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Southern Dallas won’t have a Mandela Boulevard, but it might get a Hollie Road

Lancaster Road in southern Dallas will not become Nelson Mandela Boulevard.

Dallas City Council member Dwaine Caraway on Wednesday formally gave up his bid to name the corridor for the late South African president. Caraway had pledged to stop his effort in September, but the issue didn’t come up again for council action until Wednesday.

With Mandela now off the table, Caraway is hoping to name Lancaster Road instead for a local legend: the late Dallas ISD football and track coach Raymond Hollie.

“It’s very important for the community there to have a special identity,” Caraway said. “There needs to be an infusion of enthusiasm.”

The council member had pushed for the Mandela moniker as a way to inspire children in the predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the corridor.

But many along the six-mile stretch road objected the idea, pointing out the hassle and confusion of having to deal with an address change. Some said the road should be named for an American veteran, given that the road is home to the Dallas VA Medical Center.

And Caraway’s support on the City Council eventually fizzled.

“I want the community to know that we did hear from you,” he said on Wednesday.

Caraway said he would re-engage the community over future efforts to rename Lancaster Road. But he said he was bullish about the prospects of a road named for Hollie, who’s most known for his tenure at Booker T. Washington and Roosevelt high schools.

For one, Caraway is aiming for a shorter stretch of Lancaster Road. Rather than looking at the whole shebang – from Illinois Avenue to the city’s southern limit – he’s now focusing on just the stretch from Illinois Avenue to Ledbetter Drive.

And the council member said Hollie would address some of the concerns that dogged his effort to remain the road for Mandela. The coach, who died in 1985, was a World War II veteran. And, of course, he’s a local icon.

“Raymond Hollie?” Caraway said. “That’s like drafting a No. 1 draft pick.”

Dallas City Council approves relocation grant to Commemorative Air Force

Mayor Mike Rawlings speaks at the announcement last April that the Commemorative Air Force planned to move its headquarters to Dallas Executive Airport. (Michael Ainsworth/DMN Staff Photographer)

The City Council approved a $700,000 grant Wednesday to help the Commemorative Air Force relocate its headquarters to Dallas Executive Airport.

But first, some council members offered words of praise and concern for the deal, the recipient and its future home.

Vonciel Jones Hill, who represents the airport area, and Tennell Atkins, a longtime airport supporter, hailed the CAF move, while downplaying some neighbors’ unease about aircraft noise.

“I live within walking distance of Dallas Executive Airport,” said Jones Hill, later claiming that “I and my neighbors have no complaints” about noise.

“I’ve been living there for 34 years and the flight pattern is right over my house,” said Atkins, going on to promise that “we are here to protect the neighborhood. We understand about noise abatement.”

The CAF has told the city it will have no more than three air shows a year with its vintage military aircraft — on weekends during daylight hours. But Scott Griggs raised the issue of noise from those planes’ regular weekend maintenance flights.

Assistant City Manager Ryan Evans said the city has asked the group to limit such operations on Sunday morning without success. Griggs then called for mandatory restrictions on weekend CAF flights linked to city funding.

“We’re never going to be in a better position than today,” he said. His idea failed to gain support.

The council’s economic development committee last week endorsed an incentive package that could pay the Commemorative Air Force up to $8.7 million over time, if the organization meets development and fund-raising requirements.

As he did at last week’s meeting, Philip Kingston again questioned the offering Wednesday: “I’m severely concerned that eight million dollars is too much for this deal.”

He asked Mark Duebner, the city’s aviation director, when Dallas Executive might become a financially sustainable operation. Duebner said he didn’t know when the airport would pay for itself, but “we think this is a catalyst project,” he said of the CAF relocation from its home in Midland.

Rick Callahan asked CAF president Stephan Brown whether his organization will maintain a presence in Midland. Brown said some continuity there was the plan. “We’re not a close-one, open-one organization.”

He said Dallas Executive was selected for a new headquarters “because we felt this was a better opportunity to fulfill our mission.” And he told Callahan that his group had “absolutely” been a “good-faith partner” with Midland. “We’ve brought … economic benefit to the area, and we will continue to do so.”

Sandy Greyson reminded Brown and city staff of neighbors’ complaints about their lack of involvement in airport planning and decisions.

“Do you commit here publicly that you will reach out to the community and listen to their concerns,” she asked Evans. “Absolutely,” he responded, reiterating promises that airport staff would hold at least four neighborhood meetings a year.

Greyson fired her commitment question at Brown as well. “Absolutely,” he said. “We look forward to it.”

Hill weighed back in on the noise concerns, saying she opposed limiting weekend aircraft maintenance flights. “On Sunday mornings, my neighborhood does not sleep in,” she said. “We go to church.”

Mayor Mike Rawlings echoed Atkins’ earlier words that the city’s landing of CAF would be good for the airport and the area’s development, while the organization must be “good to their promise” to the city.

“We need people coming to southern Dallas,” the mayor said, adding “we can all be proud they have chosen Dallas. … In the great scheme of things this is huge, huge news.”

The $700,000 grant would be paid in three installments if the city’s terms are met. The city would have to employ 30 people at Dallas Executive, sign a 30-year lease for airport space, base nine aircraft there and meet other conditions by certain dates.

A proposed offering of up to $2 million is planned for council review in December. It would provide partial reimbursement for construction of a museum and hangar building covering at least 35,000 square feet and costing at least $5 million by the end of 2020.

If the CAF raises at least another $5 million toward expansion of the museum and hangar by the end of 2025, a future could would consider paying the group 15 percent of the total raised up to $6 million, according to the proposal backed by the council’s economic development committee last week.

 

 

Dallas city officials welcome new alternative to payday lenders

Evening sun sets over Dallas City Hall Friday, January 24, 2014. (G.J. McCarthy/The Dallas Morning News)

Dallas city officials on Wednesday welcomed a new alternative to the payday loan industry.

The nonprofit Community Loan Center of Dallas will now offer short-term loans of up to $1,000, with no collateral or credit checks required. The loans will be provided through participating employers to workers who otherwise might have trouble borrowing money

And the loans will feature an 18 percent interest rate, which pales in comparison to the rates often charged by payday lenders.

Dallas City Council member Jerry Allen has pushed for the program – the latest in his efforts to combat payday lenders. Allen, who represents Lake Highlands, said he hopes the new loan center will help “end the cycle of debt” that often consumes borrowers.

“We are going to build one big, big, big corporation that will go nationwide to help our asset-poor people,” he said at a City Hall news conference attended by several council members.

The city of Dallas isn’t directly sponsoring the loan center, but it’s one of the employers participating in the program.

The Dallas effort is part of an expansion of a community loan model that began in 2011 in the Rio Grande Valley.

Officials said they’ve had success so far, with $3 million in loans made to employees at more than 50 workplaces in the valley. Ninety-five percent of borrowers there paid back their loans before or by the due date, officials said.

Dallas City Council repeals restrictions on protests

Protesters at the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Center obtained a judge's order to demonstrate there in April 2013, after previously being cited for waving signs too near a freeway. Photo by Mona Reeder/Staff photographer

It didn’t take any discussion for Dallas City Council members to undo an ordinance they debated strongly before passing earlier this year.

The council approved repealing restrictions on protesters Wednesday as part of a consent agenda that included 60 other items. Leaders passed the restrictions — which outlawed distracting motorists on certain highways with signs or costumes — in the wake of protests at the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Center which included huge political bobble heads.

Police had requested the measures, saying they were concerned about the safety of protestors, drivers and officers near high-speed roadways, but found a previous 75-foot limit too difficult to enforce. At least two lawsuits had challenged that distance requirement.

All but four of the council’s members voted in favor of the costume and signage regulations, calling them a safety necessity. But member Philip Kingston and others said the measures were an affront to free speech and predicted more lawsuits.

Anti-Obama protest group Overpasses for America, sued the city over the ordinance in August, saying police had infringed on its right to free speech by not allowing a protest on a Dallas North Tollway overpass. That suit is pending in federal court.

The council got an executive session briefing on the ordinance Nov. 5 and the Transportation and Trinity River Project Committee discussed it behind closed doors Nov. 18. Kingston said the city attorney’s office recommended repealing it because of concerns about its constitutionality.

City Attorney Warren Ernst did not say what changed his recommendation or return calls Tuesday afternoon.

Rawlings praises Castro, former fellow Texas mayor, for help in resolving HUD case

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings opens up the city council meeting in the reflection of the outer doors at Dallas City Hall November 12, 2014. (Nathan Hunsinger/The Dallas Morning News)

The Dallas City Council on Wednesday offered congratulations all the way around for the city reaching a favorable deal last week with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban over a housing discriminating case.

But in praising the agreement – which resolved an affordable-housing complaint that could’ve cost the city tens of millions of dollars – Mayor Mike Rawlings went out of his way to thank new HUD Secretary and former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro.

Castro spent three times talking on the phone to Rawlings alone, the Dallas mayor said. He kept “open eyes to the truth” as Dallas officials presented their case, Rawlings said. And Castro demanded “very high standards,” he said.

“His commitment on this was remarkable, to be this hands-on” Rawlings said.

The council action on Wednesday to endorse the HUD agreement was a formality, nearly a week after city officials exhaled a sigh of relief over resolving the complaint that had been filed by two developers in 2010.

HUD officials investigated that complaint and last year accused the city of promoting discrimination through its affordable-housing practices. City officials strongly denied the charge, which focused on the city’s geographic distribution of low-income housing.

Since then, HUD eventually “recognized that they just had it wrong,” City Manager A.C. Gonzalez said.

In the agreement, the city didn’t admit any wrongdoing. And it didn’t have to pay any financial penalties – to HUD or to the developers who prompted the investigation. But the city still has a to-do list to complete for the agreement to be fulfilled.

“This is a resolution,” Gonzalez said. “But it’s also a commitment to keep moving forward in a direction that is going be helping improve housing opportunities throughout the city.”

Under the deal, the city must lead efforts develop a 10-year regional housing plan. The City Council also must consider a likely contentious ordinance to ban landlords from disqualifying potential tenants based on their source of income.

And the city must continue to overhaul the housing department through its so-called Neighborhood Plus program.

“What we have committed to is going to be tough,” Rawlings said. “It’s not going to be easy for this council and future councils.”

Follow Tom Benning on Twitter at @tombenning.

Watch as two city of Dallas employees rescue a third after he drove his truck into White Rock Creek

Just past 8:30 this morning Dallas Fire Rescue sent word of a water rescue near White Rock Creek, but without any further details. Tonight, city of Dallas spokesperson Sana Syed fills in the blanks with a remarkable story that involves two city of Dallas workers rescuing a third from a truck that was slowly sinking into the creek.

According to Syed, a man who works in Equipment and Buildings Services was driving his truck along the Jackson Branch of the creek when he suffered “an apparent medical emergency.” Unable to move, the man drove his truck into the creek.

Raul Alamillo Jr. and Brent English, along with other city employees, rescued a fellow 1500 Marilla co-worker when he drove his truck into White Rock Creek this morning following an unspecified medical emergency. (Courtesy city of Dallas)

Moments later Raul Alamillo Jr. and Brent English, both of whom work in Wastewater Treatment, drove by on their way to a nearby job site. They saw the sinking truck and, at first, thought nothing of it and just kept on driving, Syed says. But then “they noticed the brake lights flash on and off and realized someone was still in the truck,” Syed says in a press release issued by the city Tuesday night.

“Alamillo and English braved the cold water and jumped in to save the man, who was submerged up to his shoulders in water,” she writes. But he couldn’t move. So they tried to open the door and had no luck. In the end, they resorted to using a hammer to smash out the window, undo the man’s seat belt and pull him out of the truck before it sank. They had no idea the man worked for the city until they pulled him out of the truck and recognized him.

“It was common sense,” says Alamillo in a prepared statement. “I knew someone needed our help, so I had to stop to help. It didn’t matter if it was another city employee or a citizen.”

The driver was transported to the hospital, and Syed says he’s in stable condition.

“These employees went above and beyond their regular call of duty,” says Dallas City Manager A.C. Gonzalez. “They are heroes and deserve to be commended for saving a co-worker’s life.”

Council members call for greater panhandling enforcement

Michael Reeves waves to drivers at the intersection of Jim Miller Road and Interstate 30 Saturday January 26, 2008. Reeves said he had been panhandling at that intersection more than two years and would periodically get tickets from the police. Photo by: Courtney Perry/Dallas Morning News.

There’s at least one Dallas panhandler who knows City Council member Rick Callahan, the councilman told the Quality of Life Committee Monday morning.

“One guy, he even raises his fist at me, ‘cause he knows my vehicle and he hollers and says ‘You’ll never drive me off,’” Callahan said. “I like to think, oh, yes we can.”

Callahan called panhandlers “nonconformists” and compared them setting down belongings to dogs urinating on cars. He told police officers he did not care if there were higher priority crimes happening, he wanted the panhandlers ticketed and jailed as many times as it took.

“Break their backs, break their spirit — that’s the only way we’re going to win this battle,” he said.

The committee requested a presentation on panhandling and noise disturbances from police during its regular meeting, where members emphasized how severe they considered the problem.

The city’s panhandling ordinance was last updated in 2011, when it outlawed panhandling in the high-profile areas of downtown, Uptown, Deep Ellum and Victory Park. Elsewhere, solicitation is banned if it is after dark or by coercion.

In the last six months, police have issued 155 citations for panhandling and arrested 39 people, police told the committee.

The city has promised zero-tolerance for panhandling in the past, such as in 2009 when police joined with a private security group working for business advocacy group DowntownDallas. In 2008 the city publicly asked residents to stop giving money to panhandlers.

Committee members said they thought the efforts had made some impact, but that there is now too little enforcement.

Committee member Carolyn Davis voiced concern about persistence of people begging on certain street corners, but expressed some compassion, telling the story of a boy she went to school with who is homeless now — just as he was in first grade, she said.

Davis suggested the role of health and human services in the city may have lost staff after that department was folded into housing.

“I’m not going to beat up on the homeless that bad,” she said. “We used to have something to guide them.”

Committee chair Dwaine Caraway called it “abusive” the way he’d seen some solicitors curse at women and suggested the police develop a specific panhandler unit that could focus on enforcement.

He called to make the ordinance itself stronger but, in the meantime, asked police to step up enforcement.

Dallas won’t have to pay HUD anything as city and feds settle affordable-housing discrimination allegations

1600 Pacific, otherwise known as the old LTV Tower, otherwise known as the building that brought the city to HUD's attention (again) (David Woo/Staff photographer)

Just months ago it appeared Dallas City Hall might have to pay millions of dollars to resolve affordable-housing discrimination allegations brought by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. But according to an agreement between the city and the feds signed Wednesday and released late this evening, Dallas will not owe anyone anything — not HUD and not the developers who initially claimed the city acted illegally when it refused to subsidize their proposed redevelopment of a downtown Dallas high-rise.

“Under this agreement, the City admits no wrongdoing, pays no money to HUD, and gives no relief or money to 1600 Pacific Building, L.P,” says a statement from the city.

For now, at least, all the city will have to do is continue to develop its so-called Housing Plus plan, a direct result of HUD’s investigation, and host what it’s calling a “regional housing symposium.” City manager A.C. Gonzalez and city attorney Warren Ernst will also present the city council with “a recommendation to expand the non-discrimination ordinance to include a prohibition of discrimination based on source of income.” And the city will have to present semi-regular reports to HUD showing that it’s not engaged in the kind of behavior of which it was initially accused.

Those accusations were initially slung at 1500 Marilla by developers Craig MacKenzie and Curtis Lockey, who in 2007 had hoped to redevelop 1600 Pacific downtown. The city’s Office of Economic Development refused, insisting that that it wasn’t a good deal: The pair wanted $102 million in government subsidies for a building that would wind up being worth about $37 million. In 2010 the two filed a complaint with HUD alleging that Karl Zavitkovsky, head of the city’s Office of Economic Development, told them “Downtown Dallas is not the right place for low-income housing” and “Low-income housing is not part of the vision for Downtown Dallas.”

HUD’s regional office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity opened an investigation, and Nov. 22 of last year sent the city a 29-page Letter of Findings of Non-Compliance to the city, which said there was sufficient evidence that showed “there was a pattern of negative reactions to projects that would provide affordable housing in the northern sector of Dallas and that those decisions were inconsistent with the goals required by HUD program obligations.” The city responded six weeks later with its own 59-page missive disputing every one of HUD’s findings.

The city and HUD are still arguing over some of those. But according to the agreement, which is posted below, HUD acknowledges that “at least some of its findings are incorrect,” and rather than drag this out, it’s willing to settle with the city and be done with it.

“In order to expedite just resolution of the matter and to avoid further administrative procedures or litigation over the remaining matters, the parties have agreed to enter into this Agreement,” says the document signed by Gonzalez, Ernst and Bryan Greene, HUD’s general deputy assistant secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. “The parties agree that all issues, findings, concerns, and questions in the Letter are fully and finally resolved and superseded by this Agreement.”

Lockey and MacKenzie, whose whistle-blower lawsuit was most recently dismissed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in August, will also take nothing.

“I appreciate the immediate attention Secretary [Julián] Castro gave to this matter and the leadership he showed to make housing for all a priority in the City of Dallas,” said Mayor Mike Rawlings in a prepared statement. He is not available to comment further, as he’s on a plane bound for England.

“This agreement allows us as a city to move forward in partnership with HUD to continue to serve the needs of our community,” Gonzalez says in the same release. “We were able to show HUD the inaccuracies in their initial report and feel confident in our ability to work together.”

We will have much more in coming days. Until then the agreement is below. Continue reading →

In Preston Hollow, Mark Cuban’s growing property holdings have some neighbors worried

Mark Cuban laughs at a news conference with Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle. (Vernon Bryant/Staff Photographer)

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has never shied from controversy – and that now extends to his old neighborhood.

Though he’s earned a reputation over the years as a city benefactor – donating money to fight graffiti and saving the city’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade one year – some neighbors blame him for increasing community tensions of late near his former Preston Hollow digs.

The brash billionaire has patched together a half dozen properties at the busy corner of Northwest Highway and Preston Road. And recently, he’s stoked fears that he might turn the single-family lots into something denser by clearing trees, fences and a home.

Cuban, in an email, said he’s in “no rush to do anything beyond cleaning the property and opening it up for any one to see.” While he didn’t deny that he’s trying to “generate interest,” he added that he’s “exploring all options but no decisions have been made.”

But some local residents, such as former Mayor Laura Miller, complain that the property clearing is now exposing homes to traffic, noise and potential intruders. And long-term, they worry about what kind of development might come to their quiet, well-heeled neighborhood.

“It’s a beautiful area that a lot of people didn’t even know about,” said Meredith Houston, a neighbor who lives next door to Cuban’s properties.

Development near Preston Center – the commercial area near the intersection – has been under scrutiny in recent months.

Two high-profile residential projects – which would’ve featured high-rise or mid-rise structures – fizzled under neighborhood pressure. And the battles raised the broader question about the future of the ever-popular – yet in many ways, outmoded – area.

City Council member Jennifer Staubach Gates decided to team with the North Central Texas Council of Governments to conduct a land-use study. It would mark the first in-depth look in 25 years at the area’s zoning, traffic and other characteristics.

The first community meeting on the study was held last week at a church near Preston Center. And during the question-and-answer session, there was one name that came up more than any other: Mark Cuban.

“What can we do to stop him?” one woman asked.

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City’s appeal makes it likely Sam’s Club near Cityplace will be built long before lawsuit is resolved

The fight over this -- the Sam's Club development in the East Village, not the rendering -- will last long after it's actually built. (Courtesy Trammell Crow Company)

Three months ago a Dallas judge opted not to stop Trammell Crow Company from building a Sam’s Club in the shadow of Cityplace over some residents’ objections, but that was hardly the end of the legal battle over construction of the megastore in the so-called East Village at N. Central Expressway and Carroll Avenue. Look no further than the flurry of filings in recent weeks as Dallas City Hall continues to try to get the case thrown out before it ever goes to trial.

The city of Dallas has been trying to get Judge Phyllis Lister Brown to toss the case by claiming that the East Village Association, which sprang up in an attempt to quash the development, had no legal standing to file for a temporary injunction. City attorneys have also filed several motions to dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction.

But on October 14, Brown ruled in favor of the East Village Association. The association, she wrote, “has standing,” and she dismissed the city’s motion. Days later, the East Village Association’s attorney, Anthony Ricciardelli, said in an email to The Dallas Morning News that he and his clients were looking forward to the trial date early next year.

On Friday, Dallas City Attorney Warren Ernst took the case to the next level by filing a notice of accelerated appeal in the Fifth Court of Appeals. Long story short: Everything else gets set to the side while the appeals court considers the filing. Writes Senior Assistant City Attorney Chris Caso, “This appeal stays all other proceedings in the trial court pending resolution of the appeal because the plea was filed and requested for hearing not later than the 180th day after the date the Defendants filed their original answer.”

A summary judgment hearing had been scheduled for January 5, but that will likely be pushed off the docket: Ricciardelli says he’s not expecting a ruling from the Fifth Circuit until some time in 2015. But now, he says, “everything is frozen during the appeal.”

Well, not everything: Trammell Crow Company is doing asbestos remediation and demolition prep on the former Xerox site, and expects to have the site cleared around February, at which point it will turn over the property to Walmart so it can begin building the Sam’s Club. And even if the city loses at the Fifth Circuit, it could always appeal up to the Supreme Court of Texas. By the time the city’s appeal works its way through the system, it’s likely the Sam’s Club and the rest of the East Village development will be open for business.

“The city wants our suit thrown out on technicalities,” says an undaunted Ricciardelli. “We just want a hearing on the merits of this dispute.”