About five years ago precisely, the Dallas City Council, despite heavy opposition, approved rezoning of a 10-acre swath of land at the southwest corner of Skillman and Church from single-family to multifamily use. A developer of high-end senior living facilities planned to build there. Much of the surrounding Lake Highlands community opposed this project because, they said, the land was meant for single-family homes.
But, the experts said, that’s unrealistic.
Yet today, the land is being cleared for a new subdivision comprising — believe it — Single. Family. Houses.
Example of a home built by Highland Classic Homes, which will build in the new Skillman-Church subdivision. Courtesy highlandclassichomes.com
A few weeks ago, after I reported the borderline-heroic re-rezoning from multifamily back to single family, Glee Huebner reminded me of the 2008 rezoning fight, from her perspective as president of the Highlands West Homeowner Association. (I had a ringside seat to this whole affair, but I needed this refresher-thanks, Glee).
“The land [owned partly by Prescott Realty and partly by Forest Meadow Baptist Church] became multifamily after Prescott purchased it and along with a builder proposed a high-rise retirement center. We and several other HOAs in the neighborhood fought against a zoning change. Still, it was changed to multifamily by the city council, even though the council chambers were completely full of people opposing the change.”
Despite the zoning change, the builder, Jonathan Perlman, took his project to a different location, not too far away.
Perlman is the CEO of the forthcoming The Tradition-Lovers Lane, a 202-unit “high-end senior living community,” that just broke ground in the East Dallas area.
Meanwhile, as we have been reporting for a few weeks now, a developer planning a single-family home project took interest in the Skillman-Church property. It recently—victoriously and miraculously, some say—was rezoned back to single family and purchased by said developer, and now the Bordeaux subdivision is underway.
Those who, like Glee Huebner, were in the middle of the fray five years ago recall real estate pundits telling us that no one would ever build single-family there.
“Remember a few years back,” notes Advocate reader/commenter lh_newbie, “when Jonathan Perlman, developer of the retirement community that was proposed at this corner, made derogatory comments about no-one wanting to buy a single family home at this location?”
Back then, before the contested rezoning to multifamily, city councilman Jerry Allen, at a public hearing, offered to stall Perlman’s project and give the community 90 days to find a homebuilder to develop the property. If no one came through with a serious offer, he said, he would recommend the rezoning so Perlman could proceed with his project.
On June 26, 2008, true to his word, Allen recommended the change and the land was rezoned to make way for what presumably would have been The Tradition-Skillman.
But the project reportedly was thwarted, and might never have been feasible at all, partly because the owner of Forest Meadow Baptist Church refused to sell his portion of the Skillman-Church land. Last year, Sid Morrison of Forest Meadow Baptist told the Advocate that the church held out for someone who wanted to build houses.
“We sided with the homeowners association, and went down to City Hall and fought,” Morrison says. “And whatever we do, we are still watching out for the homeowners association.”
That, says Huebner, was a problem for Perlman. “It left him with a narrow wedge of land that would be hard to build on,” she says.
Also, during the lengthy delays —some HOA-manufactured stalling as well as the 90-day period implemented by Allen—the economy turned and Perlman lost financing for the project, Huebner recalls.
So now, The Tradition is a few miles away, just outside of Lake Highlands, and 37 new houses priced at about $650,000 each are going up in the heart of Lake Highlands. Everybody happy?
