“Ruralness …”
“A quietness …”
“A stillness …”
Driving along Hartlee Field Road toward Clear Creek Natural Heritage Center and the city’s mountain bike park evokes the words of northeast Denton resident Anne Beckmann. Beckmann spent 23 years there, growing up with a peace that she told City Council members is unique to the northeast Denton area.
Beckmann wasn’t speaking only for herself but also for her parents and other people who have spent decades there, “building their forever homes little by little, creating a place that their children and grandchildren can enjoy safely and have peace.”
Tuesday night, she joined dozens of residents who attended the Denton City Council meeting to voice their disappointment with a council that Beckmann said “didn’t care about community wishes and chose to ignore concerns that went against a certain agenda.”
“I saw a city consultant that was paid a lot of money in order to produce a biased and misleading presentation,” Beckmann continued. “And then a hasty vote that led to a majority of City Council choosing an option that is completely against the steering committee’s vision statement for sustainability, preservation of rural character and ecological conservation.
“I left highly disappointed in my city and stressed for the future of this area, and all of Denton if this is how decisions are made.”
Older people, middle-aged people, younger people, families with children — nearly all wore red shirts. The red shirts represented the red dots of what the majority of the residents did not want when they placed them on the images of multifamily and high-density development at the city’s two in-person vision meetings earlier this year.
“If you go through with this development, you will not only be destroying crucial habitat for wildlife, including bald eagles, river otters and monarch butterflies, to name a few,” Beckmann said. “You will also be destroying the peace of the residents in the area and reducing their quality of life immensely.
“And you will rob all of Denton of the opportunity to have public green space, a refuge away from the city and their busy lives.”
The plan
For eight months now, these same residents have taken part in the city’s small area plan for northeast Denton. They helped to shape a vision statement that reads in part:
“Our vision for northeast Denton is to maintain a sustainable community that prioritizes environmental preservation, preservation of historic spaces and healthy recreation, while still honoring the rural character of the area.”
It keeps the zoning rural with homes on 2 to 5 acres and protects and preserves the area, as recommended by Denton’s 2040 Comprehensive Plan.
Tuesday night, Ned Woodbridge, one of the Northeast Denton Area Plan steering committee members, offered Mayor Gerard Hudspeth and the rest of council a reminder of what the Denton 2040 Comprehensive Plan actually says 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.”
The 2040 plan specially calls for protecting the rural character and open space at the city’s edge, promoting conservation development in rural areas and “expand the network of protected rural open space including floodplains and stream corridors through open space in conservation easements and through land dedications, voluntary conservation easements, land trusts and parks.”
The North Central Texas Council of Governments, Woodbridge said, rated northeast Denton with the highest score for ecological importance in the entire 12-county Dallas-Fort Worth area.
“This is a critical asset to be preserved,” Woodbridge said. “There are many other areas on the west side of town that are far less ecologically important and available for the city to build out. Look there for the growth.
“We emphatically request that you change the direction given to city staff on Aug. 1 that calls for denser development of northeast Denton. Instead, follow the vision statement, approved by the steering committee based on community input, which is vastly different than the direction given. Stick to the dictates of the comprehensive plan.”
Speaker after speaker, nearly all in red shirts, appeared for their four-minute public comment to reiterate that council members aren’t listening to them, that they ignored what the residents wanted and what the northeast Denton steering committee had envisioned. They clapped and cheered after each speaker, though only a few of them were allowed to speak.
Bridget Marshall said she saw a disappointing “lack of integrity” in the small area plan process. She claimed it wasn’t a refinement of Denton’s 2040 Comprehensive Plan, as Marshall said they were repeatedly told by city staff and the consultants, who Chief of Staff Ryan Adams said were being paid $200,000.
“Instead, it is an expensive attempt to circumvent the current zoning laws and the comprehensive plan for the benefit of investors and developers,” Marshall said. “This is appalling.”
Kate Landdeck, who helped get fellow residents to wear red shirts, reminded council members that the people of Denton “have spoken clearly and loudly about what they want for this area.”
“I am an optimist,” Landdeck said. “I believe that people are basically good. I’ve always believed government, especially local government, serves the people. I believe that enough people spoke up, the city staff and the City Council would listen. The past eight months of the Northeast Denton Area Plan process have made me doubt these things.”
Tranquility disturbed
Two days after the council meeting, Beckmann, Woodbridge, Marshall and other residents from Tuesday night gathered on a ranch where they met with city staff earlier this year to give them a tour of northeast Denton, to show them why it was important to preserve and protect.
They showed them the scenic Hartlee Field Road and the ecology of the area. For example, the riparian habitat — the land and vegetation that borders rivers and creeks — provides natural flood control and prevents erosion, helps clean the drinking water and, as Beckmann mentioned Tuesday, is “crucial to federally threatened and migratory bird species.”
Off the side of the small blacktop road, near a pond and shaded from the 109-degree day, the rurality, the stillness, the quietness was easily felt in spite of the heat. Located next to a floodplain, in the midst of the Cross Timbers, the ranch was once part of Hartlee Field Ranch, now known as Carter Ranch. It offers a view of what Denton County once looked like, before all the master-planned special districts and market-rate apartments started arriving.
“The thing that bothers me the most is we’re looking at huge growth in apartments south of here on [Loop 288] and certainly west of here on the loop,” said Reid Ferring, a geologist who lives in the area and was on the tour. “We’re seeing phenomenal growth. That plays into the [increased] traffic in this area, but it also raises a basic question about what kind of quality of life are we going to offer all these people that live in these dense apartment complexes? Where do they get a Central Park? We have all these other parks in Denton but no plans for this part of Denton.”
Stuart Birdseye, a former city spokesperson who is now with Denton Municipal Electric, said earlier this year that approximately 50 multifamily projects were in the pipeline for Denton.
Residents gathered Thursday morning claimed that Orion & Nanban, a Dallas investment firm known for market-rate apartments, plans to develop apartments on the Hartlee Field Ranch property, probably where the historic World War II hangars and the grass airstrip are located since it’s the only flat part.
Orion & Nanban has said it is considering a community of 1,300 to 1,800 homes.
Over on Hartlee Field Road, a sign in front of Hartlee Field Ranch reads, “Say No to Orion & Nanban Apartments.” Other signs read, “Save Hartlee Field Road.”
Marshall said that another reason why Denton’s density is so high is due to an inaccurate standard. She pointed out that the city’s standard for 1 acre is 32,000 square feet, according to the development code, while everywhere else, such as Dallas, it’s 43,560 square feet.
“The usage of [total] acreage to calculate the number of houses is another density-increasing trick,” Marshall wrote in a Thursday night email. “As we explained this morning, the city’s calculations don’t deduct the unbuildable land like retention/detention ponds, floodplains, ESAs, utility easements, roads, etc. The resulting density will vary widely between developments due to the variations in unbuildable land; no two parcels are alik
The fight
A couple of years ago, the northeast Denton residents developed their own small area plan after their council member suggested that they create one. They said that city staff ignored it and decided to create their own with community input that the council would ignore in early August.
“The NE Denton Area Plan proposed by the consultants resembles nothing like the one we submitted, and doesn’t incorporate any of the features we proposed,” Marshall said in an email Thursday.
On Tuesday night, residents reminded council members that they are a voting force. They have the money and the will to get council members out of office if they don’t adhere to their oath of office and represent the people who voted for them.
Two days later, Marshall and the others seemed somewhat disheartened yet determined to fight. They’ll have a chance to do so on Oct. 17, when the council holds another joint meeting with the Planning & Zoning Commission to discuss the Northeast Denton Area Plan.
They said they know it will be difficult one, given that three of the council members — Chris Watts, Joe Holland and mayor Hudspeth — were given thousands in campaign donations by development PACs such as the Apartment Association of Greater Dallas and the Dallas Builders Association, according to campaign finance reports.
Watts and Hudspeth have said such donations don’t affect their decisions. However, City Council member Paul Meltzer wrote in a pitch to the council in March 2022, “it undermines that [public] confidence when we see thousands of dollars flowing into political campaigns from interested parties like Texas Realtors, Apartment Association of Greater Dallas and Texas Association of Builders,” in an April 4, 2022, Record-Chronicle report.
Northeast Denton residents felt some of that public confidence was undermined at the early August joint meeting with the council and Planning & Zoning and again at the Tuesday night council meeting.
As Landdeck told the council Tuesday, “Your actions two weeks ago was evidence that your priorities are with large out-of-town investors and developers rather than the people you swore to serve.”
