At the September 11 City Council meeting, the Council approved a request (ZF 23-06) to rezone 36 acres on Waterview Parkway north of UT-Dallas from technical office use to a transit-oriented, mixed-use, planned development. The vote was 5-1 (Dan Barrios voted no; Jennifer Justice was absent.) What makes this case complicated is that the property is owned by two different entities — UTD and a private developer. What makes this case simple is that one of the applicants is UTD. Usually, UTD gets what UTD wants. This case was no exception. I have two reactions.
But first, a side note. Mayor Bob Dubey, even after four months in office, is still getting his sea legs. He opened the meeting by calling on City Manager Don Magner to "read the minutes of the August 28, 2023, meeting." After an awkward pause, the City Manager replied, "Mr. Mayor, I think you're merely looking for a motion to approve," to which the Mayor responded, "That's exactly what I want to do. Thank you."
Now, on to ZF 23-06. My first reaction is that the City Council's treatment of this request was so unlike its reaction to another request to rezone a tract just north of it from technical office to a mixed-use planned development. As I said in November, 2022,
On November 14, the City Council generally agreed with the planned development consisting of three components: A) a student-oriented apartment part, B) a mixed apartment/retail part, and C) a limited-service hotel part. But before voting on it, they directed staff to draw up an ordinance requiring part B construction to begin before a certificate of occupancy could be issued for part A. The owner and developers agreed to this phasing.Source: The Wheel.
This month, the Council approved a similar application with no such conditions. Why? Did they learn something from the prior case? For example, did they learn that a City Council shouldn't try to dictate development schedules, on the chance it will doom the whole project? I said at the time:
The hotel developer won't build his hotel unless assured of nearby restaurant/retail to make their hotel attractive to travelers. The restaurant/retail developer won't build unless assured of nearby people to patronize their businesses. The student housing component doesn't have such prerequisites. It is the obvious choice to lead this phased development, as there is, and has been, pent up demand for more student housing at UT-Dallas. Build it and they will come. With students next door, the restaurant developers will come. With restaurants next door, the hotel developer will commit. Put conditions on the order things get built, and maybe nothing will.Source: Dallas Morning News.
But that's just what the Council did — put conditions on the order of development. And judging by the fact that the whole project hasn't made any visible progress since it was approved, I suspect that the property owner has been unable to hire developers willing to build the project in the wrong order. No one wants to build student housing (the one component that there is pent up demand for) without assurance that another developer will build the retail portion (for which demand will likely follow residential buildout).
For the UTD project, the applicant says, "The best case I would say it's 10 years, worst case 20 years, to build it all out." Councilmember Dan Barrios said, "How can we guarantee that it will truly be a mixed use development versus just apartments?" He got no satisfactory answer. He got no support from other Councilmembers in this line of questioning. He ended up voting no. The five other Councilmembers present voted yes.
That brings me to my other reaction to this whole agenda item. When it came to voting, no Councilmember explained their vote. Five voted yes. One voted no. Maybe you could parse what was said during deliberation to predict which way each would vote, but none took the time to explain their reasoning before voting. Then, after the fact, in a different forum altogether, Facebook, Councilmember Dan Barrios did explain his vote. First, I want to thank him for doing that. And I guess by omission, I want to chide the other five Councilmembers for failing to explain their own votes. Councilmember Barrios gave four reasons for his no vote, of which I quote only the first reason:
What was passed had no guarantee to students or Richardson residents that this would be mixed use. By right this could be 100% apartments. I’m not against apartments but in a transit oriented development the mixed use is key to vibrancy and long term success. As written it had a max square footage (ceiling) use allotment but no minimum required for retail or office. We had multiple options that we as a council could have used to ensure a development that truly served its purpose and the needs of our community at large.Source: Dan Barrios.
He implied he knew what the Council could have, should have, done when he said, "We had multiple options that we as a council could have used to ensure a development that truly served its purpose and the needs of our community at large." But he didn't spell out what those options are. I guess one could have been the staging conditions imposed on the first development I talked about. But those conditions may be dooming that project, so I hope Barrios has other options in mind. If there's one positive outcome that could come from this utterly inconsistent treatment of such planned development applications, it would be for this City Council to take some time to consider their approach. What tools work? What tools don't? Maybe they could add answering those questions to this Council's goals for this term. More on that process to come.
"Barrios' lone stance,
Says bold plans lack guarantee.
Notes may never sound."
—h/t ChatGPT
1 comment:
Post a Comment