Before or After? You decide.
At the September 23, 2024, meeting, the Richardson City Council approved by a vote of 4-3 a request by Clay Cooley Volkswagen to add a repair shop, a body shop, and a vehicle storage lot on their property in the Interurban District. That was all covered in "Council Recap: Sell Out for a Mural", which was already a long post, so I left out a couple of points that should be made. About that mural. And about that landscaping.
About that mural
Councilmember Jennifer Justice, in two meetings, was insistent about wanting a mural on the back of the buildings. It was almost like she knew all along she was going to vote yes and was just negotiating to see what she could get for her yes vote. Well, she got her mural. I don't want to get into whether or not she made a good deal (she didn't). The point that struck me was how divergent her thinking was compared with the thinking of the Clay Cooley VW rep. And what that means.
Justice said, "I think if you're walking down the commons there, and there's a mural, that's going to be an attraction for people who are walking from Belt&Main to Four Bullets." In other words, she's thinking of making a pedestrian-friendly space. Good for her.
Contrast with the Clay Cooley VW rep's thinking. He said, "There's a really long wall. We're probably going to do a portion of the wall, which the height is 15 feet, and we'll go 20 to 25 feet down that wall. I rode on the DART because I wanted to see what the exposure was in the time frame and what we could see, and what I decided [was] painting the whole mural down the whole wall, which is 158 feet, you're not going to be able to see it. I wanted people on DART to be able to see that right on that corner. So we're going to go 25 feet down that wall, and, you know, 15 feet high. Okay, contents, we haven't determined the contents yet."
In short, Justice was thinking of making the neighborhood pedestrian-friendly. The Clay Cooley VW rep was only thinking about what you see from a speeding train. Their thinking is on different planets. I don't think Clay Cooley VW should be trusted to paint an artistic mural and not a highway sign advertising cars.
About that landscaping
City Council was also interested in landscaping. Councilmember Curtis Dorian said, "I know that I was originally the one asking to promote some of these esthetics from an architectural standpoint. Wanted to bring in some landscaping and some color, and hopefully try to integrate these existing buildings into the current landscape. So it looks like y'all have provided landscaping around the perimeter, created some soft scaping. Will the landscaping have any height restrictions, or is it just, is it going to be like boxwoods around the perimeter?"
Honestly, I don't know what Dorian was looking at. I have a hard time telling whether the image above is a before photo or an after rendering. The paint looks different, but the landscaping looks the same. But the Clay Cooley VW rep promised everyone would be pleased. And Dorian did seem satisfied. The Clay Cooley VW rep said, "There's going to be trees. The crepe myrtles that are there now are pretty good size and mature crepe myrtles. So we wanted to save those. But yeah, the boxwoods, we're gonna, we're gonna do whatever, whatever's on the plans. The whole, the whole investment with the paint, everything's going to be close to $300,000 to bring it to where it's, you know, satisfactory to everybody."
Color me doubtful. And it's because of the same divergent thinking expressed during the mural discussion. Earlier this summer, the Clay Cooley VW rep explained his desire for a 39-foot pole sign along the freeway thus, "When we first started this project...we were required to completely replace all the drainage underneath that, that dealership, okay, that was $1.8 million so we had to do that because there was flooding on the rear side, and it wasn't done properly to begin with. So we doubled the drainage size to [handle] a proper runoff. But when that happened, we were required to drop our parking lot four and a half feet. I'm sure everybody's driven by there. If you look over to the right from that side road, you cannot see our cars. You see the rooftops." Instead of sounding pleased that by fixing a drainage problem, he gets screening for a parking lot as a bonus, he sounds disappointed. Don't expect him to easily accede to planting screening landscaping along Central Expressway.
In short, Dorian was thinking about how landscaping can be used as a feature. The Clay Cooley VW rep was only thinking about it as an expense that might hide his beautiful cars. I don't think Clay Cooley should be trusted to understand the City of Richardson's "esthetics" as Dorian put it.
Recently I watched "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes". It's not a very good movie. It waits until the very end to briefly ask its only interesting question, "Can apes and humans ever get along?" Watching the Clay Cooley VW zoning case play out in front of the Richardson City Council, I thought of a similar question, "Can an 'edgy, mixed-use district' and car dealerships ever get along?" The City Council voted 4-3 in favor of that doubtful marriage, so you might think their answer is yes. But we don't have that "edgy, mixed-use district" yet. Whether we ever will now that we let Clay Cooley VW occupy a commanding position in the center of the district is a question that's more up in the air than ever.
Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
"Mural and greenery
Versus featuring the cars.
Two minds far apart."
—h/t ChatGPT
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