With plenty of enthusiasm and little disagreement, Fort Worth zoning officials have pushed forward four proposals to remove industrial land bordering residential neighborhoods across the south part of the city.
Commissioners embraced the cases as small yet meaningful steps toward better balancing Cowtown’s industrial vibrancy with its need for more homes in livable communities, common and often competing pressures of the region’s growth.
The most storied rezoning effort to receive the commission’s blessing Wednesday involved a 1.8-acre truck yard along Parker Henderson Road in Echo Heights. The lot, paved over in the early 2000s and now owned by Texas freight company Abram Expedited, shares a fence line with a block of single-family homes.
For years, Abram’s neighbors have complained about the noise, fumes and road damage caused by its vehicles. Fort Worth city council members, responding to their concerns, voted unanimously in June to begin rezoning the property for residential use.
“There’s heat from the trucks, there’s a smell. You cannot use your property. You can’t use your backyard,” Echo Heights resident and activist Letitia Wilbourn told zoning commissioners Wednesday afternoon. “It is a nuisance, and it should never have been industrialized.”
Wilbourn helped mobilize a small yet forceful environmental movement in her pocket of the city, lobbying public officials to reign in what she and her neighbors perceive as unchecked and unhealthy industrial expansion around their homes.
The zoning change, if approved by the City Council next month, wouldn’t force Abram to halt their operations; the property would only lose its industrial permissions if it remained vacant for at least two years.
A company representative named Mike Jones blamed the city for needlessly stifling business by entertaining it.
“What do y’all want? Are y’all trying to drive out every business in this area?” he said during the zoning commission meeting. “Because once y’all get rid of this business right here on this property, and they build, I don’t know, some more Section 8 crack houses there, y’all are going to move in on those other properties and get rid of those businesses too.” (No houses on Wilbourn’s street, Tahoe Drive, match Jones’ description.)
The zoning commission recommended unanimously that council approve the proposal.
Earlier in the meeting, commissioners also voted down a developer’s efforts to develop a truck lot a few minutes east at 4900 Carey St. The property, on its face, appeared less troublesome. It directly bordered a FedEx distribution center, some warehouses, and the freeway — no homes. It had, for some years, housed semitrailers in apparent violation of property codes.
City planning staff suggested approving a five-year truck parking permit to bring the owners into compliance, finding the usage compatible with the surrounding area and aligned with the city’s industrialization plans. To sweeten the request, the developers promised to beautify the site and install electric charging stations (ostensibly to reduce the emissions of its vehicles).
But residents and commissioners weren’t convinced.
“I do not support more tractor trailer trucks in the area due to more diesel pollution, street damage and safety issues,” Echo Heights resident Charles Smith told commissioners.
Property owners in other parts of southeast Fort Worth took it upon themselves to redesignate industrial land for residential use.
Dallas-based real estate development firm PMB Capital Investments applied to rezone an empty sliver of industrial space on a residential street in Worth Heights as a single-family lot.
Five miles northeast, in Glenwood Triangle, the founder of the area’s homeowners association applied to rezone several vacant industrial lots tucked under the tangled intersection of Interstate 30 and U.S. 287 for single-family homes.
“We need more people here,” he told commissioners.
Zoning officials were quick to green light both initiatives.
“I think this is very commendable, building new homes,” commissioner Wes Hoblit said of the Glenwood Triangle proposal shortly before he and his colleagues approved it. “Getting rid of some heavy industrial near other residential homes is great.”
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