Not long ago, most neighborhood residents had never heard of a neighborhood overlay district.
But in a couple of years, based on the number of requests currently on the books at city hall, it’s possible that up to 50 percent of neighborhood homes could be part of an overlay, conservation or preservation district.
We’ve gone from not much caring what was being developed next door to devising all kinds of ways to control what our neighbors can do with their property.
What gives?
“It’s a question of what I call competing rights,” says neighborhood resident Bob Weiss, chair of the City Plan Commission. “Neighbors need to discuss what they’re living in and how to manage change. People are passionate about their homes.”
Homes, sweet homes
Don’t invite Alice Ann Daily, Marcia Savard and Donald Bounds to the same back-yard barbecue — at least, not if you want the fire to stay in the grill.
Daily and Savard are on one side of a hotly contested overlay battle near Stonewall Jackson Elementary School, while Bounds heads up the opposing side.
What’s at stake? Is the housing stock around the school worth saving, and is an overlay district the best way to provide guidance to builders putting up new “McMansions”?
“I don’t mind them,” Bounds says of newer homes. “They aren’t necessarily what I would decide. But there are some small houses that I don’t like, and I’m not going to go up to them and say, ‘You know what, you have to change your house.’
“This really boils down to taste. It’s: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t like what you’re doing.’ I’m sorry, times change. We couldn’t go for a conservation district because we don’t have anything historically significant here.
“They make it sound like we live in (Colonial) Williamsburg … (an overlay district) stops the good that people can do.”
For Dailey and Savard, the city’s new overlay district process is the perfect vehicle to protect their neighborhood. If enough residents agree, they can work with the city to establish front- and side-yard setbacks, house heights and garage placements, but no architectural or design standards. The process is supposed to be quick — six to nine months.
“It’s strictly a tool for single-family neighborhoods to maintain basic standards,” says Michael Finley, chief planner with the city’s development services department.
A few weeks after the ordinance passed in November 2005, Savard and Dailey started planning the Stonewall Jackson Area Overlay Stabilization District, encompassing 282 single-family homes within the boundaries of Anita, Revere Place, Matilda and Skillman — all south of Mockingbird Lane near Stonewall Jackson Elementary.
“Once that charm is taken away, you can’t get it back,” Savard says.
They considered pushing for a conservation district, but “a conservation district has so many more restrictions,” Dailey says.
“And at the rate they were tearing down our homes, we needed [an overlay district],” Savard says.
So they obtained the application from the city and measured every setback of every house in the district. The proposed standards — no front-yard garages plus shorter building heights and wider setbacks than the city allows — are designed to keep what they consider to be excessively tall and large houses from overwhelming the neighborhood’s relatively small homes.
Savard, Dailey and other residents held numerous meetings and went door to door to collect signatures and garner enough “yea” votes. They also paid a $2,000 fee to the city to place their application in front of the plan commission.
“We’ve been out in the rain, sleet and drought,” Savard says.
But not everyone supports their efforts. Bounds leads a group of neighbors who believe overlay districts infringe on their property rights, and they say it’s not fair that only 10 neighborhood residents can start the process of creating a district that affects 282 houses.
Most homeowners are content with the existing zoning and bought their houses with plans to expand or add a bathroom or closet, Bounds says; now the rules are being changed.
For example, the proposed changes to side-yard setbacks in the district force many new additions to the back of the house; not always the most aesthetic way to create an addition, Bounds says. By forcing additions back, the side-yard setback proposal also gobbles up precious backyard space on the neighborhood’s relatively small lots. Many additions and renovations that have been done in the past on older houses wouldn’t be allowed under the overlay, he says.
Though Bounds isn’t crazy about the style of some of the new homes being built, he doesn’t believe an overlay district is the answer.
“If people keep up their properties, they’re not going to be torn down. They’re too expensive. I would have much rather devoted my time to helping the poor than protecting the property rights that I thought I had.”
Despite Bounds and other neighbors’ protests, the City Plan Commission passed the Stonewall Jackson Area Overlay Stabilization district.
But this story’s still not over: The City Council was expected to vote on the district in January, but Bounds and other residents paid a $150 fee to have it rescheduled for February, giving them time to talk to more people. Then Councilwoman Angela Hunt pushed back the vote a second time in order to hold a public meeting with residents to discuss whether a compromise could be reached.
The issue is still pending before the council.
Overlay or conservation?
Right now, there are seven conservation districts in our neighborhood, and two more are in the works in Little Forest Hills and Lakewood North. Of the nine overlay districts being developed citywide, seven of them are in East Dallas.
As more and more existing houses are razed and newer, bigger houses with varying architectural styles are built in their place, some residents are desperate for protection. The application process for a conservation district is fraught with significantly more labor, bureaucracy, paperwork, fees, meetings and controversy than the application for a neighborhood overlay.
Despite the risks, battles and hard work, many neighborhood residents still believe these special zoning districts are the answer to what they seek — preservation of a neighborhood they love.
The City Council created conservation districts for neighborhoods that want to protect their architectural styles, but need an easier process than the one required for a historic district. After neighborhood residents submit an application, city staff develops specific zoning and development standards for the district based on neighborhood input. Standards can be loose, addressing setbacks and house heights, or they can be restrictive, dictating the architectural style of houses in the district.
The standards adopted help set the tone for what a neighborhood will become.
Taking to the streets
Sheila Huffman and Beth Bentley spearheaded the Vickery Place Conservation District, a more restrictive designation than Stonewall’s overlay district. The Vickery Place district, which was approved last summer, recently expanded and includes about 1,000 homes. Architectural styles in Vickery Place are now limited to arts and crafts bungalows, prairie style homes and Tudors.
“We were in consensus that we wanted to preserve the look of the neighborhood,” Huffman says. “With a hodgepodge of houses, you could end up with a neighborhood that no one is proud of.”
And that’s the rub: While the tools and tactics are controversial, special residential zoning districts clearly are going to change the look of our neighborhood one way or another. The ultimate question: Is the change for better or for worse?
“Wherever there’s change, it causes passion, anxiety,” Weiss says. “Having been in a lot of these meetings, I’m not put off by people being passionate about where they live. I don’t mind passion. I do think we need to remain civil. The issue is more: What do we want to become?”
