double tax,” said Ken Smith, president of Revitalize South Dallas Coalition. “If you pay your tax dollars for policing, you should expect parity with policing everywhere.”

Urma Santoyo works at McDonald’s and lives in an east Oak Cliff neighborhood that doesn’t have its own patrol. She said she’s called the police several times after hearing gunshots outside her house, but they often take 30 minutes or an hour to arrive.

“It’s really bad here,” she said in Spanish. “We need more security.”

When she heard about the program, she said she wasn’t sure she could pay for it.

“I work so much, but for very little money,” she said.

Fair distribution?

Police officials say the extra patrols don’t take away resources from other areas. The cars, gas and salaries are all paid for by the neighborhood associations.

Patrols add “extra eyes and ears to a particular area,” said Steve Bishopp, a Dallas police sergeant assigned to the Caruth Police Institute. Bishopp has worked neighborhood patrols since 1998.

First Assistant Chief Charlie Cato said that on-duty officers are deployed based on a combination of factors: 911 calls, crimes, arrests and traffic accidents. Police supervisors, he said, don’t move an on-duty officer away from an area just because they know it’s already being patrolled by an off-duty officer.

“We give as fair a distribution of manpower as possible,” said Cato, who is Chief David Brown’s second-in-command. “If folks want to have an additional police presence in their neighborhood, we believe it’s a benefit because it helps them feel more comfortable.”

The program gives residents more control over where police patrol, said John Worrall, a criminologist at the University of Texas at Dallas.

The residents elect their own board and choose administrators who direct the officers.

“It’s the democratic process at work,” Worrall said.

Worrall said that affluence can create other disparities, such as with school funding.

“It’s not fair to all neighborhoods, but just because it isn’t fair doesn’t necessarily make it a problem,” he said.

Ron Pinkston, president of the Dallas Police Association, said the neighborhood patrol program is great for the upper-class communities that can afford it, “but it skews the number of overall police officers we have in Dallas.”

A council member who can afford to live in a neighborhood with a private patrol doesn’t see the need to hire more police officers, Pinkston said.

“He has police service at his fingertips,” he said. “They’re going to be right there, right then.”

‘They’re expensive’

The Dallas City Council established the Expanded Neighborhood Patrols in 1991.

Yearly dues for each household in a neighborhood with a patrol appear to range from $200 to $400 each year.

Police officials said they don’t know how much money is collected from residents or how many hours the officers work each year. That’s because the neighborhood groups pay the officers directly.

A coordinator in each police division makes sure officers fill out the required paperwork and don’t work too many hours off-duty.

Renting a patrol car costs the neighborhood associations $13.50 per hour. The city collected more than $1.3 million over the 2015 fiscal year. In fiscal 2014, the city took in $900,746.

Based on those numbers, patrol cars were used in neighborhood patrols for more than 100,000 hours in fiscal 2015. Add that to what the off-duty officers typically are paid — from $30 to $40 per hour — and neighborhood associations probably spent at least $4.3 million.

“They’re expensive,” said Sgt. Roderick Dillon, who used to coordinate the neighborhood patrols in the Northeast Patrol Division, which has consistently had the most in Dallas.

The average association pays about $50,000 to $75,000 each year for a neighborhood patrol, Dillon said, but some cost $300,000 or more.

Paying dues

The percentage of residents in a neighborhood who pay for the patrols varies. In North Oak Cliff, for example, about 15 percent of the more than 3,000 households pay the $365 annual fee. More than half of the residents pay a $240 annual fee in Forest Hills.

Those who pay the dues get extra perks from the off-duty officers, like hiding mail and newspapers. Officers get a list of houses that they’re supposed to check on — locations where the residents may be on vacation or temporarily living somewhere else during a renovation.

Overall, supporters say, police presence and response times benefit everyone.

Malouf, of Greenland Hills, said some people who don’t pay “are getting some of the benefits of the added police presence.”

Dillon, the sergeant, said he largely ignored the list he was given of paying members.

“I don’t care who’s paying — I want to know my geographical boundaries and I’m going to protect everybody inside,” he said.

Success stories

Many neighborhood leaders say the patrols have helped to dramatically cut crime.

In North Oak Cliff, crime is down by about 60 percent across several neighborhoods that have paid for off-duty officers to patrol since 2007, said Russ Aikman, president of the North Oak Cliff United Police Patrol.

“It works because they are proactive rather than reactive,” Aikman said.

On-duty officers, he said, are “typically so busy responding to one 911 call after another that they don’t have a whole lot of time just to be driving around looking for suspicious characters, suspicious vehicles.”

“We’re paying our officers to do just that,” he said.

Forest Hills was plagued by home burglaries when residents first funded a neighborhood patrol in 2003. Crime dropped by 50 percent that year.

“It helps to have an officer visible,” said Judy Whalen, who heads the Forest Hills Security Program. “But we did more and we caught people.”

Criminals figure out that there’s more police around, she said, “and they just go away.”

She said the patrol also has helped raise property values and residents’ awareness of security measures.

Officers enjoy working the extra neighborhood patrols because they get to know the communities in a way that they don’t have time to do when they’re on the city’s clock, said Pinkston, the DPA president.

“You get to say hi to neighbors and be the Officer Friendly everybody wants to be,” he said.

Dillon said he even knew the names of the kids and the dogs. But he also got to know the neighborhoods well. He knew what was out of place. A truck that shouldn’t be there. A man who doesn’t belong.

“It’s like a very small, tiny town that you’re responsible for,” Dillon said. “You feel a personal stake in it.”

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Laura Miller on the Failings of Jennifer Gates and the Battle To Save Preston Hollow

Wed, 01 Jul 2015 13:42:29 GMT

by Tim Miller
published in Frontburner

If you haven’t yet, take a second to check out our new neighborhood guide. It’s a pretty robust tool that our little web team built. If you know someone who is moving to Dallas or thinking of moving, point him to this resource. One thing that makes it great is a series of essays about various Dallas neighborhoods. For example, here’s what Adam McGill has to say about his neighborhood, Lake Highlands. We asked people all over town to tell us why they live where they do and what they love most about their hood.

One of those people was Laura Miller, former D Magazine and Dallas Observer columnist, former mayor of Dallas, current Preston Hollow resident. The essay she turned in — well, it wasn’t like the other essays. It was more of a polemic than it was a love letter to Preston Hollow. In her sights this time: Councilwoman Jennifer Gates; Gates’ appointee to the Plan Commission, Margot Murphy; and Mark Cuban. Laura isn’t real pleased with what they’re doing to her neighborhood.

The piece clearly didn’t work for our neighborhood guide. But it also couldn’t just go to waste. “Put it on FrontBurner,” Laura told me, “or I will come over there and punch you in the throat.” I made up that quote. But I stand behind my reporting.

***

The Fight for Preston Hollow
By Laura Miller

My three favorite streets in Dallas are Lausanne Avenue (in Oak Cliff); Dentwood Drive (in Preston Hollow); and Tokalon Drive (in Lakewood). Lucky for me, I’ve lived on two out of three.

What links the three, located in three completely different parts of town, is big trees, and plenty of them; shady, meandering streets lined with charming architecture; and peace and quiet. In Oak Cliff, where we lived for 17 years, we knew and spoke frequently to all of our neighbors and loved our small 1928 Tudor and the proximity to Bishop Arts and Aunt Stelle’s Sno-Cones. But our kids went to schools in North Dallas, and that daily, round-trip commute was brutal. So we decided to move north.

In 2004, we moved into a house near Inwood and Northwest Highway. The sudden juxtaposition to a plethora of mega-groceries, bookstores, restaurants, and dry cleaners was a jolt. In fact, my strongest memory on moving day was realizing, as I unpacked boxes, that I could actually get in my car and drive five minutes (instead of 25 from Kessler Park) to The Corner Bakery at Preston Center to buy my favorite chicken sandwich.

Which, 11 years later, is no longer a possibility. Because the biggest threat to Preston Hollow today is traffic and gridlock, and Dallas City Hall will determine in the next 12 months whether that gets tolerably better or disastrously worse.

Preston Hollow’s greatest asset is geography — located in the quiet center of a bustling city. It began as a 56-acre farm purchased in 1924 by Ira DeLoache, who quickly sub-divided it and began selling big residential lots out of his “country real estate office” — which later became Ebby Halliday’s Little White House at the corner of Northwest Highway and Preston Road. Preston Hollow incorporated as a separate township in 1939, but five years later, residents voted to become part of Dallas. Since then, it has bleeded out and, most notably, been cut in two by the Dallas North Tollway. Its current boundaries are generally Midway Road on the west, Northwest Highway on the south, Hillcrest on the East, and Royal Lane on the north. (Sorry, Preston Hollow Village — the mega-retail complex being built at Central Expressway and Walnut Hill — but you’re no Preston Hollow.)

To put Preston Hollow’s traffic congestion problems in a nutshell, Northwest Highway has become LBJ Freeway with stoplights.

That’s because there is no other school-zone-free stretch of divided, six-lane roadway stretching east-to-west between I-35 and Central Expressway. For most of each weekday, those 8 miles become one impenetrable wave of lurching, honking, sun-scorched metal. Scofflaws, including me, create byzantine routes through small, residential streets to avoid the traffic. That pretty well knocks out everybody’s peace and quiet.

For years, Preston Hollow has managed to stay out of the news. But things have heated up dramatically since Councilwoman Jennifer Gates was elected, in 2013, and real estate developers began proposing, in rapid fire, a rash of high-density, big-traffic-generating projects in and around Preston Center, our southern boundary. Residents were so instantly enraged by an eight-story residential project, proposed by Transwestern, to replace two-story apartments across from Ebby’s Little White House that yard signs spread like a summer rash in opposition.

The frustration grew sharply when residents found out their new councilwoman would have to recuse herself for a financial conflict of interest due to her father and her husband both being employed by real estate giant Jones Lang LaSalle, which was involved in the deal. Gates’ appointee to the Plan Commission, Margot Murphy, not only was hostile to neighborhood pleas for help, she took pains to point out why she didn’t have to care. “I am not an elected representative of District 13,” she told me at the height of the battle.

Preston Hollow residents aren’t used to being ignored.

From the day Jerry Bartos was elected to the council, in 1987, to the day Mitchell Rasansky left, in 2009, if you were a developer with an idea that wasn’t already allowed by right, that existing property owners didn’t like, you were advised — up front and early — not to bother to even file a zoning application. That forced developers to negotiate, with steely-eyed plan commissioners and council members holding their feet to the fire. Some people called that approach “anti-development.” Others called it “pro-neighborhood.”

Those days are over.

After Commissioner Murphy antagonized constituents on two zoning proposals in quick succession last year — Transwestern and Highland House, a 29-story residential tower slated to replace a two-story medical building — it became obvious to residents that they were on their own. Adding high-octane fuel to the fire was Mark Cuban. After 20 years buying up 10 acres of single-family estate properties in Preston Hollow — along Northwest Highway, between Ebby’s Little White House and the Tollway — Cuban decided to not only announce his intention to up-zone from residential to office tower, he did it in his typical Shark Tank manner by demolishing the houses, and most of the trees, and the brick privacy walls, instantly destroying his neighbors’ quality of life. When an adjacent homeowner with two little kids was immediately burglarized, the wife’s emails to Cuban begging for help were met with disdain. “I would like to think that having purchased the property, I have the right to use it as I see fit,” he said in one email response.

These three nuclear warheads, aimed directly at Preston Hollow, resulted in residents pleading with Councilwoman Gates to stop the chaos by appointing a group to study the area’s significant problems — parking, traffic, and deteriorating infrastructure — before any more zoning cases were approved. At a town hall meeting last fall to discuss the formation of the Preston Road and Northwest Highway Area Plan Stakeholder Taskforce (which I now serve on), Councilwoman Gates got a hearty round of applause when she told the 200 people assembled: “I can’t put a moratorium in place on zoning; anyone can file a zoning case. My wish is we all take a breath, and we don’t move anything forward until we’re done with this study.”

It never happened.

Highland House did disappear — but on its own, thanks to the property’s new owner, Leland Burk, who voluntarily withdrew the case in the spirit of the Area Plan. Cuban’s properties are still a jarring, jeering eyesore. And Transwestern, after throwing in the towel to get those pesky yard signs down, is now back with yet another high-density proposal, leaving area homeowners dejected and exhausted; that fight will be two years old this winter.

The latest battle is over a proposed sky bridge from the old Sanger Harris building (now Marshall’s and DSW Shoes) to the top deck of the city’s two-story parking garage. Not only would most Preston Center employees lose their current parking, leaving them nowhere else to go (except the surrounding neighborhoods), but neighbors loathe the traffic congestion that will necessarily result from an additional 2,500 cars a day headed for Preston Center and the single ramp that will take them to the top of an already completely full garage. (The developer has its own half-empty parking garage at the other end of its building but likes taking over the public parking better.)

After eight months saying she hadn’t made up her mind and postponing a decision several times, Councilwoman Gates brought the sky bridge to the City Council on June 17 for a vote. All three area homeowner associations opposed it; a majority of Preston Center business property owners opposed it; eight of 13 members of Gates’ Area Plan Taskforce opposed it; and seven of the 15 city council members opposed it — at least for 12 months, until the Area Plan could be completed and adopted by the City Council. But Councilwoman Gates bucked them all in favor of the developer. On a vote she won by a single vote — hers — she kicked the can down the road until November, ordering her Area Plan Taskforce to spend the intervening period studying the pros and cons of the sky bridge.

The next day, Gates told me how she begged the developer on the morning of the vote to please wait until the Area Plan was finished. “They said no,” she said ruefully. (It left no impression whatsoever when I explained that she was the elected official, not the developer.) “In retrospect, maybe I should have moved to approve [the sky bridge] and let it fail.”

This chronic vacillation has forever changed the otherwise placid landscape of this part of town. For the first time, the physical and mental border between rural Preston Hollow and urban Preston Center has all but dissolved, with angry commercial building owners and worried homeowners united and growing in number. The Taskforce, created in a spirit of cooperation, is now seriously divided, with a majority wondering if it’s just an empty suit. And other area neighborhoods watch and worry. Right now, homeowners around Hockaday are fighting a proposal to turn some of the residential townhomes at the northwest corner of Inwood and Forest into retail — an alarming prospect, since the ocean of existing retail on the opposite corner is some of the ugliest in North Dallas. As usual, Murphy is belligerent and Gates is coy, asking homeowners to prove that the “majority of the community” is against the proposal.

Ironically, Councilwoman Gates loves Preston Hollow for all the reasons we do. “The meandering, bar-ditch country roads work because the neighbors maintain [their yards] all the way to the asphalt,” Gates says. “The tranquility of the neighborhoods, the well-manicured lawns, the neighborhood feel, the quality of homes. And the access to good schools. It’s the people, and the strength of the neighborhoods.”

And under our new councilwoman, the neighborhoods are getting stronger by the day.

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The Battle for Preston Hollow's Soul

Wed, 22 Oct 2014 14:27:36 GMT

Dallasobserver.com
Eric Nicholson

Luke Crosland stands at the window of his seventh-floor office and looks out across Preston Center. In the foreground, a tangle of luxury SUVs battle for access to a shabby, two-story parking garage that seems to deteriorate before his eyes. The garage is ringed by a jumble of aging retail strips that wouldn't be out of place in a working-class neighborhood in Garland. Further back, past the Marshalls, a clump of mid-rise office towers stand as a testament to a 1980s office boom.

Crosland is a pugnacious commercial real estate developer best known for the iLume apartments on Cedar Springs Road. He's been gazing down on this scene since he bought into Preston Center 27 years ago. There are trendy new restaurants like John Tesar's Spoon and Hopdoddy Burger Bar, and a few office buildings have gone up here and there, but the difference between now and then is cosmetic. The retail buildings are still outdated. The infrastructure is still crumbling. Three decades of decay have only made the situation worse. READ MORE...