The City Council unanimously approved two zoning cases involving parking lots for the redevelopment of the old Sears building at Ross Avenue and Munger. The site is being converted to a Fiesta Supermarket.
The Council rezoned in an area in the 4300 block of Rowena Street to community retail. Fiesta’s development company offered to enter into private deed restrictions on businesses that make more than 50 percent of their gross revenue from the sale of alcohol. There was some concern about the possibility of a liquor store or convenience store eventually being placed on the site, which is just a few hundred feet from the future elementary school at the corner of Ross and Henderson.
Fiesta also offered public deed restrictions for the rezoning of the Hudson and Hope site so that the parking lot will be used only for required or existing surface parking for the Fiesta site.
FROM PARKING TO TRAFFIC: The City Council adopted the recommendations of the Greenville/Henderson parking task force. The recommendations were a consensus between neighborhood residents and businesses to address parking problems in the area by fine tuning existing parking regulations.
The City Council deferred action on appropriating money for a neighborhood traffic study and traffic management plan in the Vickery Place and Greenland Hills neighborhoods. Newly elected Council representative Mary Poss needed to familiarize herself with the issue.
Both neighborhoods want a traffic study to make sure that no neighborhood street is unfairly burdened by traffic coming off North Central Expressway or Greenville Avenue.
This also involves possibly building a sound wall along the Central Expressway side of the neighborhoods. Both neighborhoods support a sound wall from the south side of Vickery to the north side of Glencoe Park, with street openings in the wall to be determined through the traffic study.
PROTECTING SINGLE-FAMILY: The City Plan Commission approved a public hearing to examine the land use and zoning for the area bounded by North Central Expressway, Fitzhugh, Ross and Haskell. Areas within the boundaries which are zoned commercial were exempted from the public hearing and possible rezoning process. The initiative is to try to preserve and maintain the pockets of single family homes existing within the area. Like much of Old East Dallas, the area may undergo rapid changes in the future, with increasing commercial and multi-family development in the single-family areas. The hearing date for the rezoning proposal has not been set.
THE COWBOYS FEUD: The Cowboys nightclub at Gaston and East Grand recently received its zoning to continue operation. The dance hall received a lot of support from the Gastonwood/Coronado neighborhood.
There was a lot of arguing about whether or not Cowboys met the technical parking requirements. Cowboys also has an ongoing dispute with the landlord and a neighbor tenant. There was a recent attempt to replant a larger track and do two tracks, which would take away a lot of Cowboys’ parking, and would have thrown it back into nonconforming status. The replanting initiative was denied by the plan commission, which has final authority on replants.
Attorneys for the replant applicant questioned the decision, and there may be further developments.
An application was filed for a specific use permit for commercial and/or amusement on the property located at 7305 Gaston, where the Gaston Bazaar is located, next to Cowboys. It could be for a private club and dance hall. This complicates things because the surrounding neighborhoods seem to believe that another dance hall next to Cowboys would cause too much traffic and noise for the area. Stay tuned for further developments.
