City officials hope a new plan will help to keep Dallas’ history intact — while making sure neglected neighborhoods are protected from the city’s long history of racial inequity. The city council voted to approve a historic preservation strategic plan during Wednesday’s meeting.
The strategy aims to help answer two central questions: How can Dallas serve historically overlooked communities? And how can city officials preserve the history and cultures of the communities who have been “systematically erased by highway construction and blight removal”?
The plan’s approval comes after the city council also decided to repeal a demolition ordinance that led to the destruction of 35 historic homes in the Tenth Street Historic District. The predominately Black community is in Oak Cliff and is historically recognized as a Texas Freedman’s Town.
“Thank you council for taking this step to give us the opportunity, especially in the southern sector, to take care of our neighborhood, to fight for our neighborhoods,” Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Carolyn King Arnold, who represents District 4, said during the meeting.
Currently there are 21 historic preservation neighborhoods in Dallas. Most of them are spread out in the central part of the city — like Downtown Dallas. City staff says to add more historic districts, residents must go through a zoning change.
The plan outlines the need to also recognize Dallas’ past when it comes to racial inequity.
A page from the draft strategy shows a black and white photo of Beaumont Barbecue’s packed dining room. Black guests smile into the camera. The restaurant was listed in the Green Book, a “travel guide that listed safe places for” Black Americans to visit during the Jim Crow era from the early 1940s until 1967.
“[Beaumont Barbeque] was demolished along with much of Freedman’s Town during the construction of Central Expressway and the expansion of Uptown,” the plan says.
Staff and Dallas residents say that’s why it’s important to have a historic plan.
“Whether it’s a building or church, or a park whatever it is that made us a little better,” West Dallas resident Ronnie Mestas said during the meeting. “It’s important to us.”
Mestas told the council he supports the plan to make sure community members and neighborhoods are protected.
In the first year of the plan, city staff hopes to hire new staffers for the historic preservation team, gather data on historic districts and landmarks and start the process of surveying the city for possible new sites.
But all of that takes city funds at a time when elected officials are balancing a severely underfunded public safety pension, an upcoming budget process and issuing over $1 billion in bond funds.
“I think that the staffing recommendations…were at best aspirational but problematic for me,” District 12 Council Member Cara Mendelsohn said during the meeting. “We don’t have the budget to add in three additional staff in this area, and I’m not sure why it needs to be part of the plan.”
Mendelsohn said the plan should be a framework — but how it is implemented should be a budgeting and policy issue.
Some council members wanted to know if this plan had anything to do with the Forward Dallas land use plan — that has gained considerable pushback from some residents. Planning and Urban Design Director Andrea Gilles said during Wednesday’s meeting that the plan doesn’t specifically tie into Forward Dallas because it is not zoning.
“Through our engagement with Forward Dallas we’ve been talking with a lot of these neighborhoods and they’re ready to implement…to get something done,” Gilles said. “So, part of that discussion was thinking about…what other than zoning tools do we potentially have to help out some of these neighborhoods.”
“That’s specifically one of the tenants and one of the reasons to have this strategy because there are a limited number of tools today. Zoning can’t solve everything,” Gilles said during the meeting.
“So when we don’t have a zoning option for preserving neighborhoods…what else can we add into the toolbox that gives some resources to some of these neighborhoods that are worried about change…or loss of history.”
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