Thread by @ncoxbarrett

All right, I finally watched the video and here are my thoughts:

https://twitter.com/ncoxbarrett/status/1385601518162767876

Mill Creek (applicant) wanted to create a Planned Development (PD) to build an 80ft mixed-use project with 305 units. Current zoning allows mixed-use but only up to 54 feet due to a pre-existing deed restriction.

Mill Creek (applicant) held 45 public and private meetings, including one where they brought a lift to showing what 80ft of height looks like. They also consulted the variety of (largely useless) comprehensive, area, and trasnport. plans covering this stretch of East Dallas.

During their presentation Mill Creek noted that very few other buildings even face their project site and also noted their site sits at about the lowest possible point around the lake since it is near the spillway.

The grade changes about 20ft from the street to back of the property so the building prominence stays consistent from back to front (i.e. 5 stories in the front, 7 in the back)

South are 3-story apartments.
West are suburban style strip malls.
East are gas stations, liquor stores, and cell towers.
South is the Santa Fe multi-use trail and White Rock creek where it discharges from White Rock Lake

Thanks to its low elevation in the hilly area, the proposed building is 35 feet lower than the nearby 6-story Drake apartment building (shown below less than 1/4 mile to the southwest which starts at $2,400 for a 1BR, yowza)

Mill Creek even met with the homeowners East of the project site, who are 1/4 mile away or more and separated by a creek, 30 acres of forest, and a bike trail located on an elevated railroad ROW, and took photos to show there'd be next to no visibility of the project.

Honestly, it was one of the best coordinated applicant presentations i've seen. They had obviously rehearsed it quite a lot and put in a lot of effort in preparing their presentation compared to the usual droning by the hired zoning consultants.

The biggest weaknesses of this site are

1) It's surrounded by suburban style commercial developments
2) Weird shaped parcel and steep(ish) grade
3) Fronts the disastrously designed 3g intersection, which is being redesigned in only slightly less nightmarish fashion.

The building didn't look half bad either in the rendering.

Mill Creek's engineers spoke about traffic and drainage noting that per Dallas' drainage design manual they are prohibited from increasing stormwater runoff or erosive velocity from the site.

They proposed reducing curb cuts from 5 existing to 2 and no parking fronted the street

They also were going to build 10ft sidewalks (plus parkway), widen the pedestrian crossing, and add an pedestrian push button in the median all of which are upgrades from TxDOT's current, apparently very lame, plan for the intersection.

In a very interesting bit, the Applicants engineers demonstrated that retail allowed by-right will generate far more traffic than their proposed plan which will increase 3G intersection traffic by a mere 1%.

Listening to the public comments now...who knew we had so many amateur transportation & stormwater engineers all living around White Rock Lake?

OMG, this commenter is a member of CNU and says this project is FAR TOO DENSE. Does this get you an automatic membership revocation?

Current commenter is concerned about traffic impacts. Immediately follows by saying he'd prefer to see a fast food restaurant and CVS which applicants engineers just showed would result in more traffic than their project.

Next commenter asks if City has hired their own engineering firm to review what the developer is proposing.

I would like to confirm that yes, the city employs many engineers. They are called the engineering division and are part of permitting.

Commenter continues and is mad at the Drake Apartments so she is now mad at all apartments.

Current commenter says the more apartments the more criminal mischief.

Whew, finally finished the comments. How do the CPC members do this every 2 weeks?

On to the Q&A with the applicant & CPC members: The applicant pretty much nailed every question.

CPC then has a good discussion going over basically every concern raised by opponents (aside from the baseless ones like apartment dwellers are criminals). Nobody can raise a legitimate objection.

The developers did everything right. They met with all the neighbors even though they live far away, they went on several wild goose chases about adding traffic signals and putting up boom lifts to demonstrate good faith, they even consulted all of our useless plans.

It had everything you could want, they checked all the boxes:
Affordable housing
Good urban form
Multi-modal connections
Privately paid public improvements
Huge sidewalks
Local design teams
Answers to all of the CPC questions

None of it mattered. Nobody on CPC even suggested a substantive change, because they had either already made up their minds or they didn't have a leg to stand on.

In his motion to deny, CPC Jung said his primary concern was the protection of the view shed of the lake. In a baffling move, he described this view shed as not from private property to the lake, but from the lake to the surrounding area, citing its "relatively natural setting"

I will remind you that WRL is an artificial lake, filled with e. coli, encircled on 3 sides with state highways or major arterials with the remaining side dedicated to monuments to conspicuous consumption including a replica of Mount Vernon (i kid you not).

WRL has many charms and is a delightful destination park that serves us all well, but it is delusional to pretend that a bit of building peaking out from above the trees matters when there are literal smoke stacks, office towers and DOWNTOWN creepin' up over the horizon already.

Jung spoke of WRL being a respite from the City as if it were a nature preserve. White Rock Lake is no such thing. It is an urban park through and through.

In Dallas we are spoiled though, for we really do have a natural respite from the city in the great trinity forest.

We got this one wrong.

White Rock Lake should be surrounded by projects like The Trailhead so that many more Dallasites can enjoy the lake than currently do. All we have accomplished is to deny that that to 305 more households, if only for a while longer.

Jung continued with concerns about traffic circulation in and around the site. Citing no quantitative items but only his personal opinion and the qualitative experience that it is slightly awkward to exit the site.

All engineering opinions to the contrary mattered not a bit. Neither did the fact that his personal experiences are entirely built around a clearly dysfunctional intersection shortly to be completely demolished and revamped.

The truth is that due to our self-inflicted low voter turnout, we are completely beholden to a tiny minority of wealthy land-owning pastoralists who wield outsized influence over our elected officials and their appointees. The best among us cannot resist that political pressure.

Our zoning system is a failure. It has failed our current and future residents and we are all poorer for it.