LH homeowners associations (HOA) are responding to a proposed project that would construct a maintenance facility at the northwest corner of Forest and Audelia. This would include removing the ALDI shopping center, the apartment complex located immediately south, and about a third of the Indigo on Forest apartments. The facility would service and fuel city vehicles and replace the current facility on Goforth Road.
As of now, the project is just an idea, not an official proposal. Donna Halstead, president of the Dallas Citizens Council and a former neighborhood councilwoman, brought the idea to homeowners associations for feedback about two months ago. Halstead says constructing single-family homes on the land currently used by the Goforth facility could add as much as $48 million to tax rolls. If the project garnered support from local residents and was passed by the city council, it would not begin for another 7-10 years, according to Murray Morgan, president of the Woodbridge Homeowners Association.
Morgan is currently opposed to the plan because he worries it could begin an industrialization effort in the area, and because “a line of garbage trucks and 18-wheelers is not what I want to see in my neighborhood.” Other homeowners associations are backing the project, Morgan says, in hopes that eliminating apartments and increasing the number of city vehicles, including law enforcement, in the area could decrease the crime rate.
The next steps could include a meeting among city officials and a meeting for HOA presidents to discuss the proposal with Halstead, though no date has been set for either, according to Morgan and Halstead.
