Zang at Beckley is among the major intersections in the Oak Cliff Gateway rezoning case.
Some government machinery ground to a halt Thursday evening at City Hall. Blame it perhaps on information overload and uncertainty.
After dealing with other matters for about 3 ½ hours, the City Plan Commission returned to the familiar, a rezoning of the Oak Cliff Gateway area.
They will be back.
In recent months, commissioners have received briefings, held public hearings and met with interested parties about proposed new land-use rules for 854 prime acres in north Oak Cliff.
And after yet another hearing Thursday, which drew comments from 19 speakers, it was time to act on what has been an ever-evolving, many-headed beast of a zoning case.
“Here we go,” said commissioner Mike Anglin, the panel’s led on the project as appointee of City Council member Scott Griggs, who represents the Gateway area. “This has been an amazing process,” Anglin said. “Thanks, everyone, for participating.”
The rezoning proposal divides the target area into nine districts, each allowing certain types of uses and establishing maximum building heights – up to 20 stories in some areas.
It also addresses parking, landscaping, building setbacks, design guidelines and more. A 66-page draft ordinance includes recommendations from the city planning staff and a volunteer committee.
Facing such complexity, the commission waded into the decision process in piecemeal fashion, looking to address individual points with separate votes.
Anglin, who has shepherded the rezoning challenge in painstaking detail, offered motions for consideration, in some cases getting down to tightly focused changes in wording or referencing information first presented to the plan commission earlier in the day.
With no single written document for reference, the approach appeared to be tiring or confusing for some of his colleagues, as the evening wore toward 7 p.m. and a sense of inefficiency set in.
“We’re in dangerous territory,” said commissioner Neil Emmons. “I think we should close the hearing, get this on paper and vote on it.”
Anglin was agreeable: “This is not something I need to have done today.”
And some two hours after taking up the Gateway, the commission voted to close the public hearing and postpone their deliberations until Nov. 20.
In the meantime, Anglin will prepare an all-inclusive proposal for rezoning that can be considered in total or in any number of separate votes, as members see fit.
Anglin said he will send the proposal to his colleagues for review within a week or so. But an assistant city attorney told commission members not to communicate with each other or the public about the details until that 11-20-14 meeting.
We’ll see. Stay tuned.