New Setting, Same Old Story

See if you can guess the place described. Hint: it's not far away at all.

Over the past decade, City Hall and other local government agencies have bent over backward and poured tens of millions of taxpayer subsidies to turn the corner...into a dense, vibrant urban center. Instead, the investment has produced a bland apartment complex, a car-centric suburban strip center...and plans for another bland apartment complex and a few dozen townhomes.

Source: Dallas Observer.

Further description is after the jump.

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The transformative, walkable transit hub...is dead. In its place will be built...the car-centric, Sprouts-anchored, 60,000-square-foot shopping center, a second apartment complex with 257 units, and 50 to 60 higher end row homes.

Source: Dallas Observer.

If you guessed Richardson's CityLine, or maybe Palisades, you aren't completely wrong. Sprouts or Whole Foods, it's the same story, but a different place. The place described in the quotes above is Lake Highlands Town Center.

I'm not upset with the public monies going into developments like this. I'm upset with the results — outdated, suburban, car-centric shopping centers, apartment complexes, and corporate campuses. If we're going to throw tax money at these developments, let's at least demand that we get the transformative, walkable, mixed-use, transit-oriented urban centers that we were promised when the tax money was on the table.