Newer Greenville?

[kozzy]

I am somewhat a newby to this website. I have been reading it for quite awhile and only recently became a mamber. I have been through many threads and haven't seen a whole lot on this topic, so if it has been started, a thousand pardons. As you can tell from my "traffic light" thread, I am not real crazy about "out with the old and in with the new." I am troubled by the increasing number of old houses disappearing from the map only to be replaced by the yuppy condos. This is happening more and more often. I do agree that many of these places have fallen into disrepair and need to be remodeled before being inhabited, but are we to fault the landlords who have moved on and ignored the state of these properties? We lost an entire two blocks on Matilda in the past few months, and while many condos/apartments have sprouted up, I feel we are losing that close-knit kinship we have with our neighbors. You don't evem have to know people personally in the area to wave and smile and recieve the same thing in return. It's like an understood thing. The more people are being clumped together in these shoeboxes, the less friendly the neighborhood attitude gets.

[trolleygirl]

It's a personal preference. Some people veiw their homes as the place they will make and raise a family and live their entire lives. They build their social networks around their neighborhoods.

Others simply see a house, a dwelling, a place to take a shower and sleep and watch television. They don't usually forge lasting relationships with their neighbors. They relocate often and are more likely to buy a new house in an older neighborhood.

It's about personal-social investment. I've invested my whole entire life in my house and my neighborhood. Some of my best friends are my neighbors. But, not everyone is like me.

[Random Traffic Guy]

The more people are being clumped together in these shoeboxes, the less friendly the neighborhood attitude gets.
But, but, new urbanism, increasing density, battling the sprawl monster! :eek3:

[Columbus Civil]

The more people are being clumped together in these shoeboxes, the less friendly the neighborhood attitude gets.

That is true in my experience as well. During the four years that I lived in Uptown, I only really talked to one neighbor. Since moving to less dense, more suburban Lake Highlands, I know a lot more of my neighbors.

trolleygirl is right on. The transient nature of my Uptown neighbors probably made them less likely to form long-lasting bonds with the neighbors they probably wouldn't live next to in a year or so. Of course, this probably happens in any apartment community.

[AndyIvey]

Let me pull a few of my standard phrases out for this:
A house is a home as well as an investment. There is a balance in every neighborhood.
None of us lives on an island. Our actions affect those around us.

I live in a 1920’s bungalow in your area. We have a very active group of homeowners that actively lobby for the preservation of the older homes. Like them, I closely followed the creation of overlay districts as a new zoning tool. I think there is a whole thread on the districts so I will not go into much detail on it. However, the struggle to develop the overlay tool shed some light on the topics you mentioned in you post.

On one side, you have the owners of older homes that wish to preserve the neighborhood. They argue that the new homes are not compatible with the neighborhood. In some cases, homes are built 5-15 feet closer to the street than neighboring structures. The height, side yard setbacks, and garage location/orientation are also debated. Other arguments include the affect new homes have on taxes as well as rifts between new and old homeowners.

The other side argued for property rights and the positive impact new construction has on existing home values. I consider this the other side of the home/investment balance. The owners of the new homes are well within their rights to build these “incompatible” structures. Painting new homeowners as yuppies, emotionally distant, or neighborhood terrorist may explain why many of them seem so distant. If someone did not like me, I might not like him or her back.

We now have a tool (overlay) to help control many of the issues raised by existing homeowners. However, one drawback is that a simple majority (50% +1) can make drastic changes to neighborhood. I personally believe that this should be 2/3 instead of a simple majority. I have considered myself more of a neighborhood than a property rights advocate, but I do not see how such a fundamental right should be usurped by the whim of a simple majority. If incompatible structures are truly a large threat, gaining the support of more than 50% +1 should not be a problem.

[Lakewooder]

I believe Kozzy is specifically speaking of the southern-most section of the Robert E. Lee Elementary attendance zone:

http://www.dallasisd.org/inside_disd/depts/evalacct/schoolinfo/eszones/leere2005.pdf


That area has not been publicized much, but drive through -- there is a lot going on here with smaller townhome developments. A larger development, taking up half a block of Oram is about to start: three apartment complexes have chain link fences erected now for demolition...I'll start another thread about that one when I get some info...

Also, Cityville Greenville is in this area, which may be a catalyst for some of the smaller projects. A really nice embellished Prairie Four-Square home went down on Matlida at Prospect, but that was already zoned multi-family, not much way to save it...

[AndyIvey]

Many thanks for the graphic. That is my neighborhood :)
I expect to see an overlay district for us soon, but hope it has 2/3 support. I somehow doubt the circulating body will elect to adopt the higher limit as it is not required by the ordinance.

[Markedallas]

Many thanks for the graphic. That is my neighborhood :)
I expect to see an overlay district for us soon, but hope it has 2/3 support. I somehow doubt the circulating body will elect to adopt the higher limit as it is not required by the ordinance.

Why did a large portion of that neighborhood become Multi family zoning when it was build out at Single family? Dallas is just crazy sometimes!

[UrbanHope]

I think that having more single-family & Townhouses in Lower Greenville will make it safer. A lot of times people in apartments don't get active in helping the neighborhood but homeowners will band together. It's going to be torn down, as some of the old duplexes are awful.

[Lakewooder]

Actually almost all of Old East Dallas was zoned multi-family in the late 1940s or early 1950s because there was a housing shortage for returning veterans...a lot of boarding houses sprang up back in those days as a lot of the large homes were 30-40 years old and the kids had left -- the widows needed some income.

Then most of the mansions on Gaston and Live Oak were leveled for apartments. If you look around you will also see some 8-12 unit apartment complexes mixed incongruously with single family homes such as in Junius Heights and Munger Place. Fortunately, there were not too many of those. The same thing happened in Oak Lawn and in what is now called Uptown/Knox Henderson. Mount Auburn, Lakewood Heights, Belmont, Hollywood, Lakewood Country Club Estates and others escaped this fate, although there are some complexes on the edges, in 'buffer-zoning' style.

It took us until the 1980s to get things back-zoned to single family with grandfather clauses for existing apartments. However, should they burn, they must be replaced by single family. There have also been some special use zoning exceptions made...

I believe the area around Ross/Hudson/Matilda/Lewis/Oram was left multi-family and was not backzoned. I used to hear rumors back in the 1980s that it was being bought up by one of the big names at the time. After the bust, Habitat built some single family homes in there and SMU established an 'inner-city' house to tutor the neighborhood children.

Now, it's finally happening on a smaller scale with different small developers (except for First Worthington). This could go either way, but now it's looking increasingly like gentrification will win...