The Oak Lawn Committee’s Tuesday night meeting had one case – Mike Ablon and Caven Enterprises’ desire to upzone their parcels on Cedar Springs Road from Reagan to just north of Throckmorton.
Caven opened its case with an interesting statement. Essentially, representative and former Dallas City Councilman Ed Oakley told the Oak Lawn Committee to approve the project to preserve the neighborhood or risk the neighborhood’s very survival. It was a statement to which a committee member said after the session, “I don’t respond well to threats.”
The presentation was very short, covering only a few slides. Its brevity caught the committee off-guard. As is the cadence of all meetings, after a developer presents, the committee asks questions.
Several acknowledged Caven’s long service to the gay community over the years – a respect they’ve held for decades.
Here are a selection of the questions asked:
Given the potential for noise from either the bars or mostly the new construction, would Ablon be open to placing various covenants or deed restrictions in place? Ablon’s answer was that the language proposed for their sub-district was more restrictive than a covenant or deed restriction. As far as I have seen, the sub-district wording has not been made publically available.
Parking is already a problem in the neighborhood – especially on weekends (as in any entertainment district). The question was asked about how much additional parking would be provided for the neighborhood? Zero. Between the two phases, the same number of spaces that are available on existing surface lots (268 spaces) would be replicated in their parking garages.
Ablon highlighted his new space for ride-sharing that will be located off Cedar Springs. As much as I see delivery trucks and ride-share vehicles scattered wherever they stop, will people really use a dedicated space around the corner from where they want to go?
Also on parking there seems to have been a change. Ablon said that there was one level of underground parking with six above. If true, why is there still a 75-foot aboveground parking garage? How tall are the garage’s ceilings?
I mention this because there were several comments about the height of the garage, it’s abutting of a residential neighborhood and it not being underground.
In the end, the answer heard most often from the design team was that the math (cost and profit) didn’t work for whatever the request was (height, setbacks, streetscape, etc.) and that preserving the existing bars was paramount over all.
Will the Oak Lawn Committee take this as-is, negotiate, or deny support? We’ll see.
I still say there’s a better way.
