For nearly a year, neighbors in northeast Denton have been working to preserve the Hartlee Field area, with its historic World War II hangars, from development by turning it into a state park.
They’re not anti-development, but for this area they say it makes sense to preserve it, especially given Denton’s dwindling green spaces.
The area has been recognized by the North Central Texas Council of Governments as the most ecologically diverse in a 12-county region.
The neighbors call their conservation project “Hartlee Airfield Refuge and Trails,” or HART, a place for artists, kids and veterans, a retreat of sorts and a wildlife refuge. Denton Mayor Gerard Hudspeth and Denton County Judge Andy Eads have written letters of support for their project to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
“We’ve got county support and city support, and even the city of Dallas is supporting,” said Kate Landdeck, who has been helping lead the effort with several neighbors. “The whole region needs something like this. We know this area is growing. It’s the fastest-growing area in the county. We have to have space for people. This is the last chance to preserve this land, and if we don’t do it now, it will be swallowed up with rooftops, and there is no undoing it once it’s done.”
Then, on March 30, they discovered that 50 acres of the 800-acre Hartlee Field property they’d been trying to preserve had been sold to Denton ISD. A zoning change by the City Council would be needed to build a school there.
The Denton ISD school board unanimously approved the purchase of the 50 acres at the Dec. 10 board meeting with funds from the 2023 Capital Improvement Plan, Julie Zwahr, chief spokesperson for Denton ISD, said in an email in early May. The approval was in response to growth in the northeast Denton area.
“As has been the longstanding practice in Texas school districts, when possible, school sites are purchased well in advance of development to gain a fair price for real property and be good stewards of taxpayer funds,” Zwahr wrote. “As to when a school will open on this or any other site, Denton ISD tracks population growth and student enrollment to drive those decisions.”
In early February, Judge Sean Jordan, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Sherman, granted an asset freeze modification to allow Frisco-based Nanban Ventures to sell the land at fair-market value in an attempt to pay back investors. Nanban Ventures was once part of Orion & Nanban, a real estate investment firm that wanted to build multifamily housing on the Hartlee Field property.
In October 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission obtained a temporary restraining order, asset freeze and other emergency relief against three founders of Nanban Ventures — Gopala Krishnan, Manivannan Shanmugam and Sakthivel Palani Gounder — to halt alleged fraud that targeted the Indian American community and had raised nearly $130 million from more than 360 investors since April 2021.
“We allege that the defendants engaged in a large-scale affinity fraud that targeted hundreds of investors, largely from the DFW-area Indian American community,” Gurbir S. Grewal, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, said in an Oct. 16, 2023, news release. “Through allegedly false promises of unrealistic returns and lies about the success of their investing strategies, the defendants raised nearly $130 million from investors. But in classic Ponzi fashion, the complaint alleges, the defendants used investor money to make fake profit distribution payments, while allegedly siphoning off millions in investors’ funds for themselves. We urge all investors to confirm the credentials of supposed investment professionals and to view investments that advertise outsized returns skeptically.”
SEC Director Eric Werner from the Fort Worth Regional Office pointed out in the release that “nanban” means friend. “However, the defendants have been the furthest thing from ‘friends’ to their investors, raising money and paying false returns on a foundation of lies.”
Judge Jordan made final judgments in the case in early February, and a receiver is working to determine the amounts owed to creditors and investors and to distribute available assets.
The Denton Record-Chronicle attempted to contact Orion & Nanban and find out what the plans are for the rest of the property. The email address for Ragu Su, vice president of investor relations for Orion & Nanban Realty, was returned undeliverable. He couldn’t be reached by phone.
Orion & Nanban’s website no longer exists.
Ann Woodbridge, one of the neighbors helping Landdeck, questioned the timing of the Denton ISD’s purchase, given that the city’s Northeast Denton Area Plan has been shelved since late 2023. The area plan sought to overlay future zoning from rural residential to allow for multifamily housing on the former Carter Ranch property.
“But the plan was never completed and adopted by the city when it became very evident that the plan wasn’t reflective of the community’s stated desires for the area,” Woodbridge wrote. “... Wouldn’t the sale of some of the property for a school and future development be part of the small area plan? Who has given the green light for this land use since the [area plan] was supposed to overlay city zoning? The area is still zoned RR [rural residential]. Has the small area plan been brushed aside with plans for development proceeding? It seems to me to be premature to be buying a school site if the future land use of the area is still being explored.”
The area plan has been paused indefinitely, Dustin Sternbeck, the city’s chief spokesperson, wrote in a May 6 message to the Record-Chronicle.
“The next steps are still to be determined,” Sternbeck wrote.
Ned Woodbridge, who’s also part of the northeast Denton neighborhood group, said the February asset freeze modification indicated that Nanban Ventures was seeking to sell the Hartlee Field property as soon as possible, “to the dismay of the local community.”
“Our concern, of course, is that the sale process may proceed faster than the time it takes for us to bring land trusts to the table, so to speak, with firm proposals,” Woodbridge said in a May 6 email.
Woodbridge also served on the steering committee for the Northeast Denton Area Plan in 2023, representing neighbors as they worked with city development services staff, a consultant and representatives from Orion & Nanban to offer input on how the area should be developed in the future.
The 50 acres purchased by Denton ISD for a future school are in the southeastern portion of the property near Hartlee Field Road, closer to the Clear Creek Natural Heritage Center, in an area that neighbors have been fighting to preserve for nearly a decade.
In August 2023, Woodbridge and dozens of other neighbors appeared at a City Council meeting to express their disappointment in a council majority that directed the city staff to move forward with an area plan that would allow higher-density housing, such as multifamily projects, in the ecologically sensitive area. The decision took place during a joint meeting with the Planning and Zoning Commission.
That council majority included Mayor Gerard Hudspeth, council members Joe Holland, Vicki Byrd, Brandon Chase McGee and then-council member Chris Watts, who served as mayor before Hudspeth.
The neighbors also held rallies and an art event and met with local media to raise awareness of their preservation efforts.
That effort led them to work with council members Paul Meltzer and Brian Beck, both of whom opposed the area plan, to create a state park for the Hartlee Field area. They applied for funding from the state’s newly created Centennial Parks Conservation Fund to purchase land for state parks.
“What is special about this land?” Woodbridge wrote in a Jan. 19 email to the Record-Chronicle. “It contains broad wildlife habitat and corridors and a variety of environmentally sensitive areas (ESAs) that are shrinking rapidly in the DFW area. It comprises numerous riparian ways and river floodplains that feed into Clear Creek and the Elm Fork of the Trinity River. These are important habitats for native plants and animals. There is unusual rarity and diversity of species. These are important ‘pressure-relief’ valves to mitigate flooding hazards in the area and in the downstream dam and river systems.
“Lastly, these wetlands, floodplains and riparian ways act as natural filters for contaminants cleansing the runoff from local industrial and residential land usage, so important to water quality for the entire DFW region.”
In February, they learned that the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department had passed on using the Centennial Parks Conservation Fund but instead recommended other funds they could pursue.
Woodbridge said the neighborhood group had also taken initiatives to speak with national land trusts, which typically have an interest in preserving lands.
“We in the Northeast Denton community are encouraged greatly by the response we have had from certain national private land trusts who are interested in supporting the community and the City as we look to preserve certain ecologically-important land here in Northeast Denton,” Woodbridge wrote in a May 6 email. “In addition, we are pleased to see the interest shown by certain historic preservation organizations who seek to preserve the Hartlee airfield potentially as an aviation museum, education center and airfield. This is a wonderful opportunity for the greater Denton community.”
But as Landdeck stressed, “The emergency is to get the land before some developer swoops in, and it’s gone forever.”
Then, in late March, they learned that Denton ISD had swooped in and bought the 50-acre parcel with what Ann Woodbridge said was a closing date of Jan. 31.
Landdeck figured the district probably had someone who goes out and looks for future school sites. Denton ISD has had a longstanding tradition to purchase property for future schools well in advance of development to gain a fair-market price for the property, as Denton ISD spokesperson Julie Zwahr pointed out in an early May email.
“Denton ISD welcomes the opportunity to partner with our neighborhoods and municipalities to develop joint-use facilities, especially parks and recreational facilities,” Zwahr wrote. “We currently have several schools operating adjacent to parks and have long standing Memorandum of Understanding (MOUs) with organizations to maximize the use of property for our community’s residents.”
Of course, what the ISD isn’t taking into account is how the new school will impact the ecologically diverse area.
Hartlee Field Road is a narrow blacktop road that winds through the neighborhood toward Clear Creek Natural Heritage Center. The lack of infrastructure is one of the major reasons that an Arizona-based developer pulled out of a proposal for 1,300 homes on the former Carter Ranch property in 2021.
As former District 3 council member Jesse Davis told the Record-Chronicle in early May 2021, “If we allow density up there, then that means we are obligating ourselves to road expansion, significant sewer expansion and significant water expansion. It’s not just a question of, ‘Where do you put that stuff?’ It’s a question of, ‘How much do we have to maintain into the future?’ That is more ongoing costs.”
Northeast Denton neighbor Anne Beckmann, who has been working with the others, was also surprised when she learned about the land purchase and wondered why Denton ISD would purchase it if there were no plans underway to develop that area.
“We’re hoping that we can prevent that from happening,” Beckmann said. “It seems like — at least Denton ISD thinks more people would be living out here and [so] a school needs to be here.”
Beckmann, Landdeck and others other are optimistic about their efforts to preserve the area and retain what the Denton 2040 land-use plan states about preserving the area:
“As much of Denton is characterized as rural and agricultural land that possesses a character of Denton’s past and natural environment that is cherished, conservation development is recommended as the primary means of managing the interface of the development and undeveloped land. Conservation development is an approach to the design of rural residential subdivisions which is highly suited to agricultural fringe areas where the retention of rural character and open space is desired.”
But they are moving quicker to do so.
As Landdeck reiterated, they have support for a park from leaders at all levels — city, county and state. They just need “a little help from someone who shares our vision and has the funds to make it happen,” she said.
“If we lose, it will all be developed,” Landdeck said. “If we win, they can sell it back.”