Oak Cliff residents packed the meeting room at Kidd Springs Park Recreation Center Tuesday to learn more about a site at Fort Worth Avenue and North Hampton whose owners, Vista Property Co., have requested rezoning to build a Sprouts Farmers Market grocery store and two restaurants.
Dallas City Council member Chad West, who represents the area in question, facilitated the meeting to bring interested Oak Cliff residents up to speed on what is happening at the land now occupied by Elrod’s Cost Plus and a Chinese buffet that used to be a Luby’s.
“The goal tonight is to give [Vista representatives] a forum where they can tell community members about their proposal and answer questions as well as for the City to lay out a path for feedback collection and publishing,” West said. The organizers provided a survey for attendees’ input.
That survey can be accessed here in English and in Spanish. Please fill it out before Nov. 23.
We also learned that Sprouts’ development team has said “a national coffee chain with drive-thru service (e.g. Starbucks) is interested in the space on the northwest corner of the lot facing Hampton.” (There is a question about that on the above-mentioned survey, if that gives you feelings).
The gist:
A company called Vista Property Co. owns the land at Fort Worth Avenue and North Hampton, home to Elrod’s and Crown Buffet.
They are replacing the existing businesses. They want to bring in Sprouts Farmers Market grocery store and two new restaurants.
The site is zoned as Planned Development District 714, commonly, PD 714. Property owners say they will need to adjust that plan if they are to bring in Sprouts.
They requested a variance to the PD in order to move the Sprouts building away from the sidewalk toward the back of the property. They say, due to sloping changes from the south to north side of the site, it is physically impossible to push the grocery store to the front as the current zoning requires.
A couple weeks ago the Dallas City Plan Commission denied their request on grounds that it deviated too much from the PD 714. Plan commission member Deborah Carpenter said in a meeting on the matter that the requested changes were too suburban in form. Here is more detail on the commissioners’ decision.
Rather than giving up, Vista on behalf of Sprouts has appealed the denial to the Dallas City Council, and it will be up to council representatives to decide whether to allow the rezoning.
West said that while the item must appear on the council agenda by February 2023, there is no rush. It could be deferred. There is time to think about this and make informed decisions, he told the attendees.
If the re-zoning is not approved by Dallas City Council, there will be no Sprouts, according to Vista.
If re-zoning is not approved, and Sprouts is out, there are any number of things that could be constructed on the site. Buildings on this land as it is zoned now can be up to six stories or 65 feet. It could be offices, retail stores, restaurants with or without drive thru and residences as part of a mixed-use development.
The history:
As we reported last week, the zoning-change request for this property has been in the works for over a year. Members of the Dallas Urban Design Peer Review Panel said in January that the plan didn’t come close enough to the zoning rules that neighbors set for Fort Worth Avenue and West Commerce in 2005.
So developers made concessions to their proposed plans in an effort to make the plan more desirable to our city’s planners, the neighborhood’s residents and representative.
According to a handout at Tuesday’s meeting, those agreements include: architectural embellishments required for large retail stores, an enhanced pedestrian walkway, patios between buildings, murals, enhanced landscaping, bioswales between parking rows, prohibition of drive thru within 200 feet of Fort Worth Ave., enhanced sidewalks and more.
Oak Cliff resident David Spence said during the meeting that he was disappointed in the CPC’s decision to deny the rezoning.
“I know they’re intelligent people. I don’t know what led to that. But the notion that you would lose Sprouts in this corner — considering what we have been saddled with there for decades — is incomprehensible,” he said. “I don’t see the need to show PD 714 that much deference. It was very different days when they [created that] and they did the best they could but did not write the gospel.”
Oak Cliff Stevens Park resident Renata Wells says her family — who lives adjacent to the property and “will be greatly impacted by this” — has been supportive of the project from the start, but she echoed the sentiments of plan commissioners who feel the developers are not staying true to the “urban form” and that they could, like Aldi (also on Fort Worth Avenue), adhere if they cared enough to.
She says she’s “extremely frustrated that the developer just wants to steam roll ahead with the old Dallas mentality,” with little regard for quality of surrounding life.
