Ideal neighborhood unites against potential industrial site, concerns over environmental impact
Sherri Mixon, executive director of T.R. Hoover CDC, walks through Dallas City Hall holding several pages of signatures in her hand. Just last night, residents of Bexar Street Connections Neighborhood Association knocked on doors asking neighbors to unite against what they fear is a possible dump site taking shape behind the railroad tracks, south of Railroad Avenue, parallel to Bexar Street.
“All of those block captains that got signatures understand that all of this pollution that happens will be right here in our very back door and our kids’ school,” Mixon says. “I’m trying to stop it so it doesn’t become Shingle Mountain, or they can use it for burning tires.”
The land behind the railroad tracks is zoned as Industrial Research, also known as IR, which allows for various industrial activities, including manufacturing, warehousing, auto mechanic shops and salvage yards. Shingle Mountain, a reference to the giant mountain of roofing debris left by Blue Star Recycling, which impacted air quality in the neighboring community of Flora Farms, was also zoned “heavy industrial manufacturing” and IR.
“They are building gravel roads. They have cameras up. They have fences up,” Mixon says.
She and other neighbors have watched trucks pass by and have asked who is in charge. Mixon says that information has not been shared.
“Because they know what their zoning is, do they even care about having a conversation with us?” Mixon asks.
Neighbors want a community park for this area behind Railroad Avenue, and that’s what they told City of Dallas planners during the Forward Dallas neighborhood planning process.
The goal of Forward Dallas is to create a comprehensive city plan based on input from neighborhoods, so that when zoning requests come before the City, staff can refer to the plan to make recommendations to plan commissioners and city councilmembers. In the current Forward Dallas proposal, the land behind Railroad Avenue is designated as “regional open space.”
South Dallas and Fair Park simultaneously are undergoing a community planning process, with an area plan that could receive a stamp of approval in early 2025. The area plan aims to update plan development district (PD) 595, created in 2001, so that South Dallas will be more welcoming to the kinds of businesses neighbors desire.
However, because the original boundaries of PD 595 do not include the land behind Railroad Avenue, neither does the draft of the South Dallas/Fair Park Area Plan.
“That is a technical thing,” says certified planner Caleb Roberts, executive director of Downwinders at Risk. “The intent of the neighborhood plan is to stop stuff like this, and we are right next to the area plan, so those same principles should apply.”