Reach back into your memory to the contentious Oak Cliff summer of 2015.
Recall when Alamo Manhattan caused the collective tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth with initial designs for a monolithic apartment development on the western corners of West Davis at Zang.
Neighbors showed up to public meetings by the hundreds. Facebook lit up with misplaced anger and fear.
The negative reactions were so powerful that Alamo Manhattan quickly came up with a more palatable design, which is now under construction.
But the fact remains that the Bishop/Davis zoning, approved in 2010, allows for Alamo Manhattan’s original design. And if you don’t like that, imagine the same thing on almost any corner along West Davis between Adams and Tyler.
Two years ago, fresh off the Alamo Manhattan experience, about 1,000 neighbors signed a petition to reopen the Bishop/Davis zoning. The Old Oak Cliff Conservation League (now known as Heritage Oak Cliff) raised $10,000 to pay for a new zoning case to review and revise a portion of Bishop/Davis, technically called PD 830, which governs what can be built along the West Davis corridor.
Now the hour has come to get involved with PD 830.
The Dallas City Plan Commission has reopened a portion of the Bishop/Davis zoning.
Here are maps showing the areas reopened, generally between Tyler an Zang and between Mary Cliff and Plymouth.
“It’ll be quite a long process,” plan commission member Mike Anglin says. “Nothing’s going to happen very quickly.”
There will be community meetings. Long ones containing jargon such as residential proximity slope. But everyone who tapped out their grievances on social media that desperate summer two years ago should make the effort to be a part of the discussion, says Dallas Landmark Commission member Michael Amonett.
“There’s all this rage when something happens, ‘They’re going to tear down Corazon. Let’s go on Facebook and rant and rave,'” Amonett says. “You have to be proactive. Imagine Alamo Manhattan anywhere up and down Davis. Pick out a block and imagine it gone. Use your imagination and picture a five story building looming over somebody’s house because that’s what can happen. It was upsetting when we finally experienced it on the corner over here, and I think people will continue to be upset about it.”
We will keep you updated on this case at every turn.
