CTroyMathis
23 January 2006, 05:30 PM
A struggle with new street names
Cities, developers slow in getting show on the road
09:27 AM CST on Wednesday, January 18, 2006
By LEE POWELL / The Dallas Morning News
Visit: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/city/collin/stories/011806dnccostreetnames.12139db5.html
On stadiums, names come with a price.
Infants have no choice.
With streets, bureaucracy decides.
As North Texas sprawls, the search is on for street names.
Every house on every cul-de-sac in every new subdivision needs an address with a non-repetitious, doesn't-sound-like-something-else, easy-to-pronounce-in-a-pinch name.
It has become an increasingly tough task with Dallas-Fort Worth maps already crammed with street names. And the area's zooming growth means more streets and more names.
McKinney has built about half its expected street grid. Some planned streets – major ones – have been drawn into plans, nameless. Other monikers – almost 600 – are already reserved.
Here, significant streets get labeled by the city, residential ones by developers.
Names are tacked to subdivision plans daily, officials say. McKinney is expected to someday rival Arlington in people.
"With a fast-growing city you have issues with 'that's my name, I came up with it first,' " said John Kessel, McKinney's executive director of development services. "You've got to have a system where people turn in plats and, to some degree, reserve names. We've sort of grown into that system."
But to the south, Plano is just about done building up, making the name game less of a chore.
Left behind in this suburb of suburbs: numerous variations on Spring, Park and Preston.
Preston Creek. Preston Meadow. Preston Park. Preston Ridge.
Settling on acceptable appellations falls to municipal government.
It goes something like this: developers dream up names for streets in their spreads, submitting a list to local government. Proposed names then wind their way through the channels, with lists checked, databases tapped. The opinions of police and fire officials weigh heavily in whether a name sticks or gets tossed.
"From a public safety communications standpoint, if someone's screaming across the phone at two in the morning, how is the dispatcher going to interpret what they're saying?" says David Abshier of the Plano Fire Department, who puts proposed names through the paces.
DallasNews.com/extra
Tell us: What's most the ridiculous street name in North Texas?
Lee Powell video: How streets get named
Roughly half of suggested names don't make it. The process involves a fair amount of back-and-forth between builder and government.
Of course, names matter: They set an area's tone, helping sell it.
"It is desirable to use a name which conveys class, sophistication and wealth," said Bill Shaddock of the Shaddock Development Co. in Plano, which developed parts of that city's tony Willow Bend area.
Still, developers often scramble for street-worthy names. Enter thoroughfares bearing names of a developer's kin, or themselves.
Consider Lambert Court in Plano.
"We needed a name," Ken Lambert, a Plano City Council member in the development business, said of his namesake.
Around the area, there's concrete named after universities, cities, golf courses – even U.S. presidents, in one McKinney subdivision.
In some places, proper names have fallen out of favor.
Monikers do not necessarily stay for all time.
Names do change: a stretch of Kingsley Road in Dallas recently became Walnut Hill Lane. In Frisco, Purgatory Drive suffered defeat and was replaced by Keystone Drive after neighbors said the old name made them uncomfortable.
Streets are often renamed to honor the famous: the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., former Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry.
Several years ago, plans to rename a Plano thoroughfare after Dr. King grew contentious. The city eventually decided to shy away from renaming streets or giving them more than one name.
So with all the streets and all the growth, any chance names will run out?
Mr. Shaddock, the developer, says dreaming up new names is getting tough because so many like-minded streets are already on the ground.
"The things you and I would normally think of as street names to establish a neighborhood 99 percent of the time have already been taken," he said. "So it becomes more frustrating trying to establish a theme."
Dr. Joel Goldsteen, a professor of city and regional planning, fears celebrity culture will seep into the process.
"You're probably looking at Jennifer Aniston Drive, Julia Roberts Place to add the cachet," said Dr. Goldsteen of the University of Texas at Arlington. "It's insane."
Not likely, city planning types say.
"Anytime you've got something that stands the test of time, that's reasonable," said Mr. Kessel, the McKinney official. "People, places, themes that are not pop culture."
Dr. Goldsteen suggests that arts and humanities folks come up with street names.
"Let's get some aesthetic to the naming," he said. "Leave it to a panel of people that are not engineers, that are not planners who don't have time to do it and are not developers who want to name everything after their baby."
He sees thoroughfares paying homage to great authors, other stretches perhaps named after mariners or the like.
"Really having a bunch of humanities people in the process would take it up a notch," Dr. Goldsteen said.
Cities, developers slow in getting show on the road
09:27 AM CST on Wednesday, January 18, 2006
By LEE POWELL / The Dallas Morning News
Visit: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/city/collin/stories/011806dnccostreetnames.12139db5.html
On stadiums, names come with a price.
Infants have no choice.
With streets, bureaucracy decides.
As North Texas sprawls, the search is on for street names.
Every house on every cul-de-sac in every new subdivision needs an address with a non-repetitious, doesn't-sound-like-something-else, easy-to-pronounce-in-a-pinch name.
It has become an increasingly tough task with Dallas-Fort Worth maps already crammed with street names. And the area's zooming growth means more streets and more names.
McKinney has built about half its expected street grid. Some planned streets – major ones – have been drawn into plans, nameless. Other monikers – almost 600 – are already reserved.
Here, significant streets get labeled by the city, residential ones by developers.
Names are tacked to subdivision plans daily, officials say. McKinney is expected to someday rival Arlington in people.
"With a fast-growing city you have issues with 'that's my name, I came up with it first,' " said John Kessel, McKinney's executive director of development services. "You've got to have a system where people turn in plats and, to some degree, reserve names. We've sort of grown into that system."
But to the south, Plano is just about done building up, making the name game less of a chore.
Left behind in this suburb of suburbs: numerous variations on Spring, Park and Preston.
Preston Creek. Preston Meadow. Preston Park. Preston Ridge.
Settling on acceptable appellations falls to municipal government.
It goes something like this: developers dream up names for streets in their spreads, submitting a list to local government. Proposed names then wind their way through the channels, with lists checked, databases tapped. The opinions of police and fire officials weigh heavily in whether a name sticks or gets tossed.
"From a public safety communications standpoint, if someone's screaming across the phone at two in the morning, how is the dispatcher going to interpret what they're saying?" says David Abshier of the Plano Fire Department, who puts proposed names through the paces.
DallasNews.com/extra
Tell us: What's most the ridiculous street name in North Texas?
Lee Powell video: How streets get named
Roughly half of suggested names don't make it. The process involves a fair amount of back-and-forth between builder and government.
Of course, names matter: They set an area's tone, helping sell it.
"It is desirable to use a name which conveys class, sophistication and wealth," said Bill Shaddock of the Shaddock Development Co. in Plano, which developed parts of that city's tony Willow Bend area.
Still, developers often scramble for street-worthy names. Enter thoroughfares bearing names of a developer's kin, or themselves.
Consider Lambert Court in Plano.
"We needed a name," Ken Lambert, a Plano City Council member in the development business, said of his namesake.
Around the area, there's concrete named after universities, cities, golf courses – even U.S. presidents, in one McKinney subdivision.
In some places, proper names have fallen out of favor.
Monikers do not necessarily stay for all time.
Names do change: a stretch of Kingsley Road in Dallas recently became Walnut Hill Lane. In Frisco, Purgatory Drive suffered defeat and was replaced by Keystone Drive after neighbors said the old name made them uncomfortable.
Streets are often renamed to honor the famous: the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., former Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry.
Several years ago, plans to rename a Plano thoroughfare after Dr. King grew contentious. The city eventually decided to shy away from renaming streets or giving them more than one name.
So with all the streets and all the growth, any chance names will run out?
Mr. Shaddock, the developer, says dreaming up new names is getting tough because so many like-minded streets are already on the ground.
"The things you and I would normally think of as street names to establish a neighborhood 99 percent of the time have already been taken," he said. "So it becomes more frustrating trying to establish a theme."
Dr. Joel Goldsteen, a professor of city and regional planning, fears celebrity culture will seep into the process.
"You're probably looking at Jennifer Aniston Drive, Julia Roberts Place to add the cachet," said Dr. Goldsteen of the University of Texas at Arlington. "It's insane."
Not likely, city planning types say.
"Anytime you've got something that stands the test of time, that's reasonable," said Mr. Kessel, the McKinney official. "People, places, themes that are not pop culture."
Dr. Goldsteen suggests that arts and humanities folks come up with street names.
"Let's get some aesthetic to the naming," he said. "Leave it to a panel of people that are not engineers, that are not planners who don't have time to do it and are not developers who want to name everything after their baby."
He sees thoroughfares paying homage to great authors, other stretches perhaps named after mariners or the like.
"Really having a bunch of humanities people in the process would take it up a notch," Dr. Goldsteen said.