The last blog post Councilwoman Angela Hunt wrote, right before she gave birth to her second daughter, was a tribute to Bill Peterson, her appointee to the City Plan Commission, who recently lost a battle to cancer. Hunt got to know Peterson when they spent a couple of months preparing for a citywide graffiti cleanup in 2006 (we interviewed Peterson for a story about it).
When Peterson died, and when Hunt went on maternity leave shortly afterward, it left somewhat of a gaping hole in District 14 in terms of zoning cases. Because of this Dallas Plan Commissioner Gloria Tarpley, Councilman Sheffie Kadane’s appointee, was temporarily juggling the cases in both Kadane’s and Hunt’s districts — for example, she oversaw the White Rock YMCA zoning case.
Hunt had selected a replacement for the commission, but the process of a criminal background check as well as checks to make sure the appointee has paid his water bills, doesn’t have any outstanding library fines and so on, takes time.
Now, however, Munger Place resident Paul Ridley has received the city’s green light, and moved from the Landmark Commission to the City Plan Commission. His second City Plan Commission meeting is today.
Ridley has a master’s degree in urban planning, and his first job out of school was working for the planning and zoning department in Kansas City, Mo., “so it’s sort of a continuum,” he says. He is an architect who practices law, specializing in construction cases — delays, design defects, material issues and so forth.
Ridley worked on Hunt’s election campaign and became interested in community service, so put in an application for the Landmark Commission.
“I’ve always had in interest in historic preservation because I’m an architect, so that was sort of a natural fit for me,” he says.
During his four and a half years on the Landmark Commission, Ridley says two of the buildings he is most proud of preserving are Adamson High School in Oak Cliff, which the commission granted landmark status, “preserving it from the efforts of DISD to demolish it,” and 508 Park Street Downtown, “a wonderful art deco building that was a recording studio for Robert Johnson, famous blues musician.” Because the commission denied the application of the previous owner to demolish it, First Presbyterian Church purchased and is restoring it, he says.
The Plan Commission is quite a jump from the Landmark Commission — Hunt mentions in her tribute to Peterson that it is a “coveted, powerful volunteer appointment that is also a big commitment” — but “both are real estate related,” as Ridley points out, and even before his appointment was confirmed, he was on the job. He met with Tarpley about the Y zoning case, for example, and his confirmation came through right before that particular meeting.
Ridley voted yes, along with all of the other commissioners. In a sense, he says, the YMCA is “like a church in that it’s a facility that serves the community, and therefore needs to be convenient to the community.”
We also had to ask, because Hunt is nearing her term limit as a councilwoman, and because the plan commission is often a launchpad to city council, whether Ridley would be interested in filling her shoes. He doesn’t rule it out, but points out that Hunt sought him for the plan commission, not vice versa, and says that a potential council seat is “not why I accepted this.”
In our opinion, because of the rich history in our neighborhood, it will be a plus to have a preservationist and architect on a city commission that has a lot of say in what developers can put where.
