West Oak Cliff Area Plan Sets Precedent for Other Neighborhoods

Years of work led to unanimous Dallas City Council approval Wednesday of the West Oak Cliff Area Plan.

It covers an area of 40,000 residents living between Davis Street, Illinois Avenue, Cockrell Hill Road and Tyler Street.

Supporters said it is the protection they need to keep their area from becoming another “Bishop Arts” as booming Dallas continues growing. It imposes limits other neighborhoods could follow to restrict the size and cost of future development.

The Elmwood neighborhood along South Edgefield Avenue is typical of the West Oak Cliff area involved. Elmwood is an eclectic collection of mostly Latino businesses and single-family homes, many with longtime residents.

Resident Angie Gaytan said she has been a hairdresser in the neighborhood for 50 years.

“It’s great, friendly, everybody’s friendly. It’s very nice, peaceful,” she said.

A year ago, Ben Thomas opened Golden Rooster, an “appointment-only” tattoo shop.

“I have my building, I’m here to make my building look better and do as much as I can to improve. This building looked crappy when I first got here,” Thomas said.

They agree some new investment would be good in Elmwood, but not like Bishop Arts.

In the Bishop Arts District, tall new apartment buildings bring heavy traffic in what once was a neighborhood much like Elmwood.

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“Oh no, we don’t want this becoming Bishop Arts, not at all,” Gaytan said. “Traffic, congestion, a little bit of everything. Too much, no place to park, no. So, we don’t want this area looking like that.”

The West Oak Cliff Area plan calls for improvements to sidewalks and the business area of Elmwood, but limited size of new construction.

“A lot of the neighborhoods that are impacted here have been waiting since 2017 for the protection they’ve been asking for,” neighborhood City Councilman Chad West said. “The goal is to build the community without having to tear down and displace.”

Seventeen speakers signed up to talk with the city council about the plan Wednesday. Several of them were included in the planning process and supported the final product.

Some are worried about gentrification still occurring to make the area unaffordable in the future. A representative of the Hampton Hills neighborhood voiced concerns about transportation elements of the plan.

Many of the speakers said public input was inadequate and should improve with future development for the area.

Earlier in the long process, auto repair businesses on Clarendon Drive worried that they would be excluded but the plan now clarifies that those businesses get to stay and enjoy the future the plan suggests.

“If we as neighbors just say we don’t want development, we don’t want anything to change, developers are going to work around us,” West said. “This is a plan that prevents the duplication of Bishop Arts in its entirety across the district.”

Gaytan said she is pleased about that.

“All those high-rise apartments, expensive, and I don’t think we’d like that here,” she said.

Thomas said Elmwood is on the upswing.

“I don’t think it will be overrun over here. Change is going to happen, just slowly over time,” he said.

The issue was a contrast to another area plan two weeks ago for the Elm Thicket North Park neighborhood near Love Field where most property owners were strongly opposed to limits on the size of future development.

Both cases are precedents in Dallas where the city council is working to limit soaring property values and taxes.