Screenshot of the Junius Heights Historic District website
Update: Marsha Prior, the planner for historic preservation with the City of Dallas Sustainable Development and Construction Department, says one person has contacted the City of Dallas to ask how to remove the historic overlay for Junius Heights neighborhood, but Prior declined to reveal the name of the caller.
Original story:
Someone (or someones) has been ruffling feathers in Junius Heights by claiming there have been “discussions of repealing the Junius Heights Historic District city ordinance.”
The problem is no one seems to know who the mystery person is.
Said person distributed flyers around the neighborhood a couple weeks ago, which you can view here. The flyer urges property owners who are interest in pursuing further discussions about possibly repealing the ordinance to contact the unknown sender at juniusheights@hotmail.com.
The flyer says, “Alternately, if you are against it, we would like to hear from you as well and hear why you feel the Junius Heights ordinance should not be repealed.”
But there are no names, no letterhead and no proof that the claims are legitimate.
Rene Schmidt, the president of the Junius Heights Historic District, says concerned neighbors have been banging down his door, trying to learn more. But Schmidt is just as confused as everyone else.
“It’s bizarre,” he says, “because there have been no such discussions at all,” and Schmidt would be the most likely person to know if there had.
Most Junius Heights neighbors want the ordinance, Schmidt says. He hasn’t heard from anyone who wants the ordinance to be repealed.
“It took us five years to create the district,” Schmidt points out. “So there’s a lot of skin in the game here.”
(For Advocate’s home design issue in April, Schmidt made the argument that historic districts give neighborhoods like Junius Heights an economic boost by promising to protect the neighborhood’s architectural style and character, he explains. Read more of Schmidt’s thoughts.)
But it seems our mystery flyer-sender disagrees with that sentiment.
A neighbor reached out via the provided email address to seek more information and request the person’s name.
The mystery person responded with this:
This has nothing to do with builders and has all to do with property owners rights to do what they want with their property.
The Junius Heights ordinance has seem to lost the spirit of what it was originally intended to be.
Due to the strict requirements, the Junius Heights ordinance has created high costs to fix up/remodel a home built and there are numerous property owners who either 1) don’t have the financial resources for such repairs or 2) chose not to invest the financial resources that are needed for some of these properties to bring them back to the original state. So instead there are numerous property owners in Junius Heights that are simply renting their property out to the public and letting their property slowly deteriorate over time. Due to this Junius Heights has become an environment of transient people simply renting instead of entrenching committed families who would take pride in the area and promote a family oriented environment.
If you look outside the boundaries of Junius Heights on streets such as Victor, Reiger, Tremont, Columbia, Worth and Junius you will see that these neighborhoods are not bound by any historic district ordinance and there have not been builders purchasing these older properties and demolishing them as they have in areas such as Lakewood.
But, again, he or she provided no name or credentials.
Schmidt points out that the writer is “misinformed.”
“The streets that are mentioned are either in Junius Heights or Munger Place Historic District,” he says. “Furthermore, Junius Heights is not becoming a transient neighborhood. Quite the opposite.”
So is it a false alarm?
“We just don’t know,” Schmidt concludes. “I wish our anonymous writer had the courage to identify himself or herself.”
We reached out to the email address on the flyer and have yet to receive a reply.
