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Developer Tries to Rezone More Land for Oversized Development

Published: Thursday, May 3, 2007 2:21 PM CDT

TXU Helps Developer With Another Secret Land Sale

From Staff Reports

Coppell, Texas (May 3, 2007) - The Crow-Billingsley Group (CB) is requesting that the City of Dallas rezone still more land for its oversized Cypress Waters development. The developers acquired an additional 213.8 acres of land from TXU to add to the 342-acre site. The property is bounded by BeltLine Road to the west, North Lake to the North, and Hackberry to the South.

TXU sold the additional land to CB even though TXU had been informed that the city and school district have challenged the size and density of the proposed development. Zoning maps show that TXU has still more land that could be sold or developed, which would add to problems for Coppell and the Coppell ISD.

“TXU has shown an absolute disregard for our community,” said Jim Witt, Coppell city manager. “They are aware of the negative impact this development has on our environment, schools, parks, roads and infrastructure. Still, they chose a quick profit over their responsibility to serve the general welfare of the regional community.”

CB has filed an application asking the city of Dallas to rezone the newly purchased land in conjunction with the previously zoned Cypress Waters development. No date has been set for a Planning and Zoning Commission hearing that is necessary for the issue to be presented to the Dallas City Council.

“Hopefully the current city council or new Dallas city council will take a closer look at the huge fiscal deficit Dallas taxpayers will take if this zoning is approved,” said Witt.

“No city council member can claim they didn’t have all the facts this time around,” said Witt, referring to the fact that some Dallas council members said they had not seen a devastating financial impact report prior to the initial hearing. The report, compiled by Dallas’ Office of Economic Development, concluded that the cost of providing only police, fire and emergency services to the area would result in a net loss of more than $87 million dollars to the Dallas city general fund. Additional losses in the tens of millions were estimated by a second report. That study factored in sewer and water costs, adding to existing deficient and failing road capacities and potential environmental cleanup expenditures.

(Continued)

This new zoning application allows that the land would become part of the Cypress Waters project. It restates the developer’s plan to build up to 10,700 units in an area that is miles from the nearest Dallas police and fire stations. There are also no other convenient Dallas city services, including sewer, water, parks, recreation, libraries or CISD schools.

The new land would be rezoned for multi-family housing and ground retail support uses. Thirty-eight acres would be used for highly dense townhouses, duplexes and single-family homes.

A lawsuit filed by the city of Coppell and CISD seeks to have the original Cypress Waters zoning overturned. The suit alleges that the rezoning violated the regional general welfare of Coppell, CISD and Irving. These agencies assert that the Dallas city council failed to consider the total lack of infrastructure (on and off site) required to meet the needs of adequate school and city public facilities and services at the time of development. Prior to final approval of the first rezoning on January 28, 2006, Coppell and CISD filed condemnation cases to acquire needed school campus facilities, park, recreation and workforce housing. These are all needs generated by the development, but which were not required by the Dallas city council as a condition to the rezoning.

The lawsuit maintains that the rezoning was retaliatory against Coppell and CISD because of its potential to drive up (or increase) the cost of the condemnations. Voters in Coppell and CISD overwhelmingly approved approximately $37 million in bonds to purchase CB development land for the school, park and housing needs.

The lawsuit goes on to criticize the manner in which the rezoning process was handled by Dallas. Only 15 minutes of speaking time was given to Irving, CISD and Coppell at the Dallas Planning Commission and City Council meetings for a project that would bring 25,000 people to the area. Additionally, the application for 10,488 dwelling units was placed on the Dallas Planning and Zoning agenda only one day after filing of the applications. These limiting actions prevented any staff study of the project.

“The secrecy that surrounding the first land sale and zoning case continues,” said Witt. “We only learned about the closing of the second transaction and the size of the property involved when we discovered a new zoning case had been filed in Dallas. The City of Dallas did not inform us about the new zoning case until months after it had been filed.”

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